Big snowfalls here in Utah, but the days get longer now, and the birds’ internal clocks are tellin’ ‘em: time to stake-out nest territory by means of self-assertion through song. All the species have been more active the last couple of weeks, and the Cedar Waxwings, with their delightfully high-pitched wheeze-songs, have returned to the neighborhood from whereever it is they go.
Nature marches on in its beauty and strength, and that’s one reason that people like me believe that there is a God, and that He remains on his throne.
I begin with that because considered rightly, the human-culture news I report here is pretty grim. Pretty infuriating.
Back in the summer, I commented on a newer song by Morrissey, “Bonfire of Teenagers,” but wrote at greater length on the fact that along with nine or so other of his newer ones, it is a suppressed song, suppressed for undeniably ideological reasons. To quote from that piece:
…by around May of 2021 Morrissey had a full album of songs ready to go, studio-recorded, but he had been dropped by his label BMG the previous November. Morrissey said the album could be released by the “highest (or lowest) bidder,” but apparently for more than a year now, there have been no takers. …the headline “No record label will touch Morrissey – and that’s the music industry’s loss,” [penned by music critic James Hall] is accurate.
Let that sink in.
Major artist. Longtime fan-base. Reliably fills halls, and sells recordings. …And you cannot purchase the song I’m talking about here.
I also reported on Morrissey’s supposed ideological sins, which mainly center on his being willing to criticize the leniency of British immigration policy, and to merely suggest a few negative things about Islam in the process. I showed that the charge of his being racist was preposterous, and that the real issue was his being unwilling to be a reliable team player and espouser of official dogmas for the Progressivist Establishment in media and music-industry; he was unwilling to be, as he so pithily put it, A Dog on Their Chain. And I argued that the slandering of Morrissey, and the suppressing of his music, was only in part an action against him, but much more so a signal to newer artists without established audiences: you’d better stay in line. I made, that is, the same kind of argument J.K. Rowling recently did against the sad attacks on her reputation in the name of Trans:
“The pushback is often, ‘You are wealthy. You can afford security. You haven’t been silenced.’ All true. But I think that misses the point. The attempt to intimidate and silence me is meant to serve as a warning to other women” with similar views who may also wish to speak out, Rowling says in the podcast [The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.]
But back to Morrissey. This last October, his tour was packing venues across the U.K. and U.S., and Capitol Records announced a deal with him which would finally mean a release for the Bonfire of Teenagers album, and so it looked as if this shameful episode for the music industry would be winding down. The public would be able to purchase proper versions of songs conceived and recorded in 2020 and 2021, and a newer-yet batch recently announced, could presumably have been released shortly thereafter.
But then, odd things began to happen—Morrissey’s name was not added to Capitol Records’ online roster of artists. An oversight? More importantly, no announcement for a release date of Bonfire of Teenagers came, although a digital-only single was released. Questions grew, and shockingly, Capitol Records went mum. The details can be found at Morrissey’s website, and in a couple of pieces by the fan and music writer Fiona Dodwell, who in the piece I link shows that Capitol Records has an ugly track record of contractually-questionable moves which delay the recordings of artists who should have been up-and-coming, but who somehow got on Capitol’s bad list. But this apparent orchestrated suppression of an established artist like Morrissey, a “holding hostage” of his recordings, as Dodwell puts it, seems to be a first.
Indeed, unless we soon learn that there was some internal misunderstanding, that Capitol had all along intended a proper release for Bonfire as presumably promised in the contract, but as a matter of protecting its own dignity/power went mum when Morrissey fans began to ask questions about the delays, it is pretty plain what has happened here: Capitol deliberately tricked Morrissey, for the sake of extending the industry’s agreed-upon suppression of his music!!! What better way, than to fool him into signing a contract that gave them control over release date, promotion efforts, etc., and then slow-rolling and delaying the release, indefinitely?
Whatever other bidders for Bonfire were in play, if any, and perhaps some small-time companies were, Morrissey likely went with Capitol because of the distributional and promotional heft it would bring.
