PMRC

PMRC
 
 
The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC)  was an American committee formed in 1985 with the stated goal of increasing parental control over the access of children to music deemed to be violent, have drug use or be sexual via labeling albums with Parental Advisory stickers.  The committee was founded by four women:  Tipper Gore, wife of Senator and later Vice President Al Gore; Susan Baker, wife of Treasury Secretary James Baker; Pam Howar, wife of Washington realtor Raymond Howar; and Sally Nevius, wife of former Washington City Council Chairman John Nevius.  The Center eventually grew to include 22 participants.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
The recent untimely death of the legendary Prince – a former child prodigy simply bursting with talent who has a musical legacy anyone would be proud to call their own – revived the story of the founding of the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) that I remember being populated by Senators’ wives, with all of them being Republican save the most prominent member, Tipper Gore, the wife of then-Senator and future Vice President Al Gore. They were concerned about the effects of rock music lyrics on impressionable children, and that led to Senate hearings and notorious “Parental Advisory / Explicit Lyrics” stickers that appeared on many records beginning in the 1980’s. The controversy had the predictable result of both encouraging sales of supposedly offensive music while simultaneously making a lot of albums difficult to find – Walmart for one refused to sell any CD’s with a Parental Advisory sticker. 
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But before I get into all of that, let me share this appreciation for Prince that was posted by Nick Gillespie on reason.com as part of the best commentary on the PMRC that I have been able to find online. It is quite a bit more barbed than the mainstream accolades that you and I have been reading of late. 
“No wonder he scared the living s--t out of ultra-squares such as Al [Gore] and Tipper Gore. In 1985, the future vice president and planet-saver and his wife were, as Tipper’s 1987 best-selling anti-rock, anti-Satanism, anti-sex manifesto put it, Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society. Tipper headed up the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), whose sacred document was a list of songs it called ‘The Filthy Fifteen’. These were songs that glorified sex, drugs, Satan, and masturbation and could pervert your kid — or even lead them to commit suicide. At number one on the list was Prince’s ‘Darling Nikki’, from his massive soundtrack record to Purple Rain (jeezus, wasn’t that movie a revelation? Of what exactly, I can’t remember; but finally, it seemed, a rock star had truly delivered on the genius we all wanted to see emerge from pop music into film).” 
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I heard the story I believe on CBS Sunday Morning; my own seething anger at the time about the whole PMRC charade had been blunted somewhat by seeing the tongue-in-cheek 2002 movie that VH1 broadcast called Warning: Parental Advisory. (As an aside, I have no children of my own, and that might have affected how I feel about it all, though I very much doubt it). It seems that little Karenna Gore (11 years old at the time) was a Prince fan, and Mom and Dad bought her the Purple Rain soundtrack album. And then the track “Darling Nikki” came on; in the context of the film, the Prince character was engaging in what might be called “slut-shaming” today: 
I knew a girl named Nikki I guess you could say she was a sex fiend I met her in a hotel lobby Masturbating with a magazine
 
This was also a central story in their best-selling book, appearing on the third page of Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society: “The song went on and on, in a similar manner. I couldn’t believe my ears! The vulgar lyrics embarrassed both of us. At first, I was stunned — then I got mad!” 
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I had intended to go down the list, one by one, since the point of this post is to examine the outrageous and often offensive lyrics that rock music has created over the years, beyond those that I have talked about previously in earlier posts. Frankly, the Filthy Fifteen is under-whelming in this regard and doesn’t deserve that much attention. Most of the rock artists on the list are well known enough, but I am not at all familiar with Mercyful Fate or Venom, the two “occult” offenders. Their music is pretty disgusting all right, and they likely have the PMRC to thank for one-half of their record sales.  
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Rolling Stone magazine published an overview last year called “PMRC’s ‘Filthy 15’: Where Are They Now?”, where they give some of the lyrics. For the most part, they are no more offensive than the song titles. Here are some samples as taken from the Rolling Stone article, chosen almost at random: “Don’t you struggle / Don’t you fight / Let me put my love into you / Let me cut your cake with my knife” (from Let Me Put My Love Into You); “When it comes down to makin’ love / I’ll satisfy your every need / And every fantasy you think up” (from In My House); “Saturday, I feel right / I’ve been drinking all day . . . / I got my whiskey / I got my wine / I got my woman / And this time, the lights are going out” (from High ’n Dry).
 
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As quoted in the Nick Gillespie post, Dee Snider told the U. S. Senate: “You will note from the lyrics before you that there is absolutely no violence of any type either sung about or implied anywhere in the song. Now, it strikes me that the PMRC may have confused our video presentation for this song . . . with the lyrics, with the meaning of the lyrics. It is no secret that the videos often depict story lines completely unrelated to the lyrics of the song they accompany. The video We’re Not Gonna Take It was simply meant to be a cartoon with human actors playing variations on the Road Runner Wile E. Coyote theme. Each stunt was selected from my extensive personal collection of cartoons.”
 
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Rolling Stone’s article provides reflections from some of the rock artists involved in the PMRC controversy. Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider has this to say: “Everything I represented, stood for and said back then, I have lived and stand by today. . . . I practice self-censorship. When my own family got into Tenacious D, the first album [Tenacious D], including my little daughter who was only eight, I made a special tape for her without ‘F--k Her Gently’ on it ’cause she wasn’t ready for F--k Her Gently. But she clearly listened [to] ‘Wonderboy’ and the other songs her brothers were listening to. This is hands-on parenting and everything I stood for.”
 
Blackie Lawless, frontman for W.A.S.P., is also a born-again Christian today; but he isn’t letting these people off the hook: “At the time, to have a female senator hold up a picture of my crotch in front of the Congress of the United States made me ask myself, ‘Are you kidding me? I’m just some kid in a rock & roll band. Do these guys have nothing better to do with our tax money?’ But now being a born-again Christian, I’ve not played that song [‘Animal (F--k Like A Beast)’] for almost 10 years. Knowing what we know now, the PMRC should have stood for ‘Politicians Masked as Reelection Campaigns’. It was Al Gore’s ‘Joe McCarthy moment’.”
 
(June 2016)
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Since I am down to a quarterly schedule rather than a monthly schedule, my annual list is a lot shorter, so I will try listing all of the people that I have discussed in some depth rather than just the Under Appreciated Rock Band and the Story of the Month. They are all punk rock bands of one kind or another this year (2015-2016), and the most recent post includes my overview of the early rap/hip hop scene that an old friend, George Konstantinow challenged me to write – probably so long ago that he might have forgotten.
 
 
(Year 7 Review)
Last edited: March 22, 2021