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Showing posts with label Political. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Political. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Anti-Bullying Message from 1949


Looking at the headlines since the election of President-elect Trump, the message is sadly every bit as relevant today as it was in 1949.

Wednesday, June 01, 2016

Shadow President

I love simulation video games. Especially the "civilization building" types like Sim City.

But there's one game in particular I have a special fondness for that has never been updated or given a modern makeover and it's still every bit as challenging (although graphically challenged itself) as it was when it came out in 1993.

It's called Shadow President.


In this game, you are the Commander In-Chief. Yes, you. You have the ultimate power to create world peace, a roaring economy and make the quality of life in the world a global benchmark. Or you can send us all back to the stone age. You can be a wise peacemaker and a statesperson. Or a brutal tyrant hell bent on world domination. You can force regime changes. Or live and let live. You can test your deepest held ideology. Or define yours through a series of surprisingly accurate situations and how you would handle each of them. Any way you go, there are benefits and ramifications to every decision you make. Just like what a real president has to deal with.

The game starts in June of 1990. If you remember that time (and it seems like yesterday to me), The Berlin Wall had come down, the Soviet Union hadn't become Russia again (and it wouldn't until 1991, but the change was already afoot in the Kremlin.) And most of all, Saddam Hussein's Iraq was getting it's dander up with Kuwait and would eventually invade it. This would be your first major test of how you would deal with a major world crisis in the Oval Office.

Like I said, this game isn't big on graphics. And it's not a high action game. It can be pretty tedious at times with all the seemingly mundane things going on. But each situation, no matter how trivial they may appear has some indirect benefit or consequence to your leadership effectiveness, popularity and world standing.  It's one of those games that really belong in a classroom. But if you love a good game of mental chess rather than 3-D explosions and insane graphics, this is for you.

You can also balance the budget, increase or decrease spending in the Military, Social spending, Investment in the country and Foreign Aid. You can raise or lower Personal, Corporate and Sales taxes and well as Tariffs. You can consult with your advisors on which route to take that would ultimately shape your presidency. This means encountering a lot of things you weren't even prepared for. You may be forced to make decisions that fly in the face of your own ideals (like all presidents are forced to do sometimes.) But then again, being President means inheriting a nation and world left behind by the previous President and what you make of it will determine your legacy.

When you select a country (just move the mouse cursor to a country on the map and click on it until it lights up. Another way is to press the ? key and use the up/down arrows to find the specific country you're looking for), move your mouse cursor the the extreme left on the map, the options menu will appear. Click on SOC/ECO/CIA/MIL or NUC for each option menu and decide what you will do to the selected country.
You can decide what to do with each country. You can send them humanitarian, economic, intelligence, military and nuclear aid. You can declare war on them or defend them. Arrange for surgical strikes, issue peace delegations, give them Most Favoured economic status or block trade. Set up coup d'etats  Or blow them up in a nuclear holocaust. But remember, your every move is going to either have success or catastrophic ramifications.

Your popularity level is what ultimately determines if you get elected to another term. A popularity level of 50% or higher can mean you get another term. But anything lower could jeopardize that. A popularity rating of less than 30% can set you up for serious trouble and less than 20% could put you at risk for impeachment or even assassination. It's very very hard to build your popularity, but much easier to screw it all up. You're walking on eggshells - just like a real president.  

The Game:

Shadow President is a DOS game (it's 23 years old.) And while DOS is pretty much the Latin of the computer languages these days, it's not entirely defunct (you'd be surprised at what our own government computers still use in 2016.) But regardless of your computer operating system, you can still play it on DOSBox. Download DOSBox here and install it on your computer (there's versions for Windows, Mac and Linux and others as well as an Android version for your smartphone or tablet.)

Next, download the game here (it's free abandonware as there are no current versions of this game.) Unzip and place the SHADOW folder in your Games folder. When you want to play, just click on the SHADOW.exe file in the SHADOW folder. DOSBox should handle it from there.


