Green Day refuses to edit their CDs so they can be sold in Wal-Mart

[LynneSin]

Just another great reason to love Green Day!

http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2009-05-21-green-day-wal-mart_N.htm?csp=34

Green Day: No-go to Wal-Mart policy on edited CDs

NEW YORK — Green Day has the most popular CD in the country, but you won't be able to find it at your local Wal-Mart.
The band says the giant superstore chain refused to stock its latest CD, "21st Century Breakdown," because Wal-Mart wanted the album edited for language and content, and they refused.

"Wal-Mart's become the biggest retail outlet in the country, but they won't carry our record because they wanted us to censor it," frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said in a recent interview.

While Wal-Mart sells CDs from acts known for raunchy content, including Eminem's latest, they offer customers the "clean" version of those CDs, which are edited for content that may be objectionable. But in Armstrong's view, "There's nothing dirty about our record."

"They want artists to censor their records in order to be carried in there," he said. "We just said no. We've never done it before. You feel like you're in 1953 or something."

[Symarip]

1. Good for them

I don't care for Green Day but I completely respect their standpoint on this. It doesn't matter if it's 2 Live Crew or Suicidal Tendencies or whomever. It's not Green Days job to censor themselves so you can feel good about pushing their product. If WalMart doesn't like it, great, don't carry their cd and kiss good bye to those profit dollars.

[Left Is Write]

2. Good!

:thumbsup:

[Sky Masterson]

3. Cool

I'm listening to it right now
It's pretty darn good.

[LynneSin]

6. I love it but I'm slightly annoyed by it

It seems they want to make a "Jesus of Suburbia" style song out of every song on that album (one song that has mini songs within it).

Don't get me wrong - all of those songs are great but sometimes you just something really loud to jam out to like Holiday or American Idiot.

[Sky Masterson]

9. There are a few emo-stinkers on it

viva la gloria is probably my favorite on it so far

[LynneSin]

14. That was one I didn't like so much

but it's all good. I do like the title song along - it's been a major earworm

[Sky Masterson]

16. I guess we are apples and oranges

Because I didn't much care for Know your enemy.
Beauty is in the ear of the beholder i guess.
I think of this album as American Idiot2 sort of the same way I though of System of a downs Mezmerize and Hypnotize as being one long album.
It's all good

[arbusto_baboso]

4. Gotta respect Green Day for this.

Even though they are pretty much a glorified garage band, they've been around awhile, have a large fan base, and wield some clout. I'm glad they have some artistic integrity.

[Lorax7844]

17. Ever wonder why Wal-Mart censors music

but not movies. Green Day can't curse, but Scarface can. It makes no sense.

Also anyone know how many posts it takes before i can post my own thread.

[marzipanni]

27. Classified info, but it's variable anyway, may be amount of time or #

be patient and click on the post button occasionally to see if you're there yet. :hi: and Welcome to DU!

Posting Restrictions on New Members

New members are restricted from starting new discussion topics. We require you to first post responses to a few existing discussion threads before you are given the privilege to do so. We wish we did not have to enforce this rule, but we have found it very helpful to keep disruptors off of our message board. Please do not email us to ask what the minimum number is; we won't tell you, and it's not very high.

New members are similarly restricted from using the private messaging function or recommending topics for the Greatest Page.

[DarkTirade]

46. The weird part about that is that Wal-Mart was one of the first

big chains to do the sensible thing and start only selling M rated video games to people over 17. And yet they won't stock CDs with adult lyrics only a few feet away. :crazy:

[Rabrrrrrr]

5. Great big thumbs up from me! I'm glad there's at least one band with some integrity.

[LeftOfSelf-Centered]

7. Fully agree with them on this...

Haven't gotten the new CD yet, but I'll check it out.

And a "clean" version of an Eminem CD??? So it's an instrumental album? :rofl:

[LynneSin]

11. Not sure if I'd call it instrumental, wouldn't that require some instruments of note being played

I thought most of that stuff was computer/synth generated.

Perhaps it's just a CD full of *BEEP*

[LeftOfSelf-Centered]

22. Well, if they beep all the "naughty words"

it would end up sounding like the heart monitor of somone with a severe case of arrythmia, who also flatlines every once in a while! :rofl:

And you're right on the instrumental thing, but sometimes he samples stuff with real instruments (Aerosmith's "Dream On" IIRC), so it could be like a second-hand instrumental...

