Tipper and the Labelmakers

When I was a child, I was fascinated with 45 rpm records. I can't recall what most of them were, but I did have a Mary Poppins record. When I tired of them I would use them as toys, rolling them across the floor. Sometimes I'd put them on top of various lamps around the house to watch them warp into odd shapes. Once in awhile I'd get distracted and return to find a record literally dripping down the light bulb. That was so cool. It was my Dali period.

By the time I was 9 or 10 I was moving on to other genres. I still remember the time I had a box of cereal with a Bobby Sherman record on the back of the box. All you had to do was cut it out and play it. Needless to say, I did not eat the cereal first. I was also discovering there were radio stations out there playing stuff besides what my father listened to, which I would later learn was referred to as "elevator music" by some.

The AM radio station in my hometown would play pop music in the afternoons from 3:00 until 5:00. I heard The Carpenters, Jackson 5, Tony Orlando & Dawn, & Jim Croce. It was fun but I never thought much about the music or listened to the lyrics -- I just enjoyed hearing something besides what my father preferred.

By the time I was 11 and 12, my tastes were getting a little more advanced. I began to actually feel songs by Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Elton John, Derek and the Dominoes, and Don McLean. Whatever was playing that had a harder edge would catch my attention. Radio was becoming more important to me and I was alone after the pop show ended by 5:00 pm. (The station would go off the air at sunset.) I still wasn't buying any LPs but would occasionally pick up a 45 rpm single such as "Bang A Gong (Get It On) by T. Rex (OK, how sexual was that?)

My father, a radio buff himself, understood my newfound hobby and began teaching me more about it. From him I learned about clear channel stations (not to be confused with the Clear Channel behemoth we know today) and sky wave propagation.

We had such a station 100 miles up the road in Little Rock. KAAY 1090 could, at night, be heard over much of the North American continent, as could many others far away from my little Delta burg. I was completely fascinated by the phenomenon and, at the expense of homework, I would listen to radio for hours, tuning in stations and waiting for the station ID to be mentioned so I'd know where they were. My fascination with how far the stations were from my town overshadowed the fact that their programming and music were really not very interesting.

One night I was out in the yard in our camper with my radio and it was a bit after 11:00. I tuned into KAAY again and they were playing music I had NEVER heard before. Gone was the mushy pop music. The program was called "Beaker Street" and hosted by a dude who called himself Clyde Clifford. In between songs, there were weird esoteric background noises, echoing in a spooky psychedelic way. Clyde himself was far more laid back than any DJ I had ever heard. Prolonged periods of silence (except for the psychedelic stuff) were not uncommon. He'd finally throw another LP on the turntable and casually announce who I was about to hear.

I was also impressed that his audience was tuning in from all over North America. He'd read cards and letters on the air, and once had someone listening from Sweden.

Why is all this important? Because it would forever change my life and my musical interests and probably to a large degree, my entire philosophy. Without that early experience, I have no doubt I'd be a totally different person today -- probably more bland and generic rather than the radical opinionated person I am now.

I heard a song called "Electric Funeral" by a band named Black Sabbath. At the time I had no idea they had a hit with the song "Paranoid" from the album of the same name. That was nothing I'd ever heard on my local AM station! But I knew without a doubt I was moving on far beyond the pop music I had enjoyed hearing but never felt too compelled to buy.



It didn't take me long to figure out that my local "dime store" had a small rack of LP records and I started combing through there looking for Black Sabbath. I honestly don't remember if I found it there or on one of our out-of-town shopping excursions to the mall in Little Rock. But I bought the LP and never once looked back. The opening track - “War Pigs” - was enough to hook me on this band (and it's a song that remains quite relevant today).

Beaker Street on KAAY aired from 11:00 pm until 2:00 am, and sometimes later. Clyde seemed to have a flex schedule. For the next 4 or 5 years I don't think I would go to sleep until after 2:00 even on school nights. The exposure I received to bands I'd never heard of was invaluable to me. Soon I was buying up LPs by Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Alice Cooper, and more. My 8th grade math teacher nicknamed me "acid head" due to my musical inclinations.

Going out-of-town to malls with my parents suddenly became exciting because every mall seemed to have at least 2 record stores. At 13 I was old enough to go off on my own in the mall, away from my parents, with a preset meeting time back where we would agree to meet. Off I'd go in search of records with a $20 bill in hand if I was lucky.

My music was very personal to me. I didn't discuss it with my parents because I knew my father's taste in music was so different and he would have no interest in mine. Once when I picked up 2 or 3 albums on a trip and began to unwrap them in the backseat of the car, I was shocked to see that Alice Cooper's LP "School's Out" album cover not only opened like an old wooden school desk, but the LP inner sleeve itself was made to resemble a pair of girl's frilly panties. Now it was official -- this music infatuation was definitely MY secret.

This became very clear by the time I was 14 or so. After a shopping trip my father reached over to take a look at one of my new LP purchases. The band was called Bloodrock and the first song on the LP was titled "American Burn."

I've never seen the man so livid. His face got red and puffy and he began to question why I would buy such a thing. First, he incorrectly referred to the song title as "Burn America Burn" and then made a reference to "nigger music."

