Chapo Trap House - Bonus: We Are Sex Podcasters feat. Bryan Quinby

Episode Date: April 9, 2020

Will and Bryan discuss Tipper Gore's 1987 screed against "porn rock" and various other moral affronts of the 1980s. We talk hair metal, politicized outrage, anger's role in society, and of course, 9/11 & "limited hangouts".

Okay, hello friends, and welcome to some bonus Chapo content. Today we are taking a trip back through time to shed some light on a forgotten moment in American history and culture. Joining me to discuss, of course, is Chris Wade, but we are joined by longtime Chapo brother and friend, Brian Quimby of Street Fight. Brian, what's going on? Not a lot. This is great.

I wanted to talk about this thing because I'm like, I got really obsessed with the PMRC a couple of weeks ago, nowhere to put the information either. Well, it's all coming out now. So yeah, what are we talking about? We're talking about the PMRC, which stands for Parents Music Research Center. The PMRC was a committee formed by Tipper Gore, wife of the then-Senator Al Gore from Tennessee, and Susan Baker, wife of then-acting Treasury Secretary James Baker, who you may know as a guy who might have done 9-11 and the Iraq War.

But like one of the all-time, he was like the Bush family consuliery. He was their fixer. He was the guy who they sent to Florida for the 2000 recount, which is funny because the wives involved would later go on to, I guess, face off against each other in the 2000 election. Some loyalty among moms, am I right? But basically, this was a moment of moral panic in the 80s in America. This was in 1985. It was led by Tipper Gore, who was, I guess, kind of considered a liberal of the era.

When we get into this, that will shock you when we get into the stuff she actually cares and talks about. But this is a moment of moral panic that led to the creation of the parental advisory stickers on your favorite tape sets and CDs. Brian, when you were growing up, did your parents let you buy parental advisory albums or did they not give a shit? They just didn't give a shit. The funny thing is, I was there when the parental advisory started, and I was like,

I think the label, one of the great failures of the PMRC is that they made the explicit lyrics label look so fucking cool. Yeah. It really did. It really did. As soon as they put it on the packaging, there were t-shirts out that said it right in front of the t-shirt. Yeah.

Yeah. I think my parents tried to tow some line on not letting me buy albums with the parental advisory sticker on it, but I immediately wanted to get a t-shirt with the parental advisory label on it, and they let me do that and just walk around and be like, yeah, explicit content here, watch out, some curse words coming through. My parents were sort of like, they hated that I liked rap music. So if it was rap music with a parental advisory sticker, they would lose their fucking minds. But if it was metal, which is what she was super concerned with, my parents were just

like, ah, that's fine. It's just boys being boys. So we're going to get into it, and really the content for this episode is all drawn from a book that Tipper Gore wrote in 1987, which is two years after the big PMRC congressional hearing and then after the recording industry had agreed to start voluntarily putting stickers on albums. We'll get into the politics behind that committee and the recording industry's concession to the government, even though they claimed it was never like we're telling you what to

do because it's actually a pretty interesting politic going on there. But the name of the book is called Raising PG Kids in an X-rated Society. And I'm just going to read here from the jacket copy. It says, explicit sex and graphic violence. It's all around us on TV, in movies, videos, and rock music. As a parent, what can you do about these explicit messages? How can you protect your children from messages that contribute to a climate of violence, hatred, suicide, drug, and alcohol abuse, and impersonal sex?

So this book is basically a catalog of the worst obscenities of heavy metal music of the era. And it really is just such a funny moment in American culture to think back on because it really is. The book is focused almost entirely on heavy metal rock music, or as Tipper describes it, porn rock music. That's my favorite thing about it is that the thing is about metal was that everybody looked so fucking cool in that early part of metal that I can definitely see a parent

turning on the TV and be like, oh my fucking god. But the weirdest thing is this whole thing was set off by fucking prints of all people. Yes. It was prints. And we will get into the story behind all of this is amazing. The PMRC is sort of an artifact of, I guess like, it wasn't so much liberal hysteria because this was a genuine bipartisan effort in American culture, which again should give you a clue that anything that reaches bipartisan agreement on anything, you can be guaranteed it's absolute

horseshit at best or like actively evil at worst. The PMRC is I guess like a, you know, as most things a combination of the two. But yeah, this is a moment that was like, this is the mid 80s. This is like the height of Reagan's America. And like, you know, this is like a little bit of like culture war fodder that was very much caught up in a very specific moment about where like people were really scared of heavy metal music, but like also tangentially witchcraft, Satanism, and then like increasing drug use or increasing like, previously prevalent at like, you know, teenage sex and things

like this. But this is very much of like an 80s flavor of moral panic that seems very quaint by today's standards. The Satanism stuff is the funny stuff, I think. I think like the funniest thing in this book is that they spend a chapter freaking out because they think people are becoming satanic. They're thinking people are becoming satanic because they listen to like a death leopard album.

I know. I know. It's just, it's like, like, or like Van Halen's hot for teacher is turning people to walk down the left hand path. I mean, the amount of fucking time they put into worrying about Wasp is the funniest thing to look at in 2020. Okay. Wasp.

That's an acronym for, I will explain what the acronym stands for, but Wasp is a band that I guarantee you like nobody has heard of today. I totally forgotten they exist. I don't think I can even name a single Wasp song or like, I can't even hear it. Fuck like a beast. This act, Wasp formed like 90% of like the bullet points in this book and the presentation that the PMRC made before Congress about why like music has gotten out of control. It was like Wasp lyrics and a Wasp album cover that featured sort of like a buzz saw

pod piece. That was like the most shocking thing that they could find to like sort of scare the parents of America. It'd be like, this is what your kids are listening to. Wasp either stands for we are sexual prophets or we are sexual perverts. There's a fine line between a prophet and a pervert, Brian, but that is very true. But before we get into the book though, oh yeah, before we get into the book though, I like that you brought up the thing about how like rap music with the explicit lyrics

would be like that. That's astonishing because it is interesting. It's another like as a time capsule, there's almost nothing in this book about rap music at all. And that's because this was written before, this was 1987 and then the PMRC were 85. That was before like gangsta rap had really become a thing that was scaring. This was before NWA, which is I think 1989. So this was like right before the cusp of like when rap music became a thing that suburban

mothers were terrified by. But they mentioned Run DMC like once in this book and it's only about how someone got like hurt or beat up at one of their concerts. But like again, this is all focused almost entirely on punk and heavy metal music. And heavy metal music of an era that was like the most embarrassing era of metal, you know? Yeah, it got me listening to that shit. It got me listening to it because what happened, the reason I got super into this was because I was going back and listening to Danzig.

And then like I started to real, I started to remember that like every mother by Danzig right? Yes. It's a song that is a reaction to the PMRC. It is written about Tipper Gore, mother in the Danzig song mother is Tipper Gore. Tell your children not to walk my way. What'd you say? What'd you say, mother?

If you want to find hell with me, I will show you what it's like. Tell your children not to walk my way. Tell your children not to hear my words, what they mean, what they say, mother. My favorite song, that's one of my favorite songs now because it's about like he's challenging people's parents to a, people's moms to a... No, but Brian, I remember on an old Street Fight episode, you mentioned that when your dad found the original Dr. Drake Chronic CD with just the weed leaf on the CD, he like flipped out.

Yeah. The funny thing is like, I didn't really do the, I got into the metal thing in fourth grade. Like I was really in a motley crew in a fourth grade, which figures heavily into this thing too. But then I got into rap. I think in like the fifth grade, when as nasty as they want to be came out and it was on TV that the two live crew out there, they were on the news every night, I knew this

hillbilly guy that had it on cassette and he just, he gave it to me and I brought it home and my parents just heard me listening to the fuck shop down in my room. And they were like not impressed with it. Well, like I said, we'll start going through the book, but like, I think it's important to keep in mind like using this as sort of an artifact of like an earlier era of moral hysteria and panic in American history as it regards to like sort of pop culture and teenagers. But like a lot of things, I think it's interesting to note the ways in which like the actual

content of this seems like completely ludicrous and of an earlier era, but like the form of it in like more contemporary moral panics like that sort of has the same shape to it. A lot of the complaints and more importantly, what are being pitched as like the dangers of certain things I think are very similar to like sort of hysteria of our current era. So I was, I was talking to Will before this about how banal even the hardest like hair metal act lyrics start that it always it comes out to being like when you actually read the lyrics, it's like, yeah, baby, I want to do you, yes, so here is here is part of the part of one of the lines to wasps fuck like a beast. Oh no temptation fevers burning me. My hands

will set. My lips will scream. I take just what I need because I want to run my hands on you. My soul's alive. I feel the drive. The sweet meets where I feed well. I think they were freaking more in eighth grade or listening to this being like, yes, I need to sacrifice small animals to Satan. Yeah, well they freaked more out about his cod piece right with the chains on it, which is like the cool. That is a cool thing that happened in eighties. Well, just that just one last thing about dancing because I think people will probably more readily remember the song mother because it, you know, that song has had like a lot of it has it's lapsed and it's had a long life. But I think people may be