And don't forget the manual. You can download the PDF file here. Keep it in the SHADOW folder for safekeeping (it won't affect the performance of the game.) You will need this as there is a primitive security system of quotes in which you must answer with who said them and the answers are in the manual. If you do not answer them correctly, the game goes on a 30 day trial and that's not 30 actual days in real life, but 30 days in the game itself (on average speed, the clock goes at one hour per second.) The manual also goes into explaining the game in deeper detail.

To stop the clock during the game, press the 0 (zero) key. This helps when you need to make a lot of changes. To start back up/ change game speed, press 1 for 1 hour per second, 2 for 2 hours per second, 3 for 4 hours per second, 4 for 8 hours per second or 5 for one day per second. Beware that faster speeds can make interaction very difficult. You'll have to experiment to find the one that's right for you or adjust as you play. (Click on images to enlarge.)


 In the System Menu, there's even an Auto-Pilot feature where the game plays itself for you. But be aware that the game can often make decisions you may not want or even screw it up for you. 


After going through the "security clearance", you will be treated to the opening scenario and a tutorial overview. This allows you to get a feel for the controls of the game options and there's a button on screen for saving the game. Use it - a lot. Because you may want to play for certain periods of time and pick up where you left off. Or try different strategies. Other options include running the game without elections (oh yes, there are elections.), With/without audio (the sounds are also pretty primitive by today's standards.) Or different scenarios, such as a Super Iraq, Virtual Earth, US Economic Decline and others.


 The game also includes the 1990 CIA Factbook, which is useful in determining the history of a certain country as well as calculating potential strategies of each. But bear in mind as you play, you change the course of world history and the entries can become meaningless beyond that if say, you take over or change the regimes of North Korea. Or Iraq. Or even go full Benedict Arnold and actually support our enemies. (Yes, you can even do that. But there could be some pretty big consequences. Just like in real life.)


 The only problem is the game does not have one very important aspect to the real life workings of the President; Congress. In a real life presidency, you have to work with Congress (the House of Representatives and the Senate.) And that more than anything else determines your leadership effectiveness. If you can't get anything past them, you're what's called a "lame duck". But since this game does not have a Congress to deal with, you're pretty much a dictator in spite of being an elected President. So for the purposes of simplicity and hypothesis, you're in control of everything. A Congress feature would magnify how difficult the presidency actually is, but it would have also resulted in a game perhaps too big and advanced for the old computers of 1993.
 
Strategies:

My preferred personal strategy to this game has always been the Peacemaker/Good Guy because it's super hard. I follow a sort of Bernie Sanders-like strategy of keeping military conflicts at the barest minimum while keeping a close watch over the economy and spending on Social programs and Investment high. Cut or raise taxes according to what affects common people more than corporations and the 1%. And it works amazingly well. (Click on images to enlarge)

June 1990
November 1992
The changes are pretty dramatic, but they were made very gradually. Just a little bit month by month, but it's given me a landslide election victory the day before in the 1992 screenshot. With massively increased social spending and investment, homelessness is a thing of the past. Everyone has free college, Cannabis is legal. Life is pretty laid back. And it shows.

On the right side of the screenshot you'll see some lines with TEAQ under them. They stand for:

Total Influence
Economy
Ambition
Quality of Life

In the 1992 screenshot, the Total Influence is down because I'm not trying to be world cop and focusing on matters at home. The Economy is roaring, Ambition is very low because we're not picking fights or invading other countries (the legal weed helps too) and Quality of Life is crazy good. And 76% popularity is not too shabby.

On the other hand, you could try other things that are less challenging and more fun, like invading Canada. But I love a hard strategic puzzle.

It's a fun game for the intellectual sort, maybe not so much for the raging gamer. But it's always worth a shot....If you dare.

Cheers!

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Fake Lionel Richie

This CD was from the Mount Vernon City Library (WA) and particularly strange because these recordings aren't even from Lionel Richie at all. The singer(s) don't even sound close to Lionel Richie. Or Diana Ross on "Endless Love".
It was released in 1993 not on Motown (Lionel Richie's home label during his '80s hit making streak), but on something called Starnice. That was the first warning sign, along with the crummy, non-descript packaging.

