[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
I think the Beatles song “Daytripper” contains the line “She’s a prick teaser.” I believe it’s usually transcribed as “big teaser,” but I’m fairly certain I read in some Beatles biography that John was actually saying “prick” in the studio.
[/QUOTE]
No, it’s definitely “big teaser.”
Besides, George Martin never would’ve gone along with it.
[QUOTE=Vlad/Igor]
Blondie: Rapture. Debbie Harry stretches out the words “finger fucking” to the point where you can’t really tell what she’s saying unless you read the lyrics. I was pretty shocked when I learned that, after hearing Rapture played so much.
Vlad/Igor
[/QUOTE]
Eh? All the online sources* seem to have it as ‘finger popping’, which also seems confirmed by the rhyme ‘24-hour shopping’ in the next line.
*the only online sources I could find that listed it as fucking were a few sites listing commonly-misheard lyrics.
Anyone remember “Telephone Man”? It was a huge hit in the UK in the '70s, and was ostensibly about a visit from the telephone repair man.
“I got it in the bedroom and I got it in the hall,
I got it in the bathroom and he hung it on the wall,
I got it with a buzz and I got it with a ring,
and when he told me what my number was I got a ding-a-ling!”
In those days it went clean over my head. Only dawned on me what it was all about when I heard it again very recently 
.
[QUOTE=Usram]
That’s more likely a reference to the frozen cod delicacy popular in Britain back in the dark ages.
[/QUOTE]
I respectfully disagree, given that fish fingers have always been traditionally children’s food, and adults would have been eating cod and chips. I’ve heard the expression “fish and finger pie” as a euphemism for what Americans would call “getting to third base” and I have been and remain convinced that this lyric was knowingly sneaked past the censors.
The final episode of Not The Nine O’Clock News featured a song with the refrain “Kinda Lingers” which was pronounced more and more like “Cunnilingus” as the song went on, intentionally so; and an earlier show had a parody of the Two Ronnies with a song that had the words “Over China-, over China-, over Chinatown” intentionally pronounced like “O vagina, O vagina…” - which was not too unlike what like Barker and Corbett used to do, but a little closer to the knuckle. 
As an aside, in an episode of Bob the Builder in which Bob accidentally wallpapers himself from eyebrow to toecaps, he can be heard muttering something heavily muffled as he tries to free himself, and if you listen closely it’s plain that Morrissey has got away with saying “Oh, fuckin’ hell!” on children’s TV. Twice. :eek:
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
I know that it was much later that I started doing serious reading about "black’ music - once an actual record category, except where it was called “race” music or even “nigger” music - r&b, blues, and all the variations.
[/QUOTE]
Of course these days it’s just called ‘Urban’ music, at least here in the UK. It really makes me feel uncomfortable when I see all these black artists with a huge range of styles all lumped together in the same section of the record store.
(Sorry for the tangent)
[QUOTE=spoke-]
OK, given that definition, I would agree with you that most white folks weren’t hearing that music at the time it was produced. However, it was on the radio, and white kids in the South were listening to it.
[/QUOTE]
You, plural, keep pushing the time line. Tutti Frutti wasn’t released until 1955, which is a full generation in kid time later than the period I’m referring to. You might hear Little Richard in 1955. You were less likely to in 1951 when he started recording.
And the very first deejay who is credited with putting “race music” on a large station was Hunter Hancock in L.A. in 1948, although WDIA in Memphis went to an all-black format the same year (and received bomb threats for doing so). But that was a full two years after Billboard started its “race music” charts.
It’s not very good for chronology, but try Marc Fisher’s Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution That Shaped a Generation for early rock radio history.
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
You, plural, keep pushing the time line. Tutti Frutti wasn’t released until 1955, which is a full generation in kid time later than the period I’m referring to. You might hear Little Richard in 1955. You were less likely to in 1951 when he started recording.
[/QUOTE]
You seem confused about my post. Here my timeline, to clarify for you:
Mid-to-late 1940s: Black musicians start performing what executives first called “race music” but which would soon be known as R&B and/or Rock and Roll.
