Bad News From Restaurants

Apparently, per the new book from the restaurateur who exposed James Corden as a jerk, Patti Smith once rained hellfire down upon a hapless waitress who forgot to bring her & Robert Mapplethorpe some bread, reducing the poor girl to tears. And while it's never cool to be abusive to the wait staff, it was weird to see that story breathlessly reported by multiple news sources yesterday. 50+ years seems like a decent statute of limitations for being an asshole one night. But it got the book some publicity, and if the author has found his niche as an exposer of bad behavior at restaurants, I won't deny that's a useful thing. Stop being shitty to people just trying to do their stressful jobs.

In much more horrifying, despicable and completely unforgivable restaurant news, New Pornographers drummer Joe Seiders was caught following an 11-year-old boy into a Chick-Fil-A bathroom and filming him on his phone, which led to police discovering that Seiders was in possession a trove of child porn and arresting him. Vile. I would think the band will be having serious discussions of a name change, now that one of its members rendered their name literal. Asshole wasn't even a founding member, but has left his bandmates in a tough spot where the brand they've built for themselves (without much help from him) may no longer be viable going forward. Although that's far from the most distressing concern brought up by this story.

breno Wrote:
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> In much more horrifying, despicable and completely
> unforgivable restaurant news, New Pornographers
> drummer Joe Seiders....

Who would have thought a band with a despicable name had a despicable member? Is that ironic or self-fulfilling? Anyway, they could make the most amazing music ever and I would never know. There are some band names that just prevent me from even being curious. Maybe that's a harsh take, but I don't care. At least the rest of the band had the good sense to dump the degenerate immediately.

I had thought the New Pornographers' name was based on a quote from Jimmy Swaggart proclaiming rock & roll to be "the new pornography," in which case it would be a pretty clever name. However, Wikipedia claims that Carl Newman named the band after a Japanese movie called The Pornographers, which is a far less funny and defensible explanation for an uncomfortable band name.

> There are some band names that just prevent me from even being curious.

I can relate. Any band whose name I'd have to bowdlerize on the air is not likely to get even any personal listening time from me. The band Fucked Up has received some pretty favorable critical coverage, since I started DJ'ing ... but all that leads me to think is, "Well, bully for them."

Then again, I suppose it's possible that a band selects such a name for just that purpose: to weed out the people who won't look past the band's name, for whatever reason, and won't check out what the group truly has to offer. A Pyrrhic victory, at best.

I have listened to the New Pornographers, more than once. My fellow DJ Lon Palmer turned me on to them; he's a big fan. Actually a really good band ... but not one whose works I've added to my collection. Kinda freaky, to think they'll have to change their name and rebuild their brand going forward, thanks to this vile predatory wretch.

Delvin Wrote:
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> Then again, I suppose it's possible that a band
> selects such a name for just that purpose: to weed
> out the people who won't look past the band's
> name, for whatever reason, and won't check out
> what the group truly has to offer. A Pyrrhic victory, at best.

Well, the way I see it, I only have so many hours in the day. If a band wants to help me out by turning me off with their name, I'm OK with that. And the name doesn't have to be offensive. There is a band called Tennis. Nope.

On the other hand, if I were that much of a snob about it, I would have missed out on Echo & The Bunnymen. And Spoon. And Ozric Tentacles, for that matter.

I mean, are any of these names really “worse” than Steely Dan? No one I knew had a problem with them because you just understood what they meant - it may not have been the actual origin of their name as Brad mentioned, but it was how we found out “new pornography” as it was directed at pop music was another example of the puritanical history of evangelical culture. And “fucked up” is a common colloquial term that gets right to the point, and for at least 99% of the time I’ve heard it, it’s not obscene - it’s used to emphatically describe a situation that’s wrong or a person who’s profoundly emotionally damaged. Anyway, the first three albums by the New Pornographers and Fucked Up’s “David Comes to Life” will always be personal favorites.

Well said, Belfast! It’s indeed ironic that the band’s drummer has been busted for sex crimes, but I confess that I don’t find the name of the New Pornographers “despicable.” (Mr. Seiders’ actions, on the other hand, are, and I’m thankful that he was arrested.) “Despicable” suggests to me that the name should be hidden in a plain brown wrapper. I don’t know the group’s music, and at this stage of my life I’m not interested in hearing them, much as I’m not interested in hearing new music in general. I’m old.

I’ve not seen The Pornographers, but I have seen at least two movies by Shohei Imamura (The Insect Woman and Profound Desires of the Gods, both of which have been screened on TCM), and he was a prominent filmmaker in the Japanese New Wave. I don’t begrudge the band for naming themselves after one of his pictures, and I don’t believe that doing so “is a far less funny and defensible explanation for an uncomfortable band name” than naming themselves after some remark that Jimmy Swaggart—speaking of irony—made. After all, I still enjoy Japan’s Adolescent Sex, a title that these days is practically guaranteed to trigger those individuals whose senses, and sensitivities, are as morbidly acute as Roderick Usher’s. Mr. Seiders’ crimes have, however, undoubtedly rendered the group’s handle radioactive. He is certainly an appalling man.

I remember an older woman who was a fellow student in one of my Creative Writing classes nearly forty years ago, who was deeply offended by the title of the play/film Children of a Lesser God, which had just been released theatrically. She didn’t realize that the reference was to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King; she was a devout woman, and she believed that the title was anti-Christian. It made her “feel bad.” The very word “pornography” seems to afflict some people similarly.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2025 02:19PM by Middle C.

Let me clarify that I have never been bothered by the New Pornographers' name, just that the Swaggart quote was an easier sell when explaining the band name to someone who did seem to be offended by it (something I have had to do on a couple of occasions when I mentioned to someone I was going to an NP show) - "Ha ha! They're just calling themselves rock & rollers per the definition offered by this hypocritical evangelical jackass!" On the other hand, if someone is offended by the band name, telling them "But they're named after a movie by an acclaimed Japanese director!" isn't going to move their needle much on the topic. Whether or not the name needed defending wasn't my issue, just that if you found yourself in the position of having to do so, the Swaggart explanation generally mollified the offended party.

Then again, I bought the Resurrected Bloated Floaters lp precisely because of the name.

> I remember an older woman who was a fellow student in one
> of my Creative Writing classes nearly forty years ago, who was
> deeply offended by the title of the play/film Children of a
> Lesser God, which had just been released theatrically.

I remember a younger man in Colorado Springs who was getting married in the beautiful natural setting of Garden of the Gods. Being devoutly Christian, he made it a point to "correct" anyone in his vicinity who uttered the name of the place, insisting on calling it "God's Garden."

Band names with the potential to offend are as old as the Dictators, Dead Kennedys, Jody Foster's Army, Napalm Death, Pissed Jeans, GG Alin and the Scumfucs, the Fags and the Queers all the way through to the plethora found here: [www.discogs.com]

The New Pornographers are as inoffensive (and wonderful) a band as you'd ever happen upon. I just think of it as a silly name. Flux of Pink Indians, Grab Grab the Haddock, Frank Sidebottom and all the rest!