Was the PMRC censorship in disguise?

The Parents Music Resource Center in the 1980s was really just censorship in disguise. But it kind of backfired. Learn all about Tipper Gore's crusade in today's episode. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry over there,
and this is stuff you should know. And we're going
to mind our p's and ques because this is a
family show, So everybody don't get all excited like we're

(00:25):
gonna drop the S word or anything like that. So
next or not, Yes, just said it. Oh, we're going
to keep it clean. But we are talking about some dirty,
dirty stuff, stuff that should never be uttered by anyone.
And uh, I for one would like to tip my
hat to tip her Gore for being an American hero

(00:47):
of all time. What Actually, it's funny as I was
reading some of this and this is we're talking about
the p MRC. As everyone will soon find out, UM
and Ed put this one together. UM and he points
out that yes, if you look at this the stuff
that they were trying to do the Parents Music Resource Center,
they were basically saying, like we need to be able

(01:08):
to have a heads up that this record album has
UM lyrics on it that we wouldn't want our little
eight year old kid to listen to. That's really all
we're asking for. The thing is that's not all they
were asking for, And it's a slippery slope of doing
that where you're you're basically ringing the dinner triangle for

(01:29):
anybody who's got a beef with any dirty lyrics or
any worldview that opposes theirs to come out and say, yeah,
I like that idea, and while we're at it, let's
put him in jail if they don't comply. And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
but it's too late. The cats out of the bag.
And this all happened in real life in the eighties, which,
by the way, I'm on record is saying the seventies

(01:52):
were the greatest decade of all time. I think the
eighties were one of the most interesting. At least, A
lot of icky still pent down in the You got
the Satanic panic, Yeah, the whole backmasking thing that was
kind of part of it. You've got this, um A
bunch of other stuff happened in the eighties too. Uh,
spatial program was going pretty strong, there was a shuttle

(02:15):
disaster even I mean like it was an interesting, provocative decade.
So there you have a chuck. There's the intro Yeah,
this is uh, this was a commissioned piece because I
remember very distinctly, uh, all of this going on when
I was younger and paying pretty close attention as a
music fan what was happening, and not getting as a

(02:37):
kid that it was it meant more than an explicit
lyrics label, right, you know, there was more at stake.
But also as a kid, you probably were exclusively like,
hey man, they can't do that. That's not cool, that
censorship without understanding the nuance of that the other position
as well. Right, Uh, No, I was too young to

(02:58):
spout so see things like that. Right, so you're just
like flipping off, like newspaper pictures of Tipper Gore in
your bedroom. No, I mean I was I was little.
I mean I was like eleven or twelve. I wasn't.
I wasn't a discerning reader of the newspaper. I didn't
know who Tippergore was. You didn't know, are you? Yeah?
I knew who eight years old, and yeah, I mean

(03:23):
she was on like Donna Hue and all these shows
like it was a big deal. She was the face
of this whole thing. Yeah, I knew who Tipper Core was.
Not to imply that I was anymore discerning than you
were as far as reading newspaper. And I knew her name,
but I certainly had no idea who she was or
what any of this meant at that age. Well, some
people say knowing her name and by proxy her husband's

(03:44):
name was the whole point of all this, but we'll
get to that later. Yeah. So the Parents Music Resource Center, Um, well,
I mean it was sort of an extension of the
grand tradition of adults saying that new music is bad
for kids, and that's and happening since there's been music.
It's this chamber music amadeus. Maybe it's quite possible, I mean,

(04:08):
it's it all we we should do an episode just
on that. I'm being threatened by of with getting old,
threatened by youth, I guess, yeah, But I think it's
you're projecting onto youth where you're really threatened by your
your imminent mortality is what it is, Yeah, and you're
just projecting it onto the next generation because it's weird

(04:29):
and strange and you're being pushed out of the out
of control. Well, this we can find the origins of
the PMRC in this case. Uh In nine, when Tipper
Gore's daughter. I think she was eleven. Um turned on
her new Prince album and the song very awesome song
Darling Nikki came on with the very famous line about masturbation,

(04:54):
and uh, I I remember being a young church kid
thinking like, WHOA, I probably shouldn't be listening to Yeah,
it was a dirty, dirty song. Did you keep listening? Uh? Yeah,
because it's a it's a great song. It is a
great song. Yeah. And if you put it even further,
it's a great song on its own. But in context
with the movie Purple Rain, that song shows up because

(05:16):
Prince is trying to humiliate his girlfriend who he's just struck, um,
because he found out that she was working for Morris Day,
which was Prince's rival in Purple Rain. So like it's
a it's a song to humiliator. Right on its own,
it's a great song. It is a racy song, but
it also has context that Tippergore didn't have at her

(05:38):
fingertips when she listened to that song. Yeah, and she
wrote a book a few years after that. Um, and
I don't remember I didn't own this book. You didn't
read that book when you were left And I write
it when I was eight, No, I was sixteen by
this point, but I remember I had it for some reason.
I might have done a some sort of school thing
on this on the PMRC, the whole thing. I definitely

(06:00):
had a copy of this book. And it wasn't like
because I was like, this is great and awesome, like
I read it for some school project. But it's called
Raising PG Kids in an X Rated Society and uh.
In it, she talks about how not only was she
worried and afraid for her kids, but she was afraid
herself about just these images that she was seeing on

(06:22):
MTV an Ozzy Osbourne crawling out of a swamp as
a swamp beast, and instead of laughing at that like
everyone else on the planet, it scared her or just
taking it as part of the your formative years that
you eventually grow out of and don't do, aren't aren't
brought to worship or hail Satan as a result. Yeah,