Late 40s: Television enters the entertainment world. Radio panics, thinking the end is near, and a lot of radio stations are sold off at bargain prices and purchased by independent owners. These independent radio stations begin to experiment with new formats.
1948: Black DJ Nat Williams goes on the air at WDIA in Memphis and starts playing prototypical Rock and Roll by black artists.
1950: Dewey Phillips (a white DJ in Memphis) begins playing these “race records” to an audience consisting largely of white teenagers.
1951: Little Richard begins recording for Peacock Records.
1952: Little Richard begins performing in clubs.
1950-54: Independent radio stations across the South, such as WLAC in Nashville, sense the growing popularity of Rock and Roll and begin playing these black artists.
1950-54: White kids listening to black artists on the radio begin to absorb the musical vibe. White kids like Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly. White kids begin to show up at performances by these black artists.
1953: Elvis shows up at Sun Records, and pays to record a demo. Chuck Berry begins performing at The Cosmo in East St. Louis.
1954: Elvis records “That’s All Right Mama,” an Arthur Crudup song. Elvis is the artist Sun Records owner Sam Phillips has been seeking, one capable of bringing the black sound to a wider white audience.
1955: Little Richard records “Tutti Frutti.” Chuck Berry begins recording for Chess Records. Fats Domino records “Ain’t That a Shame.” Bo Diddly records “Bo Diddly.” Little Richard’s growing popularity with white kids is especially worrisome to white parents because of Little Richard’s sexually-charged lyrics.
1955: Record executives, sensing the irresistable force of rock and roll, but wanting to present it in a form more palatable to white parents, start making “safe” covers of the best Rock and Roll songs with whitebread artists like Pat Boone.
I hope that clears things up for you Exapno. The main point I am making, in response to your original post, is that “race music”/R&B/Rock’n’Roll was being played on the radio beginning in the 40s (at least in the South). White kids were being exposed to it. They were absorbing it. They would soon regurgitate it in the form of rockabilly and in the person of Elvis Presley.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
I think the Beatles song “Daytripper” contains the line “She’s a prick teaser.” I believe it’s usually transcribed as “big teaser,” but I’m fairly certain I read in some Beatles biography that John was actually saying “prick” in the studio.
[/QUOTE]
I thought the repeat at the end of “Baby You’re a Rich Man” becomes “Baby you’re a rich fag Jew” in “honor” of their manager.
What’s New Pussycat?
Pussycat, Pussycat
You’re delicious
And if my wishes
Can all come true
I’ll soon be kissing your sweet little pussycat lips!
I heard this on a mix CD this morning, and thought it was a good one for this thread- the Pretenders’ *Tattooed Love Boys * contains this passage, although I don’t know how much airplay it actually got:
Chrissy’s painting herself as quite the good-time girl there.
[QUOTE=spoke-]
I hope that clears things up for you Exapno. The main point I am making, in response to your original post, is that “race music”/R&B/Rock’n’Roll was being played on the radio beginning in the 40s (at least in the South). White kids were being exposed to it. They were absorbing it. They would soon regurgitate it in the form of rockabilly and in the person of Elvis Presley.
[/QUOTE]
Your chronology is exactly mine with more detail through in.
However, the point I seem not to have emphasized enough is that this music didn’t come out of nowhere in 1948. It had been around for decades. Black music with explicit sexual or drug references had been part of jazz, soul, blues, and other forms since WWI (and probably a few existed earlier.) You pretty much need to be an expert collector to find these records, although some compilations exist. Think of “Minnie the Moocher,” which is from 1930 although based one earlier songs.
When Groucho makes a prostitute joke about Minnie in Night at the Opera, he was referring to one of the extended, not-played-on-radio versions. The song was like a good joke: you could add as many verses as the audience would take.
Lots of nightclub music was of this sort. Very little of it, even the cleaner versions, got played on the radio. Almost all of it was “race music.”
White kids did not grow up listening to this stuff, except for the few who snuck off to the black part of town. (They became musicians themselves, lots of the time.) It was impossible before WWII.
