well, I think it is some modicum of decency. If one attacks a person while they are alive, they can defend themselves, but if one smears a person when they are dead, it shows one as a coward
It is one of the sadnesses in my appreciation of music that I find it harder to separate some of my favorite artists from their politics. (I really like PIL - John lydon’s later stuff and studio work culminating in That What is Not.)
Some artists just made it impossible: I was a HUGE CSNY fan, but after 9/11 they just went off the deep end with way-left screeds at their concerts. It was disgusting, and just made going to those (extremely expensive) concerts unbearable.
NOFX is an example of an absolutely brilliant punk band musically whose politics just mar them unbearably. If you are unfamiliar with NOFX and enjoy this kind of music listen to a track like Linoleum:
http://grooveshark.com/#!/search?q=NOFX+linoleum
What a tragedy they can’t keep their lyrics off politics! But that’s what they’re about, sadly (for me and for the world.)
On the other hand there is an aspect of Lydon’s stuff that appealed to me as somewhat of an anarchocapitalist... In the end there is a ‘duality’ here. To some degree Lydon and the punk scene created Thatcher and the “modern” conservative legacy, and vice-versa. I am not an expert on the subject but I always see the “extreme bounce” or “turning and turning in the widening gyre” aspect of things, where things have to Carter a bit before they Reagan. Lydon was/is a genuine original in my book, and I think, looking at his later lyrics, you can see that to some degree they’re just sort of ‘here and there’ artsy freedom ‘screw you censorship’ stuff, not really serious.
His interviews and statements probably indicate otherwise, I don’t really know. But I like to think, whether or not I am totally right, that the music itself is basically just music, his voice his (awesome in the 80s and 90s) voice.
I don’t think I want to let it color me too much - I have lost too much already!
[[it shows one as a coward]]
Yuo jjust described about 9/10’ths of the left