(06:43):
because she was a drummer. I mean she was and
an all all women band called the Wildcats. Yeah, so
she Uh, I don't know, it's kind of a lot
of this is surprising. It is very surprising, and it's
not like she was, you know, just a Democrat. Yeah,
you know, well, so here's the thing. The from what
I've seen, if you were on the industry side of this,

(07:06):
the opposing side to the p MRC at the time, UM,
you were pretty convinced. And I think some people still
are that the the whole thing that Yes, Tipper Gore
was like, this is this is terrible. I can't believe
I listen to this is my eleven year old and
said something to some other some other people sees friends
with around Washington, and they were like, you know, we
should do something about this. It would probably help Owl's

(07:27):
um exposure to the nation and get them ready for
a run at the presidency. And that that was actually
like this, the the impetus for this whole quagmire was
to make al Gore a prominent national figure. That's what
a lot of people think this And whether that was
Tipper and Owl's idea or whether they were kind of

(07:50):
led into it depends on you know who you are.
But that's um, that's that's very much out there in
the zeitgeist that that was the whole basis of the
entire thing. Huh, well, I don't buy that, um. And
in fact, that the pre PMR c uh and Cincinnata, Ohio.

(08:10):
There was a school PTA group that Delshare Elementary School
p t A who also heard Darling Nikki and also
didn't think that it was just a great jam, and
they got all up in arms about it and drafted
a statewide association letter that basically said, Hey, Recording Industry

(08:30):
Association of America, we're just gonna call it the r
i A A probably on this show, but um, maybe
you should have a voluntary system of ratings. Uh, kind
of like movies too with the m p a A.
What's the big deal, right, And they're like, call us back,
we want to talk about it, and I are a
A never called them back. Yeah, they said, we'll get
right on that. Yeah, exactly because they don't they want
to do that. They were scared of this idea to

(08:52):
begin with. They were really worried it was gonna hurt sales.
If you have, like a an album that specifically says
this is not kids, there are some stores in some
parts of the country that just won't carry that album,
and you want to be able to sell those albums.
You want to either have albums that a store would
be happy to sell, or at least slide it in
underhand at least, so the stores don't know what they're

(09:13):
selling and just the kids do. UM. So they were
afraid of this kind of idea, but they also, I mean,
it's the music industry in the eighties, like they could
afford to be like be quiet, Cincinnati School District, we're
not listening to you. When Tipper Gore came into the
mix with some of her friends from Washington, UM, the

(09:33):
dynamics of it changed for a number of reasons, not
just because they were connected to government, but because the
R A R I A A and government specifically UM
had something going on. Yeah, So they formed the PMRC
in UH on May fift They got a grant from
Mike Love of the Beach Boys, which is just further

(09:54):
cements him as one of the leading jerks and the
history of music. So what why is he jerk? Because
I saw that, I was like, what was my clove
doing that? And I know, I know he wasn't the
Manson one. That was Dennis. Wasn't it the one who
hung out with the Manson family for a little while.
That was Dennis Wilson. Okay, why is my clove a jerk?
Because God made him that way. He's just that way. No,

(10:15):
I mean he's he's he's a notorious I mean, I
can't use words that I want to use, but he isn't.
Just google Mike Love jerk and go down the rabbit
hole of of stories about this guy. Does he yell
like at basketball players courtside and stuff like that kind
of jerk? He's just you just go read some articles.
He's just he's just a jerk. I wish I had already.

(10:38):
Uh So, it does not surprise me that he gave
five thousand dollars to kick off the PMRC. But what
you were talking about is is the tape tax, which
was very interesting at the time. The recording industry was suffering,
or not suffering, but they were just beginning to struggle
a bit with the fact that UM cassette tapes were

(11:00):
pretty inexpensive. UM or they could be super cheap if
you got really crutty ones. Yeah, but the the neon
C through ones, those are expensive. The Maxels, Yeah, I
had the black Maxels, but do you remember like the
C three ones they had like kind of fluorescent and
neon colors to them, like the kind that Emilia Westevez
and Charlie Sheen find and men at work? No, I

(11:20):
haven't seen that either. You never saw men at work?
It's a good one, is it? Okay? Um? Yeah, so
they people were. You know, if you grew up in
the eighties, you made tapes. You've recorded stuff off the radio,
you made mix tapes. If your friend had a tape,
you would dub that tape you had, set it in
front of your speaker and record your albums. Do you

(11:41):
remember figuring out how to record tapes that have been
made so you couldn't record them? There was like a
way that you could break off a tape. They were
like these two things and if they were broken off
while there were two tabs on top, if they were
broken off, then they couldn't be either recorded from or
recorded onto. I can't really means you can't record over
what's there. So if you make a tape you really

(12:02):
wanted to keep, you snap those tabs there for yeah, okay,
but you can put tape over those things in full
whatever sense them, and that you can record right over
it again, that's right. But do you remember being a
kid and wondering if you were going to get in
trouble for recording a song from the radio, like knowing
that you were in some gray legal area that you
weren't quite really. Yeah, yeah, I didn't worry about it.

