Thursday, May 29, 2008

Does Rock Kill ? A Rock Lovers Tract

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I am interested in the following quote I found from a religious tract on the web and what you think ? Can rock lead people to kill ? This is a pretty ghoulish thing to post about but still interesting ?

"Tommy, your typical, all-American, fourteen-year-old, one Saturday night, slit his own mother's throat, and then gouged her eyes out. Tommy then slashed his wrists and cut his throat from ear-to-ear, with an intensity that nearly decapitated him. Mayor Fran Slayton said, "There's just something that's bothering me about this situation. It bothers me that a good kid like that can go in two weeks." Tommy's father said, all week his son had been singing a ROCK SONG, "about blood and killing your mother."

"Dr. Paul King, medical director of the adolescent program at Charter Lakeside Hospital, in Memphis Tennessee, says more than 80 percent of his patients are there because of rock music. He says, "the lyrics become a philosophy of life, a RELIGION."

My own view is pretty clear; while some black and death metal may push the boundary of taste and while some goes even further is messing with forces that I personally would be worried about it's all an expression of what's on the inside rather than the outside; people's problems run very deep, this young man's would have been very complex:

Why is it useful for some people to blame the music?

1. His father would have gained some solace in seeing the music as the problem

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2. American society "eats the menu" when it blames the music, protecting itself from looking at some of it's deep wounds and dysfunction

3. Religious fanatics who post these anti-rock tracts fail to see that rock has been a critical vehicle for revolution and change, as conservatives they are nervous about any challenge to their own power and authority. They use this young man for their own advantage


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4. Mental illness clearly a massive feature of these events, no amount of rock can change your genetic make-up, the environmental stressors that trigger it.

Let me know what you think ? Have I simply written another tract ?

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