Was this the first ever song to incite child abuse ?

I would have been twelve years old at the time. As far as I recall, nothing was said about the lyrics then. Those were so much more "innocent" times.

G

On Throbbing Gristle's classic 1980 album "20 Jazz-Funk Greats" there's a really chilling track called "Persuasion" which is very, very difficult to listen to.

In that piece of music it is very clear that one of the protagonists is a child and the other an adult.

The Gary Puckett song is ambiguous, but it would be reasonable to assume that both are roughly the same age - a classic case of teen love?

Kevin

Kate Bush- The Infant Kiss. A tale of a woman becoming sexually aroused whilst putting a young boy to bed. I doubt she'd get away with writing such a song today, nor if the genders had been reversed. A very challenging artist.
Randy Newman's 'In Germany before the war' is VERY uncomfortable listening.

Kevin

I agree, when you point it out, that the Young Girl lyrics give no pointer to the man's age. But Gary Puckett was not, to my recollection, a teen when he sang the song.

But there's no point in getting prudish. That was then, and this is now.

All the best.

G

Gary Glitter - Do you wanna touch?

or Do you wanna be in my gang?

or another TG - We hate you little girls

DS

ITCCA - Decomposed Subsonic - Gradients

In Van Morrison's "Cypress Avenue" (from Astral Weeks), I could never make out whether the protagonist was a doting father or a stalking pedophile:

And I’m caught one more time
Up on cyprus avenue
And I’m caught one more time
Up on cyprus avenue
And I’m conquered in a car seat
Not a thing that I can do
I may go crazy
Before that mansion on the hill
I may go crazy
Before that mansion on the hill
But my heart keeps beating faster
And my feet can’t keep still
And all the little girls rhyme something
On the way back home from school
And all the little girls rhyme something
On the way back home from school
And the leaves fall one by one by one by one
Call the autumn time a fool
Yeah baby my tongue gets tied
Every every every time I try to speak
My tongue gets tied
Every time I try to speak
And my inside shakes just like a leaf on a tree
I think I’ll go on by the river with my cherry cherry wine
I believe I’ll go walking by the railroad with my cherry cherry wine
If I pass the rumbling station where the lonesome engine drivers pine
And wait a minute, yonder comes my lady
Rainbow ribbons in her hair
Yonder comes my lady
Rainbow ribbons in her hair
Six white horses and a carriage
She’s returning from the fair
Baby, baby, baby
And if I’m caught one more time
Up on cyprus avenue
And if I’m caught one more time
Up on cyprus avenue
And I’m conquered in a car seat
And I’m looking straight at you
Way up on, way up on, way up on....
The avenue of trees
Keep walking down
In the wind and the rain, darling
You keep walking down when the sun shone through the trees
Nobody, no, no, no, nobody stops me from loving you baby
So young and bold, fourteen years old
Baby, baby, baby...

How about "Backdoor Man" by Howling Wolf, then made mainstream by the Doors? "The men don't know but the little girl understands"....

I remember seeing them at The Roundhouse ,the girls in the front knew exactly what ihe meant!

___________________________________________________
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Chris Kelly:
How about "Backdoor Man" by Howling Wolf.
___________________________________________________
Chris, I think we need to acknowledge the slang and nuance used in Blues. The music abounds with 'mean women' and 'little girls' but I dont believe this advocates sexism or child abuse.
Jayd, although blues often becomes clumsy in the hands of white interpreters (Jim Morrison), I happen to think Van Morrison is one of the more sensitive interpreters. I think he would excercise caution regarding singing about 14 year old girls today. The likes of Van Morrison's and Clapton's blues are a million miles away from the puerile trash of Guns 'N Roses etc... The best book I ever read about Blues and the culture that produced it was Charles Shaar Murray's 'Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix and post-war pop'. Come to think of it, its one of the best books I've ever read, period.

quote:

Originally posted by Malky:
___________________________________________________
Chris, I think we need to acknowledge the slang and nuance used in Blues. The music abounds with 'mean women' and 'little girls' but I dont believe this advocates sexism or child abuse.
Jayd, although blues often becomes clumsy in the hands of white interpreters (Jim Morrison), I happen to think Van Morrison is one of the more sensitive interpreters. I think he would excercise caution regarding singing about 14 year old girls today.

As in Sonny Boy Williamsons "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl". And covered by Van Morrison on Too Long in Exile from 1993.

And the Grateful Dead on thier first album!

Not to mention Ten Years After!
Malky, I'd vote for "Crosstown Traffic" as one of the definitive books on the music of my generation too.

Even more sinister is the tune by Randy Newman:
In Germany Before The War.
I think this is about a serial child murderer.
A bit like Lange's 'M'-esque and it gives me a chill down my spine everytime I hear it.

"In Germany Before The War
There was a man who owned a store
In nineteen hundred thirty-four
In Dusseldorf
And every night at fine-o-nine
He'd cross the park down to the Rhine
And he'd sit there by the shore

I'm looking at the river
But I'm thinking of the sea
Thinking of the sea
Thinking of the sea
I'm looking at the river
But I'm thinking of the sea

A little girl has lost her way
With hair of gold and eyes of gray
Reflected in his glasses
As he watches her
A little girl has lost her way
With hair of gold and eyes of gray

I'm looking at the river
But I'm thinking of the sea
Thinking of the sea
Thinking of the sea

We lie beneath the autumn sky
My little golden girl and I
And she lies very still"

Leadbelly, 1934, Goodnight Irene:

"I asked your mother for you
She told me that you was too young ..."

