PROVO — The rap group 2 Live Crew — which released the first album in the United States to be deemed legally obscene — will play next week at a Provo nightclub that was once a controversial strip bar.
2 Live Crew gained national notoriety in 1990 when a Florida state court ruled the album "As Nasty As They Wanna Be," which contains 87 references to oral sex alone, was obscene.
Two members of the group were arrested later that year on obscenity charges after a performance at an adults-only club in Hollywood, Fla. The ruling was later reversed and the rappers acquitted.
The irony of a raunchy rap act singing such songs as "Me So Horny" in one of Utah's most conservative cities does not escape the managers at Club Atchafalaya, 210 W. Center.
Nor does the fact that just a few years ago the city ran strippers out of the club when it was called LeMar's.
Manager Michael Stewart said the club was not trying to create controversy when it booked the band. Signing national acts for weekend shows is normal, he said.
"We may get some flak from the city, but we're a private club. It's not advertised for the public," Stewart said. "It's not like they're going to be playing in open-air Provo, subjecting this stuff to women and children."
Atchafalaya, a Cajun-themed bar, may be a private club, but that does not mean the city can't regulate what goes on inside, City Attorney Gary McGinn said.
If the show violates the community standard for obscenity, Provo police officers could stop it. But McGinn said that is a remote possibility.
"If they are performing and doing something obscene or pornographic, we could stop the show," McGinn said, "but I would say the chances of that happening are slim to none."
The community standard for obscenity may be more stringent in Utah County than in other areas: There are three stores in the county that edit sex, violence and profanity from R-rated videos.
In 1999, Utah County attorneys unsuccessfully prosecuted a video-store manager for renting cable-edited X-rated films, and a Springville woman in June made national headlines when she asked Victoria's Secret to move window displays from a Provo store.
"We have guidelines on what types of books an adult bookstore could sell, but nowhere does our ordinance say anything about what people say," McGinn said. "What if someone in a store reads aloud from an obscene book? I'm not sure our ordinance covers that. We've never had anything like this."
Provo city code prohibits obscene performances, which includes "explicit verbal description or narrative accounts of obscene sexual conduct." The ordinance also prohibits the use of profanity in public, a measure that McGinn says likely is unconstitutional.
Stewart says his club often plays music that could be considered obscene.
"If you listen to (2 Live Crew) and compare it to Nine Inch Nails, I mean it's mature, but it's not that shocking anymore," he said. "It's still the same thing, but compared to the stuff that's out now, it's not nearly as offensive as it used to be."
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