Monday, September 25, 2006

Sparks Are 'Dicked Around' by the BBC

Having seen Sparks perform their song DICK AROUND on Jonathan Ross on Friday Night (link HERE) I was astonished to get an email just now from someone who tells me that BBC banned the song from their breakfast show this morning, despite having Sparks in the studio. Bearing in mind some of the output which the BBC puts out in the early morning on Radio 1 and elsewhere quite what they were thinking of is anyone's guess. Who do they think listens to BBC London anyway? Ron and Russell Mael were quite clearly embarrassed but they were quite rightly insulted that they had been asked to get up at 6am and then not havge their song played. So what should have been an interesting discussion ended up as a 15 minute discussion on being banned.

Ron Mael mreacted angrily: "The BBC has offocially killed off our single, DICK AROUND, ostensibly through rather childish objections to the title, an innocent reference to the idle life. That a piece of music can be condemned purely by its title without the 'decision makers' even having the decency to oppen the CD case is a travesty and an insult to both os us as the creators of the music and to the listenersof the BBC."

Bearing in mind that Radio 1 and Six Music often play songs with lyrics glorifying knife and gun crime, it does make you wonder what the agenda is here. Sparks fans will no doubt remember the song NOW THAT I OWN THE BBC. If only...

To see what all the fuss is about you can watch the YouTube video HERE. Visit the SPARKS Website HERE.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I smell marketing. No plug is better than a ban.

dizzy said...

Outrageous that they would ban it because of the title!

If they'd banned it for being crap I wouldn't mind quite so much because...well it is.

Anonymous said...

Ironically, Sparks performed this very song live on Loose Ends on Saturday - that will be Loose Ends on Radio 4. On the BBC...

Bizarre when the Radio 4 teatime slot is where its at for the cutting edge...

That said, as a former fan, it ain't very good! Amateur Hour, even....

(Ron is 60 next year, you know...)

The Hitch said...

So correct me if I am wrong , but the BBC allow some morbidly obese fetid oaf to present their radio 1 breakfast show, pay that smug unfunny arsehole £6 million a year to ask people if they wank then have the fucking cheek to ban a song ????????????????
iain if your dream of becoming minister for sports and culture comes true , sack the lot of them

Anonymous said...

Oh outrage is me, I hate the BBC, blah.

Anonymous said...

Iain, WTF are we talking about Sparks?? You have a sleazy war mongering poodle about to slip out the side door; a guy who sold a chunk of our national gold reserves at a discount of £1.4 billion and has sold a generation of pensioners into penury about to be annointed leader for his handling of the economy - ignoring the article (on the Beeb, God forbid!) pointing out that the Europeans say Britain has actually been scammed for £8 billion in VAT fraud. £8 BILLION!! How much NHS debt does that cover?

Of course, he might not yet be annointed if the Newsnight polling is to be believed. That might leave us with The Abominable Doctor Reid - the fellow who sent our troops out to Afghanistan with the cheery notion as they departed that they would be there for six months "without a shot being fired". Unfortunately HMG forgot to tell the Taleban. They also forgot to equip our forces properly. And they send a Chinook chopper to rescue our guys from a mine-field - where the down-draught sets off the mines, killing one, stripping the legs off three other paratroopers. Afghanistan is a disaster of Zulu proportions just waiting to happen. And we are talking about Sparks whilst Government in this country has to all intents and purposes ceased to function???

Anonymous said...

marquee mark,

Radio 4 is like foreign cinema. You're allowed to do all sorts of things there because the great unwashed who would be corrupted by it are elsewhere.

Incidentally, I watched Men in Black on Saturday night (early evening) and at one point, Rip Torn said something like "All your experience don't count for dick"

Anonymous said...

"I watched Men in Black on Saturday night (early evening) and at one point, Rip Torn said something like "All your experience don't count for dick" "

Not to mention that classic line of Bill Murray's in Ghostbusters:

http://www.mundoblaineo.com/sounds/dickless.wav

Anonymous said...

marquee mark - granted, it's not important on the global or even national scale (although I do like the song and the band). But it's evidence, if we needed it, that the BBC has inconsistent policies (song played on R4 and in regions, but not London) and still believes that it knows what's good for us, even more than we do.

Unconscious, unthinking bias? Not at the BBC, surely...

Anonymous said...

Really outrageous when you think of that cretin Chris Moyle and what comes out of his fat gob, not to mention that other lick spittle Chris Evans who replaced Johnnie Walker - he's not fit to kiss his boots. Both Moyles and Evans constantly spout obscenities. Why doesn't the BBC ban them? Not to mention that smug asshole, Jonathan Ross.