Atlantic Bites Back With Free-Speech Album

Last year Atlantic Records was probably best known as the stodgy record label famous for promoting pop fluff from Phil Collins, Debbie Gibson and Laura Branigan.

How times have changed. Just days after it boldly announced it was distributing 2 Live Crew’s upcoming album, Atlantic is also putting out a no-holds-barred spoken-word album called “Sound Bites From the Counter Culture.” Culled largely from performances at Bogart’s earlier this year, the just-released album features a rainbow coalition of pop-culture rabble-rousers including Hunter Thompson, Jello Biafra, the late Abbie Hoffman, Timothy Leary, Jim Carroll, ex-Black Flag singer Henry Rollins and ex-Sen. Eugene McCarthy.

The album jacket captures the record’s spirit perfectly. It shows the Statue of Liberty surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, with a gag over her mouth. The back cover impishly reprints the outrageous warning label proposed earlier this year by right-wing state legislators that suggests that the album “may contain lyrics” describing “sodomy, incest, bestiality, sadomasochism, adultery, satanism, murder and morbid violence.”

Inside the material is just as spicy. Jello Biafra hums the “Dragnet” theme as he gives a play-by-play of his arrest on obscenity charges:

Police: “We’re police officers.”

Jello: “What are you doing in my house?”

Police: “You’re under suspicion of trafficking in harmful matter.”

Jello: “Harmful matter? What’s that? Can you imagine anything more harmful than finding . . . nine cops ransacking your bedroom?”

While independent labels, in particular Harvey Kubernik’s Freeway Records, have kept the free-speech flame alive in recent years, it’s news that a major label is touting provocative spoken-word artists. “It’s just the right time for a record like this,” said Toby Emmerich, the Atlantic A&R; exec who oversaw the album’s release. “We’re in a tremendously conservative period and we think the music industry should be speaking out about it.

“Jello Biafra, Hunter Thompson and Abbie Hoffman have always been rock figures, at least in terms of cultural attitudes--and it’s that attitude that’s threatened by censorship attacks against 2 Live Crew and other artists today.”

Oddly enough, Atlantic nearly had a censorship crisis on its hands putting the record out. Emmerich acknowledged that he had originally hired guerrilla poster-artist Robbie Conal to do “Sound Bites’ ” cover. But when Atlantic’s lawyers got a look at Conal’s graffiti-style collage, which skewered the likes of Tammy Bakker, Ronald Reagan and Fawn Hall, they advised him against using the artwork.

“So here I was doing a free-speech record, but worried about censoring my own album cover,” said Emmerich. “Atlantic stood behind me and said I could put out whatever I wanted. But I ended up using the alternate cover because Robbie’s art really wasn’t representative of what’s on the record.”

Atlantic has shipped 6,000 initial copies of the album, which it is promoting heavily on college radio and through local book stores. “We’re submitting a video to MTV,” said Emmerich. “We’re even trying to get most of the guys together to do a show. You have to admit--Jello and Timothy Leary and Hunter Thompson--wouldn’t that be the ultimate talk show?”