They Ain't Gonna Play Trump City

Donald Trump is having a hard time finding bigly name performers to play at his inauguration...

Just when you thought it was time to break your Andrea Bocelli CDs in two, the opera singer is reportedly not performing at Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony, despite earlier reports. Whether Bocelli was ever officially slated to perform is unclear. According to Page Six, the singer bowed to backlash from fans and is backing out of the gig.... In November, Elton John also had to deny rumors that he was performing at Trump’s inauguration. The president-elect often played the singer’s music on the campaign trail without the British singer’s approval. “I’ve met Donald Trump, he was very nice to me, it’s nothing personal, his political views are his own, mine are very different, I’m not a Republican in a million years,” [John] said in an interview with the Guardian in February. “Why not ask Ted fucking Nugent?” Sponsored Protectly.co has USA Made N95 masks in stock! Plus NIOSH respirators, surgical masks, gloves, goggles, 3M half-face respirators and more. www.protectly.co

Two quick thoughts...

1. Any big stars tempted to sing for Trump—there are rumored offers of seven-figure fees and ambassadorships—should Google "Ben Vareen," "Ronald Reagan," and "1981 inaugural gala" before agreeing to perform for/help normalize Donald Trump. Performing for Reagan, who launched his 1980 general election campaign blowing a racist dog whistle in a racist place, derailed and nearly destroyed Vareen's career. (“Doesn’t [Vereen] know about Republicans?” Richard West asked in New York Magazine.)

Reagan would keep blowing that racist dog whistle for eight long years. (His campaign strategist Lee Atwater explained it all for us on his deathbed.) The current president-elect doesn't use a racist dog whistle. Trump uses a bullhorn. Trump's racist appeals aren't "abstract and coded," they are explicit and overt. SNL nailed it back before Trump won the GOP nomination:

JAKE TAPPER: Now Governor, why have you decided to speak out against Donald Trump? MITT ROMNEY: Well, Jake, for the last nine months I've watched Donald Trump say something every day that was either racist or sexist. And we in the GOP, the party of the great Ronald Reagan, we do not say racist and sexist things. We imply them. Subtly. Over decades and decades.

So, yeah: Trump is an unsubtle racist and performing for him is arguably worse than performing for Reagan.

2. Washington—official Washington—is Trump City for the next four years. Big stars shouldn't play Trump City. Big stars shouldn't perform at the White House, big stars shouldn't perform at anything Trump attends at the Kennedy Center, big stars shouldn't show up in the East Room to accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the tiny, racist hands of Donald Trump. Performing for Trump should be career suicide.

And one star can help make sure it's career suicide: Steven Van Zandt.

Van Zandt should rerecord his anti-apartheid anthem "(I Ain't Gonna Play) Sun City" as "(I Ain't Gonna Play) Trump City."

Sun City is a resort town in South Africa and the racist government of apartheid-era South Africa regularly brought/bought big stars to play there—and paid them handsomely—because their performances helped normalize South Africa and apartheid. Van Zandt is credited with leading the musical fight against apartheid:

Released in December 1985, the Sun City LP was credited to Artists United Against Apartheid, a musical coalition Van Zandt assembled to help raise awareness of the system of racial segregation enforced by the governing party in South Africa.... Van Zandt’s mission was to encourage a cultural boycott of the region in order to damage the South African government’s credibility on the world stage.

The cultural boycott was successful, "Sun City" played a huge roll in its success (no one would play Sun City after that song came out), and it damaged South Africa on the world stage. And it's a great fucking song:

Just as Van Zandt led the musical fight against apartheid in the 1985, he can can lead the musical fight against normalizing Trump in 2017. And if Van Zandt won't remake "Sun City," someone else should.

UPDATE: Allan writes...

You wrote: "Washington—official Washington—is Trump City for the next four years. Big stars shouldn't play Trump City." I'm down 100% with a boycott of Trump-related venues, but I hope nobody will boycott DC because of Trump. Government aside, DC as a place is as liberal as Brooklyn or Seattle (and voted 90% Clinton, 4% for Trump). So if you post about this again, you might clarify this. We will need musicians stopping in at the Black Cat and the 9:30 Club over the next four years to keep us sane. Also, DC will be the only place where artists can denounce Trump from his own doorstep—and where they can rally the beleaguered, uncelebrated Democratic Congressional staffers who will form the front line of the anti-Trump resistance.

Thanks for writing, Allan, and I should've been clearer: I'm not calling on artists to boycott all of Washington D.C. I'm calling on artists to boycott official D.C. while Trump is president: his inauguration galas, Trump's White House, any Kennedy Center events Trump attends, awards ceremonies in the East Room, etc.