Re HW: Other Bands

Ted Jackson tojackso at LIBRARY.SYR.EDU
Fri Jan 17 06:30:28 EST 2003


On 17 Jan 2003 at 11:42, Henderson Keith wrote:

> "Better *By* You..." of course.
>
> But yes, your second instinct was the correct one.
>
> Interestingly, IIRC, this particular tune was one of the main
> prosecution arguments against Judas Priest in that ridiculous
> suicide-due-to-rock-music-influence trial out in Utah or wherever.
>
> And so of course, they didn't even *write* this tune.
>
Anyone see the outstanding PBS coverage of this trial back in the day?
Truly amazing stuff on many levels.  And also very sad.  The parents, trying to
blame a band for their own failure as parents.  The lawyers, willing to pick any
corpse for a headline or a dollar.  The band in palpable disbelief, trying not to laugh
out loud at times.  Of course, the parents' fundamentalist religious beliefs and their
obsession with controlling their son drove him to embrace loud heavy music.
The judge essentially said that he saw no evidence of backward masking, and that
even if the band did encode messages telling you to kill yourself, it would be
protected by the right to free speech anyway...

theo



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