interested to find out it is written about Tipper Gore and Brian, like I said, it's challenging the mothers of America to fight. But I mean, if anything, Tipper Gore, she was so focused on, you know, albums with, you know, music and things like that. She should have been worried about books because if the kids had found gun densics home library, they would have started reading shit about like real life werewolves and all the stuff, you know, the expurgated books of the Bible where Jesus like killed a child for sassing him. Yeah. He's so great. I gotta say, like if there's he is like the dumbest guy that's ever existed. And that's why I love him. Like he's so he's he's like he's the dumbest guy with like smart

guy affectations and interests, but they're like filtered through his like his Jersey, like dumb guy, like muscle dude brain. And it comes out in the best way possible. But you know, the other thing I remember like real vividly from my from my childhood, it was probably it was my early teen years is rage against the machine being like naked on stage with PMRC written across their chest. I remember that too. Like they really got like a decade of material out of the PMRC, which I think is very cool. And what's amazing is the PMRC only existed for like a year. They did one congressional hearing and then Tipper wrote this book, but they've had such like a sort of outline, sort of outsized afterlife

because there's such good heels for, you know, the rock community, because this is like, you know, the squarist fucking, you know, I'll fuck it, I'll use the slur, Karen's. This is just a group of Karen's and sort of like a service industry tyrants and and and mommies, you know, just basically saying that, you know, no, you cannot rock, you cannot party. I don't have any. I can't actually cite anything real, but I'm sure that there were music videos in like 1998, 1999, 2000 that were still like having scenes of the the raucous front man busting up a congressional hearing about how bad they were and how much they can't do their good songs. I'm sure that corn has a PMRC like some sort. I can I can almost guarantee

it. It's so it's so funny. Like, like everybody, all the rock guys were probably like breathing this sigh of relief when two live crew and NWA started where they were just like, okay, they don't fucking care about us anymore at all. As soon as ice tea did the body count did cop killer. They're like all the white metal acts were just like, oh, we were just talking about like getting pussy and like crashing cars and drinking and driving. Thank God ice showed up to just literally start doing a song about murdering cops. I got in trouble for asking for that album for Christmas because my aunt and uncle were cops. And they were like, how do you think they felt that you asked for that album for Christmas? And

I was just like, I would sacrifice them for ice tea. Alright, well, let's let's get into the book here. This is this is this is Tipper Gore's sort of masterpiece, her magnum opus, raising PG kids in an X rated society. And I'm just going to read from the introduction here and it really sets the tone for a lot of what's to come. So it just begins here where she writes, like many parents of my generation, I grew up listening to rock music and loving it, watching television and being entertained by it. I still enjoy both. But something has happened since the days of twist and shout and I love Lucy. Brian, like this really sets the tone for like the way she begins almost

every chapter, because she has to find a way to be like, because these are all like, you know, boomers. And again, like, you know, she was associated with Al Gore and then like later the Clintons, which are like, you know, we're the we're the new Democrats, you know, we're of the we're of the post war generation. This is a new generation in charge of American politics. Yeah, like we were hippies. Yeah, maybe we smoked a joint and like, you know, the Beatles or our thing, but they're just there to assure you that like all the same arguments that we dealt with as kids regarding rock music and our culture, we're going to recapitulate now. But like, we're serious because it's like, like, I'll tell you why,

like there's just there's some they're like, no, no, like that old rock music that everyone says was filth and degenerate and actually Satan's music. Those people were laughable, but the music today that our kids are listening to that actually is pornographic filth and satanic. There is a guy that I went to high school with that was like he basically listened to like Cannibal Corpse and Marilyn Manson was like all the music he listened to. And he was at a high school football game at my old where I went where I grew up where I went to high school because his daughter goes there and they played a rap song. He didn't even

say what the rap song was, but he wrote a letter to the superintendent and they had to quit playing rap songs at the fucking school. And that's when I realized like this argument gets dredged up every single jet. Like in 10 years, there's going to be people that are 25 now calling the school superintendent about something that's like, listen, I listened to young thug. So I know, well, I don't mind if it gets edgy, but this is fucking too edgy, you know, But it's like Tipper has to reassure herself as the messenger for this cause and all of the parents that she's, you know, you know, frightening that like the Beatles and Chuck

Berry and like, you know, Buddy Holly, like that's okay. You know, that's that's fine that you like and listen to all that stuff, even though all of their music was also about sex and drugs pretty explicitly. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Like they don't have like the difference in the music between the sixties or whatever the Beatles and the, I mean, the Rolling Stones is porn rock. Like almost every song from the Stones in the seventies was crazy. And like, yeah, like they were, they had an album called like, you know, at his Satanic Majesties request that Tipper mentions, but she was like, yeah, that was the, she said

to Tipper says, you know, that Rolling Stones album, it was really more in a literary sort of metaphorical context, whereas like, you know, Slayer means it, you know, like, yeah, let's spend the night together in the fall from grace. No, but like, like, let's spend the night together. That was a stone, big stone single that was like hugely controversial because explicitly it was about, Hey, like, you know, let's have sex. Yeah. Right. So it goes on here. It says, and a small, but immensely successful minority of performers have pioneered the porn rock phenomenon. A Judas Priest song about oral

sex at gunpoint sold 2 million copies. So did Motley Cruz album shout at the devil with lyrics like, not a woman, but a whore. I can taste the hate. Well, now I'm killing you. Watch your face turning blue, as well as Sheena Easton's sugar walls about female sexual arousal was an even bigger hit on top 40 radio stations and Prince pedaled more than 10 million copies of Purple Rain, which included a song about a young girl masturbating in a hotel lobby. That's not all the songs about. Yeah. Yeah. I also love this. He said he pedaled 10 million copies like he was selling it in a raincoat door to door. You know, Hey, I got some purple rain here. You want it? So it says here, the dilemma for society is how to preserve personal

and family values in a nation of diverse tastes. Tensions exist in any free society, but the freedom we enjoy rests on a foundation of individual liberty and shared moral values. Even as the shifting structure of family and other social changes disrupt all patterns, we must reassert our values through individual and community action. People of all political persuasions, conservatives, moderates and liberals alike need to dedicate themselves once again to preserving the moral foundation of our society. Again, this is like 1985, Tipper Gord that they were they were the liberals in American society. These were like the Democrats saying this shit about we need to preserve the, I don't know, Judeo-Christian foundation

of America's morality. It is very funny that like, I can't like, we're already going through this thing with Joe Biden, where it's like we're getting screamed at for saying, you know, I don't want to vote for this guy. I like, I can't imagine the getting screamed at when Tipper Gord is like attacking heavy metal music and you're like, ah, just I don't want anything to do with these people. So it says, by the way, by the way, something you read in there, where they said, how do we keep our family values whole? There was a whole corn tour called the family family

value store. The family value store. Well, they were looking for ever like long after it was like any kind of threat to their, you know, like like censorship or otherwise because like ultimately end of the day, like the parental advisory sticker, I mean, you know, obviously I'm against it. I think it is a kind of a form of soft censorship because like a lot of big retailers like Walmart, like wouldn't sell parental advisory albums, but it's not like it stopped or slowed down the proliferation of porn rock and porn rap in American society. If anything, like you said at the beginning, it just made you want to listen to those albums all the more because it was like, oh, there's a sticker on every album that's like cool.

Like that's how I know to shop for music. If it's cool, it's got the sticker on it. Well, there were guys, so I do this podcast about new metal and we like cover, we cover new metal bands and we do a different album every month. And we recently did POD and Lincoln Park is another one where they didn't cuss and you know, POD was like Christian music and stuff. And we got a fucking shitload of emails from people who were like, my parents would only let me listen to the edited version of Limp Biscuits albums and you grew up listening to edited versions of music. And it does seem, it seems crazy to me because I like, as soon as I heard the first beep, I would be like, no, I can't do this. I'm moving on to something

with cusses in it. Like if I, if I would accidentally bought the like clean version of a rap album, like accidentally, you put it in your car stereo. I mean, as soon as that first edit kicks in, just like eject it, throw it out the window of a moving car. Worthless. Brian, just as an aside, was the family values tour the one in which Fred Durst had emerged from a giant toilet when performing with Limp Biscuit? Oh, that was Ozfest 98. The family values tour had a Romstein on it when I went to it.

And the lead singer pulled, this would have made Tipper Gore nuts. The lead singer like brought this guy out to the front with one of those black bondage masks on and a hospital gown. And he pulled the butt flap down and he pulled out a dildo and was like kind of standing behind him like he was going to pretending to simulate fucking him and then turned around and a dildo sprayed white liquid on the crowd and everybody in this is like 1999 and they freaked out a bunch of metal fans. Like people are like, no, this is too far. I'm joining a PMRC right now. Our values are indeed under attack. Yeah.

