Nickelback Frighten Charlottetown Politicians With Swear Words
Tuesday July 10, 2007 @ 07:00 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

Nickelback

An herb-fuelled Snoop Dogg performance in Lethbridge, Alberta in January got city officials' knickers all in a twist and had the mayor proposing that artists pay a good behaviour deposit that would be returned to them if they didn't contravene whatever policy they set to protect the community's moral standards.

Now an obscenity-laden Canada Day set by Nickelback has caused a similar uproar in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. The multi-platinum rock group joined Staind, Hedley, Finger Eleven, Buckcherry and Default at the city's "family-friendly" Festival Of Lights, and apparently they upset a number of people by swearing and throwing beer into a section of Confederation Landing Park that wasn't designated for alcohol and included children and teenagers.

"People were really, really disappointed and really upset," mayor Clifford Lee told the local Guardian newspaper.

City councilor Cecil Villard wants Nickelback to return to Charlottetown, for free, and play a family-friendly concert to make up for their bad behaviour.

While festival organizers from Tourism Charlottetown claim to have asked the participating acts to watch their language, councilor Rob Lantz said that Chad Kroeger and his bandmates shouldn't have been invited to perform to begin with.

"The man has been charged with drunk driving, I've heard him curse and swear on national TV, we should have been well aware of what we were getting ourselves into."

The mayor says that city council owns Confederation Landing Park and provides more than $100,000 in funding to Tourism Charlottetown and that he'd like to see a clause in artist contracts whereby they'll only be paid if there's no profanity in their performance.

"I honestly think, as a city, we have to step back and determine how we want to promote Charlottetown," Lee told the newspaper. "Is that what we want people all across the world to think of Charlottetown?"

If he wants the provincial capital to be known as a hotbed of reactionary censorship, he seems to be on the right track.