Although hindsight has rendered it less controversial, the revelation shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack that Clear Channel Communications, the largest operator of radio stations in the country (including no less than six on our own sparsely populated FM dial), had distributed a “do not play” list was received with suspicion by millions of music lovers.
None of us are fans of Clear Channel’s business model, although we’ve all long ago given up fighting it. Community-owned radio like KFAI is great, everyone here at Hymie’s love it, but sometimes I just want to listen to the same stupid U2 songs over and over again. And I want a honey-voiced dimwit who may not even live in Minneapolis to introduce them. That’s what Cities 97 is for.
But after September 11, I couldn’t hope to hear U2′s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” or “Rock the Cashbah” or “Walk Like an Egyptian” or 163 other songs. Clear Channel sent a memo to the programmers at its stations instructing them to not play a list of 165 songs. It’s a weird list (read it on Wikipedia here).
I guess I understand the need to quietly shelve songs like “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and “Free Falling” for a few days. It’s remarkable they’d even have to ask programmers to do that, but I guess corporate radio isn’t exactly one of our country’s great brain trusts.
In fact, a lot of songs are on the list not for political reasons but for their easily-misunderstood references to flying, falling and fires (I’m not really sure why Elvis’ “You’re the Devil in Disguise” is on the list and not “Burning Love”, though). I think that many of the songwriters would understand the suggestion their songs take a seat for a while – Surely Tom Petty would feel the exclusion of “Free Fallin’” wouldn’t leave him ill-represented on corporate radio stations like Cities 97. What it would do is ensure nobody overwhelmed by shocking footage of their fellow citizens, innocent civilians, compelled by fear to leap from the World Trade Center, might turn off the television and then suddenly hear Tom Petty sing “gonna leave this world for a while” just before the chorus.
See, sidelining “Free Fallin’” (and shit, wouldn’t you rather hear “I Won’t Back Down anyway?) is just good business. Nobody wants to turn on the radio and hear that after what happened, including Tom Petty.
“Imagine” and “War” (two versions) are clearly on the list for political reasons. It’s kind of weird that Captiol Records issued a compilation with a burly, worn flag on the cover called United We Stand and chose to start its jingoistic cash-in with a song that starts that includes this verse:
Imagine there are no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
So apparently nobody in the Captiol archives listened to the records while reading spreadsheets anymore. Someone at Clear Channel did because not just the incidentally upsetting songs were identified – and, really, they had to tell programmers not to play “It’s the End of the World as we Know It (And I Feel Fine)”. This is how stupid they think their employees are.
The thing about the Clear Channel memo is that they’re thinning an already filtered pool – they didn’t have to tell people not to play “London Calling” or “Tommy Gun” because they were cut from the original Clear Channel playlist – the only Clash song on the Clear Channel list is “Rock the Cashbah” because it’s the only one getting played on September 10th.
Still, there are songs so beloved Clear Channel was forced to encompass them into any encomienda ruling regional markets – this is why you hear “Imagine” on the radio pretty often, not because the DJ and the corporation that pays him give a rats ass about all the people living life in peace. Clear Channel didn’t have to include a song like Bad Religion’s “American Jesus” in its do-not-play list because it was already on the implicit do-not-play list. No one’s allowed to play “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding” so why add to the irony of it all by banning it.
Fans of Rage Against the Machine would say as much about the inclusion of the band’s entire catalog. My theory is that they were more likely unfortunately-timed victims of the broader war against ironically corporate music, but I suppose they’ve been taken seriously more than 16 million times over the years.
Click on the link above and read the list – I think you’ll have the same reaction as I did to some of the songs, the same reaction as in this excerpt from the famous “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” bit by George Carlin:
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Some of the songs didn’t belong on the list because I think they were already on an unwritten do not play list. Take, for instance, the Pretenders’ “My City was Gone”, which I think only saw CC airplay as Rush Limbaugh’s ironic opening theme. Playing a song like this was bad for business before and after 9/11 (especially in Ohio):
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(“My City was Gone” by the Pretenders)
Two songs with seemingly benign lyrics were not being banned from airplay for the first time – these are “Dancing in the Streets” and “Nowhere to Run” by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, songs from the Motown machine which, along with “Shotgun” by Jr. Walker and the All Stars, were perceived to endorse rioting and revolution in the summer of 1968 when race riots ripped through the country. Here is “Dancing in the Streets” from The Motown Story: The First Twenty-Five Years, a five LP box set that includes recollections from the artists – Martha Reeves describes the song in her own words:
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The history of paranoid interpretations of “Dancing in the Streets” is an interesting story all it’s own, but it’s hard to see any classic Motown track as controversial in the era of shock & awe media.
So here are a five of the songs I don’t think belonged on the 2001 Clear Channel “do not play” list:
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(“Doctor my Eyes” by Jackson Browne)
I have no idea why “Doctor My Eyes” is on the list. This is my favorite Jackson Browne song but I don’t think I’ve ever heard it on the radio.
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(“Wonderful World” by Sam Cooke and “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong)
The “wonderful” set – obviously the last thing you’d want people to hear after a horrible tragedy. Louis Amstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” is here represented by a late-career rerecording.
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(“Have You Seen Her?” by the Chi-Lites)
I suppose after adding songs about flight, fire and falling, programmers became anxious about the ongoing missing persons nightmare that faced the families of 9/11 victims. Although several cover versions are included along with the original recordings in the Clear Channel do not play memo, such as the Guns n Roses version of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”, MC Hammer’s hit cover of “Have You Seen Her?” (on Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt Em) was okay for airplay. Strangely, so was Guns n Roses awful remake of “Live and Let Die”. I suppose they expected there was no chance they’d get played even during the best of weeks.
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(“Last Kiss” by J. Frankie Wilson and the Cavaliers)
“Dead Man’s Curve” (Jan and Dean) and “Last Kiss” are oldies standards. People love car crash songs. They were on the list because somebody died. “American Pie” was on the list too, although I guess that was more apt because Buddy Holly died in a plane crash. Why didn’t they exclude this song too:
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