[HopeHoops]

8. FUCK WALMART!

That just needed to be said. Hmmph.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DinahMoeHum]

12. Fuckin' A, Green Day !!

They are on the cover of the latest edition of Rolling Stone. In "Spirit of '76" poses, to boot!

www.rollingstone.com

[LynneSin]

13. It's a great article too

Do you know that Armstrong coaches his kid's little league team when he's not touring.

And that his family has spent some serious time building homes via Habitat for Humanity.

This guy shows more Christian values than your typical fundie christian.

[belpejic]

15. You go, Billie Joe

I don't even really like Green Day (though I very much appreciate their punk roots), but they are big enough to tell Walmart to stick it. And they should--Walmart is ridiculous.

[Initech]

18. Fuck Walmart!!!

Besides real music fans dont shop at Wal-Mart anyways.

[Dappleganger]

19. Overrated plagiarizers.

I'd rather rally behind someone other than this particular band.

[kid a]

20. Link please

[LynneSin]

21. Oasis is claiming that Green Day stole their hook in "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"

something bizarro like that.

Oasis is just pissed because Green Day is bigger than Oasis.

There's also people who claim they here bits of other songs worked into other Green Day classics but a comment I found in a forum where this was being discussed had the best reply to that which is "How can Green Day be accused of plagerism when they write all their songs pretty much based on the same 3 chords?"

[last_texas_dem]

23. "Wonderwall" and "Boulevard" do blend into a pretty nice medley

Found this on youtube, and thought it was pretty cool:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCh9TSo0r64

Even though I like more of Oasis's music than Green Day's, the plagiarism charge is kinda funny coming from one of the Gallaghers since Oasis is notorious for aping all manner of things about the Beatles. The songs do sound similar, but I'm honestly not sure how close to each other two have to be to be considered plagiarized.

[EastTennesseeDem]

26. I prefer Oasis to Green Day myself, but didn't they

steal John Lennon's "Imagine" for "Don't Look Back in Anger"?

Pretty hypocritical.

[Midlodemocrat]

40. Score one for Green Day!!!!

:rofl:

[HughBeaumont]

47. On "Longview", you can hear a little bit of Poison's "I Want Action".

On "Basket Case", there's a tad bit of "Talk Dirty To Me"; different Key, same song structure. Supposedly, it's inspired by Pachabel's "Canon and Gigue in D Major", replayed.

On "Brain Stew/Jaded", the bass line (by the band's own admission) is directly from "25 or 6 to 4" by Chicago.

[last_texas_dem]

59. Very interesting

Green Day had to learn the hard way that a person can't keep their love of Poison in the closet; it's going to be revealed in one way or another! haha

[MrCoffee]

38. Boulevard of Broken Songs kicks ass

Oasis has a point.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

24. How the hell is there a deleted sub-thread in here?

[Shell Beau]

28. It's all the new rage this season.

:eyes:

[Deja Q]

25. Why should Wal-Mart tell everybody what to do?

I've not heard Green Day's lyrics, but if that's what they want to sell, Wal-mart can just say "no" and lose the profits too.

It's nice to know Walmart sells 'cleaned up' versions, though that's cheating the consumer too. And there's modern day music that isn't dirty either.

And there are plenty of venues for music; if GD doesn't want a separate wal-mart friendly version, fair enough. Walmart needn't be the one stop shop anyway?


In short, I'm ambivalent.

[ghostsofgiants]

29. Do they also refuse to edit their CDs to include good music?

:evilgrin:

No, that's cool though, good for them.

[TommyO]

30. Good for Greenday,

with legal downloads, there's no reason to buy it, or any other album, at Walmart anyway.

[slay]

31. Huge props to Green Day for this!

Fuck Walmart and their CENSORSHIP OF ARTISTS!

[slay]

32. Might want to cross post this in GD since threads that get rec's here don't make it to Greatest Page

for some reason. I think people who only check the greatest page or GD would be interested in this. :hi:

[jobycom]

33. Now if they'd quit editing their music for elevators, I'd be happy.

[Generic Brad]

34. Walmart fancies itself the arbitrator of good taste?

With the goods they carry? They have got to be fucking kidding us.

