The Art Neuro Weblog

Coelacanth Notes

Tonight I'll be putting up what is ostensibly the final track for Coelacanth, 'Wang Zhaojun Goes West'. It's the difinitve closer track of the 12 song set. Thank you to all the people who came along to iCompositions to have a listen.

I was speaking to AudioDarnok yesterday and he made the observation that posting songs up at iCompositions is the recording equivalent to doing live gigs. That is to say, one is involved with music without making a dime, but the material is getting out there. I thought that was an astute observation.

Censorship Blues

During the current 'release' of the Coelacanth material, we ran into a strange difficulty involving censorship. That's right. Unlike Blogger here where I can practically run my mouth off to my heart's content the Terms of Service over a iCompositions allows its staff to police the general 'G' ratings. As it turns out they

1) Unilaterally remove songs if they find it offensive
2) Do not explain what the specific circumstances of the 'offensiveness' might be
3) and watch your next move carefully.

How did we find this out? It's actually really creepy.
Track 10 of the 'Fish Don't Carry Guitars' album is called 'Uberpussy'. I loaded it up with the requisite 'EXPLICIT' content tag according to their Terms of Services only to find it removed within hours.

Now, while 'pussy' is undeniably euphemism for female genitalia, when one looks up the Shorter Oxford Dictionary it is the fifth definition of the word pussy. In other words, to interpret the pussy in 'Uberpussy' to mean female genitalia is only one of at least five interpretations of the word. The lyrics of the song are actually not about female genitalia at all. The most suggestive line is:

explore with me anatomy

Now how mild is that? If that got your pocket rocket rocking, you have a pretty high testosterone count. In fact, we re-titled the song 'The Birth of Tragedy' AND labelled it 'EXPLICIT' and it finally stuck. What did we learn from this exercise? It wasn't the lyrics, it was the title. *gasp* And iCompositions were willing to unilaterally remove the track without any discussion or consultation whatsoever on account that they thought it specifically meant female genitalia.

Well folks, it's only as dirty as your own mind, and frankly, my mind isn't that dirty.
In the description I made sure to make the point:

Censorship is the unashmed hand of Fascism.
Hypocrisy leads to Stupidity.

In other words, hey iCompositions.com, you are censorious fascists and you are hypocritical to the point of stupidity. Within 8 hours, the site administrator 'Powermac99' made a post referring to the TOS. Why would this be so if it were not for the fact that they were 'watching' the Coelacanth moniker to see if we persisted in putting up offensive material. It's creepy stuff. The way I figure it, he wouldn't have posted if the description didn't hit the mark.

Well, powermac99, I'll say this on this page because it's my page: my conscience is clear that I exercised due dilligence in adhering to your Terms of Service. So really my beef is not with the Terms of Service and its guidelines itself, but how you choose to exercise your power over artists' contributions. I object to it greatly. Powermac99, you are a censorious fascist hypocrite moron.
There. I'm satisfied now that I got that off my chest.

- Art Neuro