THE DISC WASHERS

...It was not only violent, he said, but—God save us—it contained a political message...

...An 'X' record will not only be barred from radio and TV, it will also have enormous difficulty being distributed to large record stores...

...Now, if someone sets Grimm's fairy tales to rock music, the Center will have to hire a lot more staff, m...

...Bessie Smith had far better suggestive material...

...When I asked a staff member of the Committee whether Senator Gore had had anything to do with setting up the September 19 public hearing on pernicious rock lyrics, the aide chuckled...

...The Center points out that "the average teen-ager listens to rock music from four to six hours a day...

...insignia printed prominently on the cover...

...Similarly, some book distributors put pink slips into certain books for young readers before they ship them to school libraries and curriculum centers...

...Also on the list of the damned is Sheena Easton's "Sugar Walls" ("The blood races to your private spots/Lets me know there's a fire...

...And in 1956, Asa Carter, executive secretary of the North Alabama White Citizens Council, proclaimed the start of a purge of jukeboxes because the National Association for the Advancement of ColNat Hentoff, a member of The Progressive's Editorial Advisory Board, writes about music every month...

...Lots of folks are going to be willing to help...

...It spoke out," Seideman explained, "against the 'authoritarian' attitude in Central America...

...The Washington wives demand that recording companies "reassess" those of their artists who do not behave properly at rock concerts...

...Zappa warned on one television show...

...In many instances, a librarian or principal who sees the pink slip immediately sends the books back...

...The man in charge of this Herculean task was the Vice President of the United States, Spiro Agnew...

...Says the Center: "These messages reach young people at a crucial age when they are searching for answers to life, and their minds are often not yet discerning enough to discard the self-destructive influences engendered by what they hear...

...In a few months, this group has been the subject of admiring accounts in Newsweek, The Washington Post, People, and U.S...

...Meanwhile, Tipper Gore, a principal spokeswoman for the Parents Music Resource Center, tells Rolling Stone...

...Remember the Constitution...

...The Washington wives have also been circulating a Motley Crue song that, they say, describes the killing of someone with a knife...

...If someone buys a Bruce Springsteen set, and then makes twenty copies of it, neither the record label nor the artist receives any royalties from those twenty copies...

...You'd better get off your ass and do something...

...Iwill stipulate that virtually all of the lyrics the Washington wives cite are crude and as devoid of imagination as a homily by George Bush...

...Susan Baker, another pillar of the Parents Music Resource Center, is the wife of Secretary of the Treasury James Baker, a man with easy access to the President...

...The State should not intervene, even when asked to by committees of citizens concerned with purifying school libraries, movie theaters, the magazine racks in variety stores, or the airwaves...

...The packet includes, as well, a song about what the Center calls "quickie sex on an elevator," and lyrics bristling with threats of violence...

...The messages the children receive often encourage and glorify the use of drugs and alcohol...

...Prodded by Gortikov, who is anxious not to see his legislative agenda derailed by some of the husbands of the Washington wives, many of the major labels have agreed to put a printed inscription on certain of their releases: "Parental guidance—explicit lyrics...

...ored People had "infiltrated" Southern white teen-agers with "rock and roll music...

...And the Parents Music Resource Center's links, which continue long after the end of the business day, bring the First Amendment into this dialogue...

...It's the American way—and, indeed, the P-TA has teamed up with the Center...

...Sales will also quicken if the Center achieves another of its goals—"the printing of the lyrics of each song in easy-to-read type...

...In cooperation with the American Civil Liberties Union, the managers have formed The Musical Majority to counterattack censorship of rock lyrics...

...His "Who's on First" column about First Amendment issues appears four times a year, and is supported by a grant from the Evjue Foundation of Madison, Wisconsin, to The Progressive's Morris H. Rubin Memorial Fund...

...That seems to mean companies must not re-sign anyone who engages in, among other improper moves, "explicit sexual behavior...

...Political sentiments, including antinuclear statements, are gratuitously inserted into videos...

...ABC's Nightline asked me, as a parent of four, about this fear of what these lyrics might make kids do...

...Other exceptions, who are fighting back, include John Denver, Dee Snider of the Twisted Sister group, and an organization of rock performers' managers...