Yeah. So, but I do like the, I do like her thing that is like every, she is like being like, I'm hip. I'm cool. I'm with it. I used to listen to the Grateful Dead and shit like that where you're just like, then why don't you understand that this stuff is basically just that? Yeah. The Grateful Dead had a song, you know, all their songs are about doing drugs. All that like Lucy and this guy with diamonds. Oh, LSD, like driving that train high on cocaine. Like even the earlier generation of rock and roll music, like they had to like veil it through one more layer of metaphor. Like, you know, like, ooh, my ooh, la rock and baby. Like that just means that her pussy is good. Like that just means that she's fucking

everyone. Like, you know, like it wasn't, it didn't take that big of a leap to understand. And you know, the, the moral scolds and like, you know, religious authoritarians of that era certainly understood that rock and roll itself was just a slang for fucking like, and that if you listen to the music, it would make you on a party and like hook up. Like that's what it was for. So very early in the book, there is a part that's about twisted sister that is like, it's so fucking mild what, what she's yelling at them for. It's like, uh, it's something like, uh, he, he missed these. Here it is. He, he also missed the Snyder statement in

a teen fan magazine about greeting the increasingly younger fans of his band. Twisted sister with like, all right, you sick motherfuckers. If you're ready to kick some ass, we're twisted fucking sister. Like, is that really super offensive? Like they're freaked out about the video for I want to rock, which seems insane to me. It's like, people are telling people not to listen to their parents. This is sick. Another one of the big acts that keeps coming up again and again. And like, she even references the act and their big single. It is the scorpions and rock you like a hurricane, which are German guys pretending to be American metal dudes. And the lyrics are just like, here I am, rock

you like a hurricane. Number one, America, sexy, cool. Like just shit like that. And it's just like, it is, it is the most, it is the most anodyne fucking content imaginable. That, that, that twisted sister one, I mean, them going after twisted sister like that, because they were also mad and they, they had like a gotcha with logic moment where like, where like D Snyder was like, you know, we're not making music. I mean, we're not doing anything that offensive. It's not like we're saying anything crazy. And then one of the, I watched the hearings and one of the people up at the hearing was like, well, would you like to tell the audience who, what the name of your fan club is? And he's like, yeah,

it's the twisted motherfucking fans or it's the, yeah, it's the sick motherfucking fans of twisted sister. And he was like, the guy was like, gotcha, right? That's it. He's calling themselves that. So one of my favorite, probably my favorite thing about this book is that each chapter begins with like, like epigraph quotes that like, you know, sort of kick off the chapter. And they're always like, she usually pairs it with like an uplifting moral message. And then like, you know, yeah, like a motley crew lyric. And the first of the first chapter is a mother takes a stand. And this is about like her, her forming the PMRC. And the chapter

one epigraph begins with a quote from the, the punk singer, Wendy O Williams. And the quote is, you say that things are getting out of hand. This is an inflammatory statement. Rock and roll has always meant sex, but maybe it's not fucking that you're against. Maybe it's just masturbation that you find offensive. And again, this is like supposed to be like the most shocking, gotcha quote, but it's actually like a really intelligent, like articulate critique of their point of view, you know, because like, like, you know, like, because Wendy Williams was like, you know, her music was sexually explicit, but it was from like a, a female perspective and talks about things like, you know, masturbation or orgasms or

things like that, which, you know, begs the question, what's really offensive here? Like, is it the prince is talking about sex or that he is letting teenage girls know that like sex is pleasurable for them too, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And like, uh, uh, I think the funny thing about this very beginning of the book is like, this is the prototype. This is the very beginning of, uh, of like, uh, people like this complaining about their mentions on Twitter, because this really is, she went to a fucking thing where like, uh, a panel and Wendy Williams was there. And then like most of the first chapter is about how she had to sit at an airport and ruminate on the rude things that Wendy O Williams said

to her because her flight was delayed. And like, you know, and again, she showed up as a representative or someone who's like, you are pornographers, like you were like Phil Pebbers, who was like ruining our society. And again, like, it's like, yeah, it is like the my men's he's thing where it's just like, you come out with like something that is deliberately inflammatory and like, you know, poking a hornet's nest. Then when people just show up to be like, no, fuck you, I disagree. Like piss off. They're just like, God, I can't believe how violent in course our society is. It was just like, dude, it's like, uh, so like, I actually, she goes into the, uh, the anecdote about like, you know, what really

inspired her to get the PMRC started. And it goes as such. She goes, I'd become aware of the emergence of explicit and violent images in the world of music several months earlier through my children. In December 1984, I purchased Prince's bestselling album, Purple Rain for my 11 year old daughter. I had seen Prince on the cover of magazines and knew he was the biggest pop idol in years. My daughter wanted his album because she heard, she had heard the single, let's go crazy on the radio. I mean, that's, that's, that's a scary message right there. It's encouraging, you know, insanity among youth. But she says, but when we brought the album home, put it on our stereo and listened to it together, we heard the words

to another song, Darling Nikki. I knew a girl named Nikki. Guess you could say she was a sexist. I met her in a hotel lobby, masturbating with a magazine. The song went on and on in a similar manner. I couldn't believe my ears. The vulgar lyrics embarrassed both of us. At first I was stunned. Then I got mad. Millions of Americans were buying Purple Rain with no idea what to expect. Thousands of parents were giving the album to their children, many even younger than my daughter. I like that she said that she was familiar with Prince and like seen him on the cover of magazines, but had no idea what to expect about the album. It's just like, what about Prince's self presentation? Didn't say like sex stuff to you.

There is a theme in this book of her explaining that like, oh, my daughter was also very embarrassed by this or like there is an anecdote later on where a guy is like, a guy's son is singing an Aussie song, an eight year old is singing an Aussie song. So he takes them to the store and has them look at the cover of an Aussie album and say, do you want to be like this? And the kids like, no, where it's like, they can't figure out that their kids are fucking either, you know, Tipper Gore's daughter was probably embarrassed to listen to it with her mom, of course. But like, she, she probably wasn't shocked by it or freaked out by darling Nikki until her mom was like, can you fucking believe she's talking about masturbating on

this? They're talking about masturbating on this song. Like I would have been embarrassed sitting with my dad and listening to somebody sing about masturbation. My daughter would have also been, would be in, well, she would have been embarrassed like two years ago sitting with me and hearing something. Yeah, that's the worst. That's the worst. So I, here's just another clip that I really love for, she's talking about music videos or like an even more potent delivery vehicle for, for smut and violence and explicit, you know, themes and images. So this year, I had always thought that videos had great potential as a dramatic new art form, but I had not watched many. I began watching more often

and observed that several included adult or at least mature themes and images. Mom, why is the teacher taking off her clothes? My six year old asked after watching Van Halen's Hot for Teacher, in which a quote teacher does a strip tease act for boys in her class. It is funny to think about the video. My parents hated MTV so much, but from like the age of eight, I was obsessed with it because like just back then MTV was the coolest thing. So like, it is, it is funny how crazy they get, they got about videos and how like when you look at them now, you're like, okay, like what, it's not like there's nudity in them or anything like that. I like Hot for Teacher though. I like the Hot for Teacher example.

Yeah. It's a great song. Yeah. It just, it's, so it talks about the famous committee hearing about it and also Frank Zappa, who became like a big figurehead of, you know, anti PMRC. He testified and he called the PMRC quote, the Washington wives, you know, this is sort of a proto Bernie bro, you know, misogyny sort of thing. But like, you know, let's be honest, that's exactly who they were. Famously in the committee, like she got like a whole bunch of like, this book is filled with people who like, you know, as Dr. Joseph Stucey says in his landmark study about how rock influences behavior, she got all of these like quack academics and doctors to testify for the PMRC. And like every time I was reading this book and that

she mentioned like an authority she was citing, I had to Google their name and was always expecting to be like, you know, like, you know, Dr. Jailed after, you know, cash of child pornography found in crawl space and house or something like that. Or it found out that like all of his like, you know, clients had killed themselves or something like that. But famously, that's who is testifying on behalf of the PMRC on the side of rock and roll and truth and justice was Frank Zappa, Dee Snyder, and famously John Denver, who was one of the artists who agreed to testify. And when he, you know, had his moment to speak, all of like the senators and people was like the, it was like the commerce transportation cabinet. Who was it? Fuck forget

I forget the secretary in charge of country roads. Yeah, exactly. They all thought that he was going to be on their side and be like, yeah, this heavy metal music is obscene and it's gotten out of hand. But he very eloquently testified on behalf of the First Amendment and that he is opposed to censorship in all forms in American society. And that like once you make something officially illicit, you sort of like you make it more, more attractive to you know, especially young people. And he cited the example of people intentionally or otherwise misinterpreting his song Rocky Mountain High to being a drug anthem and not just a simple ode to the, you know, crisp but slightly thinner air of Colorado.