A Googling of Starnice reveals it to be a Hong Kong based label with other titles of presumably similar knock-off material of other acts. Regardless, the CD is a fake and not worth anyone's money unless you like really bad anonymous karaoke covers better than original hit recordings (which I'm presuming most of you don't.)

I'm also sure this wasn't intended for sale in the U.S. where recordings like this are illegal to sell unless they are marked as not the original performer on the packaging. This is how these recordings otherwise get sold in America, as worthless anonymous "tribute" albums. I can't believe there's an entire bastard subset of the music industry dedicated to this crap (I once broke off a budding relationship with someone over the fact that she bought a Glee CD - no joke.) But this disc is a flat out fraud. It promises Lionel Richie, but gives you not one, but two and possibly three, maybe even four schmucks with detectable Chinese accents.

This disc starts out with an anemic cover of "Say You Say Me", bungled up lyrics in "Hello" ("I've been alone with you inside my head".) It's just droning electronic keyboards and lame attempts at sounding like Lionel Richie.     

And since it is a cheap, chintzy knockoff, I've included it for your masochistic pleasure. But most of you probably would rather have a tax audit instead of hearing this garbage.

Enjoy (Or something.)   

CD Front/Inside V Card (Other side was blank)

CD Back
CD Label

Monday, September 28, 2015

"Up With People" Up With People (1965)



When I was a kid, I hated this record. Like smash this record to atoms, melt it into an unrecognizable blob, jump on it, toss it into a woodchipper, melt it back down into another blob, toss it into a lead barrel, seal it with concrete and launch it into deep space hate this record.

Up With People is a musical troupe that goes around the country (and even the world) trying to bridge cultural differences and create global understanding through public service. And musicals. They released several albums (all including this song) from the 1960s to the 1980s. Actress Glenn Close was a member in the '60s

Good intentions and wholesomeness aside, UWP became infamous for four years as being the selected Super Bowl halftime act from 1976 to 1986. They were lambasted as utterly the worst Super Bowl halftime act ever and, well, here. Take a look.




UWP's incredibly choreographed and cheerful singing and dancing acts were remarkable visually. No sleazy "wardrobe malfunctions", hard rock music, hip-hop or anything remotely disturbing to heartland American sensibilities. They were as threatening as milk and cookies. 

But in spite of it as time wore on, Up With People's brand of entertainment had become increasingly stale and dated. Halftime became the time you made a run to the 7-Eleven for more beer, chips and ranch dip. It wasn't until 1987 when they were permanently dropped from the halftime act roster and were replaced by hipper, edgier pop acts and commercials you just have to see.


They returned as the pre-game act in 1991, but that would be their last Super Bowl appearance.

While some people may look at Up With People as some pseudo-hippie musical act about peace, love and understanding, I look at them as just one big, if somewhat creepily happy glee club.

However, They've received corporate funding, including from Halliburton (cue Jaws theme), General Motors, Exxon, Searle Pharmaceuticals - major progressive no-nos. Leading to criticism that they are more closely linked to right wing politics than they let on. They've also received praise from John Wayne, Pat Boone and Presidents Nixon, Reagan and George H.W. Bush, not exactly the most liberal statesmen.

In 2009, a documentary was made on Up With People called Smile 'Til it Hurts: The Up With People Story.


Up With People are now in their 50th year. Not doing Super Bowl halftime shows, but still very much active.


Wednesday, November 19, 2014

The Long Wave Radio Band

Atlantic 252 was one of the first attempts to make a commercial pop station on LW radio and they actually became very successful in the 1990s with five million listeners. Listenership declined as local copycat stations on AM/FM and fewer radios capable of receiving long wave radio were available. After several format changes and a failed attempt at sports talk, 252 kHz now relays RTÉ Radio 1 for Irish communities in the UK and Europe.
The longwave (or LW) radio band is one you've probably never heard of if you live in the Western Hemisphere.