...It fears what these lyrics are going to make kids do...

...Among others doing avid research on rock lyrics are Georgie Pack-wood, wife of Senator Robert Packwood of Oregon, and Nancy Thurmond, wed to Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina...

...Each of these describes or discusses instances of great violence...

...In our history, many public-spirited citizens have failed to share Justice Douglas's confidence that families can take care of these matters on their own...

...But the Parents Music Resource Center is not just making literary judgments...

...We aren't capable of policing this music, so they'll do it for us...

...At best, under the new regime of ratings, their audience would be restricted, and much more radically so than the code campaigners imply...

...But even a dramatic gesture of that magnitude wouldn't have long-term effect without the involvement of the record-buying public...

...Hey, look what it says herel So far, the most dismaying aspect of the growing impact of the Washington wives is the silence of all but a few performing artists...

...You can never rest if you're in the business of saving children from pernicious influences...

...Those who have the ear of millions must begin speaking out...

...Are such children—and they are hardly limited to the families of Senators— really going to beat up or kill somebody because there's a song saying somebody else did it...

...Imagine how the nature of the battle would be changed if the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder publicly demanded contractual assurance that their records would not be rated...

...You just have to look at Senator Thurmond to know he understands how to deal with wicked rock 'n' roll...

...What, specifically, are the Washington wives demanding...

...Lillian Brand, director of an early-childhood program in Hamburg, New York, reports that parents have complained that the nursery rhyme chronicling the adventures of Jack and Jill has "suggestive and mystical overtones...

...Even he failed...

...Since record distributors in some cities don't want to tangle with church groups or other monitors of morality, they too are likely to return albums so designated...

...The rock heroes and heroines, self-declared models of independence and rebellion, have not been heard from as the Center moves steadily onto their turf, proposing all manner of curbs on their expression, artistic and otherwise...

...To ask the record industry to engage in self-stigmatization is like demanding that book publishers rate their books—with the resultant "Censor Me...

...According to the Parents Music Resource Center's ratings, that means Jack and Jill gets an 0 for occult...

...Carter could not beat back the dancing hordes, but in 1971 a more renowned paragon of virtue tried to cleanse the lyrics of rock songs, and there were grim intimations that if radio stations didn't shape up, their licenses would be taken away...

...It already is...

...on the outside of each recording...

...One exception is Frank Zappa, although he has not been a national head-liner for some time...

...The record industry has already made a concession to the Center's censors...

...It has been lauded on various television programs, and has managed to persuade the Senate Commerce Committee to hold a full-scale hearing on the rising plague of vicious rock lyrics that, unless stamped out, will end civilization as we know it...

...These Washington wives have been sending their indictments of rock lyrics to the press and to the record industry...

...You must know," he said, "that the Senator's wife is a leader of the Parents Music Resource Center...

...On the other hand, in those areas where record distributors decide to carry albums whose covers announce there is violence or sex inside, the Center's intentions will be turned around...

...They want to protect yours and mine from these barbaric lyrics...

...As Stanley Gortikov of the recording industry trade group has tried to point out, if the Center wants a rating system, it can set up its own...

...Tipper Gore, for instance, is married to Senator Albert Gore Jr...

...Yes, the movies do it, but kids learned how to beat that system a long time ago...

...As the urge intensifies to protect the young from sex, violence, the occult, and "rebellion," the definitions of the dangers facing kids will inevitably expand...

...Ah, but those women aren't really worried about their own children...

...God, how I wish that would happen," a record company executive told me...

...This year, however, a new cadre has emerged...

...These would-be censors—they abhor the term, as all would-be censors do—are members of the Parents Music Resource Center...

...News & World Report...

...And radio stations will be monitored to make sure they don't play music that has received an X, D/A, 0, or V rating...

...We're seeking a coalition with the P-TA, the American Academy of Pediatrics, labor, anyone who is willing to help...

...The Parents Music Resource Center has a packet of lyrics that it disseminates to shock other parents...

...Some promote denied sexuality, satanic worship, violence, and even rebellion...

...The Disc Washers BY NAT HENTOFF Whenever William 0. Douglas was urged by civic or church groups to restrict certain forms of speech because they were polluting the community, he said he had abiding faith in the ability of the people to decide for themselves what they wanted to hear...