But it looks like it was a set-up. Executives at Capitol were, either due to their own convictions, or to pressure coming from some external power players, willing to go through all the expense and trouble of setting up a contract, to risk all the negative publicity (and perhaps legal consequences) that would come when seen to betray its core understanding, and to lose the potential profits from this and future Morrissey releases, all just to make a shitty tyrannical statement:
“Morrissey is persona non-grata! He Is Cancelled! Artists of the world: Take Note!”
Oh we note it, Capitol execs and sundry insiders. We see what you are: apparatchiks, and in fact even lower on the scale of moral judgment. For you are not simply conformists trying to “make it” in an entrenched Communist Party system, but agents of despotism-mainstreaming, and traitors to liberal-democratic civilization.
But we would also point out to you, that as you sold your souls, and agreed to live henceforth in a whirlpool of propaganda and Narrative, your minds became incapable of basic Tactics.
You think this vile trick you’ve pulled on Morrissey is in any way clever? That it constitutes “winning” in any sense of the term?
A little mildly heterodox—heterdox by your lights--thinking and public statement on matters of immigration policy, and you commit yourself to these kinds of sledge-hammer moves for the remaining life of the artist in question? The political party Morrissey got in hot-water for announcing his partial support for, For Britain, disbanded in August, in the face of a total slander campaign against it by UK media, and a subsequent lack of public support and increased threats of violence against its leaders. You won that fight, didn’t you know?
But now you’ve gone and exposed yourself as the fully totalitarian creeps you are.
And you’ve shown us that you are deeply afraid of the independent spirit that artists like him represent. You’ve made a strong case for what might otherwise seem a hyperbolic argument, a piece of pop-journalism flattery: the importance of Morrissey. You’ve made Bonfire of Teenagers into the Howl of its day!
Oh, and we know what you’re counting on: sheer inertia of public perception, sheer preponderance of the kinds of persons, many who regard themselves as good liberals, good moderates, etc., who remain unable to admit into their conception of reality the fact that institutions like Capitol Records now regularly coordinate ideological suppression and intimidation campaigns.
Maybe it really is all a mix-up.
But far more likely, you’ll continue to indefinitely delay Bonfire. Or, you’ll realize your tactical error and try to walk it back, trying to sell some “mix-up” line. You’d better have strong evidence! Your guilt already looks pretty plain, and in 2023, all marginally aware people regard organizations like yours as guilty until proven innocent when it comes to censorship/suppression issues.
Unless you have such evidence, or unless you fire the execs responsible for your sin here against basic artistic freedom, myself and many like me will do our best to refrain from purchasing releases by Capitol artists, and to slag your name whenever we can. And we will accuse the artists on your roster who do not now speak up for Morrissey as accomplices to your suppression.
I think it is also fair to ask all other pop and rock artists to speak out against what you are doing. We could start with those on my list of my favorite Millennial-Gen artists.
Who knows if protests like mine and Dodwell’s, and even if they eventually get taken up by a coalition of artists—they should—, could ever get through to anyone with power at Capitol. I wish Morrissey the best in this struggle, and in what I guess will have to be his legal strategy to be pursued against this likely breach of contract, but the larger point here is plain: our elites are toying with the establishment of a new kind of totalitarian society, and we have to let them know in no uncertain terms that we will be having none of it.
every single one of my rock hall friends (living and dead) sued their label.
when james taylor - who was born into the resources to hire the best counsel money can buy - has to sue to get back royalties, you realize how brazen these clowns are
my bloody valentine had how many albums in the can and warner would only release the first one?
joy div had to buy back their masters so they could go with what was a local nothing label. it's a long and ugly story.
And as for you in your uniform (ideology)
Your smelly uniform (ideology)
And so you think you can cancel me
Because you wear a uniform (ideology)
A smelly uniform (ideology)
And so you think you can cancel me
But even I as sick as I am
I would never be you
Even I sick and depraved
A traveler to the grave
I WOULD NEVER BE YOU