[Jamastiene]

42. +1

[pokerfan]

35. Is it really any different than what Apple is doing?

Trent Reznor (NIN) doesn't seem to think so.

Still somewhere between perplexed and apoplectic after Apple had rejected the new Nine Inch Nails iPhone app update, the band's frontman, Trent Reznor, expressed himself very clearly on NIN's blog forum.

Neatly emphasizing his point with a quite liberal use of the kinds of words that Apple appears to find uncomfortable, Reznor compared Apple's attitude with that of, startlingly, Wal-Mart Stores:

"And while we're at it, I'll voice the same issue I had with Wal-Mart years ago, which is a matter of consistency and hypocrisy. Wal-Mart went on a rampage years ago insisting all music they carry be censored of all profanity and 'clean' versions be made for them to carry."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10233409-71.html

[LynneSin]

36. Apple only had the explicit version of the Green Day album

If two versions are available then they'll make them available for download but I think it's up to the artist to clean up the dirty words.

[pokerfan]

37. Apple is pro-censorship

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/05/apples-censorship

Actually, it's worse than that. If a customer is unhappy with the limited options at Wal-Mart, she can easily go across the street to another store with a better selection. But in this case, a customer wanting access to uncensored content for her iPhone would have no where else to go, thanks to Apple's policy of locking up the iPhone and blocking all unapproved applications. It's as if Wal-Mart was the only place to buy music.

[LynneSin]

39. well not sure about that - I'm listening to the album on my Ipod and the cuss words are there

Perhaps it's just an Iphone thing.

[Jamastiene]

41. Up yours, Wal Mart!

Green Day fucking rocks!

:applause:

[Jean Louise Finch]

43. I remember this with Nirvana

Does anyone else? It's not exactly the same, but when In Utero came out, Walmart and other discount stores refused to carry it, unless they edited it. I think Walmart (or maybe it was Kmart, I don't remember) really didn't like the cover or the song title "Rape Me".

So Nirvana released a different version. It really annoyed me, until I heard their reasoning. Most of the band had grown up in random rural Washington, and the only place they could buy music was Walmart. They wanted kids like themselves to be able to buy their music. Seemed sort of reasonable on their part, though I don't think it involved them changing the music.

Anyway, this just reminded me of that.

[last_texas_dem]

58. Yeah, and one thing I always thought was funny about that was

that Wal-Mart seemed far more concerned about the album package than the actual musical content. They had them change the title of "Rape Me" to "Waif Me" on the CD case's back cover but I'm pretty sure the actual song on the album itself remained the same. The other big change was taking a bunch of fetuses off of the back cover, as these were apparently considered offensive. haha

[Zavulon]

44. Good for them. I can't stand the band at all, but I do love their stance.

Fuck Wal-Mart. :mad:

[DarkTirade]

45. If I ever had a band, I'd do the exact same thing.

I'd make sure there was something in my contract right from the start that would prevent my shit from being edited for 'content'.

[mvd]

48. Good for Green Day

While not a fan of bad language, the edited versions are worse - you can get pauses or words that change the meaning.

[J-Lo Biafra]

49. I just wish their principled stance kept them from sucking.

[mvd]

50. They are a fave of mine; one of the best rock bands ever IMO

:headbang:

[ghostsofgiants]

52. That is by far one of the best usernames I have ever seen.

:thumbsup:

[J-Lo Biafra]

55. I am humbled.

:D

[LeftyMom]

54. +1

[Amerigo Vespucci]

51. And Jim Morrison got The Doors banned from the Ed Sullivan Show...

...for agreeing not to sing "girl we couldn't get much higher" in "Light My Fire" and then going on the show and singing "girl we couldn't get much higher..."



The Stones, on the other hand, were more than willing to comply with Uncle Ed while crooning their hit "Let's Spend Some Time Together"...I mean what the hell, Mick & Keith...you couldn't have just picked a different song?

So bravo to Green Day. Censorship sucks.

[mokawanis]

53. Fuck Green Day AND Wal Mart

Billy and the boys can afford to tell Wal Mart to go to hell. If they really had principles they would have told Wal Mart to fuck off from the git go, before the censorship issue came up.

[Feron]

56. The censoring is silly anyway.

Like kids don't know what the swears are when you hear "eff you" or "stupid shhh".

[Metric System]

57. Wal-Mart in Canada doesn't have this policy so I guess this is a US-only issue.