Some is in that article; some is in this thread. An example: the music industry in the early '60s had a complicated racial structure. There was a lot of money being made by taking songs written and originally performed by black artists that were locally successful and repackaging them with shiny white teen-idols to sell to suburban white kids. A lot of The Beach Boys' early success and institutional support is linked to their shiny suburbanism while delivering r&b grooves to white teenagers. You can read Mike Love talking about hanging around black kids and getting into R&B. But the black writers and original performers of R&B songs made a lot less money than the repackaging with white performers. That's just what was happening at the time. It's not their fault, but it was an aspect of what they were a part of. The Beach Boys had some unusual talent and grew out of that, but that's what their start was.
A lot of American folk is rooted in the poverty of the depression. One can analyze a folk musician's music in that light without being taken as asserting that the musician was impoverished during the depression. Why can't people read an analysis of music in the light of racism without freaking out that the musician is being called racist?
A lot of American folk is rooted in the poverty of the depression. One can analyze a folk musician's music in that light without being taken as asserting that the musician was impoverished during the depression. Why can't people read an analysis of music in the light of racism without freaking out that the musician is being called racist?
Fair enough. I certainly wouldn't argue at all about that, and the fact that there was a structure that perhaps gave the band of white kids a better deal than what the record company might have "tried to pull" had they been black kids instead.
With regards to your question about why people freak out about the interpretation that a musician is being called racist... it's all about how things are framed/context of a person's argument or statement, and how that gets interpreted by many people. While a fair point could easily be made talking about the 1960s and how suburban white kids were more accepting of white musicians as opposed to black ones (and how record companies may have exploited that), it's all too easy for the terminology that the person arguing such a point to begin to veer into something where the band and members are somehow "guilty" of something, when in fact by all accounts they seemed to be good people who did not behave in a racist way. It naturally begins to put some sort of finger-wagging on them, as though the teenaged band was responsible for going to the record company and saying "we don't want to benefit in any way from a record deal that we might be getting because we are white".
I mean... I'm sure there were some forward-thinking people in the industry who might have taken such a stand, and I think that's RAD beyond words. Yet I don't think they are guilty of anything except just being white male kids in the early 1960s, which somehow seems like that fact alone is problematic to some people. I feel someone is gonna write an article throwing Kevin Arnold under the bus next.
And I think anyone who starts to casually throw around the term "racism" and "The BBs" in the same sentence (the current Trump situation excluded from the point I'm making) should absolutely feel a *responsibility* to be very careful with what words are chosen, and to not give any sort of impression that might allow the band to begin having some sort of unfairly negative connotation to modern young people in PC culture. I know we are not publicists or spokespeople for the band, and have no vested personal interest in keeping the band name scandal-free, so to speak... but still, people can latch onto ideas in an overly negative way, and start causing an entire band's music to become unfairly stigmatized. People SHOULD walk on eggshells somewhat to make sure they are not saying stuff that could lead people down such a road, just as many people walk on eggshells (fairly) by choosing their words carefully to avoid saying things that could be misinterpreted as racist/sexist, etc.
Fair is fair. There's plenty of people who have probably begun to feel a toxicty about the brand name (Trump excluded) just because of articles like the Pet Sounds one, and I think that stinks. It's certainly the author's responsibility to not make such implications (unless that's their intention). Yes, readers have their own minds, but again - people are impressionable, and often easily-manipulable. If it becomes "hip" to rag on the band by throwing their name and the term "racism" in the same sentence, it's gonna start happening, and it's just not right. (Of course, the Trump thing is gonna f*** that up big time too).