“The Devil had nothing to do with this next song”

I’m a journalist. I was an English literature major. My mum was an English teacher. My ex-wife worked in the library. It’s no wonder I have issues with censorship. I don’t think we should need stickers on album covers to warn us of the content of the lyrics – yes, even such simple “warnings” smack of censorship to me. Frankly it’s a little like the surgeon general’s warnings on cigarettes and alcohol – feel-good efforts that I doubt have little effect. (Know any pregnant women who were about to take a swig from a bottle of Jack or a drag on a Pall Mall until she saw that little reminder of the likely ill effects on her unborn child? Yeah, neither do I.

Oh, I suppose some naïve, cave-dwelling parent might notice the “Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics” sticker and nix Johnny’s birthday gift idea, but we all know Johnny’s already heard it. And I think you should judge for yourself. Listen to the songs. I’ll tell you, it was an eye-opener when I shuffled through a handful of tunes on my oldest daughter’s iPod when she was a senior in high school. One song about oral sex rather shocked me at first (my baby was listening to this crap), but I realized I’ve got songs on the subject by AC/DC and Billy Squier, so it was nothing new. Kids are aware of more than we want to acknowledge. Ignorance is bliss.

The censorship theme of the Styx album “Kilroy Was Here” is part of its allure to me. I find it to be a brilliant concept album, a musical extension of “1984” and “Fahrenheit 451.” It was at least topically timely. And ironically the new live album, “Caught in the Act,” served for me as a link from the latest Styx music – “Kilroy” – to the band’s older catalog. Which led to the raid on my brother’s left-behind music collection before I headed to college after the summer, where I found a nice mix tape of Styx music from several of their earlier albums.

Random photo to convey the Philmont connection: my
camper and staff Philmont Guidebooks and a couple
other Phil-books, one a brief history, one on trails.

Oh, the connection? Well, it hinges on a song introduction by guitarist James Young (Track 5, Disc 1):

“Is everybody feelin’ kinda loosened up? Anyway we’re feeling loosened up. And last year, the state legislature of California was so loosened up that they decided  that some records, including ours, had backwards, satanic messages on them. But we can honestly and sincerely say as we stand before you this evening that the Devil had nothing to do with this next song, from the Paradise Theater album, a song entitled Snowblind.”

OK, self-indulgent reverie: When I googled “The Devil had nothing to do with this next song” to confirm it was Young who uttered the words and see if I could find any other history about the stage banter, the first hit was an excerpt from the book “TheGrand Delusion: The Unauthorized True Story of Styx.” The second was my blogfrom Jan. 7, 2011, in which I quoted that bit as the title. Mostly that means that the quote doesn’t come up much on the ’Net (6 times, to be precise). But it’s pretty cool to see your work pop up in Google searches, especially when you weren’t expecting it.