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Gored



I remember when music was still a little bit of a threat to parents, even if more imagined than real. Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center were a big deal once upon a time. Parental advisory stickers started appearing on album covers, then they were even printed directly on the cover art (remember Jane's Addiction had released Ritual de lo Habitual with that ugly white cover because of this?), bands were protesting, parents were treating cassettes with advisory labels like they were as bad for you as a pack of cigarettes.

I think Tipper Gore, her crew of Washington Wives, and all the parents that bought the PMRC argument gave us kids way too much credit. Kids might hazily listen to lyrics, but it's not until they have a Hayes Code telling them they can't hear them that they start to actually pay attention to them. Maybe it's not a good idea to overgeneralize, but I'm going to go even further. Let's be honest, any naughty lyric by any band that the PMRC took offense to was in all likelihood nothing compared to what many kids witnessed coming from the mouths of parents in their own homes and/or their friends homes.

None of this was really all that serious, though. I mean, when you have a band as ridiculous as Warrant writing a protest song called "Ode to Tipper Gore", you can safely assume that you're not in the same league as the protest music of the Vietnam era. Maybe there was something to the whole Cop Killer kerfuffle, but looking back, barely anyone would have noticed that terrible attempt at hardcore had it not been for all the flack. Sorry Ice, you make a better cop on TV than a cop killing frontman of a mediocre hardcore act.

Fugazi was the first band I had heard as a kid that was being dead serious about actual ideas (Crass would come later). But, being a kid, I didn't quite get it. My response to the music was not to sit back in reasoned thought about what they were saying. Fugazi was energizing, exciting and fun. But much later it came to me that a major part of what they were communicating was that you can still be energized, excited and have fun, but you don't need all the bullshit you think you do to achieve any of it. Pretty straight forward stuff. Not understanding this was always and naturally still is the real threat.

I started thinking about all of this because I was watching the Ian Svenonius interview with Ian MacKaye for the umpteenth time recently. MacKaye has a lot to say, and sure, many of his assertions are arguable, but hey, if they weren't, then he wouldn't be saying anything worth a damn.

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