...And in Cash Box, a trade weekly, Zappa said: "If you are an artist reading this, think for a moment—did anyone ask you if you wanted the stigma of'potential filth' plopped onto your next release via this 'appeasement' sticker...

...Kids will go zipping through the record bins looking for albums with the titillating inscription, "Parental guidance—explicit lyrics...

...If a rating code comes to pass," Marsh warns his readers, "what will become of future songs in the [political] mode of'Born in the U.S.A.,' 'What's Going On?,' 'Street Fighting Man,' 'Authority Song,' and 'Beat It...

...Nor, to my knowledge, have any of the morning drive DJs, whose stock in trade is the double entendre...

...In Rock & Roll Confidential, an exceptionally forthright and knowledgeable news letter, editor Dave Marsh has pointed out that not only artists have been silent...

...V for lyrics concerned with violence...

...of Tennessee...

...They are all mothers, and they all live in the Washington, D.C., area...

...This black music, they said, would, if it mesmerized enough of the young, destroy civilization as we know it...

...Are they going to masturbate in a hotel lobby because that act is described in a song...

...Their ignorance is like a virus...

...Among the steamy illustrations is a song by Prince, "Darling Nikki...

...As for allegedly endangered children, Justice Douglas observed that it was the responsibility of parents to watch over their children...

...I said I could hardly believe that youngsters growing up in the home of a Senator did not absorb reasonably decent values around the dinner table and in other occasions for family discourse...

...If the record industry doesn't do what the Washington wives want it to, the Senate Commerce Committee is likely to be asked to save the children of the nation by setting up regulations and statutes as to the kinds of rock language that can no longer be permitted, especially on the air...

...Everything to do with rock will be stamped with a rating...

...If this recommendation goes through, artists presumably will be yanked off stage if they go beyond their ratings...

...The Washington wives also want all "violent or sexually explicit" album covers kept behind the counter or covered with a plain wrapper...

...It can happen here...

...The ever-watchful Center is asking that record companies set up a rating system for their artists' on-stage performances...

...D/A for lyrics glorifying the use of drugs or alcohol...

...Video performances are included in the proposed dragnet...

...The record industry is trying to get Congress to pass various bills this term, one being a royalty on blank tapes to provide some compensation to make up for all the home copying of commercial record releases...

...These creatures [the Washington wives] can hurt you...

...Even nursery rhymes have to be examined carefully...

...Well, the Parents Resource Music Center wants the record industry to set up a ratings system: X for profanity, violence, suicide, or sexually explicit lyrics, including fornication, sadomasochism, incest, homosexuality, bestiality, and necrophilia...

...Our experience with would-be censors extends from Cotton Mather to Anthony Comstock to those preachers in the 1920s who were desperately alerting the citizenry to the dangers of jazz and the blues...

...Not a single record company or broadcast executive has spoken out forcefully against the rush to censorship...

...Have none of these members of the Parents Music Resource Center ever heard songs by Ma Rainey or Lil Green or Ro-setta Crawford or, in this example, Bessie Smith: "I'm so wild about your sugar: don't know what to do/It's that granulated sugar: ain't nobody got it but you...

...So, as Stanley Gortikov, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, wrote to the record firms, "I cannot escape continuing dialogue with the Parents Music Resource Center group, particularly because of its Washington links...

...The latter is paying close attention to their complaints because, among other things, the husband of Tipper Gore is a member of the Commerce Committee...

...Marsh quotes an interview in the New York Daily News with Tony Seideman, music video editor at Billboard trade weekly...

...These women, who have thoroughly alarmed the record industry, are led by wives of powerful men...

...The young woman, Nikki, is "in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine...

...O for lyrics dealing with the occult...

...Seideman was objecting to a music video made by the Rolling Stones...

...Get mad...

...Anybody remember Louis Armstrong's hit version of "Mack the Knife...

...Marsh makes a further point...

...I've got some real dogs, but if I'm ordered to put a plain wrapper around them, they'll begin to move...

...We're going to have to put a national organization in place, on a state-by-state basis...

...Fight back...