Full credit to Craig of Heavy Metal PR for this article, which is well worth a read…
“Microsoft Blocks Explicit Content”… Quite a bold claim I can hear you all shouting at me but give me two minutes of your time to explain – after that, all I ask is that you share this on your websites, on your radio shows and in your magazines because music censorship is wrong, it hurts bands, artists and songwriters etc. So now you have put aside two minutes of your time lets go:
Imagine for a second that you have just gone out and bought the debut CD by Fuckshovel called This Is What We Are on the strength of the review that you have just read in Classic Rock, Big Cheese, Terrorizer, etc. and when you come to put that album on your Windows Phone you can’t find it. You would be forgiven initially for thinking the had failed because your search result for “Fuckshovel” came back with zero results. Trust me, the album is still on there, you are just looking in the wrong place.
Look at the list to the left – Microsoft have changed the band’s name from “Fuckshovel” to “Shovel”. The worst part is this… they didn’t ask permission to do this nor did they let the band know they had done it!
When you finally find the album under the band name Shovel you will see that not only have they censored the band name but also the artwork! This artwork is special, carry on reading below and I will tell you why….
The reason why the artwork for the album (as shown at the top of the article) is special is because it was designed by Jamie Reid who was the person that created the iconic album cover for Never Mind The Bollocks…Here’s The Sex Pistols so in effect they are also censoring his work too!
For those of you like me who needed 100% rock solid proof this is happening I tweeted Microsoft asking if they were indeed censoring band and album names if they contained swear words. Here is their answer:
One of Fuckshovel’s songs called “Portia’s Box” contains the lyrics “You don’t get to choose what I decide” which goes pretty much hand in hand with what is happening here. You can check out the video below.
We are asking that you put a feature about this on your websites, magazines, radio shows, social networks – hell, pretty much anywhere you can do! Help us get the word out there because it must be happening to more than just Fuckshovel.
Fuckshovel can be found at the following places:
Fuckshovel: official | facebook | bandcamp
