X-rated Bob wrote
Psean wrote
Clint Green wrote
It's all nothing new, really...Screamin' Jay Hawkins did it in the late 50's, Arthur Brown did it in the late 60's, Alice Cooper in the 70's, GWAR did it in the 80's and Marilyn Manson was the poster child of this kind of thing for the 90's. Only difference is all of these acts had freakin' awesome music to back it up with. Die Antwoord: not so much. ?
This
Well that's a bit dodgy in two ways.
1) Screaming Jay Hawkins and Arthur Brown were nothing like Die Antwoord or, for that matter, Marilyn Manson. They were wild, but they weren't gratuitously and deliberately profane.
2) Are we saying that it's OK to create a really, really sick, evil piece of art as long as you show that you have good technique?
Yeah, I think you're right here. The way I see it, most of the other artists mentioned here go beyond simply using the profanity and whatnot as a gimmick (which as far as I can see is
all that Die Antwoord do, besides on or two catchy bits). The others generally seem to have a different mesage, viewpoint, what have you, that underlies the profanity or expilicit content and so on. A quote from Manson for example:
"It was a perfect preface to an album about abuse: sexual abuse, domestic abuse, drug abuse, psychological abuse. Midway through the record, we [initially] included one of the taped confessions we had gathered, from a girl who molested her seven-year-old male cousin. It underscored the subplot of the album, about the most common target of abuse: innocence. I've always liked the Peter Pan idea of being a kid in mind if not in body, and Smells Like Children was supposed to be a record for someone who's no longer a child, someone who, like myself, wants their innocence back now that they're corrupted enough to appreciate it. [...] What began as a very disturbing record had become a record that disturbed only me.[6]"
It seems to me that it's about all that stuff, but not merely to grab attention (although other of his gimmicks may be). The good musiciannshiop behind thos records is just something addditional. Basically I think that Die Antwoord have nothing more than shock value or wierdness or wahtever.