(12:26):
I worried about getting in trouble for it. Not from
my parents because they clearly didn't care, but my my
local law enforcement officers. Games. Yeah, you come to your house,
come to your house and play you out of your
upstairs bedroom. Uh. So that the tape industry, the cassette
tape industry, was UM putting a dent in record sales,

(12:47):
and they were really threatened by it, and basically went
to Congress and said, hey, listen, I'd like you to
pass an act, the Home Audio Recording Act, that UM
puts a pretty heavy tax on these cassettes, on these
tape to tape decks that everyone's buying these days. And
then we want all that money, like hundreds of millions

(13:08):
of dollars a year. And the in the music industry
was like, and we've got a great system worked out. Um,
ten percent of all that is going to go to
all the artists and is going to go to the
record labels. Some thing's never changed, right, So UM they
had this thing there was it was a house bill
HR eleven, and it was in the Commerce Committee, and

(13:30):
the Commerce Committee was going to decide whether the R
I A A got this text money, a special text
just for the music industry to kind of offset some
of these perceived albums sale losses. Um that same committee,
the Commerce Committee or this committee, and I'm sorry the Yeah,
the Commerce Committee. UM also was decided to hold the

(13:54):
hearing on the p m r c UH and it's
it's desired to start labeling records as explicit. So was
I mean that was a senatorial hearing? Was that the
Commerce Committee specifically? Yes? Okay, because I thought the conflict
was the fact that members of the PMRCY were married
to people on that committee. I didn't know that was

(14:16):
an actual Commerce Committee hearing. Yeah, I guess it wouldn't
have been because it was HR twenty nine eleven, so
that would have been the Commerce Committee then would have
been in the in the House. And you're right, this
was a Senate hearing. So yeah, no conflict whatsoever, totally fine. Well,

(14:39):
like I said, the conflict was the fact that four
members of the PMRCY were married to Congressman, right, So
there was a conflict there. Basically, the record industry wanted
something from Congress, and Congress now all of a sudden
wanted something from the record industry, which was to label
their records as potentially offense of two whomever, which is

(15:02):
a big deal. And some people say that if the this,
if the record industry hadn't been greedy and wanted the
HR eleven out of Congress, they probably would have fought
this tooth and nail. And a lot of people in
the industry stood up and said, we're not going to
take it to make a lot more sense in a
couple of minutes, and UM pushed back and like did

(15:25):
a lot of media tour and did a lot of
interviews and spoke out about this, and rallied like their
listeners to say, like, this is wrong, and they may
have successfully fought it had they not had the industry
ultimately wanted hr UM eleven to pass, this tape tax
to pass, and so they decided that they were going
to play ball. Yeah, and this was before the very

(15:46):
famous hearing even happened. Nineteen record labels got on board
and said, yeah, well we'll do this. We'll figure out
a good system. And so the very famous hearing on
September uh with strange collection of humans, John Denver, Frank Zappa,
and Dee Snyder twist its sister. It was moot at

(16:09):
that point. So let's what before we get into the hearing,
and we gotta back up a little bit. Let's take
a break real quick. He wants to ye, okay, we'll
be right back. Everybody, don't go anywhere, and things chop stop, shot, shot,

(16:48):
all right, chuck, So we should say, I gotta amend
something I just said. I can't believe this is so dumb.
It's It's possible the record industry would have fought this
a lot harder than they did had that ape Tex
not been in existence as a proposed bill. But that's
not to say necessarily that they did. Because we've got
to give a little more background on the p m

(17:09):
r C and what they did. One of the things
that they were able to do because of their connections
and because of their visibility, was a media blitz. Over
just a handful of months. They went from meeting in
the in a church in Washington, d C. I think
they were originally like nine members or something, to being
on Donahue, The Today Show, um editorials across the country.

(17:34):
They just they made this a topic of national They
made a national conversation about explicit lyrics on album on
on albums and whether the recording industry should do something
about it. Out of overnight, they made it a thing.
So as a result of that, um legislation in state

(17:55):
among the states started to pop up saying, forget why
the federal m is going to do it or not,
we can do this ourselves. If you want to sell
that record here in our state, you have to put
a label on it. And I think they're at least
a dozen states over over a very brief period of
time that that came up with legislation proposed legislation for this.
So the the R I A A would have had

(18:17):
a hard time of fighting this off once the Once
the cat was out of the bag from the p
mr c UM, they could have still tried to fight it.
The A c l U was like, we're writing right here,
you guys, go ahead and pass one and see what happens.
But it still would have been just a huge enormous problem.
So the p MRC did start this and some of

(18:38):
the states took it up. So whether it was just
the tape text or not, or whether it was to
try to stem off this legislation. Um, the the r
I a A Said okay, we'll play ball, And like
you said, they said, okay, we'll do this, and then
they still held that sentence hearing hearing, which I think
goes to further the idea that this this was to

(19:00):
to bolster al Gore's image because he was on that
signate hearing. Yeah. So what the PMRC called for, um,
it was forced explicit tags UH rated X and just
you know, they kind of followed the m p a
a's example of movie ratings, which we did a great
episode on that too. Yeah, that was a good one.
UM rated X for explicit sex or foul language, uh

(19:22):
D A for drugs or alcohol, V for violence, oh
for a cult, which meant anything that's not you know,
good strong Christian values, anything weird. Uh. And so to
to illustrate this, they trotted out what is now known
as the Filthy fifteen UM and I think we should
go through these. It's a list of fifteen songs and

(19:44):
what they were tagged for. We can't say all the titles.
Darling Nikki of course, UM was tagged for for sex
at the top of the list. From what I understand.
Oh yeah, I think this is the accurate list, and
I think like it may have been in some sort
of order. I don't think, hey, we're ranked. Is like
this is the dirtiest of them all. I don't know.

