OK... so I'm listening to one of the area's "classic rock" stations the other day, and that old Steve Miller standard, "Jet Airliner" comes on the air. I'm no Steve Miller fan, but having grown up in the era of AM rock and roll, followed by a few decades of FM, I've heard this song on the radio about a million times whether I wanted to or not.
I'm sure you know the lyrics:
Leavin' home, out on the road I've been down before Ridin' along in this big ol' jet plane I've been thinkin' about my home But my love light seems so far away And I feel like it's all been done Somebody's tryin' to make me stay You know I've got to be movin' on Oh, Oh big ol' jet airliner Don't carry me too far away Oh, Oh big ol' jet airliner Cause it's here that I've got to stay Goodbye to all my friends at home Goodbye to people I've trusted I've got to go out and make my way I might get rich you know I might get busted But my heart keeps calling me backwards As I get on the 707 Ridin' high I got tears in my eyes You know you got to go through hell Before you get to heaven Big ol' jet airliner Don't carry me too far away Oh, Oh big ol' jet airliner Cause it's here that I've got to stay Touchin' down in New England town Feel the heat comin' down I've got to keep on keepin' on You know the big wheel keeps on spinnin' around And I'm goin' with some hesitation You know that I can surely see That I don't want to get caught up in any of that Funky shit goin' down in the city....
Except that the last line had been censored for airplay. There apparently is no funky shit goin' down in the city anymore, only funky "kicks".
Way, way back in the day, this wasn't unheard of, and I'm sure the edited line was recorded contemporaneously with the correct lyric. Remember Ed Sullivan telling the Rolling Stones they couldn't sing the line "Let's spend the night together" in 1967?
But we all, well, grew up and got over it. What once was titillating was now classical music.
That was until recently, when the stations I don't listen to began playing c(rap), or "hip hop" if you prefer. Rap has been around long enough, we actually have classic rap stations now. Egads.
The Brothers filled their "songs" or "music" or whatever people in polite society refer to it, with foul language we couldn't even imagine back in our hippy-dippy 1960's radio world.
The Mad Mothers of America or some other organization popped an artery over this, and the record labels featuring such trash were ordered to put warning labels on the records to scare off buyers, which had exactly the opposite effect in the urban market. Of course. Which only gave the rappers more incentive to use the invective.
And then there was Howard Stern doing his shock-jock gig. And who can forget Janet Jackson's so-called wardrobe malfunction on national TV?
The Feds came down hard and threatened anyone with access to the public airwaves that uttering any one of George Carlin's Seven Dirty Words meant stiff fines and a close look at their broadcast license.
And so, here we are again, back in the sixties, with Steve Miller singing about funky kicks when every lyric website in the world will tell you differently.
To borrow a line from Bob Dylan, "It doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."
And so it goes.
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As you surmised, it was the single version of the song which contained "kicks" instead of "sh*t." Back in 1977, you could tell how cool your radio station was by which version it played. "Cool" being a relative term, of course.
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