From: Kent Stewart <kstewart@td2cad.intel.com>
Subject: sickness (was metal head behaviour)
Reply-To: kstewart@td2cad.intel.com
Organization: The Internet
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 21:49:24 GMT

 
I think rude, aggressive, and sexist behaviour is going to be
somewhat inevitable amongst young fans of groups whose main posture
is just that. Rude, aggressive, self-centered, and often sexist.
That's one way of relating to the world, whether I agree with it
or not.

*I've* never enjoyed listening to much of that stuff because it feels
like mind poison to me (not to mention heart poison). To a certain
extent, though, people are free to associate with the ideas and
self-images which appeal to them.

IMO, however, that freedom stops at the point that it inhinges apon
the freedom of another. (theft, violence, sexual abuse, peeing on
people's lawns -- oops, wrong tirade 8-).

| Plus, many of their T-shirts were so sexist it made me sick.

| GnR sold one that showed a woman that looked like she was raped 
| and beaten, leaning against a wall with her underpants by her ankles, 
| and it said in spray-painted letters "Guns and Roses was here".

Frankly, to me it looked as if she had been left for dead, or was
dead already.

The first time I saw this (worn by some teenager in San Francisco),
it *literally* made me sick. I thought I was going to vomit, and 
the world seemed to spin wildly out of control. This went beyond
arrogance and stupidity masquerading as freedom of expression: this
was hateful and evil, a deep sickness of spirit. 

Take a beautiful human soul, rape it, humiliate it, torture it,
mock it, murder it and leave it in the alley. Go on to more manhood-
affirming good times with your rowdy buddies and forget about the
trash in the alley--you don't need it any more.

This is pure evil. I won't get involved with the argument of whether
or not entertainers should feel responsibility as role models for young
fans.  I think the reality is that the attitudes they promote *are* picked
up on and emulated. This was a sick, sick, seed to plant in the minds
of teenage boys everywhere and I consider Guns N Roses thoroughly 
reprehensible for doing it.

It's just a virus that has infested areas of Rock for years which I wish
we could cure ourselves of. Maybe most people just don't hear lyrics. I
always have. As long as I can remember I've been hearing shit like:

	"and I'm going to take your love or your life"

and 

	"well I take whatever I want, and baby I want you."


in Rock music.  It's a sickness, an arrogance of spirit that leads 
to that body left in the alley in it's ultimate manifestation. It's
lesser manifestations can still be grossly unpleasant, unfair, and
unkind.

I love music, I consider music an elevating, consciousness expanding
medium. I hate seeing it used to promote evil, regressive modes of
thinking of one's self and others.

That's my bias. I admit that there is a point to which it is
indeed a matter of freedom to associate with ideas, but there is 
also a point at which it goes beyond that, and like hate literature, 
becomes an incitation to violence and abuse.



--bongo, who *still* does not believe that possessiveness and ease
	 of access are the key themes of Till The Morning Comes 8^)