MACHINE HEAD NEWS!

October 12, 2007, posted by Crumbs.

Robb Flynn's Headbanger's Ball Blog

Machine Head

With all the news surrounding the Machine Head/Arch Enemy House of Blues show that Disneyland canceled, we thought we’d go directly to the source and have Machine Head frontman Robb Flynn write up a guest blog about his views on citizenship and censorship. Check this out, and don’t forget to watch the band’s new video for “Now I Lay Thee Down.”

In the six years since the attacks of September 11, the United States has become a better place in a number of ways. As a country, we have implemented a few common sense security procedures and protective measures that have made the nation little more secure; as a people, we are a little more conscious of our surroundings and what we can do to increase our safety; and, as a society, we are (to some degree) a little more aware of our effect on the rest of the world, both positive and negative. On the night of September 11, when I asked the crowd in Tucson, Arizona to please give 15 seconds of silence to pay respect to those whose lives were lost on that tragic day, for that one brief moment, we all felt like one. These are good things.

However, in those same six years, the United States has also managed to deteriorate into a place much worse than it was on September 10, 2001. Since that infamous day, many ugly truths have surfaced, many of the liberties we once took for granted – freedoms we once thought invincible – have been quietly erased by men that have taken it upon themselves to ignore the Constitution and write their own rules. These are the same men that fed the world lies in order to justify a war that it wouldn’t agree to, men who value power and control over human life and exercise it with an unprecedented audacity and disdain for the law. And these are very bad things.

But worse than any of that, in my opinion, is the fact that, for the most part, we are allowing it. We, the people, are sitting idly by while all of this is happening, watching it slowly unravel in front of our very eyes. The scale of it all so large, the stage so vast that it’s impossible not to feel helpless and detached in the shadow of everything that’s happening — that is, until the same kinda s–t happens to you, on a much smaller scale. You tend to turn a blind eye, until you see the same tyrannical attitudes and repressive tactics trickle down into your daily life, absorbed by corporate America and dictated to you as “the way it needs to be”.

I have been on the road touring for over half of my life, 13 years of which have been with Machine Head. This is what we do. Frankly, it’s all we know how to do. And in the 13 years we’ve been touring, we have never experienced the kind of flat-out extortion that we were just privy to. Never did we think that what we just witnessed over the course of the last few weeks would ever be possible, let alone tolerated in this day and age. But as I sit here writing these words to you, we are still in an utter state of shock.

About a month ago, we were told that our concert at The House Of Blues in Anaheim, California (which is on Disney property) — after having been on sale for six weeks — was going to be moved on two days notice because Disney had begun silently enacting a blanket policy to eliminate all heavy metal shows from the two House of Blues venues that reside on Disney property. Now, of course, no one would go on record about exactly what Disney’s brand new issue(s) with metal seemed to be (understandably so). But the “unofficial” gist is that metal lyrics were deemed “inflammatory” and metal fans deemed “undesirable.”

Is it ultimately wrong for a family-oriented establishment like Disney to have a say in who plays at venues located on their property? No. During Machine Head’s early years, we ran into a not-really-similar scenario when we tried to play our local punk club, 924 Gilman Street. We were turned down because of the simple fact that we were “a metal band.” Our friend Tim from Rancid even spoke to the 924 Gilman committee about why we should play there, but in the end, they “voted” us off the table, as they felt it would compromise the integrity of what their club was — a “punk rock” club. We’re a metal band, fair enough.

But when a corporation like Disney forces the cancellation of your show because your style of music is “inappropriate,” it really sticks in your craw, especially when you think about what’s playing at the theater right next door. For example, now playing at the Downtown Disney AMC Theater are a number of movies rated “R” for, among other things, “strong sexual content”, “strong horror violence,” “intense sequences of graphic brutal violence,” nudity and drug use. It goes without saying that a heavy metal show is (with the exception of violence) fairly tame by those standards. Hell, even by the oft-assumed worst-case scenarios preached by ignorant conservative groups about “the evils of heavy metal,” the genre still falls well short of offering its fans the sort of influences present in the major motion pictures playing a mere hop, skip and a jump away.

So that makes you wonder exactly what it is about having a heavy metal show at the traditionally metal-friendly House of Blues next door that seems to scare Disney enough to allegedly threaten and pressure promoters into canceling all currently booked and on-sale metal shows, and prevent the booking of any future shows within the genre. What is it that metal says to people that makes it so much worse than the content described in the ratings of the aforementioned movies? Is it as simple as Disney wanting nothing to do with metal fans? And if that’s the case, how do you think the public would react if they made the same decision about hip-hop fans?

Or does it have something to do with the fact that metal says what most other media is afraid to say? Take Machine Head’s lyrics, for example. When we were writing the lyrics to “The Blackening,” we all sat down and had a good old fashioned vote on whether or not we should go ahead with what we wanted to say, knowing full well that we could piss off a number of people, and that there might be repercussions. So, the whole idea of Disney reading the lyrics to “Clenching The Fists Of Dissent” or “A Farewell To Arms” and deciding that there was no way in hell that we were going to be allowed to play there is far from shocking. The real shocker came two days before the show when they suddenly decided to pull the rug out from underneath the opening night of our tour, after tickets had been on sale for six weeks. This new policy of theirs apparently “began” around that same time, and since then, nearly every other metal show at the House of Blues Anaheim and House of Blues Orlando - already booked and on sale - has also been mysteriously canceled. The only exceptions to said “rule” have involved a handful of Christian-friendly and/or Bush-friendly metal bands such as Megadeth, Underoath and As I Lay Dying.

So what’s really going on here? Is this your average, everyday case of ignorant corporate tools making decisions for you, or is it something else? f this was all in an effort to make Disneyland a “happier” place for everybody, why do they still allow the showing of R-rated movies at the AMC Theater in Anaheim, or the purchase of unrated DVDs and explicit CDs at the Virgin Megastore in Orlando? Those two simple facts alone speak to a less-than-global elimination of “questionable” content from their premises. So, why ban metal shows? They’re no less lucrative than a country show, and there’s no less potential liability involved than with a hip-hop show.

The one word that continues to stick with me is “inflammatory.” Now that we’ve played four shows on this tour at House of Blues venues – all without issue or incident — I’m left wondering if this really was a case of an uber-conservative corporation deciding that certain things simply should not be said. After all, banning a genre of music that has always traditionally been anti-establishment and (especially in Machine Head’s case) very anti-administration and anti-war does coincidentally serve the very obvious agenda of the Disney/ABC conglomerate, albeit a very minor service in the grand scheme of things.

We’ve played the House of Blues venues in Anaheim and Orlando before, as have many of the bands now being banned, so why has this genre now been labeled “inflammatory” and their fans “undesirable?” As much as I might want to dismiss the notion that there is a degree of suppression involved here, I just can’t shake that word “inflammatory.” What exactly are metal bands supposedly inciting with our lyrics: Free thought? The idea that our government might not always be working in our best interest? Comprehension of the corruptive force of organized religion? Have things really gotten so bad here in this country that the mere possible mention of these issues is now enough to remove potential “offenders” from the table outright?

I won’t pretend to have all the answers. I’m no scholar by any means, but in between the enormous amounts of vodka I consume, and the occasional recreational drug, I do pay very close attention to what’s happening in our world today, and I can tell you this… I, like many of you, have got a real bad feeling about the road we’re all traveling down.

Was all this to make Disneyland safer? Are these the things that make America safer? Is this the America we live in now?

Because if it is, it has to be asked, safer for who? And who protects us from those in charge of making it “safer?” Because I don’t feel safer…at all.

Source: HeadbangersBlogg.com

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