Is it wrong to listen to Nazi bands?

[luckyjimm]

Just started watching a documentary on those two girls, Prussian Blue

http://www.channel4.com/culture/micr...pop/index.html

Prussian Blue, I'm sure, make crappy music of no merit or interest. But what happens when bad people actually make good music? Could you forget the politics and still like it; or listen to it without subscribing to the politics?

As a Gothic teenager I listened to several bands who flirted with Nazi or occult imagery. Specifically, Death in June:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_In_June

who, alongside other "apocalyptic folk" bands like Current 93 used Holocaust and white supremacist imagery in some of their songs. Their politics and their place in the punk and UK political scene are intelligently dissected here by Stewart Holme: http://stewarthomesociety.org/dij.htm

I listened to Rozz Williams / Christian Death whose songs were very dark and, of course, anti-Christian

I listened to Radio Werewolf, a band set up by Zena LaVey, whose father founded the Church of Satan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Werewolf

and a singer called David E Williams: http://www.myspace.com/davidewilliams

who is a fantastic lyricist and composer (albeit with an odd singing voice) whose albums contained beautiful love songs, but also other songs which have intentionally vile (yet ironically cloaked) supremacist / psychotic sentiments.

I recently downloaded and listened to his music again and found, as when I was a teenager, I very much liked his love/anti-love songs and just didn't listen to the extremist/sadistic ones. (I am the same when it comes to Billy Bragg). I found and have been listening on repeat to a duet he did with Rozz Williams - a cover of Abba's The Winner Takes it All. It was one of the most beautiful covers I ever heard.

So, could you forgive yourself for listening to good tracks by bad people? Perhaps what you do is form a judgement on what use they're making of the imagery. It's all about context. For example Sylvia Plath's famous poem Daddy makes very strong use of this sort of imagery:

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/404.html

but what she is doing is condemning her father by casting him in the role of a German, and herself as a Jewish victim - incredibly powerful and shocking, but in no sense is she endorsing the extremist views. She's just using it as a metaphor, the most powerful weapon in her stock of imagery. By the same measure of authorial intent you might condemn T.S. Eliot poems which appear more like a sincere expression of his anti-semitism.

So, the two considerations I believe are a) the artist's intent, and, b) genre. For example the comic metal band GWAR have some horrible lyrics about serial killers, but it's part of a death/glam metal genre and you realise it's part of an act. Similarly with the goth bands, their Occult/Nazi references are part of a scene's "dark" image and not really reflecting their beliefs.

How do you decide what you should or shouldn't listen to - is it just what you like, or do political considerations come into it?


I suppose I think that listening to genuinely Nazi bands like Skrewdriver or Prussian Blue, who come out of the white supremacist movement, cannot be justified on any grounds, musical or otherwise. But if they're part of the goth or metal scene, they don't really mean it and you can listen to it. Is this a cop-out?

[slothinator]

I think you should post the same topic twice to double the number of people who think this is a stupid thread. They are bad people, and if you don't agree with their politics, you shouldn't be listening to their music.

[luckyjimm]

Here are some David E Williams lyrics of the sort I like - love/anti-love songs:

I Have Forgotten How to Love You
I Have Forgotten How to Love You
I Have Forgotten How to Love You
I Have Forgotten How to Love You
I Have Forgotten How to Love You

A squirrel walked into the mower.
Alright, I put him in there if truth be told.
But I was
young and gay in a terrible time.
To my mind, still,
my most heinous crime
is that

I Have Forgotten How to Love You
and reason for going on is gone, gone.
Pilate resigns with a sign of the cross.
You can't fly an airplane on chocolate sauce.

There was a bear
a holy terror in your room.
When I shot him I discovered
he was my brother
in a bear costume.

So much for me as the Iron Man
a warrior soul made of marzipan

The memories of those better years
are shining brightly through my tears.
I Have Forgotten How to Love You.
I can't remember how.
Dismember, disembowel
me now.

_________________________

Fear of Food

Only one thing can save you
from the Evil which you are:
that would be a tourniquet over
your tracheotomy scar.

Only thing I ever got from you:
the spice rack I stole in June.
I had never heard of fennel nor
coriander before.

Still, every dinner ends the same
but no end of sin for the Holy One.
All the bread it has the same
taste of cold linoleum.

My feet are in enormous pain.
Nothing more for me to do
but to empty the bone and jelly remains
of the frog you put in my shoe.

________________________________________

Spring is in the Air

Spring is in the air
and there's a cyst on my cheek.
Everyone's in love
except for me.

And the terrible image
of Nature unbound
can only remind me of you.
And the terrible image
of Nature unbound
can only remind me of you.

And I hope there's no such thing
as karma on this Earth;
I love you too much for me to see
you get what you truly deserve.

Went straight from the Little League
to bisexual goblin.
Mommy always wanted a daughter;
Daddy was convinced that she got one...

[otnemem]

[ QUOTE ]
Here is a great David E Williams song of the sort I like - a love/anti-love song. He really can't sing but the lyrics are great:

http://www.davidewilliams.com/mp3/forgotten.mp3

[/ QUOTE ]
I think the word you meant to use here was horrendous, but you accidentally typed "great."

Are you [censored] serious? That song is very far from great, and much closer to suicide-inducing. There are many reasons to not listen to this drivel, and his cloaked nazi-ism is not one even one of them.

[luckyjimm]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Here is a great David E Williams song of the sort I like - a love/anti-love song. He really can't sing but the lyrics are great:

http://www.davidewilliams.com/mp3/forgotten.mp3

[/ QUOTE ]
I think the word you meant to use here was horrendous, but you accidentally typed "great."

Are you [censored] serious? That song is very far from great, and much closer to suicide-inducing. There are many reasons to not listen to this drivel, and his cloaked nazi-ism is not one even one of them.

[/ QUOTE ]

I didn't say the song was great! But the lyrics are good.

Edit: just realised it's not the whole song, just a sample. Even I'd say it's not really worth listening to, you can't form an impression from just that snippet.

[amplify]

Why don't you ask some Jews if it's all right with them?

[Miamipuck]

[ QUOTE ]
Why don't you ask some Jews if it's all right with them?

[/ QUOTE ]

Well [censored] the first thing I put on my IPOD was Hitlers speech in the Riechstag. Between that and the wearing out of the "Trimph of the Will" DVD no Jew's day is complete.

[luckyjimm]

Okay I tried to open up some subtleties in my OP...

[guids]

Is it wrong? I dunno. would I throw you out of my moving car if you popped in a cd with this crap? yes.

[Blarg]

The lyrics seem pretty terrible to me.