Steely Dan- Come Back Baby.

"Come back baby, I don't want to live alone again
I don't like lying all alone in my bed"

quote:

Originally posted by Malky:
Jayd, although blues often becomes clumsy in the hands of white interpreters (Jim Morrison), I happen to think Van Morrison is one of the more sensitive interpreters. I think he would excercise caution regarding singing about 14 year old girls today.

Perhaps, but the song cited above isn't really blues, and he isn't simply interpreting it - he wrote it.

quote:

The likes of Van Morrison's and Clapton's blues are a million miles away from the puerile trash of Guns 'N Roses etc...

And the "blues" of Van and Eric are another million miles removed from, well, the blues.

Jayd
So who has the rights to the blues? I've always thought that blues is about feelings. So why are Van and Eric "A million miles removed from...the blues"? I think Eric has always shown tremendous reverence for the original material but plays it with his own feeling.
And which song mentioned do you think isn't really blues? "Backdoor man" or "Good Morning little schoolgirl"? Van most certainly didn't write either of those.
Anyhow, if you listen to Ali Faka Toure, the Malian musician, you'll realise that the blues isn't really the blues either - it's a reworking of African music, which presumably crossed the Atlantic with the wretched slaves. It is mildly ironic that it took a bunch of predominately white boys in the 60's to bring blues to a much wider audience. At least as a result some of the blues greats enjoyed relative comfort in their later years.

Chris,

I've always thought Clapton had terrific respect for the blues, as a scholar and interpreter. However, it only takes a cursory comparison of his versions of Robert Johnson songs to the originals to hear perfect illustrations of the distance between the two.

As to "who owns the rights", I'm not sure I understand the question. I was fortunate enough to be raised in the heartland of the blues, and spent long summer evenings on front porches with folks who sang the blues because it was what they did – there were no multi-million dollar contracts, no Rolling Stone reviews, no sold out arenas. I simply rate what I hear based on genuineness. "Interpreter" sums up Van and Eric and oh so many more, and there's nothing wrong with it.

And as for your assertion that the blues is a reworking of African music, I have to state that it's a lot more complex than that. The blues isn't the blues? Yes, it is, and African folk music is definitely in there. But there's so much more. Listen again.

quote:

Originally posted by Chris Kelly:
It is mildly ironic that it took a bunch of predominately white boys in the 60's to bring blues to a much wider audience. At least as a result some of the blues greats enjoyed relative comfort in their later years.

And I won't touch this one except to remind you that it was other "white boys" (predominantly) who screwed the blues greats out of their song rights to begin with. The ones in the 60s were just another wave to get rich harvesting fertile ground they didn't own.

All your contributions reminded me of Stray Cat Blues. It is on "Beggar's Banquet" (1968) and there is an even meaner version on "Get Yer Ya-yas Out!" where the girl is only 13.

I'll paiste the complete lyrics here. It always amazed me how they got away with this song, the Rolling Stones.


Yeah, cat's on (...)

I hear the click-clack of your feet on the stairs
I know you're no scare-eyed honey
There'll be a feast if you just come upstairs

But (That's) it's no hanging matter
It's no capital crime

I can see that you're 15 years old
No I don't want your I.D.
And I can see that you're so far from home

Oh yeah, you're a strange stray cat
Oh yeah, don't you scratch like that
Oh yeah, you're a strange stray cat
I bet your mama don't know you scream like that
I bet your mama don't know you can spit like that

You look so (...) and so lost from home
But you don't really miss your mother
Don't look so scared, I'm not no mad brained bear

Oh yeah

I bet your mama don't know that you scratch like that
I bet she don't know you can bite like that

You say you've got a friend, that she's wilder than you
Why don't you bring her upstairs?
If she's so wild, then she can join in too

I bet your mama don't know you can bite like that
I bet she never saw you scratch my back

___________________________________________________

quote:

Originally posted by jayd:
And I won't touch this one except to remind you that it was other "white boys" (predominantly) who screwed the blues greats out of their song rights to begin with. The ones in the 60s were just another wave to get rich harvesting fertile ground they didn't own.

___________________________________________________
Jayd, True, the likes of Led Zeppelin blatantly ripped off the music but, conversly, no one did more to bring blues to a mainstream ,white and lucrative market than the Stones, even the classic bluesmen acknowledge this.
True, Morrison did write Cypress Avenue but his output at this stage was heavily influenced by the blues idiom.
I agree that, in general, white players are a mere facsimlie. However, artists like Peter Green, Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughn are some of the very few white artists who, in the words of Charles Shaar Murray "transcend pastiche and penetrate the emotional core of the music".

quote:

Steely Dan- Come Back Baby.

I seem to recall that Walter Becker got into some sort of trouble for allegedly engaging in under age sex with a (too) young lady a few years back.

John.

For some reason the distateful elements of this thread reminded me of the hilarious 'She Moved The Dishes First' by Supercharge from their 1976 album 'Local Boys Make Good'.

Guy brings girl back to his parents house late at night. She needs to urinate, but he asks her not to use the bathroom upstairs and risk waking his parents. They're in the kitchen, and she says - "It's OK, I'll piss in the sink".

Then comes the classic line ............

"I knew she was a nice girl, because she moved the dishes first".

John.

Spinal Tap's mickey take of these sort of songs;
Extracts from "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You"

You're too young and I'm too well hung

You're sweet but you're just 4 feet and you've still got your baby teeth