We're Only in It for the Money: Encyclopedia II - We're Only in It for the Money - Censorship

We're Only in It for the Money - Censorship

Initial releases of the album had certain sections of songs edited or removed due to perceived offensiveness. These instances of "censorship" varied depending on release; general consensus is that Frank himself was responsible for the first series of cuts (perhaps in an attempt to stave off exactly what would happen later), while Verve is probably responsible for the second set. These two sets of edits are often distinguished by the monikers "censored" and "heavily censored." Tracks affected include:

• "Who Needs the Peace Corps?": a spoken line "I will love the police as they kick the shit out of me" was cut out of the heavily-censored version.
• "Concentration Moon": Gary Kellgren's whispered statement describing The Velvet Underground and The Mothers of Invention as 'shitty' was cut. In one of the more interesting cases of album censorship, three different variations of the cut exist: the most common version (and the one that made it to the '95 reissue) has the line completely cut, the heavily-censored version has only the "shitty" reference cut, while Canadian LP issues seem to include the line intact.
• "Absolutely Free": The spoken word lines "I don't do publicity balling for you any more" and remark "Flower power sucks!" were removed on the heavily-censored version.
• "Let's Make the Water Turn Black": Several lines of the song are removed from the heavily-censored version.
• "Mother People": a verse containing the expletives 'fucking' and 'shitty' was replaced with another; the original was reversed and appended to the track "Hot Poop" (even there, however, "fucking" is absent, and the heavily-censored version omits the backwards verse entirely). (The line is: "Better look around before you say you don't care/Shut your fucking mouth 'bout the length of my hair/how would you survive/if you were alive/shitty little person?")

The 1986 release with new drum and bass tracks reinstated these sections, while the 1995 release with the original musical parts reverted to the "standard" set of US censorship.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Censorship", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki