Retailing records series; (part 7) censorship (II)

But the PTA’s resolution was relatively toothless – it really had no enforcement power and stopped short of calling for a boycott of all recordings.

However, before all controversy over Prince’s alleged “profanity, sex, violence, or vulgarity” (pick one or two) had a chance to blow over, Mary Elizabeth “Tipper” Gore, wife of then-freshman Tennessee senator Al Gore, overheard her daughter listening, once again, to Prince. This time the sonic culprit was his somewhat less innocuous song “Darling Nikki” (whom the singer finds “masterbating with a magazine”).

Mrs. Gore compared notes with Susan Baker, the wife of Treasury Secretary James Baker, and the two of them formed the Parents Music Resource Center. Bolstered by the PTA mandate, this group used their clout in Washington, and convinced the U.S. Senate to convene a hearing on the issue of monitoring the music industry with a ratings system similar to the one used by the film industry.

On one side of the room were the members of the PMRC, several senators, and foes of “porn rock,” as the subject of the hearing came to be referred to. On the other side sat one of the most unlikely troikas of performers from the world of popular music: Dee Snider of the theatrical heavy metal band Twisted Sister; mellow, middle-of-the-road pop star John Denver; and virtuoso iconoclast Frank Zappa.

The festivities kicked off with senator Paula Hawkins playing the videos for Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” and Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” before giving a symposium on album covers she claimed glorified sex and other “unacceptable behaviour” for young people.

Snider countered this by describing himself as a practicing Christian who didn’t drink, smoke, or use drugs, and saying that everything he did professionally as the leader of Twisted Sister was consistent with his beliefs. He remarked that the violence in the video of “We’re Not Going to Take It,” which shows a teenage boy throwing his father against a brick wall, down the stairs, and out a window, “was simply meant to be a cartoon. It was based on my extensive personal collection of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon.”

The Reverend Jeff Ling, a PMRC advisor, recited lyrics to songs he found objectionable by such “popular” bands as the Mentors (which has not sold more than 5,000 copies of any record it’s released to date, even after all the publicity from the hearings), quoting lyrics like “Smell my anal vapors/Your face my toilet paper.” This inspired committee member John Danforth to inform Ling that his time was up.

Denver countered by pointing out that the amount, availability, and indeed the market for some of the songs Ling had quoted was a very small part of the pop music universe, small enough that “it’s not going to affect our children to a degree that we need to be fearful of.”

The star of the day, however, was Frank Zappa, whose life mission always seemed to be hoisting jerks on their own petard anyway. After refreshing the committee’s memory with a reading of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (ostensibly for the members of the foreign press), he began:

The PMRC proposal is an ill-conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children, and promises to keep the courts busy for years, dealing with interpretational and enforcement problems inherent in the proposal’s design… . No one has forced Mrs. Baker or Mrs. Gore to bring Prince or Sheena Easton into their homes… . A teenager might go into a record store unescorted with $9.98 in his pocket, but very young children do not. If they go into a record store, the $9.98 is in mom or dad’s pocket, and they can always say, ‘Johnny, buy a book.’ … The parent can ask or guide the child… away from Sheena Easton, Prince, or whoever else you have been complaining about.

Zappa really got to the heart of matters, noting the smoke and mirrors surrounding the Reagan tax reform package that was working its way through Congress, designed to raise the national debt while lining the already well-laden pockets of America’s wealthiest. Zappa pointed out that while the PMRC circus was going on, “people in high places work on a tax bill that is so ridiculous, the only way to sneak it through is to keep the public’s mind on something else: ‘Porn Rock.’”