(20:04):
This is the one that got tipper uh Shena Easton's
sugar Walls. You remember that tune? No? And I went
back and listened in Cherry's nodding, and uh I I
didn't recognize it at all. Yeah, this was her big
image change song because she was sort of not all
American because she wasn't American, but you know, just sort
of that clean image. And then she came out with

(20:25):
sugar Walls, and everyone's like, you know what that's about? Right?
Easton knows about sex? Uh, judas priests eat me alive.
That's sex and violence depending on who you're talking to.
But all right, if it's if it's consensual sex and
violence and is it really violent? Uh? I haven't heard
a bunch of these. Actually, strap On Robbie Baby from

(20:48):
Vanity and I've never heard that one. I haven't either,
but I can guess what it's about. Motley Crue song
Bastard for violence in language. I didn't know the song,
but I looked up the lyrics. It is a rape
revenge song. Oh really, Yeah, it's about a woman like
killing a man who tried to rape her. That raises

(21:08):
a really good point here, Chuck, and we'll get into
this a little more. But I just want to point
this out to everybody listening right now. I can't wait
any longer. One of the great things about the p
mr C is that they provided endless amounts of entertainment
to people who were opposed to them by grossly misinterpreting
the lyrics of songs and and that that's a really

(21:30):
good example, Yeah for sure. Um and there are a
few examples of that. Um. A C. D C has
let Me Put My Love into You. That's sweet song
about love. Let Me put my Love into You, Open
your heart to my love. Twisted sisters, we're not going
to take it, which it says violence for that that
that is hysterical because there's nothing violent in that song,

(21:52):
not at all. And zero. The Snyder at the Senate
hearings was like, apparently somebody saw the video and with
the guy from Animal House, yeah, and mistook this cartoonish violence.
If you if you want to know this was I
collect cartoons, and every single one of those acts of
violence was taken from some of my favorite cartoons of
all time. So there's nothing in the song. So what's

(22:16):
the what are you talking about here? Why would there
be explicit an explicit lyrics warning on my album when
there's no explicit lyrics and it's cartoonish violence in the
video this but this was on the list of fifteen
that they used to say this is a good example
of what's going on in the music industry. I read
a good interview with him, it was like thirty years

(22:37):
on about the PMR, and he said who they really
wanted was Vince Neil because Vince it was a party
guy and not super articulate, and it would have been
a blood bass. Did they confuse them because they looked similar. No, no, no,
I mean I don't think they accidentally got d Snyder.
But he said that's kind of who they wanted, was
Vince Neil, but what they got instead was me. D

(22:59):
Snyder very famously didn't drink or smoke or do drugs.
It was very articulate, kind of well spoken family man.
And he throws a little shade to the Gore's way
and he's like, I'm still married and the Gores are
separated and one of their kids was busted for drugs,
and like he's he was even nice about it now,

(23:19):
He's like, look, marriage is hard. I don't want to
make fun of them, but it's just interesting that I'm
the one that they were picking on. I'm still married
to my wife thirty nine years later. He also called
her out because this whole thing started because she failed
to read the lyrics of the Prince album before she
listened to it with her little kid. And he's like,
I've always read the lyrics or listened to an album

(23:43):
before I've shared it with my kids. That's a parent's job.
I've always done this, and like he he goes even
like when Tenacious D's first album came out, he said
his whole family loved it, but he made um. He
made a version of it without one of the songs.
And I know it's so, but you do um for
his kids so they can enjoy Tenacious D. But they
weren't ready for this other song. D Snyder is basically

(24:05):
one of the top heroes of this if not the
top hero of this whole thing. Yeah, sure, um, And
do you remember we met him kind of said high,
oh wait, where was that? The Whatever show with Alexis
and Jennifer was on at the same time as us.
That's right, yep, because he was in Rock of Ages,
so he was on. I totally forgot about that. It

(24:26):
was It was wonderful. One of them was Martha Stewart's daughter.
Alexis was interesting. Yeah, totally forgot about that whole thing
you did. Yeah, uh Madonna dress you up? Yeah, Madonna.
If you read quotes from her about this, she's like, yeah, whatever,
it's like a Tuesday for me. The band Wasp, if

(24:48):
you remember them, we are sex perverts, is what WASP
stands for. They were like a proto guir kind of
and please don't kill me if you're a guar faint
and I'm way off it makes sense to outsiders. Did
that really stand for that or was that like kids
in Satan's Service? No, that's what it stood for. They
were like there was like a big stage show and
like human black lawless right, yes, and he remember he

(25:11):
wore a cod piece that shot out. It was wired
to pyrotechnics and like shot sparks out. There was also
a cod piece with like a saw I think a
chainsaw on it, okay, kind of like a presage that
whole horrible scene in seven. I think I think the one,
the way he was approaching was a little more funny
and just kind of lighthearted than the seven one. Uh

(25:33):
So their song animal, sex, language, and violence, it covered
all three, but not a cult, no no, no occult,
def Leppard, high and dry, parentheses, Saturday Night it was
about drinking, all right, uh and they even said like, yeah,
it's about drinking. People like to have fun on Saturday Night.
Sometimes um Merciful Fate into the Coven and I think

(26:00):
was um King Diamond's band originally, Yes, he was Merciful
Fate singer. So they there's was a cult, and it
was like overtly occult stuff like come come serve Satan
with me. It's fun, kill your parents kind of thing,
but don't really, your little psychotic sixteen year old, this
is not for real. This is just music and I'm

(26:22):
trying to sell records by banning my face. Plus also,
one of the other points that I think a lot
of people made too was you're not gonna find Merciful
Fates into the coven on Casey Caysum's Top forty ever,
like you would really have to go find this thing. Yeah,
there were no songs on the radio. And even if
you do find it, well, then if your kids listening
to Merciful Fate, have a conversation with your kid about

(26:44):
what they're listening to and what Merciful Fate saying and
just how real or non real it is to engage
your child. And also, um, you will not be the
one parent in the history of the world that stops
your child from listening to or watching something that they
want to listen to or watch. Yeah, when it's impossible.
When License the Ill came out, um, I knew like

