PARENTS MUSIC RESOURCE CENTER
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)
You might remember “We’re Not Gonna Take It” as a classic music video on MTV back in the day; as Wikipedia describes it: “The song is notable for its popular music video directed by Marty Callner, with its emphasis on slapstick comedy, where a parent gets the worst of the band’s mischief. Controversy arose when the depiction of the family in the video caused a public outcry long before the ‘explicit lyrics’ warning was placed on records, cassettes, and CD’s.
This led to the formation of the Parents Music Resource Center, co-founded by Tipper Gore (who later became Second Lady of the United States). Mark Metcalf, the actor portraying the father in the video, had previously played Neidermeyer, the ROTC student commander in National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978). In a reference to his role in the film, Metcalf says in the video, ‘A Twisted Sister pin? On your uniform?!’. [Lead singer Dee] Snider himself can also be heard cursing and swearing the question ‘A pledge pin? On your uniform?’ at the end of the song.”
(June 2013/2)
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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.
“Prince is dead and we look to see who might replace him and see no one on the horizon. As Brian Doherty so aptly puts it, ‘He was a bold rebel in terms of image and message, playing with still-prevalent social confines of propriety in behavior, dress, and comportment, mixing sex and religion like they were his own personal possessions he was generous enough to share with us, destroying color lines in pop music and its fandom.’
“More than Michael Jackson and arguably even more than Madonna — to name two other ’80s icons who challenged all forms of social convention in a pop-music setting — Prince took us all to a strange new place that was better than the one we came from. (In this, his legacy recalls that of David Bowie.)
“In the wake of the social progress of the past several decades, it’s hard to recapture how threatening the Paisley One once seemed, this gender-bender guy who shredded guitar solos that put Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton to shame while prancing around onstage in skivvies and high heels. He was funkier than pre-criminality Rick James and minced around with less shame and self-consciousness than Liberace. Madonna broke sexual taboos by being sluttish, which was no small thing; but as a fey black man who surrounded himself with hotter-than-the-sun lady musicians, [Prince] was simultaneously the embodiment of campy Little Richard and that hoariest of White America boogeymen, the hypersexualized black man.
“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).”
(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.
June 2016 – 1980’s-1990’s gross-out/punk band THE GYNECOLOGISTS; Story of the Month on Dead Kennedys; also, Prince, Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), Tipper Gore, W.A.S.P., Twisted Sister / Dee Snider, Cyndi Lauper, the Beatles, “Louie Louie”, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts, Coven, Black Sabbath, Betty Blowtorch, Tommy Afterbirth.
(Year 7 Review)
