In 1994, James Dean Bradfield raised eyebrows by wearing an IRA-style balaclava during a Manic Street Preachers appearance on Top of the Pops.
It was a performance of the song ‘Faster’ (which I personally think is one of the greatest singles of all time).
At the time, as a teenager, I thought the image was really cool. This being the 1990s, however, there was no suggestion that counter-terrorism police needed to get involved.
After all, it was just a slightly edgy, attention-seeking performance by a particularly political and socially conscious band. The Manics were just doing their thing.
If that was today, I wonder if James Bradfield would be taken in for questioning by police.
The controversy and carefully managed outrage over the Irish rap trio Kneecap once again demonstrates the hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance in popular discourse and cultural gatekeeping.
Imagine people who are more outraged at a music act than at the ongoing massacre said music act was protesting against.
Not that I’m defending the ‘Kill an MP’ thing: but it’s the anti Israel imagery at Coachella that seems to have prompted the most upset.
Establishment media and agenda-setters are taking any opportunity to maximise the nebulous antisemitism conversation and distract the dialogue away from what’s happening in Gaza in real-time.
I’m willing to take a guess that half the people condemning the Irish group were, conversely, full of praise for Pussy Riot when the girl group was being excessively cracked down on by the intolerant Russian authorities.
How dare Putin go after a pop group, right? What happened to freedom of expression, freedom of art, etc? What kind of modern society is Russia?
But in Kneecap’s case, it’s different somehow? Being investigated by counter-terrorism police? Really?
Also, who isn’t being looked into as a ‘terrorist’ these days? It’s already happened to journalists in the UK. Now musicians too?
As I’ve predicted for a while, the term ‘terrorist’ is starting to lose meaning. Which, in the long run, is actually bad for authorities.
Musicians have the right to make political or social commentary – and they don’t have to do it in a nice or acceptable way.
I’ve actually written before about how few popular musicians these days actually say anything political or anything about society.
Probably because of potential PR problems. Modern pop stars play it safe: either out of self-censorship or under duress from industry handlers.
There isn’t any modern Rage Against the Machine. There isn’t even a modern Sinead O’Connor.
But Kneecap is obviously cut from a different cloth.
Sharon Osbourne‘s remark that they should be ‘more like Bono’ shows how out of touch some of these people are with reality.
Her calls for the group to have their US visas revoked over the Coachella incident are particularly telling, given the current climate of the Trump administration targeting pro Palestinians.
Osbourne, incidentally, is a daughter of an Ashkenazi Jewish father (who unsurprisingly was a music industry businessman), and has a strong affinity for Israel: so her attitude makes sense – though it’s amusing to think that her husband’s band, Black Sabbath (which she managed) was once considered an ‘edgy’ metal act.
To be honest, I’d never listened to any Kneecap until this week. But they’re fun. I’ve been missing out.
More to the point, though they’re thought of as a rap act, they seem just as much like a modern punk band to me: with as much in common with the Sex Pistols as with anything contemporary.
Maybe they’re both.
At any rate, the more they keep trying to control or shut down the conversation about Gaza, the more obvious it is how desperate they’re getting.
I remember writing about how Israeli media attacked Eddie Vedder back in 2014 when he made an impromptu anti war diatribe at a Pearl Jam show in Milton Keynes: I was at that concert, and he didn’t even mention Israel by name. He certainly didn’t say anything even remotely as inflammatory as Kneecap did at Coachella: but a big backlash ensued anyway.
Which illustrates how Israel and the Palestinians are meant to be a big no no for rock stars and pop culture figures. Show solidarity with Israel – or just say nothing: that seems to be the rule.
But it’s too late, really. Ordinary people are fully awake to the reality of the Gaza situation – establishment media and commentary is trying in-vain to maintain an illusion that has already long since collapsed.
When you’ve resorted to trying to shut down a young musical act in order to maintain control of a crumbled narrative, you’ve already lost.