(27:05):
every word on the album front to back, and uh
one of them. I was singing it out loud to
my parents about smoking that dust at St. Anthony's Feast
and they were like it was funny. They didn't say
anything immediately, but they did look at each other, and
like a day or two later, they approached me and like, Josh,
you know that song, that BC Boys song where they're

(27:26):
talking about smoking dust? Are they talking about Angel dust PCP?
And I was like I don't know, probably, and they're like,
you can't listen to that anymore. Yeah, And but that's
one of the points though, that it makes in this
article is that like a kid probably doesn't know. And
I think research has even shown that lyrically, people are

(27:47):
more prone to bring their own experience into something, especially kid. Well. Also,
I legitimately remember I can put myself back at that
time and hearing that I wasn't like angel does time
a try. That's a great idea. I really didn't think
like that, and I think most people don't. Ironically, if

(28:10):
you're under the influence of angel dust, then lyrics are
super suggestive, probably, but you have to do the angel
dust first. Uh. Sabbaths trashed obviously about drugs and alcohol.
That's not Osborne or Dio Sabbath either. It's not either
one of those who ian Gill him now I don't
even know. I had to look him up. It's fine.

(28:32):
It sounds a bit like um, a little more melodic
motor head Okay, it sounds motor heady. It's not my
kind of Sabbath. Mary Jane girls in my house. I
don't know anything about that dude that's been in my
head all day. Yeah, I don't know that girl. Is it?
What is it in my house. Is it rapper? Is
it in my house? Well, that doesn't clue me in anymore.

(28:56):
It's not rap. It's the Mary Jane Girls. Um. They
were like a girl girl group that Rick James put
together super eighties like sexy. Um, it's fine, like it
like it wouldn't you would not bat an eyelash over
it today. Venom possessed, never heard of a cult. And
then finally this is Cindy law her with her very

(29:21):
famous masturbation song she Bop So you know it's about masturbation. No, okay,
until I read the words today and I'm like, oh,
well that's about masturbation. Yes, she said that she she
like Bapa Day kept the doctor away, so she was
recommending it and that's why she made that song. I
got the impression she's a little embarrassed as an adult
for having released that song, but not apologetic. No, she

(29:45):
Cyndy Lauper apologizes to no man. We saw a show
of hers once. She's good concert. Yeah, I um, you
know I went to that christ that Halloween party of
hers one time. No in the nineties. My she has
big Halloween bash every year at her place in New
York and my friend John Abraham was a member of

(30:06):
the fan club, and I think you could get like
early tickets or something. Oh that's cool. So you got
us all tickets and we went and I met Cyndy
lawpers party to her Halloween party, which was so much fun.
She's um, like, she spends a lot of time and
money like helping out l g B t Q youth
who have been kicked out onto the street by this. Yeah,
it's like a legitimately great person. Yeah, she's totally and

(30:27):
talented to very much. So she pops Cindy, that's right.
Uh So that's the Filthy fifteen, that's what they trotted out. Um,
and this is when I guess we need to get
in a little bit to the fact that it seems
sort of okay even me as apparent now to be like, well,
you know what, there's nothing wrong with a rating system

(30:49):
because as a parent you want to know what's going on,
and that just helps us. That's a bit of shorthand
for us. But um, it wasn't a voluntary thing because
very on what started happening is uh, they started people
started doing interviews and on the PMRC, people in the government,

(31:09):
and it was clear that they were trying to get
get be rid of this stuff. Well, yeah, get it
out of stores, them out of business. Yeah, kind of that,
like we have. They have different views in ours. We
don't like it. They considered themselves the moral majority, UM,
which was ascendant thanks to uh basically a pact with

(31:31):
Ronald Reagan. They helped out Reagan or get Reagan elected,
and Reagan like made the Christian right, UM very prominent
in in powerful in American politics in the eighties. And
there I read this. One of my favorite things to do, Chuck,
when we're researching stuff like this is to read contemporary
articles at the time, like they don't know the outcome,

(31:52):
and they also know tons of details that get lost
to time over history. But I was reading this like
long form l a Times article about this whole thing,
written right smack dab in the middle of it, and um,
they quoted this one guy who was like, this is
part of a movement. Like everybody's looking at it, like, um,
it's just about censoring records. They're like, No, these same

(32:13):
people tried to get rid of the Last Temptation of Christ.
They tried to get funding pulled for the National Endowment
for the Humanities, this is like part of a larger
thing that they're trying to do, and they're trying to
sanitize American popular culture to their tastes. And what you
were saying, I think is that in interviews and at
the Senate hearings, some of the people on the p

(32:35):
MRC side, including p m p MRC members, basically said like, yeah,
we're trying to censor this, which it's one thing if
you go into it saying that, because then the people
who are opposed to you know where you stand. But
the PMRC, their whole position, they talked out of both
sides of their mouth, and one of the sides of
the side that they said the loudest was we're not

(32:56):
trying to censor anything. We're trying to get the record
industry to do this voluntarily. We just happened to be
a group, right, We just happened to be married to
these senators and these congressmen and like these cabinet members um,
and that has nothing to do with anything. But if
you look at the context of everything, it was it's voluntary.
But if you don't do it, we're going to put
you out of business, or we're going to have the

(33:17):
government do it, and that is censorship. It's also unconstitutional
when the government gets into that, that's unconstitutional. And probably
every single law like this would have been thrown right
out by the Supreme Court. Yeah, well, which is one
big reason why this wasn't a law that was never
legislation proposed. It was always voluntary from a private group

(33:37):
to a corporation. But Frank Zappa at those hearings said, well,
wait a minute, if this has nothing to do with legislation,
if this has nothing to do with law, why are
we holding Senate hearings on a private group trying to
get a private action, voluntary action undertake him? What are
we doing here? And he really revealed, like the the