It is funny. That is such a cool, that's like almost pro wrestling in a weird way that they like John Denver was like, yeah, I'll testify. And all the senators were like, Oh, we got an artist on our side. And he comes in there and reveals like, no, I'm on the heavy metal guy's side. Like, I think that that is a real cool move by John Denver that I like the hearings are very funny too. Like Frank Zappa just fucking destroys these people. And every time the senators come up with an argument, they just he makes them look stupid. It's just over and over again. I don't even know if these aired in full on TV. But if they had, we would be much closer to delegitimizing the government.

Now, so the thing about like at these hearings and like, you know, in their presentation, the PMRC were always careful to say that this is not about government censorship, right? Because that would have fallen afoul of like pretty clear precedent on on the First Amendment. Like the government actually can't legislate against things like, you know, musical lyrics or creative expression. But like what they did, it was this sort of like two step of like sort of being like, oh, well, we know, you know, oh, we're not calling for censorship or whatever. We just want to have like a skull and crossbones and like warning danger put on every album with like sexually or explicit content in it. But what one of the things

that they did want the music industry to do was have all of the lyrics to every song on an album available on the cover of the album, which is like, we would totally negate all album art forever. Also, it would be like illegible because the type would have to be so small. And like they eventually started putting it in the booklet in the CD or cassette tape itself. But then, you know, if it's wrapped in cellophane, you would have to open each album and read the lyrics for yourself. So it's like, I mean, it was sort of like an intentionally ridiculous proposal. So that so that what they would what they would settle on is like the compromise would be like essentially what they were going for. And what they settled

on voluntarily was the parental advisory sticker. Now, the interesting thing about the politics of this is that like, if they had wanted to, the music industry could have actually just said, fuck you. You're saying that this isn't about government censorship. Well, then like, we're going to call your bluff. And if you want to take this to the Supreme Court, like, you know, this is something we're willing to stand on because you don't have like any legal, you know, standing to pursue something like this. But what happened is that the RIAA, the Recording Industry of America Association or something like that, like the actual industry trade group of the record industry voluntarily came up with the parental advisory sticker

because I think the same committee in Congress was going to hear a piece of legislation that they had proposed and were lobbying for that was all about home taping. And this is another amazing artifact of the era is that when blank cassette tapes started to become wildly available and people realized that you could tape songs off the radio or if you had a double cassette player, just dub music yourself, there was this whole campaign by the recording industry to be like, home taping is going to kill the music industry. And they knew that this bill was going to come before them. So they played nice on this like pseudo censorship issue to get that bill passed, which I think would raise taxes or the prices of blank cassette

tapes as it kind of means to backstop, like, and, you know, protect their intellectual property. So it was like an interesting bit of music industry scum baggery going on here that led them to get the compromise that put parental advisory out stickers on CDs and cassette tapes. I also when you brought up the lyrics, there is a piece that there is a sentence buried in this book about how she just wanted them to staple the sheets, yes, to the CD on the outside or have them available up at the counter. I just got to and like, I love the idea of parents going in to a record store and saying like, I'd like to read the lyrics to fuck

like a beast to see if it's good for my kid. So in the book, actually, she has a couple editorial cartoons like as like insert art. And this is this is a newspaper cartoon essentially depicting the PMRC congressional hearing. And it's sort of like a heavy metal band standing in front of like a lectern with all the senators there. And they're saying, yes, Senator, my name is Adolf de Saade of the band Fascist Lust. And I'd like to deny the sex and violence charges. What I love about that is they basically probably almost 20 years before I think this is where Brace Belden got the idea for his hardcore band.

Yeah, that is a that is a good point. I mean, Fascist Lust sounds like like they'd be they'd be at least put on a good show. Yeah. Well, it sounds like an 80 that sounds more like like that that early 80s punk like the sex pistols sort of stuff is a Fascist Lust is kind of that name. So skipping ahead here, chapter two is titled where have all the children gone and the quotes that begin this chapter are wonderful. The first one is, of course, St. Paul from one Corinthians says when I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. The next quote is from Paul Rutherford of Frankie goes to Hollywood, who

says here, kids are really sophisticated now. They don't need to be sheltered. Little girls want to be fucked. Teenagers, little boys, they want to fuck. True, though, he's fucking not lying. Like young people want to fuck. That's like part of being a teenager at the beginning of the chapter. She talks again about music videos and she says one set of parents told me that their four year old had nightmares for a week after watching the music video thriller, which shows Michael Jackson turning into a monster, frightening his girlfriend and joining graveyard ghouls and a great dance routine that older teens love. I was scared of that video, by the way, when it came out, I couldn't watch

the werewolf part, but I could watch the zombie graveyard dance. The funny thing that there was a funny part in this chapter where they're she's mad about the dead Kennedys and it's like children are also portrayed as victims of brutal violence by some of these bands. One group tastelessly styled the dead Kennedys has a song called I kill children. It goes like this. I kill children. I love to see them die. I kill children. I make their mothers cry. But that song is about Reagan's austerity. Yeah, cutting him cutting budgets for like social services and shit. But like I do think I do. So that actually says a lot about like

you can't just read these lyrics and know what these things are about because you're gonna always because when she puts lyrics in here, they're always taken what because lyrics you can take them more wildly out of contact, top context than like a podcast thing, you know, where it's like they can take a piece of a pod like a minute of a podcast and make it sound like you said something really evil. But if you take one line from a song and then you cut out the words in the middle and put an ellipsis in between it, you can fucking make the song about literally anything you want it to be about. And this goes back to my like earlier point about how like the the content of this moral

panic seems like so specific to the era, but the form is basically the same. And like the common denominator is just like an absolute inability to distinguish like irony or like at any level and just like an like like an insistent literal mindedness to like it like to the to the documentation of like anything that you see. And the idea that like the the depiction of things that are bad and not good is a de facto endorsement of those things. And to become affected by those things, you just need to sort of like see the image or hear the words and like the child or person is just like a kind of passive receptor to the to the evil thoughts inherent in a creative endeavor, you know, there's one thing she

says here, it certainly has regards like Reagan's austerity budget, which is what the dead Kennedys are talking about, is she says here, children have always been uniquely vulnerable, but they are even more vulnerable in today's society. And she's not, of course, talking about like the Reagan 80s of which, you know, many kids were made more vulnerable through the actions of let's be honest, the husbands of the people of the people in charge of the PMRC. I mean, it is interesting how how into talking about Satan, all these people are because like, honestly, every one of these people and certainly their husbands were like literally working for the devil. And like, I mean that you can take that in a literal sense or a metaphorical

one, but like these people like are literally doing Satan's work in this country. And also the idea that like she was writing this in 1985, children are more vulnerable than ever in today's society. It's like, I don't know, I think they were probably a little bit more vulnerable during the Great Depression. You know what I mean? Or like, I don't know, the 19th century when they were when they were packed 30 into a room being like newsboys in the low and the popper news boys in the Lower East Side at the beginning of the century. Yeah, just about the just about the the devils and demons. Almost the only reason I asked to come on is because I was reading about additions of Dungeons and Dragons last night

as I am want to do. I just saw this great little gem in a 1987. The company that published Dungeons and Dragons responding to this quote an effort was made to remove aspects of the game, which had attracted negative publicity, most notably the removal of all mentions of demons and devils, although equivalent fiendish monsters were included later renamed Tenari and Batizu. So they had to to turn their demons and devils into the Elzebub's of Tipper Gore's panics. There is like a story in this book about Dungeons and Dragons too. Yeah, I'm actually I'm really weird. Yeah, I found it here. Here it is. So actually, it begins by talking about I remember I talked about the Rolling Stones album, Their Satanic

Magistries Request. This is her quack professor, Joseph Stucey, who points out such references are merely spiritual or literary illusions no more serious than the Mephisto waltz like astrology or transcendental meditation, he says. The Satanism in 60 songs represented a fleeting curiosity about alternate philosophies and religions. But like a cancer, Satanism has come a long way since then, as heavy metal groups capitalized on the growing fascination with the occult. From the Exorcist to the Dungeons and Dragons fantasy roleplaying game, Americans chased one occult fad after another. The popular Dungeons and Dragons game has sold eight million sets. The game is based on occult plots, images and characters, which

the players become as they play the game. According to Mrs. Pat Pulling, founder of the organization, bothered about Dungeons and Dragons, the game has been bad, bothered about Dungeons and Dragons. Everyone in the 80s is trying to get on that ad fad. Everyone is angry about drinking and driving, and you have to form a parent's group against it. So according to BAD, the game has been linked to nearly 50 teenage suicides and homicides. Pulling's own son killed himself in 1982 after becoming deeply involved in the game through his school's gifted students program. A fellow player threatened him with a death curse and he killed himself in response. Yeah, the death curse, that is to me like

that when he says the death, when she's like, I think he really thought he was in a death curse. And there is a story that Brett tells about, he used to hang out at this like hip Christian family's house that was trying to like, they were baptizing people in their pool in the backyard. And he was really into magic. And they called him into a room alone and said like, Hey, when you guys play magic, do you guys think you're really doing spells on each other? Because they were freaked out that they were fucking doing spells. And I just adults being worried that there's demons and spells happening. Just it doesn't even fucking compute with me now.

