Kings Condemned in Colorado

Nearly four months after residents in a small Colorado town filed complaints to a city commission about a concert featuring The Kottonmouth Kings, the hip-hop hybrid group was slammed by a recent article in the local daily newspaper.

In a recent story published by The Vail Daily newspaper, the Kings were cited for condoning illegal behavior. Entitled “Keeping Vail’s Concerts Clean,” the newspaper urged the concert promoter to “take another look at who they allow to perform during both ticketed and free concerts in city limits.” The story was published on August 13th and authored by Charlie Owen.

According to a released statement by the group’s record label this week, Suburban Noize Records, residents of the quaint Colorado town, filed complaints with the Vail Commission of Special Events after the group performed in the city’s “Spring Back to Vail” concert in April. Also appearing at the concert was hip-hop mogul Snoop Dogg.

The California-based group argued that its music attempts to spread a message of peace and positivity.

The label’s released statement reported that Vail Special Events coordinator Sybill Navas was asked if the town would allow The Kottonmouth Kings to perform there again.

“We would prefer that they were not brought back under the town’s sponsorship,” he said.

Kottonmouth Kings frontman Brad “Daddy X” wrote an open letter addressed to The Vail Daily, refuting the August 13th article that asked “How much swearing is too much?” and “Is grabbing one’s crotch on stage a sexual act”?

In his open letter, Daddy X said: “It is 2008 and we are still talking about censoring artists. I bet these right-wing zealots have quite a porn collection stashed in their closets.”

He added that fans were required to pay a cover fee to watch The Kottonmouth Kings perform and no one was “forced” to watch the show: “I understand a free community production and family entertainment (I even have a young daughter of my own), but The Kottonmouth Kings concert had a cover charge to get in; we didn’t force anyone to be there.”

Daddy X stated in his letter that his group’s message is positive.

“It’s funny how people get upset about a group like The Kottonmouth Kings (who spread a message of peace and good vibrations), yet when we were in town, there was a bar on every corner and more drunk idiots roaming the streets than I can count.”

According to the August 13th article, a major concern is that the show is free and in the public, meaning that many people who are in the area but do not want to hear certain types of music may be offended.

“If it’s a free show out in the streets that other people are going to listen to without paying for a ticket, then it has to be PG,” Diane Moudy, owner of Resort Entertainment, the company that books many of the concerts for the town of Vail and other concert promoters, said in the article. “If it’s a ticketed show — providing the money isn’t coming from the town of Vail or from the committee for special events or something — then it’s just a parental (advisory) or an explicit lyrics restriction.”

According to Owen, while the show was free, fans required a ticket to watch The Kottonmouth Kings, which the author described as “a band notorious for its stance on legalizing and promoting marijuana.”

In his interview with Navas, the commissioner stated that not enough was done to market the group’s performance to mature audiences, yet Navas stopped just short of promoting censorship in his statements to The Vail Daily.

“I don’t think the town wants to cast itself in the role of a music censor by any stretch of the imagination,” Navas told The Vail Daily. “We’re not trying to determine what people should and shouldn’t listen to, but I think we are trying to determine what’s appropriate for public support, and that gets a little bit dicier in terms of how it’s approached or looked at by the community at large.”

One concert promoter defended The Kottonmouth Kings, telling Owen that keeping concerts “clean” is not an easy thing to do.

“You can put this stuff in musicians’ contracts all day long, but, honestly, they’re not going to care,” Jeff Brausch, CEO of Highline Sports and Entertainment, told Vail Daily. “It doesn’t make a difference to them. And often, when you try to push this stuff on them, they fire back the other way. We’ve seen that with shows with punk acts in the past where you tell them ‘keep it clean on stage, there are kids in the audience,’ and it’s f-bomb, f-bomb, f-bomb.”

To read the entire article, click here.

The recent war of words in Vail comes two months before The Kottonmouth Kings’ tenth studio release, The Green Album, slated to hit the streets October 28th through the group’s own label, Suburban Noize Records. Featured on the album are Tech N9ne (of Strange Music) and Brother J (of X-Clan).

In an effort to continuously spread their message of peace and positive vibrations, the group will be donating a percentage of profits from the sale of albums to various environmental causes.