(33:58):
theater behind the whole thing, I got rid of all
the set dressing and showed it for what it was,
which was a stab at censorship. This guy, Jeff Ling,
part of the PMRC, said do I think it should
be out of stores? Sure? I do. I think label
Ling will do that. Another p M MARC member, Sally Nevius, said,
we want the industry to police itself. If they refuse,

(34:20):
we're going to look into legal ways to stop what
we feel is contributing to the delinquencies of miners. Pat
Boone very famously said that's what the Constitution had in mind,
self imposed majority approved censorship. Uh so, I mean they
were blatant about it, about the fact that not only
were they trying to legislate morality, if it came pushed,

(34:43):
came to shove, they would try and do that. But uh,
pet to Pat Boone straight up saying like, yeah, if
if the majority wants it, sure sensor art, which is
just really scary. Oh, it is scary. There was a
woman named Judith Tough who introduced legislation in Maryland for
record labeling, and um she apparently told Frank Zappa to

(35:05):
stop worrying about civil rights, which is not a phrase
you want to go down in history, as is famously saying, yeah,
and and Frank Zappa is the last person I want
to say that too. You know, Vince Neil probably would
have been like, all right, fine, where's the Jack Daniels.
Uh And even though it was a senator, a Democratic

(35:25):
senator there named James Exson of Nebraska, and he even said, like,
what are we doing here? Well, okay? And I was like, hero,
Guy's a hero for saying that. No, not a hero
for saying that he wanted to know because he was
in favor of of censoring. Yeah, but he he was like,
there was no legislation on the floor, Like, why is

(35:48):
it here in front of the commerce I took it
to mean like he was like, well, what are this is?
This is this is inappropriate? Then this is not right?
But no, he was like, well, I thought we were
here to a censor thing. It turns out did you
watch the Frank Zappa testimony, Um, it happens in the
first couple of minutes that whole thing. Oh yeah, I
watched a lot of this row. I watched it back

(36:09):
in the day, so I'm too, but rewatched some of it. Um.
John Denver was great. He was He had the most
impact of everyone because I think they thought John Denver
was going to come in there and Pat Boon Mr.
Squeaky Clean. Yeah, and Pat booned up and he came
out hard on a couple of things. He was like,
first of all, you think my song Rocky Mountain Highs

(36:30):
about smoking dope. It's not like you're wrong. I wrote it.
It's about feeling the euphoria of nature in the Rockies. Yeah,
and the Rockies in Colorado. Uh and not only that,
but um, you shouldn't be doing this. And they were like, wait,
we called you in here because we thought you might

(36:51):
be friendly. Committee to Denver and he said, hey, I
am friendly, I'm John Denver, but you shouldn't be doing
this and they all clapped. It's funny if you watch
the Frank Zappa testimony. They introduced him, and my brain
was like waiting for applause and like cheers, and I
was like, oh, yeah, have to senate here. They don't
do that there. Um. But so yeah, let's pause for

(37:12):
a second here and and point something out, chuck. Um.
We just talked about a Senate hearing where John Denver,
Frank Zappa, and Dee Snyder from Twisted Sister testified. That's
a pretty significant Senate hearing and the eighties it is
it really is. I think it is. I think it's landmark. Now. Um,

(37:33):
so you want to talk a little more about the
hearings and then we'll take a break in a little bit. Uh. Okay,
So the guy who's most frequently actually all three of
them are, but Frank Zappa really kind of laid it down.
He brought Moon Unit and Dweezel with him, and uh,
they were I don't know if they got to testify,

(37:53):
but they came so that they could testify as concerned
teens who were worried about their speech. And Frank's apple
really pointed it out. He said that, first of all,
I think this is the parents concerned, not the government's concerned. Um,
and that, uh, I've got four children, two of them
are here. That was moon Unit Deweesel. Just like saying

(38:13):
both of their names. I want them to grow up
in a country where they can think what they want
to think, be what they want to be, and not
what somebody's wife or somebody in government makes them be.
It's is pretty pretty wise words, although he does say
there's a little watchword in there. Wife. Wife got thrown
around a lot during this from the opposing side, and

(38:36):
it just danced along the edge of being denigrading. I think, like,
you're a Washington wife, stay in your lane, don't worry
about big stuff like this. You know, almost kind of
smacked of it whenever it came up Washington wives or
wives or ladies. It just seemed just just kind of denigrating.

(38:57):
Here there go back and list and you'll see it.
I heard heard it, but I had a different take
than you did. Yeah, um and Frank Zapp actually was
mislabeled too. Later he had a a word lyric free
instrumental album that was tagged with explicit lyric because somebody

(39:19):
in a record store was like, oh yeah, he testified
against the p MRC. Man, it's so sad. What's going
on with his family? What's going on with his family?
Just in fighting, divided side suing each other. Oh yeah,
it's awful. Our Moon union, Deweezel on the same side
are opposing sides. I believe, um man, I went down

(39:43):
the rabbit hole on this not too long ago. I
think Dweezel, well, I know Dweezel and I Met are
completely on opposite sides. And I think I Met and
the mom have control of I think the mom's dead. No, no,
I think they're in control of a catalog and we're like,
you can't play Dad's music anymore. Uh. And so I

(40:06):
think Dweezel and Moon I think are on one side
and there's another sister. But yeah, it's a complete house divided.
That's sad. It's really sad. Oh yeah, it's all money,
all right. Let's take a break because I'm bummed out
now and shoot, all right, we're back. We shook off

(40:52):
the whole Zeppa drama. Well now it's back again. So
part of the problem here with these stickers was and
is that, Um, well, it's there's a few things. First
of all, what we've been talking about with misinterpreting these lyrics,
you've got somebody else deciding, well, this is what this