That shit was real. It was incredibly real in the 80s. That is one of the most fascinating like times of moral panic. Like the, you know, the, the, the McMartin preschool stuff. I mean, you can, you can talk endlessly about how seriously people took what seems to be so patently ridiculous. But you know, I have to say if I had spent, you know, four or five years leveling a paladin up to like level 15 or something in my Dick DM just says, it's an unsolvable curse and he dies. You know, I would be contemplating radical measures as well. But, um, yeah, like it goes in, like I said, they, they, they quote this guy, Dr. Joseph

Stussy a lot who, um, you know, provides some sort of like intellectual or academic veneer for the argument that like heavy metal music is different than all other kinds of rock music because like it's intended to be taken seriously. And it's kind of like a, a, a user's manual for like evil and violence and the devil. And he says, I know personally of no form of popular music, which has had hatred as one of its central themes as radio consultant as radio consultant Lee Abrams allegedly stated, heavy metal may be the music to kill your parents by. This is in a chapter. This is in a chapter called the cult of violence. And again, like this is, um, you know, I remember like I was, I was way too young to have any

like actual memories of, uh, the PMRC, but I do remember in the 90s, like Bob Dole and his campaign against Bill Clinton made like, uh, violence in movies like a thing. And I remember Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting being like, you know, the, the, the big ones about like sort of glorifying, uh, drugs and violence by making it seem cool. But it's the, it's the same idea that like, that, that images or words or even like ideas themselves function sort of like epidemiologically that all it takes for you to like become infected by something is to just sort of see the bad image, like here are the bad lyrics, like encounter the bad thought. And it's sort of like it, like without you even being aware of it, it's sort

of like takes you over and like reprograms you into being like a vicious or evil person. Yeah. I mean, it is funny because this book doesn't talk about movies at all. It talks a little bit about TV. It talks about TV a little bit. And actually, as long as we're talking about TV, this is one of my favorite parts. Uh, she's a, you know, of course, quoting another hack named Dr. Gerbner, whose views on televised violence are illuminating that the violence is seen as entertaining, helps it go down smoothly, he says. There is no pain, no gore, no consequences of the violent action. Therein lies the most, it more insidious lesson of televised violence. When the violence is sugar coated, it is more deadly. Dr. Gerbner

also observes that violence has changed over the years. Quote, the approach on a show like the A team, for example, which uses a variety of military weapons without anyone actually getting killed, presents the problem of uninterrupted sequence of sanitized, yet action oriented violence as a solution to almost any problem. And I got to say Dr. Gerbner's on to something because when I used to watch the A team, it would drive me crazy that like everyone was just shooting machine guns at each other, but somehow like the fire would always go like right in front of someone's feet. And then they were just kind of like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not what we're doing here. But it was just four guys hopping out of a van

and just spraying people with machine gun fire and like nobody gets tagged even once. It sounds like she wants to, in that part, it sounds like that doctor wants to add gore to the A team, you know? Yeah, exactly. Like, I mean, there's a certain point about like PG-13 violence where like everything sort of looks like a video game and they sanitize like what a bullet hit really looks like. But yeah, he's just basically saying like everything should be like a Michael Hannecke film and just really like rubbing your nose in like the awful sadistic like aftermath of a violent act and really like really punishing you the viewer for watching it. Like B.A. Barakas has to kill a guy with his bare hands

and then you have to see that bad guy's family crying and mourning his death. They want the A team to be. Yeah, exactly. It's just getting pretty heavy. So in the Cult of Violence chat there, it has some examples of things that were featured on MTV in the eighties. And I was going to read a couple here. For the music video, for Motley Cruz, Looks That Kill involves women in cages being attacked by the studded leather clad male band. A laser shooting woman frees them and sets the band on fire. I just, I love the descriptions of like the videos and the lyrics of that era because like it's so stupid. It is so stupid. Like it is like like that era of metal. Like it's hard to imagine like a dumber time for

music in American culture and it's like you know I'm just trying to read a plot or an if then consequence into every any heavy metal video that it is always just like a series of like inner cuts between like the band has a cool guitar then sexy women followed by children yelling. It's like there's no there's no like narrative logic to that to derive meaning or consequence from. They didn't write the if looks could kill video in that kind of way where it's like yeah we're torturing and beating women and then a woman actually fires laser at lasers at us through our eyes and that's feminism. So yeah, I would really like this video. I would like to be sitting in on the Motley Cruz story meeting where

they're really trying to like break out the the acts of the video and like make sure that the denouement has the appropriate moral resonance. There's another personal anecdote from from tipper about how video images have disturbed her family members. She says here my six year old was disturbed by Tom Petty's don't come around here no more because the last scene showed an Alice of Wonderland fame turning into a cake and being sliced up. We adults must not forget in our desensitized age the effects these images have on children of all ages. So I mean she's even looping Tom Petty into all of this Tom Petty's Alice in Wonderland music video that was just vaguely kind of

psychedelic that's that is too much as well that is warping children as well. If your son's like freaked out about a Tom Petty video you just got to be like hey buddy you know just give up. So yeah the next chapter video is so that's such like a weird thing to I mean I understand that kids are scared of what they're scared of but it's like you can't expect the world to like change so much that you're like we got to censor this. We should we should not allow like you know exactly we should not allow the standards of what is like adult society or entertainment or music or literature or whatever to be dictated by like the world's weakest six year old. You know what I mean she's like basically

trying to to cancel surrealism at that point. Yeah but again we got to we got to get this Unshanandalu off TV or else people are going to get the wrong ideas of what you can and cannot do with eyeballs. I feel like they I feel like like will has said a few times like I just feel like they don't get any they don't have any sense of like symbolism or irony or any of that stuff. They have they and they again are making movies out of music videos which probably didn't take especially in 1985. They didn't think at all about what they were putting in those videos. They were just like wouldn't it be cool if there was like cave women and also like a guy spitting and then you know what I mean a guy sitting

at the end of his bed like like fucking resting his head in his hands. That's all they were they weren't movies. So this is from the chapter about sexually explicit lyrics. Tipper writes no one wants to take sex out of music but the amount of explicit descriptions of sex currently being marketed to youngsters must be reconsidered. Unhappily some artists prostitute sexual scenes for their own commercial gain while exacting a heavy price from our children in the process. It is a quantum leap from the Beatles I want to hold your hand to print singing if you get tired of masturbating if you like I'll jack you off. It's a long way from the Rolling Stones let's spend the night together which drew protests in its day to

Sheena Easton's Sugar Walls which the lyrics are you can't fight passion when passion is hot temperatures rise inside my sugar walls. So I mean I didn't like that doesn't seem that different than a Rolling Stones song like when it was fucking like you know you know Little Richard you know long tall Sally she built for speed she got everything that Uncle John needs like they would just say a wop bop a lubop a dubop instead of being like yeah like my pussy is hot right now like it's just sugar walls could be anything really I guess I mean I know what you know what it's about but it is like that thing where she says it's not like it's not up for interpretation what sugar walls are but it's

up for interpretation what let's spend the night together is because yeah that's one sounds more explicit to me like the one where they're saying let's like stay all night together and fuck you know so it's just one more lyric here I gotta share it from of course the Motor City Madman Ted Nuget's Wango Tango the one artist I would make an argument actually should his work should be censored and it should be censored for lyrics such as this when I need some lubrication baby you get a belly propped down you get your butt propped up yeah I think you're in the right position baby I did we did me and Felix did a little thing about Ted Nugent on October this month and like there is I'd listened to like five

interviews with him and in all the interviews he would come to a point where he'd be like Wang bang sweet Poon Tang is a real lifestyle and I'm like I fucking hate you dude so much right we get now yeah in the sex chapter eight we get to I think probably my favorite quote in the whole book Motley Crew shows up again they are really like a bet noir of this book but it says your members of Motley Crew a band popular with young teens thrive on explicitly describing sexual activities in public as part of their act they have been known to shout into the microphone such statement says do you motherfuckers like to eat pussy do you know why our fucking hearts are broken tonight Boston because we can't eat all that Boston

pussy tonight I told Brett he could open the next live show with that if he if he wants to fuck it but that is the funniest fucking thing that I I think that would be the best thing I heard one time I was at a concert and the lead singer walked out in the first words out of his mouth was like are you ready to worship Satan but I want to eat all the Boston pussy is totally a better fucking stage banner than you know it's you know it's funny is if it were any other American city it wouldn't nearly it wouldn't be nearly as funny just the statement we can't eat all that Boston pussy tonight it's like Boston market or something I don't know what I don't know what's offensive about them that's another thing like she's

