TIN MEN: Are you being censored if...

TIN MEN: Are you being censored if you don’t have the courage to say who’s censoring you? That’s the big question involving “Tin Machine II,” the new album by the David Bowie-led band of the same name that is due for release Sept. 3 by Victory Music, JVC Music’s new U.S. record label. According to Victory Music execs, 60% of the nation’s record store chains refused to carry the album with its original artwork, which features a quartet of classical Greek statues (6th Century B.C. sculpted forms known as Kouroi) depicting naked young men. To ensure that major record chains would carry the album, Victory had to alter the statues, airbrushing out their genitals. Who are the timid retailers who are so cowed by conservative pressure groups that they refuse to carry an album with artwork you could find in any museum in the world (and on the covers of innumerable classical music albums)? Victory execs have refused to name any names. As a fledgling label without the clout of a major player (like Warner Bros. or Columbia Records), Victory is apparently concerned about alienating retailers who might refuse to stock even a retouched album package. But who’s really being timid here--the record chains or Victory Music, which doesn’t want to make waves with powerful retail chains? As for Tin Machine, the band is reluctantly going along with plans for the expurgated album cover. “They were backed into a corner,” says a spokesman for the group. “They are befuddled and unhappy about the prospect of being censored.”