LW radio is mostly used in Europe and some countries in Asia. Long wave radio signals work similarly to AM. The signals cover a vastly wider area during daylight hours than standard AM because LW transmission relies mostly on ground waves, rather than skywaves (like standard AM and shortwave.) And because of their extremely long range, there are only a handful of countries in Europe with LW stations

The LW radio broadcast band is from 153 to 279 kHz, MUCH lower than the frequencies of a standard AM radio, which runs from 530 to 1710 kHz.

If you need a further breakdown, 1000 kHz AM is 1 MHz. The FM radio band begins at 88.1 MHz.

Yes, LW is really as far down as you should wisely go on the radio dial.

But the advantage of LW is it has an incredibly long range covering hundreds, even thousands of miles during daylight hours with a steadier, non-fading signal.

But LW in Europe today is regarded like AM in the Americas, a radio band for older people who remember it and it's use and listenership has severely declined in favour of higher fidelity FM and digital signals. But it is still fairly popular, especially for older British and European people living or commuting around the continent. It's also less affected by terrain than AM and especially FM and high frequency digital signals. It's also possible to drive from Spain to Austria and never lose the signal.

And I know what you're going to ask; Why didn't we have LW radio in this hemisphere?

Well, there's no easy explanation for that. Many factors come into play, but mostly it was the fact that LW was simply never allocated internationally as a specific broadcast band in the Western Hemisphere. Another is there are only 15 channels in the LW band and 107 channels on AM, later to 117 in the late 1980s with the expansion of the AM radio dial from 1600 to 1700 kHz.

Yet another is the LW signals are so vast, they would interfere with each other. And finally, they're more susceptible to electronic interference than even AM.  

However, that doesn't mean we weren't trying to use it.


In the 1970s and '80s, there was a planned civil defense radio network in the US called Public Emergency Radio. The network would broadcast on 167, 179 and 191 kHz.

The flagship station of this network was WGU-20 on 179 kHz out of Chase, Maryland.

WGU-20 was a service of a branch of the forerunner to today's FEMA called Defense Civil Preparedness Agency called DIDS. DIDS stood for Decision Information Distribution System, which was a network of Low Frequency broadcast and feeder stations, DIDS was supposed to deliver audio messages directly to the public within 30 seconds after activation. In case of attack, DIDS was supposed to save 10- 17 million additional lives in its initial deployment (by 1979), and as many as 27 million more if developed further.
Signing on in 1973, the purpose of WGU-20 and it's planned sister stations was to broadcast news and information to Americans in the event of a nuclear war. The station was always in test mode, 24/7.

However, listening to WGU-20 wasn't much fun. There was no music, no sports or casual talk on WGU-20 throughout it's life. No wacky morning zoos or outrageous contests either. WGU-20 only aired it's station ID, time checks and weather reports for the mid-Atlantic coast  

And here's what it sounded like:



The advantage of using an LW signal rather than standard AM or FM signal was because as I mentioned earlier, LW signals travel through the ground rather than the sky. And that's where most of us (hypothetically) would be in a nuclear war - underground. In bomb shelters.

Second, radio direction guided missiles would have more difficulty homing in LW signals because they don't rely on sky waves. Besides, since radio towers are above ground, they would likely be destroyed or unusable due to radioactive contamination.

Thus WGU-20's ominous unofficial nickname, "The Last Radio Station".

And LW stations have the same purpose in other countries. In The Letters of Last Resort, which are the considered the final acts of Her Majesty's Government in the event the UK is destroyed in a nuclear war and the Prime Minister and second in command are killed. One of the protocols given to UK nuclear submarine commanders is to listen for BBC Radio 4 on it's 198 kHz LW frequency. Because LW signals not only travel well underground, but underwater as well.

If there is no signal and all other protocols for verifying the worst have been followed and the UK is no more, the commander may retaliate with his/her submarine's nuclear weapons, not retaliate, join a commonwealth country like Canada or Australia or an allied nuclear power like the US or France. The exact orders can vary and change with each new Prime Minister.

And while LW is disappearing from modern European radios, it's worth noting how important it still is; UK submarines on patrol were reported to have briefly gone on nuclear alert in 2004 when BBC Radio 4's LW signal mysteriously went off the air for 15 minutes.

