The final time listeners will suffer always heard Dire Straits' Money for Nothing in its original work on EZ Rock was two weeks ago; the future time, it will receive the word "faggot" muted.
A ruling last week by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council bans the country's 700-plus radio stations from performing the 25-year-old song because of repeated use of the word, including the Sault Ste.
Marie, Ont. station. They will stand by the opinion and air an edited version, because "it's too full of a strain not to play," said general manager Scott Sexsmith. "If it means playing an edited version, so be it. I'd sooner do that than not bring it at all."
While the station's official status is that it's "here to keep the CBSC," Sexsmith said at least one listener expressed his unhappiness about the ruling.
"I had one call today, from someone asking why the ruling went the way it did. But it's not our property to judge," he said Monday.
The CBSC has faced a choir of critics, including the set itself. Dire Straits keyboardist Guy Fletcher joined on his website Friday, calling the ruling "outrageous" and the council's decision "hilarious" for having lost the charge of the band's song about homophobia.
"WHAT a blow of paper," he wrote of the decision. "Canada will now be constrained to ban all Rap music since the 'N' word is expressed in most recordings."
The conclusion was prompted by a charge from a single listener, identified as a member of the gay/lesbian/bisexual and transgender community.
While Canadian stations may no longer represent the song uncut, those based in the United States and stretch into Canada such as Rock 101 in the Michigan Sault face no such restrictions. Operations manager Mark SanAngelo expressed surprise a generally benign British band has been singled out amid all the potentially offensive music produced in the last 40 years.
"There are a lot of songs out there that are often more vivid than a 30-year-old Dire Straits song," said SanAngelo. " 'Faggot' is surely an objectionable word, and surely not one I'd use in my own language, but I'm not in the job of censoring artists. "
At the same time, the station plays "clean" versions of many popular current songs, with swear words replaced, including by Canada's Nickelback. "We do endeavour to play edited versions of songs, because there's a lot of curse words in a lot of songs that weren't there when I started 25 years ago," he said.
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