The ‘Washington Wives’ of the 1980s: The last time the censors almost won

Americans who depend on the Internet are worried about censorship lately, and with good reason – SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) in the House and Protect IP in the Senate will likely be serious threats to freedom of speech on the Internet if they pass. But these threats are nothing new.

Right now, the boogeyman the folks in charge and the companies that lobby them use to try to restrict the free flow of information is Internet piracy – It’s a real problem with real consequences, but the proposed solution is akin to curing the disease by killing the patient.

In the past, the boogeyman was obscenity. America has always had a tug of war between cultural conservatives and people who like to push boundaries through art and music.

In the 1960s, all it took was a few bad words to get you in trouble. Censorship wrecked the career of stand-up comedian/spoken word artist Lenny Bruce, who was arrested a number of times on obscenity charges. Most of the charges were defeated in court, but fighting them ruined him financially. TV and radio were heavily censored and musicians had to be careful to disguise themes such as sex and drugs in metaphor. There were others who paid a price as well.

After a period in the ‘70s when the culture lightened up about topics like sexuality and drugs, there was another crackdown in the ’80s as evangelical Christians and clergy suddenly found themselves with some serious political power and decided to throw their weight around. Tipper Gore and the PMRC went after heavy metal, punk rock and rap. In 1985, representatives of the PMRC, musicians Frank Zappa, John Denver and Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, and Senators Paula Hawkins and Al Gore testified before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on the subject of record labeling and obscenity. (Check out the Wikipedia page. It’s a pretty good read.)  Snider in particular shocked a lot of people by not being the dummy they expected and putting the moralizers on the defensive.

The push to censor and control the sale of music with explicit lyrics continued into the ’90s. Store clerks got arrested for selling the rap record “As Nasty As They Wanna Be.” A record store owner in Florida was put on trial and convicted (overturned on appeal) and the rappers themselves were put on trial for obscenity (acquitted). I bought a copy of 2 Live Crew’s album after I heard about the arrests – I wasn’t even into rap at the time, but I couldn’t abide that kind of censorship and I wanted to know what the fuss was about. Turned out to be nasty as you would expect and also damn funny.

It’s hard to even remember what the mindset was back then. Check out this excerpt from the TV show Quincy (which incidentally featured a performance from bona fide punk group Mayhem). It’s funny today, but it was dead serious at the time.

 

America has changed since then. Rap has become mainstream. Formerly scary rappers Ice Cube and Ice T have acting careers (Ice Cube has been in a kids’ movie and Ice T played a cop on TV). The country lost its fear of heavy metal, thanks in part to the parody “This is Spinal Tap.” Punk rockers grew up and went mainstream. Henry Rollins of Black Flag is working on a show for National Geographic. How mainstream is that? History tells us that sooner or later we’ll get another moral crusade, however.

Check out Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys taking on Tipper Gore on the Oprah Winfrey show in the ’80s. I think the PMRC folks thought they were getting a punk rock moron like Sid Vicious when they took on Jello, but he turned out to be anything but. He gives Tipper a pretty good shellacking in this clip.

Fear is a powerful tool, one that politicians can’t resist. Whenever anything new pops up in the culture that they find threatening (the Occupy Movement for example), the folks in power will appeal to our moral sensibilities to try and stop it. And it might actually work, for a while… But sooner or later change will come, whether they like it or not. Americans are very adaptable and I think the country will evolve into something better than what we have now — but that doesn’t mean the process will be painless.

I am just wrapping up a post about goth pop artist Jonathan Scott of the Doleful Lions, who was personally affected by the PMRC and is working on a fascinating musical project to remind people of that era.

Hip hop – the profane and the principled (part 1)

I’m a white guy who was weaned on rock ‘n’ roll. It took me a long time to get used to the idea of hip hop….

At least that’s what I’ve been telling people, but you know what? I’m not exactly sure if that’s accurate. Was there ever really a time when I hated the stuff? Maybe there was, but when I think back, I remember liking “Rappers Delight” from the Sugar Hill Gang and “Rapture” by Blondie in the ’80s. I remember Yo MTV Raps coming on and me not turning the channel when I heard NWA’s “Express Yourself.” I even bought 2 Live Crew’s Nasty as They Wanna Be just to see what all the court cases and fuss were about. I guess I grew accustomed to rap over the years, liking some of it, disliking some of it, pretty much like the whole country did. The whole world in fact.

When I hear someone, usually someone white, say they have learned to appreciate hip hop after years of thinking they hated it, it usually goes something like: “I just discovered [fill in intellectual/socially-aware rapper] and found out rap isn’t just about drugs and killing and hating women.”

I don’t say that at all. I can listen to the most socially obnoxious hip hop and it doesn’t bother me. In fact, I now get a kick out of the West Coast gangsta rap that got all the civilized folks so upset back in the early ’90s.

Lately, I’ve been listening to The Chronic, Dr. Dre’s solo debut featuring Snoop Doggy Dog, Warren G and others. It’s got it all: profanity, liberal use of the “N-word,” drugs, violence, misogyny, homophobia, glorifying gang culture and all kinds of creative insults and death threats.

Today, The Chronic is considered a classic album by all kinds of folks, black and white. It wasn’t quite so unanimous when it first came out. Songs like “The Day the Niggaz Took Over,” which glorifies the L.A. Riots, scared white people — some of whom were also fascinated. It was a glimpse into a completely different mindset, before rap became such a multi-racial phenomenon, before Eminem, a white guy from Detroit became one of the most popular rappers of all time. Vanilla Ice was around, but nobody took him seriously.

For some reason instead of offending me, The Chronic makes me smile. For one thing, it’s an extremely well-crafted album. The beats, raps and singing fit together perfectly. Would I have liked it in ’92? Not sure, but right now I find it downright irresistable. Also I guess it comes across as so over the top that it’s almost like satire, even though they didn’t mean it that way at the time. You know people can’t really live the lifestyle described on that album for very long without either winding up dead or in prison. You can’t just go around 187ing everybody just for the hell of it.

I almost can’t believe people took the stuff so seriously — rappers getting letters from the FBI about their lyrics, rappers threatening to kill each other (and possibly actually doing it), record store employees getting arrested for selling 2 Live Crew albums. It seems silly to me now, and nostalgic. Now Dr. Dre is a respected producer and Snoop Dog and Ice Cube are actors.

The Chronic might not be shocking or surprising today, mainly because it influenced so many other albums, but it still sounds pretty darn good. Definitely helps liven up the old morning commute.