But while WGU-20 made it to the air, the other planned LW stations in the network did not.

First, we were pretty satisfied with the Emergency Broadcast System. Which is now called the Emergency Alert System, of which those ear splitting digital data bursts have replaced the once annoying, but comparatively easier on the ears 1 kHz audio tone.

Second, manufacturers balked at the idea of including LW tuning components in newer radios, which would add to the expense of manufacturing and ultimately serve no real purpose.

And third, with political pressure in the government cutback happy 1980s and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 and 1990, there was really no need for such a network  

WGU-20's final broadcast was in 1990.

However, if you're curious to hear what LW radio sounds like, there's a tunable WebSDR in Peterborough, UK you can use to sample the European LW dial.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Anti-Rock Music Hysteria

Racist religious tract, 1957
From the day rhythm & blues and country came together to form a brand new hybrid of pop music called Rock N' Roll that appealed to both young black and young white music fans, there was a problem....

Another racist anti-rock flyer, New Orleans, LA 1960
Older puritans hated ANYTHING with a backbeat. And the very thought of integrated black/white performing groups and audiences have always shocked and frightened social conservatives. Although their fear goes all the way back to the dawning of the Jazz age in the Roaring '20s, it began to really heat up especially as the Civil Rights movement was dawning and schools were required to become intergrated. Especially in the waning years of the Jim Crow era. 

Communism, Hypnotism and The Beatles by David A. Noebel, 1965
When the race card ultimately failed, they brought back other scary nemesis: Communism and the devil. Listening to The Beatles was surely a indoctrination and their records, audio Little Red Books, they alleged.

But The Beatles weren't exactly rationing their records away. And they were living pretty bourgeois lifestyles that Karl Marx probably wouldn't approve of. Besides, they were banned in The Soviet Union itself.

But religious conservatives latched onto a statement allegedly made by John Lennon. During an interview with Evening Standard reporter Maureen Cleave, Lennon remarked, "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink ... We're more popular than Jesus now—I don't know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity".

The comment went virtually unnoticed in England. But caused a viral massive public outrage in the US when quoted by an American magazine five months later. The furor that followed—burning of Beatles records and Ku Klux Klan threats against Lennon—contributed to the band's decision to stop touring.

"Well, before they can burn our records, they first have to buy them" - George Harrison
Amused by their supposed link to Communism by the American right-wing and religious fundamentalists. It's been said it was one of the reasons The Beatles recorded "Back In The USSR". Which shocked American ultra-conservatives speechless as their shaming of The Beatles backfired horribly on them.

Rhythm, Riots and Revolution by David A. Noebel, 1966
Rock N' Roll: The Devil's Diversion by Bob Larson, 1968
Rock & The Church by Bob Larson, 1971
But by the early '70s, the anti-rock hysteria had become a major tool of Christian evangelists to recruit impressionable young people. New acts such as Alice Cooper, The New York Dolls, Kiss and David Bowie were incorporating makeup and visuals into their performances, giving rock a more theatric flair. But to the religious right, they looked like black masses. But depending on who they were following, everything in pop culture at the time was a tool of the devil.   

Is it just me or are David A. Noebel and Bob Larson just not exactly the kind of guys you'd want to go out dancing with?

Backward Masking Unmasked by Jacob Aranza, 1983
But in the 1980s, with the popularity of heavy metal and new wave, came a flood of dire new books. The argument this time wasn't about race or Communism, but that rock directly promoted devil worship. And this time, they had proof...

Michael Mills "Hidden Satanic Messages in Rock Music" (1981) MP3

I had a friend named Rich who was a Born Again Christian who tried to convert me by playing the allegedly satanic lyrics of "Stairway To Heaven" Led Zeppelin backwards on his stereo turntable. "Can you hear it?" he said as he spun the record backwards "He (Robert Plant) just said 'My sweet Satan'! What do you think now?" All I knew was I had a really bad headache and a perfectly good Led Zeppelin record was needlessly ruined.... 