talking about a concert like would she ever say that a Broadway play with cuss words in it shouldn't be allowed to exist like I'm sure there were plays that were about eating pussy back then yeah a few people know this but actually William Shakespeare invented eating pussy he did it he did it during the black black quarantine yeah exactly oh just imagine what we're inventing right now so no the no it is it is just underlined by the phrase eating Boston pussy perhaps being one of the least erotic for eating Philly pussy would also be not that around another in that phrase in and of itself is is a an advertisement against sex she should be praising Motley crew for despite their act decreasing the

overwhelm all horniness of that arena that night it's very you know I need to think of a guy that's like really excited like standing on stage saying I want to eat every single pussy in this audience right now such an edgy that was like such an edgy thing at that time where now it's like I want to be pegged by everybody in the audience right well I mean like just two things here is like in each chapter there are these sort of like bullet points that give you like statistics about like I don't know I guess what they're selling is like social breakdown about you know increasing use of drugs or alcohol among teens or teen pregnancy or STD rates or like teen suicide or like all these sort of like sort of factoid

measures of like society particularly for young people decaying and like I don't know like even if you take those statistics seriously as I'm sure like they probably reflect some kind of reality I just need to stress again that this was tipper gore and the wife of George HW Bush's fucking secretary of commerce in the Reagan era or no he was sorry he was Reagan's secretary of Congress and then would go on to be George Bush HW Bush's chief of staff I think it's like these people were doing all of the evil to the country like they were the ones that were like sure causing things like suicide and despair and like not to mention literally importing crack into the United States so it's just like these people

create all of these awful social problems and then like they're like oh here's Motley crew they're talking about eating pussy that's why it's making all these people kill themselves you know or like yeah they listen to an album backward and another interesting thing about this book is that for all of its focus on like lurid explicit sexuality as part of the culture war there is absolutely nothing in here about being gay or like gay themes or gay sex which is hilarious because one of the first things they talk about is Judas Priest and they were like the exactly explicit lyrics about Judas Priest and managed to miss the entire hilarious thing about Judas Priest is that like how did nobody not know that

they were gay until like the late 90s yeah it's yeah because she's just like this fucking lead singer a Judas Priest is writing all these lyrics about fucking women and it's like yeah he's like the lead singer of Rob Halford is you know thinking making America's teenage girls thinks that it's cool to dress in leather leather and be a daddy and it's just I'm sorry girls can't be daddies I am reading an oral history of heavy metal right now and there's a part in it where Rob Halford does say that like he he used to bring a machine gun like a real gun on stage and shoot blanks in the air and then just start pointing it at the audience and you can see that on their faces they were completely freaked out and

did not understand what was going on and I was like that is so cool I mean I talk about another sort of like a different era this isn't like rock music was all about showmanship this is before this is before nirvana came on the scene and it was like three ugly guys wearing rags would just sort of like mumble in front of a microphone and like then smash their instruments but like before the grunge era like to be in rock music you had to have like a like just sort of like a car a car knees like yeah show me like like an like ice capades level of like lighting smoke and and like you know like flair and acts you remember like motley crew Tommy Lee had like a drum set that would like levitate off the

stage and start rotating him as he played the drum was over the audience yeah the we've lost that the the rollers the roller coaster we've lost that because we've stopped musicians from eating Boston pussy that's true it's true the PMRC really killed that kind of showmanship that they had I do I I always say it's gonna come back but like I I just recently saw corn who could definitely do something like that if they're in arena rock band they were they're like classic rock and it was like they had four screens on stage and they did a costume change and I was like okay yeah you could have shot a gun into the audience I guess now things people would be more freaked out by that now probably oh my god well I would

be like he was just like he thought it was like this really badass thing that he was doing on stage and then he said like half of the audience is like just went white with fear as you fucking would I mean Jesus Christ that is great but I just want to read what one paragraph here just like talking about like you know like the fact that the complete absence of like any any mention of gay people or gay sex from like all of this just is also an interesting artifact of the era but I just like I want to read this because like again this is tipper gore these are the people of the 60s generation who like rebelled against their parents and like you know protested the Vietnam war allegedly or like smoke to

do be and like we're into free love and the Beatles and all shit like that I just like it's good to read this just to show like how utterly worthless that entire hippie generation was because they all turned into people like this human beings were created as male and female as sexual in beings endowed with this gift of love and life this marvelous cycle of pleasure and recreation the sexual instinct is the most powerful urge humans know and can bring the most intense ecstasy nothing is wrong with songs and other messages that celebrate love and sex as long as those in the public domain remain within the reasonable restraints of our social customs and values this prefaces like the entire anti gay marriage

argument about how like men and women are created as unique sexual beings and fulfill like a complimentary role that can create life and like that is like the only actual like good part of human sexuality is that like it's just you know God created men and women and like this is again this is the Democrats bringing this shit up in the 80s it also would a really like to hear a tipper gore be tasked with writing a like a sexy song that she felt appropriately celebrated the act of physical love they have to play they have to play wedding vows between the two people that the song at the beginning of the song so you know that they're they're actually in love and married of course they are they the next chapter is

of course all about teen suicide and the link between heavy metal and teen suicide which was like Judas Priest is actually taken to court over this shit and luckily yeah Ozzie was taken to court like and luckily like those cases failed because believe it or not you could not prove in a court of law that playing the Judas Priest album backwards contains satanic instructions to end your life but it says this chapter this chapter actually made me very mad because it was like all these parents like who what was going on in these houses had way more to do with whatever happened then they're just bit and it tipper gore is like amplifying these voices of people are like no my son never thought about committing

suicide until he listened to a suicide solution by Ozzie Osborne you know exactly so it says here uh yeah according to the national education association many teenage suicides are linked to depression fueled by fatalistic music and lyrics in late 1984 19 year old John McCollum shot himself in the head in his home in indio california he had been listening to Ozzie Osborne's albums before he killed himself and was still wearing stereo headphones when his body was discovered as the united state is united press international reported the lyrics in suicide solution are part of what McCollum's parents claim spurned the teenagers suicide the lyrics of course are breaking laws knocking doors but there's no one at

home made your bed rest your head but you lie there and moan where to hide suicide is the only way out don't you know what it's really about so there you go if you listen to something that powerful who can be fucking pressured into topping themselves right and like the Ozzie thing he explains what that song was actually about and they're just like I don't I don't believe it's actually because it was about somebody that that happened to that had committed suicide in his life and he was like singing about that and it was like uh so then you take him into court and you drag up all this shit just so you can say like no I did everything right it fucking Ozzie came in and parented my son for three

months and now he's now he's like this okay the next chapter I already read the dnd part of it but the next chapter is all about satanism and it begins with a quote from Paul McCartney that again will I will submit to the court's consideration that the entire generation of people and music that they inspired our dog shit and here's here's example number one this is quote from Paul McCartney let's say a really great group emerged and they came out with a really great album and turned a lot of people on to satanism there's got to be a point where you're going to say look guys we're all for artistic freedom but maybe we just don't want to double trampling trampling across america dude fuck the Beatles dude

wasp forever wasp yeah fuck like a beast is better than abbey road I anything anything the Beatles ever produced all these guys were so freaked out by satan like black Sabbath I in the book in louder than hell that the oral history I'm reading black Sabbath like they started getting fan mail from like witches and stuff and people started sending them like artifacts and stuff like that and it freaked them all out and they had to get rid of it because I guess they're christian guys and it's so fucking weird how how freaked out these people are by just hearing dark shit like you could watch a fucking movie about satanism and it'd be like oh well you know that's just a movie it's just but they

are pissed about slasher film so maybe I'm wrong about yeah yeah they do talk a little bit about Texas chainsaw massacre in the book but like again of the era the 80s era when like satanism or like practicing witchcraft and satanic rituals was like a big fear of people and yeah we did that live show yeah yeah live show in New York where yeah I remember and like just some of the weirdest shit like the guy was like saying like your kid might be a satanist if they're shoplifting at candle stores and it's like people were my kid my kid wants to go to the mall every week and all they do is hang out in Yankee candle yeah my house smells great but I'm worried that dark forces maybe getting an edge in but I'm

like Paul McCartney cell Paul McCartney saying something like that is just yeah fuck the Beatles forever like I fucking I would erase the Beatles from history and replace them with Motley crew if I could absolutely absolutely but like what the fascinating thing about that is like you know I'm sure there have always been people who are like you know into satanism and I'm not even saying like I'm sure a good number of them got into it probably through popular culture but like that kind of satanism were like people like decide to read Anton LeVay and dressing in black is like the tamest shit imaginable like none of those people are like they're doing it as like kind of an aesthetic pose or kind of a fuck you to

