The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) was a committee formed in 1985 by the wives of several congressmen. They included Tipper Gore (wife of Senator and later Vice President Al Gore); Susan Baker , wife of Treasury Secretary James Baker; and Nancy Thurmond , wife of Senator Strom Thurmond. Their mission was to educate parents about "alarming trends" in popular music. They claimed that rock music encouraged/glorified violence, drug use, suicide, criminal activity, etc. and sought the censorship and/or rating of music.
Proponents of the PMRC claimed that the change in rock music was attributable to the decay of the nuclear family in America. They said that since there was little stability in the family, children were forced to turn to outside influences, and thus were greatly vulnerable to corruption. As a method of combating these problems, the PMRC suggested labeling records that contained "explicit lyrics or content". They said that it was a method of warning parents of dangerous material before their children listened to it. They pressured the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) into requiring that labels be put on all records containing explicit content. The RIAA resisted their pleas.
Opponents of the PMRC (most notably Frank Zappa and Jello Biafra) said that the problem with record labeling was that it violated First Amendment rights and that there was no one definition for "moral standards". They also argued that many of the supporters of the PMRC were not set only on labeling, but on controlling (or even banning) records with explicit content.
On September 19, 1985, the US Senate Commerce, Technology, and Transportation committee, under pressure from the PMRC, began an investigation into the "pornographic content of rock music". Many famous rock musicians were called as witnesses, including Frank Zappa, Dee Snider, and John Denver. Zappa said: "The PMRC proposal is an ill-conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children and promises to keep the courts busy for years dealing with the interpretational and enforcemental problems inherent in the proposal's design... It is my understanding that, in law, First Amendment issues are decided with a preference for the least restrictive alternative. In this context, the PMRC's demands are the equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation."
Zappa also pointed out in media interviews that neither "comedy records" nor "country music" recordings were being subjected to the same call for warning labels in the proposal, despite the latter genre being rich with examples of references to whiskey, sex, divorce, hellfire and the devil.
There was a blank tape tax pending in Congress. In the era just before the battles of filesharing and the internet, lobbyists for the recording industry were accepting labeling in return for the enactment of a blank media excise tax to be levied on everyone who might purchase any blank media of any type (especially including tape cassettes at that time as they were used to dub CD recordings).
The corporate and Congressional justification for this was allegedly to recoup money that was perhaps to be lost in the age of digital recording where analog "generations of quality" via copying become moot. And the price of blank media would increase exponentially. The RIAA and other industry associations were, as Zappa pointed out "giving away the rights of a third party (the consumer) without their permission." The same corporate welfare arguments found their way into the Digital Millennium Copyright Act legislation.
On November 1, 1985, before the hearing even ended, the RIAA agreed to put labels on those records containing what the PMRC saw as explicit content. Many record stores refused to sell albums containing the label (most notably Wal-Mart), and others limited the sale of those albums to minors. The label became known as the "Tipper sticker". Some politicians attempted to criminalize the sale of explicit records to minors, and others went so far as to try to ban such records. However, the power of the PMRC has greatly declined in recent years, especially with the growing popularity of rap and heavy metal (popular targets of the PMRC). Still, the RIAA encourages the labeling of any album containing explicit lyrics.
Notable snippets of audio from the hearing found their way into Zappa's audiocollage "Porn Wars", released on the "Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention" album. Senators Gore, Hollings, Gorton, Hawkins, and others appeared. The album cover featured a bitingly sarcastic parody of the RIAA warning label.
The Filthy Fifteen list
In 1985, the PMRC published its infamous "Filthy Fifteen" list of songs that were on top of the PMRC's hit list and what they determined the songs were about.
External links
Last updated: 05-17-2005 04:22:31