Why Knock Rock by Dan Peters & Steve Peters, (1984) This was also made into a video series that was shown at countless super lame Christian teen parties....
But in 1985, things got super ugly as the PMRC or Parent's Music Resource Center (or as we called them in high school, Pre-Menstruating Record Critics) was formed by senators wives Tipper Gore and Susan Baker, bringing potential legislation dangerously into this debate and rock n' roll was in for the fight of it's life.

Gore and Baker formed the group after Gore was listening to her daughter's cassette of Purple Rain by Prince and hearing the lyrics to the track "Darling Nikki", which specifically mentioned masturbation. Going through their kids music collections, they were 'shocked' to find many more albums with lyrics referencing violence and sex in even the most indirect way.

This included innocuous pop songs like "In My House" The Mary Jane Girls. And it could also include 85% of all pop music ever written in history. That was the disturbing thing about the PMRC. They thought the '50s and '60s were such a pure time musically and only since the 1980s did music get overtly sexual and mention gratuitous violence.

"My Girl's Pussy" Harry Roy & His Orchestra (1931)



"Butcher Pete (Parts 1&2)" Roy Brown (1950)


While many dismissed the PMRC as a group that was powerless against a by then well established music form, that wasn't entirely true. The very fact it actually made it to a senate hearing is proof of how dangerously close we were to actually legislating the end of free artistic expression in music.

And Frank Zappa knew what was at stake.

James Dobson & Susan Baker "Rock Music Lyrics" (1986) MP3

Zappa, Dee Snider of Twisted Sister and John Denver appeared before congress and blasted the senate for the hearing and the thinly veiled attempt at censorship.

Dee Snider made an excellent remark regarding the Twisted Sister song "Under the Blade", a song Snider claimed was written about an impending surgery, that "the only sadomasochism, bondage, and rape in this song is in the mind of Ms. Gore." he stated, "Ms. Gore was looking for sadomasochism and bondage, and she found it. Someone looking for surgical references would have found it as well."

John Denver, whom the PMRC wives and the more conservative senators thought would side with them were in for a big surprise. And Denver should know something about getting censored; In the early '70s, his song "Rocky Mountain High" was banned off many radio stations due to the FCC's ban on songs that promoted drug use and some record shops refused to stock the song. He knew exactly what Snider, Zappa and the acts targeted by the PMRC were up against.     
But the most passionate speaker was Frank Zappa.


Naturally, the religious right were milking this for all they could get. In 1985, an avalanche of anti-rock books and local groups of religious and socially conservative people began appearing on daytime TV talk shows to denounce contemporary rock music.
 
More Rock, Country & Backward Masking Unmasked by Jacob Aranza (1985) Not even country music was safe. But the author hit a nerve with country artists and fans with this book, as country fans tend to be more religious and conservative. But not like this. This was going too far. And country artists and fans soon began joining the rockers when they realized their music was in the crosshairs as well. 
Rock's Hidden Persuader: The Truth About Backmasking by Dan and Steve Peters (1985) Brothers Dan and Steve Peters were the type of Christians who would blame your bad day on a Thin Lizzy song you stumbled over on some Classic Rock station while scanning the radio dial. They argued satanic messages could be subliminally understood whether a record was played backward or forward...
The Devil's Disciples: The Truth About Rock by Jeff Godwin (1985) Unquestionably the most ludicrous of all the ludicrous books ever written on this immaterial subject. Even Christian rock and pop was a tool of the devil according to Jeff Godwin.
On December 23, 1985. James Vance and Raymond Belknap, after hours of drinking beer, smoking marijuana and allegedly listening to a cassette of Judas Priest's 1978 album Stained Glass, went to a playground in Sparks, NV with a 12-gauge shotgun to end their lives. Belknap was the first to place the shotgun under his chin. He died instantly after pulling the trigger. Vance then shot himself but survived, suffering severe facial injuries. Following numerous complications, Vance too passed away in 1988, three years after the suicide pact.