like square Christian American society but like no one involved in that was doing anything actually evil it was like the nerdy a shit imaginable like anyone who wants to tell you talk to you about Anton LeVay at a party is just a big nerd but I just want to underscore again that like actual like satanic pedophilia what at an organized level definitely was going on in American society and it was being perpetrated by like everyone who donated to the Republican Party and the Democrats in the 80s like the Franklin credit ring shit like like these people in the PMRC and their parent and their fucking spouses were way closer to like actual like satanic like child sacrifice and murder than anyone who fucking

likes drew a pentagram and like you know in their notebook in the back of a notebook yeah maybe the maybe the galaxy brain G conspiracy about this is that the PMRC were basically you know running dogs to create a distraction limited hangout limited hangout I'm telling you yeah dude I like I mean it's gonna make sense to me in 10th grade I got really into Satan because it just seems like cuz he's cool it was a cool dude yeah well it was just like I had this class called crafts that they put me in it was just crafting and and they put me in it cuz I was a fucking idiot and I didn't do anything and everything I made was satanic in that class it was like it would be like make a call like one of the assignments

really was to make a collage out of things cut out of a magazine and I just had Charles Manson in the middle of it and then cigarettes like we're just a bunch of cigarettes yeah and she was like the teacher called my parents and had him come in for a fucking conference and she was like I think your son is satanic and they were like who cares he's an idiot so yeah like but like Brian that's a good development of the like the 60s Satan stuff like LeVay like formed it published his first satanic books and like 69 and stuff he was like a 60s burnout guy like in the Manson thing like that was all hippy stuff but then by the 90s the church of Satan only existed like troll religious for groups being like

oh yeah you're gonna put ten commandments on the courthouse lawn we're gonna put a statue of Baphomet how about that yeah it's it's it's nourished it like that and like they're mostly like libertarian in their like actual like outlook on the world which is bad enough as it is but like Brian like like your example about getting into like yeah I was into Satan like it didn't really like alter your behavior or like ethics at all basically what it led to is a lot of doodling yeah yeah it was all just fucking like wearing shirts with pentagrams on them and stuff and think yeah six six six was really cool it's the cool number yeah and you like you like you display it or doodle it to like kind of like yeah like freak people

out a little bit but like your actual behavior did not change in the sense that like you know if you adopted a new religion you know what I mean yeah there was a guy I went to high school with and I still think he's probably the coolest guy I ever saw he would get in trouble once a week for wearing a New Jersey Devils hockey jersey with the number six six six on the back and the name was Satan and I just think that's like the height of cool dudes in high school and again like I said like it was the every every teenager or rock act associated with Satanism did not believe in it in the slightest I would say the vast majority of people of the kids who got into it did it knowing full well the actual like

the irony of it like that like the kind of the symbolic subtext that was really going on like nobody who got into it did it out of like a sincere belief or dedication to like evil or worshiping the devil which is like in itself like just funny like it's just a funny thing to like say you're into or do but it's a troll it's a troll like it's an everyone involved in it understood that at some level other than these fucking adults who again I really really must stress at the exact same time this was going on was like either participating in Franklin Credit Union shit importing crack cocaine into America and funding like literal rape and death squads in Central America like actually actual like

satanic murder and torture on like a massive level yeah it's just it was just being edgy because like saying you were satanic in I mean in the late 90s saying you were satanic still freaked out like 70% of the people I went to high school with would be like don't fucking say that man you're gonna go to hell okay like we spoke to joint wrapped in Bible paper one time oh yeah and we were playing with some dark forces there were you a little bit nervous you know no I wasn't but like I hung out with all these like bad kids and like a bunch of them were just like I don't want anything to do with that man and they just like backed off of it and I was like this is so fucking weird that you guys still

believe in this stuff it's like believing in Santa Claus when you're a teenager you know and you know like I think the last moment in our culture that like really reflected like like this kind of shit was like Marilyn Manson and Columbine and I was who and Eminem kind of yeah yeah you got to get Eminem in there but like particularly like the satanic like weird you know like oh this is dark like there's it's not just music it's like it's like a vehicle for something like you know evil and sinister it was like Marilyn Manson and Columbine and it was like that first Marilyn Manson album which coincidentally was the only time like it was the last time he like anyone cared about him at all and he wasn't just considered

like kind of a clown like by this by his second or third album like I think everybody kind of got like yeah this is a little desperate you know like this is he's trying a little bit too hard to be like controversial and scary but like after that moment like none of this stuff has ever come back really right I went to Ozfest 97 with Marilyn Manson was on that touring behind Antichrist superstar like at the at really the main time that people were freaking out about it like you know the album had just come out and I was at Ozfest in a plane somebody hired a plane with one of those banners on the backup drags behind it and said remember that Jesus loves you and it was flying circles around the place

and then I look over into the on the other side of the venue and there's a bunch of fucking sirens and cop cars over there but nobody knew why and then when I got home we found out there was actually a bomb threat there too because Marilyn Manson was there so it was like an actual it freaked people out but I think it also just tired people out at some point where they were just like I don't care anymore well we've also we've talked about this kind of a lot over on and introducing the I mean my big theory is that nine eleven really killed anger in music and there was still a little and in pop culture in general and it had to get much sillier or like popular music turned into a much like lighter like

more like hedonism focused affair and there were still some holdouts like you disturbed or drowning pool into the early odds but like by 2006 2007 all that stuff is like totally passé and kind of removes the need to be panicked about this and I mean so think about the music panics that we've had and I don't know the last decade the first one that comes to mind and maybe the only one is like is Miley Cyrus too sexy at the VMAs oh yeah yeah I do or even then it was like a more of like a that was maybe an appropriating thing because she was trying to twerk whatever but you know we don't have many controversies about whether music is too angry right now but maybe it's coming back in a little way well I mean I've been

listening to a ton of metal over the past like three months like actual like Danzig and and Brett is listening to a lot of thrash metal and stuff and it just feels like it feels like an artifact of a time where like people were okay with with being angry and I mean I hope it I hope it starts to come back especially since you know the TV show we're making is the aesthetic we asked for was headbangers ball but yeah well I was we I just think that like it's harder to freak people out now and generally what does it is is like the gender bending stuff that that could that could still freak people out but like it's really just singing about politics at all has gone away and if that was still

here I think people would still be freaking out about rock music I think Chris is right I think most of them like musical controversies which like again do never ever get to like a rise of like national prominence it's just people kind of like little hearings and sort of like people sniping at each other on like the internet or like maybe like you read an article about it or like yeah or all based in like sort of controversies about like cultural appropriation yeah or like the personal conduct of an individual person not really them their musical conduct like you know when we were talking a lot about XXX intasian you know and I think all of a lot of that discussion was very warranted but that wasn't really about

his music it was about like what kind of guy that person was and like if you wanted to make a case about like you know Motley Crue and like how bad their lyrics are like if you want to have a hearing about them you could have just read from their like I don't know autobiography or they pretty much admit to like just raping a woman like like they've done bad things that like you know there are reasons to cancel Motley Crue they're just not Motley Crue songs yeah yeah I mean they stink I was talking to I was talking to Catherine about this the other night and this was like based on something that like Matt has brought up that I thought was really poignant and kind of stuck with me about these sort of like

hinge moments in our culture where it's like like you can really see like a door kind of like opening and closing or like just a corner being turned and he's talked to like Matt has talked about Woodstock 99 really being like that moment and like just in the five year shift from like Woodstock 94 which I remember being like kind of a big deal and even though if it was all like commercial and was essentially like a sell out of whatever even stupid message the original Woodstock had it was like three days of peace love and rock and roll and they pulled it off in 94 like all the biggest bands are there and it was like Green Day and Red Hot Chili Peppers and like acts like that and I remember like

you know it worked and everyone kind of felt good about it and like the album came out and just in five years later like Woodstock 99 was like even grosser but like the headlining acts were like just like like the dome like aggression like anger music and like famously you know you know climaxed in a riot in which people actually like were hurt and sexually assaulted while Limp Bizkit was playing break stuff on stage and Matt was talking about Red Hot Chili Peppers actually were playing during the ride. Oh really? Yeah.

Oh shit. When they were playing fire everybody their cover of Jimi Hendrix fire. But I will say this. I shit on fire. I did. I think the spirit of Woodstock 99 like I heard it described this way and it's I totally agree with it and like I was there was like let's go to New York and fuck shit up which I don't think is the intention of like what Woodstock was supposed to be.

Woodstock 94 didn't even have that and that's only a five-year difference like American culture had just gotten like strangely darker and more nihilistic and like a very profound way. You know? It felt neat being there in like this mosh pit where you couldn't see the other side of it where like the lead singers are surfing on wood. But like when I look at it now I'm like oh man this this fucking thing was like out of control and it's surprising that people didn't die at it.