After the war, the world changed. I’ve made this point before in history threads: there is a huge and critical break in popular culture after WWII. Life after WWI was premodern; life after WWII was modern. We can identify with it in a way that we cannot with the prewar world: those earlier times seem like a Walker Evans photograph, or a Keystone Kops flic. 1948 is very late in this game. It had been played for decades by that point.
Even so, the change - even then - was slow and mild and localized until after Bill Haley broke in 1954.
So while I agree with you about the late 40s and after - I said it all before you did - I don’t care very much about them. I’m referring to a generation preceding it. The hippies didn’t invent sex and drug and rock ‘n’ roll. The Jazz Generation didn’t either, but they put it into their music first.
[QUOTE=Malacandra]
As an aside, in an episode of Bob the Builder in which Bob accidentally wallpapers himself from eyebrow to toecaps, he can be heard muttering something heavily muffled as he tries to free himself, and if you listen closely it’s plain that Morrissey has got away with saying “Oh, fuckin’ hell!” on children’s TV. Twice. :eek:
[/QUOTE]
Cite!
Or at least tell me the name of the episode so I can go and buy it.
[QUOTE=Frostillicus]
“Well I make her pussy burn with a stroke of my hand…”
Nope. Nothing dirty there.
[/QUOTE]
“I can make a pussy PURR with a stroke of my hand”
That’s called a double-entendre, son. Well, and entendre and a half.
Would you believe an entendre and a quarter?
Not pre-1985, but I just recently realized that “Peaches” by the Presidents of the United States of America is a filthy, filthy song.
“Movin’ to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches…”
What about “I really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree”?
[QUOTE=gigi]
What about “I really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree”?
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, that phrasing has a long history, going back to old blues songs.
[QUOTE=spoke-]
The Beatles - “Penny Lane”
…four of fish and finger pie…
[/QUOTE]
I see your Penny Lane and raise you I am the Walrus. “Crabalocker fishwife pornographic priestess boy you’ve been a naughty girl you’ve let your knickers down”.
Heh heh heh heh!
Yummy, Yummy, Yummy.
I got love in my tummy,
And I feel like a-lovin you:
Love, you’re such a sweet thing,
Good enough to eat thing
And that’s just a-what I’m gonna do.
Ooh love, to hold ya,
Ooh love, to kiss ya,
Ooh love, I love it so.
Ooh love, you’re sweeter,
Sweeter than sugar.
Ooh love, I wont let you go.
I’ve always been surprised that The Eagles’ Life in the Fast Lane wasn’t censored for the line:
“We been up and down this highway, haven’t seen a god-damned thing.”
And at the risk of sounding completely dense, I will confess that I just realized a couple weeks ago that that song is all about snorting cocaine.
I still think it’s hilarious that the Kid Rock/Sheryl Crow song “Picture” was played uncensored on the classic rock station and the country station, but that the word “cocaine” was blanked out when it was played on the Top 40 station. Actually, it was even more amusing that they blanked out “cocaine” but not “whiskey”.
[QUOTE=McNew]
I heard this on a mix CD this morning, and thought it was a good one for this thread- the Pretenders’ Tattooed Love Boys contains this passage, although I don’t know how much airplay it actually got:
[/QUOTE]
Damn, I was going to mention that one! I don’t know if it got any mainstream radio play either, but a year or two ago it was prominently featured in a commercial. A voiceover explains that the elderly [antiques?] store proprietor you’re seeing has an odd, secret habit: every day he has to listen to The Pretenders’ “Tattooed Love Boys”… but the commercial doesn’t use that snippet of the song.
Time, by David Bowie, from Aladdin Sane, especially the second verse:
Time - He flexes like a whore
Falls wanking to the floor
His trick is you and me, boy
and:
It’s not the side effects of the cocaine
I’m thinking that it must be love
from Station to Station
also, the Rolling Stones’ Honky Tonk Women
I met a gin soaked bar-room queen in Memphis,
She tried to take me upstairs for a ride
For all I know they were censored - I wasn’t around at the time. The one do I remember hearing about having been banned from UK radio was “Let’s spend the night together” on the strength of the title alone.
As for Beatles drug references - there were suggestions that A Little “Help” from my Friends was H as in heroin, as well as the infamous LSD from Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.