Uberlols at the tgp thread.
Now dont' get me wrong, I think some women might want theirs melted by Steel Panther. It reminds me of when Ice T was on Oprah defending the lyrics to Iceberg:
[youtube]http://youtube.com/5fO-KzW1YXw?t=7m40s[/youtube]
"Maybe some girls
like to do it with a flashlight!"
I have no problem with Steel Panther for being as raunchy as they are or even living the vacuous hair metal douchebag dream, as long as everything's consensual. I think it's great for people to live openly sexual lives, and in no way should prudishness infringe on that.
I DO think that TC having that name for a pedal preset could be insulting and it was right for people to reach out and ask them to kindly cut that shit out.
And that's sort of a risk that's come up as a result of decades-long tradition of "artistic" naming of guitar pedals. In the last year or so, I've become increasingly disenchanted with the whole concept of pedal graphics at all and pedal names that sound like they're out of a comic book or whatever. Invisible Man's steez is very appealing to me at the moment.
I like to think of pedals as tools or art supplies. But when I go into Home Depot to buy an angle grinder, my choices are informed by how much power does it take and what size is the disc. "Oh, it's a 7.5 Amp 4-1/2 in. Paddle Switch Angle Grinder? Thanks, Makita!" Similarly if I go into Michael's to buy paintbrushes and canvas - what size is the brush, what is it made of, etc.. But then I walk into a guitar store and suddenly my choice of tools is limited by "well, does this have a picture of
a pickle jerking off on the front of it?" etc.
Anyway, this may be a bit of an old man yells at cloud rant. Creative pedal names are a tradition that goes back to the first guitar pedals and are certainly an entrenched part of the industry. But what I'm trying to say is that the risk of offensive pedal names may come with the territory to a certain extant, but that territory itself is stupid.