(41:12):
person meant when they wrote it, so it deserves a sticker,
whether it's John Denver or Twisted Sister. With their song
under the Blade, it was about you know, the guitarists
for that band was having throat surgery and was scared.
So d Snyder wrote a song about that being scared

(41:32):
going into surgery and going under the blade. And they
thought it was a song about like killing people with
a knife. So that's a big problem. That's a big
problem in and of itself. While you get past that
by training somebody, right, I mean you, You you find
a an elite group of people who have all studied
comparative literature extensively, probably of doctorates in it, and you

(41:52):
pay them a significant amount of money to work at
each record label to go through the songs that come
out and decide which ones deserved songs that come out
each year. Right, that's what you do. And that's what
they did, right, Okay they did, and I knew they
didn't know, And it's funny to go back that under
the blade thing. Uh. The Snyder very famously was like that,

(42:13):
that's not about B D s M. That is all
in Tipper Goore's mind. Apparently, Well, and I got mad,
He got really mad. Oh yeah, he was livid in
the series in this hearing. Yeah yeah, I didn't see
that part. Yeah, he was really ticked off at d Snyder.
So yeah, de Snyder said that, and that became kind
of a talking point. Um on the opposing side was

(42:33):
like basically painting Tipper Gore is like this lascifious, like
like pent up housewife who like couldn't couldn't, couldn't stop
herself from talking about B D s M and things
like that. Um. And then not just not just Tipper,
but also some of the other people. UM, they were
kind of painted as people who were just basically getting

(42:54):
off on talking about this stuff on the Today Show
or Good Morning America, which like just brings him right
up to the line between like earnestness and performance art,
and like they were they were almost saying like these
people are are like putting you on, almost because I
mean the idea that somebody's walking around getting off on
it's just such a cartoonish, Freudian sketch of a person

(43:17):
that But that's is this is where the talking points
were on both sides, Princes talking about Darling Nikki masturbating.
All you wanna do is talk about masturbating in the
in the in the mass media, and it was basically
verbatim quotes is what I just said. Well, I mean,
that's the irony of it all is the word masturbata
probably not been used that much in public like ever

(43:37):
right then because of these hearings, and certainly not only
not on Good Morning America or anything like that. But
it was the very people who were decrying it who
were the ones that were bringing it to the masses.
Oh dear a few more songs. Azzie's Uh Suicide Solution song,
which is anti suicide about alcoholism, was promoted by the

(43:59):
PMRC as a suicide encouraging song. So they're just getting
it all wrong. They are so okay, So you've got
a subjective thing by definition, judging lyrics and interpreting them
is pretty subjective. Subjective, you're not going to go to
the trouble of of training people to do this job correctly.
At least you're going to come up with a set

(44:20):
of coherent criteria and guidelines that can be applied across
the board. Right now, they didn't do any of that,
and it wasn't applied across the board because in the end,
uh and this was a survey in Portland, Oregon only.
Let's say we could extrapolate this across the country. UM,

(44:43):
eight percent of CDs and cassettes total had parental advisory stickers.
Rap albums, heavy metal, one percent, mainstream pop, and no
country albums had stickers, which is pretty rich considering there's
a guy named David allen Coe and Hank Jr. And
Walk Tass and all that. All they said saying about

(45:03):
was drinking and doing drugs again in fights and stuff. Yeah,
but sex violence and drugs and drinking yep, yep, And
they had zero parental advisory So that's smacked of all
And again that's an extremely narrow sample record stores in Portland, Oregon,
but it gets across some people's points on the opposing
side like, no, this isn't this isn't about like values,

(45:27):
it's about what they're threatened by. They're threatened by like
rap music and heavy metal. They're okay with everything else.
And this is proof positive of that. They probably didn't
even run the country songs through the process. That'd be
my guess. I'm sure they just targeted groups, you know.
So finally, um, well, like we said, they already are

(45:50):
a a had already decided pre hearing that they were
going to do this, and they said, all right, we're
gonna figure this out. Should just take us about five years.
And what the plan may have been was like maybe
this will all just go away. I think that, yeah,
that was part of it. But I think also, um,
they realized that like they were gonna, they were gonna

(46:11):
have to it would stem off that legislation, and it worked.
If you read some of the contemporary reports with legislators
who brought legislation to their state houses, they say, well,
since they agreed to play ball, we're sending our bill,
but we've got it over here if they don't end
up playing ball after all. So it really did work.
But they did it like a couple of days or

(46:34):
a couple of weeks before the UM the committee, the
Commerce Committee voted on the tape tax, and the r
A didn't get their tape tax. No, they did not, UM.
But what did happen was the stickers in March started
coming out. Remember going to the store and seeing those

(46:55):
for the first time. I gotta buy that one. Well,
that's kind of what happened too. In some cases. Do
you know what the first album that had the first
sticker was? Was there a first album? If you could guess, yes,
if you could guess what album that came out in
just guess who would have gotten the first explicit lyrics.

(47:16):
I don't know. Jan's Addiction to Live Crew, Oh of course,
Banned in the USA was the first album to get
an explicit lyrics sticker. Yeah, And so you know, these
stickers started coming out and I had a had a
ripple effect in a big way, but in a lot
of ways, UM. Everything from Steven Tyler getting on stage

(47:39):
and saying thank you, Chipper Gore because you throw some
four letter words on an album and now you're gonna
get another million in sales because kids were looking to
buy those records. It just it's forbidden fruit all the
way to the other side of the coin, which is
Walmart or certain states, saying we're not even going to
carry these records. That was part of it. In stores,
it also became an easy target for local law enforcement

(48:02):
that decided that they were going to enact their own laws,
like UM in Broward County, Florida, which is around Miami
where Miami is UM, the Brower County Sheriff sent out
some deputies with their badges full uniform to go buy
record stores and said, Hey, just wanted to give you
a friendly little heads up. If you guys sell any
more of those two Live Crew albums, we're gonna arrest you.

