{"id":612,"date":"2015-04-01T09:00:44","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T23:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qut.edu.au\/crime-and-justice-research-centre\/?p=612"},"modified":"2015-04-01T08:16:06","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T22:16:06","slug":"crime-on-a-desert-island-music-about-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qut.edu.au\/crime-and-justice-research-centre\/2015\/04\/01\/crime-on-a-desert-island-music-about-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"Crime on a desert island (part five): Music about crime"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"This
\nImage cca Alan Levine This Old Guitar<\/a><\/p>\n

by Dean Biron<\/p>\n

Music and crime are most commonly associated through notions of illegal downloading, the lyrics and lifestyles of \u201cgangsta\u201d rappers, or heavy metal musicians supposedly exhorting young people to deviance. In the 1980s, links between certain types of rock music and antisocial or even criminal behaviour were widely feared, to the extent that in the US, the wives of several government officials \u2013 most infamously Tipper Gore, partner of Senator Al Gore \u2013 founded the Parents Music Resource Centre, in an attempt to deny children access to music they claimed threatened the very foundations of society.<\/p>\n

Of course, music and crime have long between intertwined. Countless classical opera scores are drenched in blood. In Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto<\/em> (1851), for instance, the protagonist enters into a bargain with an assassin, with unforseen deadly consequences. A century on, the Mississippi Delta blues musician Robert Johnson was said to have sold his soul to the devil: the result was a handful of legendary songs and an early death, allegedly poisoned by a jealous husband.<\/p>\n

In the 1960s, The Beatles revelled in their image of four clean-cut and fun-loving young men, whereas the Rolling Stones were considered to best represent the malevolent, dangerous side of rock and roll. The status of the latter seemed only to be confirmed by the 1969 Altamont Speedway concert, where the Hells Angels \u2013 hired as \u201cstage security\u201d by the band for $500 worth of beer\u201d \u2013 went on a spree of violence which culminated in a fan being stabbed to death in front of the stage (images captured in the 1970 documentary film Gimme Shelter<\/em>). Yet the Beatles too were unsuspectingly dragged into the dark regions of sixties counterculture when petty criminal and cult leader Charles Manson used their songs \u201cHelter Skelter\u201d and \u201cPiggies\u201d as incitements to mass murder.<\/p>\n

Musicians have also used the song form as social commentary, often in an attempt to right perceived injustices. Bob Dylan wrote several of these, the most famous being \u201cHurricane,\u201d about boxer Ruben Hurricane Carter\u2019s wrongful conviction for murder.<\/p>\n

Here are 10 pieces of music with explicit links to crime:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. “Send me to the ‘lectric Chair” by Bessie Smith <\/a>(1927)<\/li>\n
  2. “Hurricane” by Bob Dylan (1976)<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. “Tired Eyes” by Neil Young (1975)<\/a> \u2013 story of drug deal gone wrong.<\/li>\n
  4. “Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa” by De la Soul <\/a>(1992) \u2013 the \u201cdaisy\u201d rap band expanded their repertoire in this gripping tale of sexual abuse.<\/li>\n
  5. “The Mercy Seat” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds <\/a>(1988) \u2013 the \u201cmercy seat\u201d refers to the electric chair.<\/li>\n
  6. “Rape Me” by Nirvana <\/a>(1993) \u2013 an anti-rape song, though it was subsequently banned from radio because of the title.<\/li>\n
  7. “Nebraska” by Bruce Springsteen<\/a> (1982) \u2013 story of mass killer Charles Starkweather.<\/li>\n
  8. “Midnight Rambler” by the Rolling Stones<\/a> (1969)<\/li>\n
  9. “Poptones” by Public Image Ltd<\/a> (1979)<\/li>\n
  10. Kristallnacht<\/em> by John Zorn<\/a> (1993) \u2013 a musical meditation on the \u201cnight of broken glass\u201d, the notorious Nazi crime perpetrated against the Jews in November of 1938.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Image cca Alan Levine This Old Guitar by Dean Biron Music and crime are most commonly associated through notions of illegal downloading, the lyrics and lifestyles of \u201cgangsta\u201d rappers, or heavy metal musicians supposedly exhorting young people to deviance. In the 1980s, links between certain types of rock music and antisocial or even criminal behaviour<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":312,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,9720,9712],"tags":[9723,9704,9705,2394,9716,217],"class_list":{"0":"post-612","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"category-crime-and-popular-culture","8":"category-staff","9":"tag-crimeandculture","10":"tag-crimejusticequt","11":"tag-criminology","12":"tag-law","13":"tag-media","14":"tag-music"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qut.edu.au\/crime-and-justice-research-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qut.edu.au\/crime-and-justice-research-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qut.edu.au\/crime-and-justice-research-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qut.edu.au\/crime-and-justice-research-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/312"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qut.edu.au\/crime-and-justice-research-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qut.edu.au\/crime-and-justice-research-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":640,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qut.edu.au\/crime-and-justice-research-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions\/640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qut.edu.au\/crime-and-justice-research-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qut.edu.au\/crime-and-justice-research-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qut.edu.au\/crime-and-justice-research-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}