Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Happy 75th Birthday to Sleepy LaBeef

Today is the 75th birthday of the great Sleepy LaBeef, one of the great rockabilly pioneers who for some reason has bever really gotten his due.






Lyrics That Somehow Snuck Past The Censors

#1: Start Me Up, by The Rolling Stones

As the song fades out, Mick Jagger repeats the line
"you, you, you make a grown man cry."
But in the last repetition of this line, he clearly says
"you, you, make a dead man cum."

How that ever got on the radio without being bleeped is a mystery to me, and no matter how many times I've heard it on various radio stations, I have never heard that line censored.


The Rolling Stones - Start Me Up - MyVideo

#2: Who Are You? by The Who

Towards the end, while Pete Townsend, John Entwhistle and Keith Moon are repeating "who are you? Who, who are you?" He slips in the line "Well, who the fuck are you?" I have never heard this line bleeped.
It happens at about the 5:40 mark in this video:


CSI- The Who- Who Are You - MyVideo


#3: Walk on the Wild Side, by Lou Reed
The line "But she never lost her head,
even when she was giving head"
got past the censors in 1972, and it still gets played on the radio today.
The story I heard, which may not be true, is that the expression "giving head" as a slang term for oral sex was not in the common parlance in '72, and so the censors just didn't realize what the line meant.



#4: Relax, by Frankie Goes To Hollywood

The entire song could really have been bleeped, I think it was banned by the BBC. The song is about trying not to climax too soon during gay sex.
Here are a few sample lyrics:

Relax, don't do it
When you want to go to it
Relax, don't do it
When you wanna cum

Relax, don't do it
When you wanna suck it to it
Relax, don't do it
When you wanna cum.


And it's not like the video wasn't a tip-off:



Although, I think they did end up having to make a different video for MTV with the band performing on syage with lasers and whatnot but still, this has to be the dirtiest song to ever get mainstream airplay.