But the point Matt made about Woodstock 99 is specifically like the Limp Bizkit break stuff being kind of like an anthem not just for the concert but just like that kind of cultural moment in America is that like this is where like the 90s were heading like the end of the millennium like the 90s were supposed to be like the best decade ever basically we'd figured everything out everyone was you know happy and prosperous and like there was no wars anymore any real problems left in the world that like we hadn't solved through like liberal democratic capitalism and American leadership. But at the very end of it like we were all just sort of anticipating something happening

that would fuck it all up or change everything and like Matt talked about break stuff this kind of directionless anthem of like give me something to break like prophesizing the Iraq war like the Iraq war fulfilled the hunger the need in that audience to break shit for no purpose or really any any just anger for no political direction or emotional connection it was just give me something to break. And with 9-11 we finally got the excuse to do that on a global stage but the need for the music went away. So like yeah there wasn't any anger it was like there was either hedonism like an idiotic

sincerity for a few years after 9-11 or just kind of like yeah like the anger or darkness to a large degree kind of went away and also what went away was pop music as like a national monoculture at all like it all kind of disappeared after that like there are there were never any like the end of the 90s like the boy bands and then like the new metal like they were both reacting to the same thing because if you liked metal like you hated the boy bands and Britney Spears and like music for girls that you had to know about. But the point is everybody knew about it like everybody at every level of the culture like knew about the backstreet boys and was responding to them in some way and there just there really

isn't any equivalent like that like you know 20 years later in American culture. You can imagine an almost infinite amount of stupid things happening in government right now but it for me at least is almost impossible to imagine a type of music or performer who would have to be brought up in front of Congress to like answer not for themselves but for the content of their music that's that seems like something that that has actually been exercised from our national moral horizon I guess. It does feel like it does feel like after after 1999 or so when when that music started when when that angry music started to like sort of on their down slope but somebody mentioned

that like in 1999 Limp Biscuit also did or no and maybe 2000 Limp Biscuit did a tour called the summer sanitarium tour where people were booing them and throwing shit at them because they hated them you know where it was where it was just like this breakneck speed of like nope now everybody hates these guys and you can see like the change but you're totally right about it all being directionless rage because I didn't think about politics ever but I was pissed off but I don't like I don't even know what I was pissed off about at that time like I don't I don't know what the thing was that that got me mad it wasn't like it definitely wasn't politics because I had no fucking idea I didn't vote in 2000

so like it is it is a really weird thing to think about because we were very that whole generation was very pissed and almost at war with each other like you had to pick a side yeah metal and pop music and like and like what's interesting about it like in that late 90s moment of like you know before the dream all came crashing down is that like officially nobody had any reason to be angry at anything because like like we'd solved all the problems but of course like in your actually lived life like they had all the same like just misery anxiety depression and alienation that had come before and in fact is getting worse and worse and worse but there was like there yeah there was no articulation

of that outside of this kind of like angry young white guy thing and what's interesting now is that like those same sort of currents are like still existing and getting worse but like it's all on the computer it's like it's not tied to music in any way like whether you become like an alt-right person or like an epic you know communist on Twitter or just like a 4chan like just purely nihilistic weirdo like it's all just this kind of like like there's no music there's no like the culture is based on like sort of text and images and kind of like this kind of anti-meaning that the internet produces but as a result of it it's like incredibly niche and like it's you know it tailored to these very specific

like online communities but there's no like national monoculture that represents anything anymore. Yeah that's yeah there was nowhere to go back then either to like I didn't you know I didn't have anywhere to go to kind of try to figure out what I was so pissed off about at that time and the internet has probably just taken away the need for something that cathartic something that's cathartic like like limp biscuit or corn in 1999 because I would go in those fucking pits and I'd be down there like banging my chest and like half crying and screaming I would come out of there like like I'd been through a fucking war you know

and I didn't do anything I wasn't doing like anything in my life and and I think the reason now that like I've been able to channel that anger into into what you know what we do has taken away it takes away some of the some of the need for that yeah like people are still getting I think people are still getting anger but it's all been like funneled into a direction and whether it's like politics or you know you see people screaming about food all day on the internet and stuff like somebody just mad about Chicago hot dogs go out and yell about that I will say maybe telling about this transition I was looking up on genius just the phrase PMRC to see if I could find the latest reference to PMRC in music and

unfortunately genius you can't sort by date but I will say a telling trend that I see is a lot of rap songs talking about referencing the PMRC a lot of songs and particularly you know rap songs telling the PMRC to go fuck themselves but somewhere along the line the search turned trade changes from PMRC to returning hit after hit about perks that is also that change of moving from an anger to a kind of an hedonism I don't have a yeah he's gonna get perked out and not deal with this well there is a lot of rap now that's inspired by that era of metal though too that late 90s early 2000s like City Morgue and like you know Flatbush zombies and there's a lot of these SoundCloud people that are like when

they ask when when they get asked who their who their heroes were they'll say like Marilyn Manson or corn or the deftones and I think we're gonna see a return kind of a return to that but it's gonna be the type of return that's like kind of just a mix up of everything that just the same nostalgia that that we always have right I just like just like cuz I'm bringing this up cuz like Katherine and I were talking about this the other night and I was genuinely marveling at it like like one of these things that like looking back on it seems so unlikely but King like just think for a second about how like absolutely singular and bizarre it was that Nirvana was at one point like the biggest rock group in

America like that those guys were like international global rock stars despite the fact that they were like these like weird like unshaven very shy kind of unaggressive like you know like they were just everything about them was just like not trying like be like being kind of like yeah shy and neurotic and like introspective and intellectual and like sort of dressing bumbley but they were like mega mega like top 40 radio stars yeah yeah yeah it's hard to imagine that happening again probably won't but you know there are different versions of that thing throughout that that are manifesting and like we keep talking about it as like you know the the the SoundCloud coat a coterie of stars very much fill up that void of you

know I mean a lot of them aren't as shy maybe as as or retiring as like Kurt Cobain was who you know in interviews which is kind of like mumble and yeah yeah songs of that but you know in terms of like kind of come from nowhere having a lot of songs that are mostly about being sad and stuff like I don't know things things find a way of coming back hopefully a little Uzivert will be brought up in front of you know but with Mike Pence's wife yelling at him in front of Congress that's a great example by the way because you know that little Uzivert is just means Lucifer right yeah yeah exactly say it fast enough it's just it's Lucifer come on he's gonna be special he's gonna be special for me forever because that's

the first mosh pit I ever got in with my daughter was little Uzivert like tell her yes we moshed it a little Uzivert that's wonderful that Brian that is indeed how you raise a PG kid in an x-rated society yeah I think that's a good place to wrap up this this culture focused crossover episode of Chappell and Street Fight I want to thank Brian for coming on and and reading the book Tipper Gore's book with me it's it's it's a good one you know there's a lot of good lyrics in there it's very funny so you know what did we learn I mean I think I learned that like most things that come out of Washington DC the PMRC was like an actual limited hangout false front to distract from like actual coordinated ritualistic

satanic worship and child abuse being carried out I guess allegedly by every single member of the PM's RC and their husbands and probably children as well I learned that Molly crew wants to eat a ton of pussy well Chris any final thoughts about the the the rock music panic of the mid 80s it's just it's so hard to look at the lyrics of the hair metal generation and be like this is dangerous yeah this needs to be contained the people cannot have this this secret information in front of them oh man no I would wait I would also just as a by recommendation watch decline of Western civilization part two if you are at all interested in the in the the world of hair metal in the mid 80s it's just an amazing document documentary

I think it might be on YouTube right now and if not it's on prime yeah yeah I got I bought it on because I've watched that movie 200 times I bought it on itunes because it's it's that movie fucking kicks ass I'm kind of more of a fan of part one about like the punk guys about like black flag in LA but part two also also rocks part two is funny like that's why it's good well I actually just I have this final thought here I just had sort of like a flash of vision of the future of things to come like Chris you said that like you just can't imagine like as as idiotic as our politics are you can't imagine like a a recording artist or a musician being called to testify before Congress about why they're the messages

that they're putting out to the world they're warping a younger generation of people and you're right I can't imagine that happening who will get called before Congress at sometime in the future podcasters yeah yes absolutely podcasters that is that is the thing that is that is what's turning our kids into you know Epstein truthers and what's making them not vote for Joe Biden it's podcasts and eventually we're gonna have to answer for this right now well until that dead all right boys thanks a lot for hanging out oh yeah and if you haven't if you don't if you don't listen to Street Fight please do so if you're not yeah already you ain't got nothing else to do yeah Street Fight check out Shocktober I just did an episode

of Brian's mini series about sports talk radio about Mike Francesa to God so yeah for that as well there is a Shocktober next Thursday for the choppo fan Shocktober is gonna be out next Thursday we got a new episode where me and Felix spent about 60% of it just talking about man cow again that's great and also if you're into music check out Chris and Molly's podcast and introduce yeah which is a if you like the last 20 minutes of discussion here that's just about like kind of generally music and culture it's all about that and Brian's been on to talk about corn we do a lot of Woodstock 99 talking that and will's been on to talk about the fall so yeah it's good if you like this you'll like that all right

cheers guys bye bye so come and get it