Vance and Belknap's parents sued Judas Priest, claiming the lyrics to "Better By You Better Than Me" (which was a cover of a 1969 song about a someone ending a romantic relationship through a third party from Spooky Tooth) prompted Vance and Belknap to their suicide attempts. A note written by Vance after the shooting was submitted as evidence as well as an "audio expert" who could discern evil in any record provided his example, claiming a subliminal message, saying "Do it" was repeated several times during the song.

(I personally heard that song many times before this tragedy and after, in both the Judas Priest and Spooky Tooth versions and both sober and drunk and high and not even once have I ever heard the words "Do it" in "Better By You Better Than Me". Nor have I ever felt the need to end my life over a song.)

Although the case was eventually dismissed in 1990, it further put rock music under the public microscope.

And the fear continued. In 1986, Wal-Mart stores (even then, a powerful and expanding empire) stopped carrying albums with explicit lyrics stickers and banned all rock magazines, including Rolling Stone from it's shelves. All albums for sale at Wal-Mart to this very day MUST be censored, clean versions.

And 1985/86 were rough years for Frank Zappa. He appeared on CNN's Crossfire program and staunchly defended artistic freedom....


.....And lampooned the PMRC controversy on his 1985 album Frank Zappa Meets The Mothers of Prevention


Warning sticker from Frank Zappa Meets The Mothers of Prevention.
Eventually, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) caved in November of 1985 and allowed for labels and retailers to voluntarily sticker their albums with a uniform Parental Advisory warning sticker to parents.

Donny Osmond (of all people) was vehemently opposed to Parental Advisory stickering. He predicted that teenagers would find a way to get an uncensored copy of the album regardless and that would negatively impact artists album sales as well with unsold and unmarketable "clean" copies of albums that would have sold without the Parental Advisory stickers. Osmond also argued that artists that did not make explicit music would be forced to do so to remain marketable. His predictions were proven correct in the early '90s as "clean" versions of popular gangsta rap albums were vastly outsold by the uncensored versions and mainstream pop/rock acts of the time such as Madonna and Kiss made their most explicit records then.   
Frank Zappa also released his album Jazz From Hell in 1986. And the album immediately was given an Parental Advisory sticker by the Pacific Northwest Fred Meyer department store chain. One of the very first to receive one.

Jazz From Hell was an entirely instrumental jazz album.


The Parental Advisory stickers did exactly the opposite of what was intended. They designated the "cool" albums - especially in the emerging hip-hop scene and it's sub-genre, gangsta rap. NWA, Ice-T, Snoop Dogg and others proudly and prominently displayed their Parental Advisory warnings not as stickers, but as an actual part of their album covers..

As hip-hop rose to prominence in the late 1980s, a Miami rap group called 2 Live Crew released their debut album The 2 Live Crew Is What We Are in 1986. Featuring shocking and sexually explicit lyrics, including the singles "We Want Some Pussy" and "Throw The Dick". In 1987, a Florida store clerk was acquitted of felony charges for selling the album to a 14 year old girl.

The game had been upped. Now record store owners and employees were facing prosecution for selling controversial albums to minors. Particularly 2 Live Crew's albums. Realizing what they were facing without retail sales, the group offered clean versions of their later albums. The move actually helped them because they became more accessible to radio and Miami radio station WPOW "Power 96" began playing 2 Live Crew's toned down offerings. But the group always made explicit records and a record store owner in Alexander City, Alabama, was cited for selling an explicit copy of their next album Move Somethin' to an undercover police officer in 1988. 

It was the first time in the United States that a record store owner was held liable for obscenity over music. The charges were dropped after a jury found the record store not guilty. But a chill was placed on American independent retail record shops. Especially in the Bible Belt and the Deep South.


However when 2 Live Crew's 1989 LP As Nasty As They Wanna Be was released, the shit hit the fan. Lawyers for the religious conservative group American Family Association met with Florida's governor at the time to see if the album met the state's definition of 'obscene'.

(To this day, outside of child pornography, very few things, if anything else, ever met mutually in any definition of obscene on a federal level. One person's obscenity is another's art. Even the Supreme Court allowed plenty of ambiguity in obscenity cases and left them up to the states in which these suits were being contested.)

