Censoring the Saints

Just got done listening to the new Mötley Crüe, on assignment for the album descriptions thing, for the first time in what will probably be six or seven times before I hand in the description in about a week. The album is what I expected it to be: fun music not requiring a whole lot of intellectual energy to get behind, songs about sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll, wrapped in a package that's got to be one of the slickest pieces of album artwork I've seen in a while. In other words, it's pure Los Angeles stereotype, just like what I was hoping. But here's the thing: it's been censored.

It's the usual problem: big music retailer with family values aspirations, making an edited version a gateway to retailability to any record label that wants a piece of the revenue pie. Usual malarkey where a third party makes morality decisions about what their customers should and shouldn't hear, with the complete arbitrariness that demonstrates lip service to a supposed standard and an all too pragmatic subservience to the bottom line. Anyway, they bleeped out every incidence of "fuck" on Saints of Los Angeles, which comes pretty close to ruining the record: nevermind the judgment on the maturity of the listener, this is freakin' Mötley Crüe, the band whose history is like a bible for decadent lifestyle. You don't bleep that out; it's so counter to the whole point that it practically creates a bizzaro world, a world where a band can sing about waking up in a haze and doing some powder off the bathroom sink but can't proclaim themselves the motherfuckers of the year without hitting the censor's auditory pen. Not cool, man. Not cool.

I blame Tipper Gore.