(48:23):
We don't want to, but we wanted to give your
heads up. First. Two Live Crew found out about it,
and we're like, m that's prior restraint on free speech.
And they won. They won in the Supreme Court actually,
but this kind of thing, it was like, as as
the Grabster put it, the censors were emboldened by the
the the um. The response from the PMRC's album and

(48:45):
these labels were Hey, go after these guys and not
just the records. Like when artists came to town, they
would get arrested for their performances. In nine performers were
arrested in Georgia alone for their concerts. Yeah, from Bobby
Brown to Gene Simmons. Yeah, And that's what D Snyder

(49:05):
and that that sort of thirty years later things said,
is you know, it worked in one way because they sequestered,
which is maybe all they wanted was they sequestered a
certain group of artists from the rest. And that sequestration,
like you said, range from now they can they're following
where they're touring and cops are gonna show up there

(49:27):
to uh, Walmarn't saying not not going to carry this
unless you change this album cover or this lyric or
the song title to something ridiculous like Nirvana's song rape
Me was very famously changed on the album the title
to wait for Me. Nothing about the song, but they

(49:49):
didn't change the song itself. But if you look on
the back of that in utero, mcumbers says wait for Me,
but it's even like crossed out and they're written in
sharp wave. It's not, but it should have been. Uh
so it you know, it had a big ripple effect
in a lot of ways. People were um and and
I guess before this they had always had radio safe
versions of some songs. Well, yeah, you just weren't gonna

(50:11):
get radio play, right, But now it's like the albums
need to be like radio safe or else Walmart won't
sell them or whatever. That's a big retailer, it was
even back then. Um So, so there was a negative,
that slippery slope that the PMRC had had carried the

(50:33):
nation across. We started to slide down it and actual
legitimate censorship took place as a result. And then the
way that all of this happened, the way it was
able to happen, was because there was a gatekeeper. There
was a funnel for the record industry to the public,
and the PMRC was able to go to them and say,

(50:54):
you've got something, We've got something you want, you've got
something we want. We're gonna make this happen. And just
by the fact that the record industry is not like
it was back then, they're no longer the gatekeepers. Like,
if you make music, you can sell directly to your
your fans. Um you've got some you know, a few
digital platforms that that do some kind of explicit stuff

(51:18):
and and or labeling or something, and there it's there
and I think if you still can buy a record,
I didn't know anybody still bought like physical CDs or whatever,
but it can still come with a sticker. Um. But
it's just changed. It's just different. And if you listen
to stuff today and then you listen to that filthy fifteen,
you're like, you're you've got to be kidding me. So

(51:40):
it's almost like the the the PMRC went and put
their finger in a dike that didn't even really need it,
and in doing so, they exploded in the floodgates. The
flood just came and overwhelmed them. And just by the
number of of of songs that were released and the
amount of just filthiness that was attendant in those songs,

(52:02):
it's just it became normalized rather than the exact opposite,
which is what the PMRC was was working for. Yeah,
And what what didn't happen is our generation, which was
the generation of the seventies and eighties. It turns out
we did not grow up to just be a bunch
of degenerates. Well, that was going to be the ruin
of our country. It's true though, because of music, and

(52:23):
I think that that is ultimately like what what parents
tell themselves they're really worried about is that their their
kids going to become morally unhygienic and the country will
go down the hill one way or another. But but
I mean, it just doesn't seem to pan out ever,
despite it being such an ongoing and old worry. You know,
jazz was going to be the end of moral society

(52:46):
then rock and roll, that's true, although I have to
say the p MRC did give us Glenn Danzig's song Mother,
which is apparently an O two Tipper Gore in the PMRC. Really,
if you go and read the lyrics, you're like, Okay,
PMRC was in a bunch of songs. I mean, those
those four letters appeared in a lot of rock and

(53:07):
roll songs, hip hop songs. They got a lot of attention,
and maybe that's all they wanted. Well, we just gave
him some more. Well they're no longer around. They they
broke up the band in the nineties. And do you
know when do you know when Tipper quit uh became
vice president? Yeah? And then now you can see her

(53:27):
sitting in with the Grateful Dead on drums smoking grass.
All she talks about his grass. Now, if you want
to know more about the p MRC. Well, I don't
think there is anything more to know, but go look
around read some contemporary articles. It's fun. And since I
said contemporary articles, it is time for listener mail. I'm

(53:48):
gonna call this short and sweet. Remember in the Olive
Oil episode, I said something about Greeks and Italians, like
what's the difference? I got support on that from a
Greek aleman. Apparently it's a thing, he said. I think
you'll be pleased Chuck to find out that you didn't
offend anyone when you said Greeks and Italians are the same.

(54:09):
In fact, there's actually a phrase una faccia raza or
in Greek mia fatsa mia razza, meaning one face, one race,
often used to express the perception of close cultural affinities
between Greeks and Italians. Keep keep up the good work, guys.
That is from Nick Kantos. Well done, Chuck, and I

(54:32):
bets you. Nick Kantos is Greek. I'm good. Hey, it
doesn't matter, yeah, don't um. Well thanks a lot, Nick,
that was very nice email in the sind to support
Chuck because I left him hanging high and dry. Um,
if you want to get in touch with US. You
can go onto our website stuff you Should Know dot
com and you'll find our social links all over the place.
I also have a website called the Josh Clark Way

(54:54):
dot com and you can send me, Chuck and Jerry
an email at Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com. M HM