The Broward County sheriff warned area record store owners that selling the album could be prosecutable after a county circuit court judge ruled there may be probable cause for obscenity violations. 2 Live Crew sued the sheriff and in June of 1989, a US district court judge ruled the album was obscene and two days later, a local record store clerk was arrested two days later, after selling a copy to an undercover police officer.

A few days later, members of 2 Live Crew was arrested for performing songs from the album at a nightclub in Hollywood, FL. The arrests and obscenity trials became international news and the group also received support from several rock and heavy metal artists. The memories of their earlier hassles with the PMRC were still painfully fresh.

Eventually, their convictions on obscenity were overruled.  

And somehow, the same old prudes that got their pantaloons in a twist over 2 Live Crew's albums completely ignored this classic from 1980.



In 1988, Poison released Open Up and Say... Ahh! While there was nothing controversial about the music itself, some people who overthink too much saw the cover model's Gene Simmons-like tongue and immediately wanted it banned.  

The "clean" cover of Open Up and Say... Ahh!

The obscenity threats also extended to rock album covers. And it had been for a very long time. But I'll save that for a future post.

In the mid '90s, gangsta rap reached saturation and began to fade. In it's place was a new musical threat to conservative and religious ideals. A hard rock group from Florida named Marilyn Manson emerged and at first glance, it was hard to see what they were upset about. It was a band that put a lot of theatrics in their shows, not unlike anything Alice Cooper and Kiss did 20 years before. But the rumour that Marilyn Manson was allegedly a priest in the Church of Satan (as well as the title of his 1996 LP was Antichrist Superstar) led to even more gruesome - and totally ludicrous stories, such as onstage human sacrifices, rapes and torture.

Marilyn Manson
But what made the allegations different was they were being spread by the internet, which was new and had virtually no rules in it's beginnings. But malicious lies and slander could be spread across the nation in virtually seconds and totally anonymously back then. And spread even farther and to others that much more quickly. By word of mouth alone, it took months to years at the fastest that they could be spread. 

And the band's leader/namesake Marilyn Manson had to fight back a daily barrage of unfounded and increasingly outrageous statements against him. And he did and took legal action against the sources of these statements. And they quickly ceased. Manson's music was also criticized after the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, CO as the shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, were fans of Marilyn Manson. And suddenly, Manson found himself in the same ugly national spotlight as Judas Priest and 2 Live Crew had a decade earlier. While no legal action was taken against Marilyn Manson, having to go through that experience alone is pretty traumatic.  

In the 2000s, a Detroit based hip-hop duo called Insane Clown Posse made hot lyrics a part of their act since their mid 1980s beginnings and after years of music industry rejection and the obsessiveness of their fans (known as 'Juggalos') of their beloved duo had came to a cult-like hero status outside of the mainstream had recently earned them another status - federally recognized criminal gang. 

Insane Clown Posse
In 2011, the FBI put the Juggalos alongside such notorious criminal gangs such as the Bloods, Crips, Surenos, Latin Kings and MS-13. They cited certain examples of assaults and vandalism allegedly involving Juggalos, which Insane Clown Posse vehemently condemned and questioned. The band recently filed a lawsuit against the FBI and lost. But Insane Clown Posse plan to continue the legal fight against the classification. 

While most rock/pop stars realize a certain amount of urban legends are actually helpful to their careers. When the myths begin to overtake the facts, it's time to draw a line. Books like the ones illustrated above would never be allowed to be published unchallenged by the artists the books are making reference to today.

Maybe what some people forget is it's pop/rock and hip-hop music's role to challenge the status quo. If rock had never evolved beyond the '50s, it would never have survived. And each generation brings changes. Some of them marvelous, others not so much.

Maybe sometimes the most outrageous acts that come along are just a generational gimmick to attract disenfranchised youth. Sometimes, they work. And sometimes, they don't. 

Or maybe no matter what you call it, it's only rock n' roll. But we like it.