I was embarrassed at his outrage and knew at that point I had to operate in a stealth mode to procure my desirables. I was also shocked -- not that he called it "nigger music" but why he called it that. I don't think the band had any black people in it! It would be a long while before I'd understand that rock music came from the blues and the blues came from the delta where I grew up, and white people in the delta tend to be a tad bit racist. (Some of them wore white robes and hoods on occasion.... ok?)

So I began to be a little more discreet* with certain purchases, and made sure my parents were either out of the house when I played certain things or I'd use headphones.
(* oh, except for the one time my parents went to the mall and left me at home for the evening, and I asked my mother to go to the record store and buy me Alice Cooper's Muscle of Love LP. She did. And no red flags went up surprisingly!)

Lyrics never had a negative impact on me, and especially not in the early years. There were plenty that I just didn't understand at the time, subtle things that adults might catch if they were listening (click the link to Muscle of Love for an example), but I didn't. The vocals for me were just another instrument and if I got the lyrics, fine, if I didn't, fine too. Robert Plant comes to mind. You could make something up in your own mind that you thought he was saying. The sensuality and blues influences were totally lost on me when I was in my very early teens.

From Led Zeppelin's "The Lemon Song:"

Squeeze me baby, till the juice runs down my leg,
The way you squeeze my lemon, I..Im gonna fall right out of bed, yeah.

This is why I don't understand all the fuss about music lyrics and young people back then. On Wednesday night I made an off-topic comment in a thread at ShakesSis and apparently I provoked a post there on Thursday:

In politics, there are some stories that just won’t die. Bill Clinton tied up all of LAX for a haircut. Not true. Al Gore claimed he invented the internet. Not true. Tipper Gore was pro-censorship. Not true.

A few times now, someone’s brought up the bit about Tipper, and her “crusade” against musical artists, most recently in comments last night, when Konagod asked, “Has Tipper Gore gotten past her inquisition phase regarding music lyrics?” And each time, it irritates the bejesus out of me that this story still won’t die, so let’s just get it cleared up right now.

I had no idea my comment would be such a touchy subject, not only with Shakes, but with many of the dozens of comments that followed.

I remember when all this was going on back in the 80s but I wasn't paying particularly close attention to it. However, I was annoyed at the whole series of events surrounding it. By that time, I'd gone through a heavy-metal phase, moved on to punk rock and new wave, and then gradually allowed heavy-metal back into my life after purging it due to some foolish idea that it was uncool if I were to enjoy a variety of music. I loved music. The accusations that it could cause people to be suicidal just seemed outrageously insane. I felt that music was under attack and being used as a scapegoat for people with emotional disturbances and dysfunctional families. Tipper Gore was front and center of that controversy.

I never said or suggested that she was "pro-censorship." However, I felt that parental warning labels for music would have a chilling effect and were a useless intrusion. Not surprisingly, Wal-Mart stopped selling CDs with warning labels, much the same way Blockbuster suppresses artistic freedom by refusing to stock films rated NC-17. Many newspapers still won't accept advertising for NC-17 films and a huge number of national theatre chains will not run the films, regardless of the artistic merits of the works.

While it's not government censorship, there were lots of smaller towns around America where the only outlet for music CDs would be the local Wal-Mart. By refusing to carry the music it became de facto censorship for the people, minors and adults alike, who might have wanted to purchase a recording with an PMRC warning label. They had to travel to get what they wanted or mail-order.

Several points were brought up in the thread at Shakes about the labels being helpful to parents who would otherwise waste hard-earned money on something that could not be returned once opened. The problem was the generic nature of the labels offered nothing specific regarding whether the music was sexually explicit or violent, or both. I have several CDs in my collection where the offending sticker is on the jewel box case rather than the outer plastic wrap, and it's a pain in the ass to remove it. Mine all read: "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content"
Well, I sure hope so! I demand nothing less.

Many parents have no problems with sexual lyrics but prefer not to have their children exposed to violent lyrics. I just thought it was odd that Tipper would buy her daughter a Prince recording and have no idea there might be content that she objected to. I was even more baffled after learning the age of her daughter at the time of the incident. She was 12.

Anyone who is old enough to not only masturbate but get pregnant can handle hearing the word "masturbating" in a song's lyrics. That's just my opinion. Maybe it would cause another child to masturbate himself or herself to death. I don't buy it.

Read this from Wikipedia:

The PMRC claimed that the change in rock music was attributable to the decay of the nuclear family in America. Families, according to Gore, are "haven[s] of moral stability" which protect children from outside influences. Gore said that without the family structure, rock music was "infecting the youth of the world with messages they cannot handle."

Sorry. That is unacceptable bullshit. If I had a kid, I'd treat him or her like a real person rather than a prized award or ornament to be kept on a shelf untarnished. I am thankful I grew up on a world sans warning labels and that I was allowed to purchase and listen to what I liked, and yes, that my mother bought me a copy of "Muscle of Love" and didn't demand to listen to the album. An no harm was done. Unless you believe I'm now a menace to society as a result of my early exposure to the "devil's music."

Way to go PMRC. And by the way, fuck you.

Rage Against the Machine protesting PMRC

At a Lollapalooza appearance in 1993 in Philadelphia the band stood onstage naked with duct-tape on their mouths and the letters "PMRC" painted on their chests for 15 minutes in protest against the PMRC. The only sound emitted was audio feedback from guitars.