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From: dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Newsgroups: net.motss,net.music
Subject: Re: MTV Censorship of Bronski Beat
Message-ID: <796@watcgl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 17-Dec-84 01:14:11 EST
Article-I.D.: watcgl.796
Posted: Mon Dec 17 01:14:11 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 17-Dec-84 04:21:21 EST
References: <248@decwrl.UUCP>
Reply-To: dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 17
Xref: watmath net.motss:1362 net.music:5445

Interesting to stumble across this discussion now.  My exposure to
Bronski Beat has been:
1) Hearing "Small Town Boy" on the radio.
2) Seeing the video for it on MuchMusic (the Canadian pay-TV music video
   channel, which also is broadcast unscrambled by a Toronto TV station
   late at night).  The video is indeed better than most - just simple
   images that fit the story in the song, not silly images of a band
   playing the song.
3) Buying the record ("The Age of Consent")
4) Reading the lyrics.  Only at this point did I realize that at least the
   songwriter is gay.

I haven't had another chance to see the video since figuring this out,
so I don't know how obvious it would be in retrospect.  There certainly
wasn't anything in the video that I could see offending anyone.
And there isn't anything specifically gay about the lyrics of "Small Town Boy"
at all.