From: mmchugh@andy.bgsu.edu (michael mchugh)
Subject: Issue #100: Rock and Roll Confidential (complete) Monthly Post
Followup-To: rec.music.misc
Keywords: Rock and Roll Confidential Music Censorship Newsletter
Organization: Bowling Green State University B.G., Oh.
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 01:15:17 GMT

ROCK AND ROLL CONFIDENTIAL         NO. 100/AUGUST 1992
BOX 341305, LOS ANGELES, CA 90034
MMCHUGH@OPIE.BGSU.EDU

Copyright 1992 Rock and Roll Confidential, Inc./ISSN:0891-9372

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This issue of Rock and Roll Confidential marks a change in its distribution. Starting with this issue (No. 100/August 1992) RRC will be available for the first time on USENET. It will be posted monthly on the following bulletin boards :

alt.music.rap
alt.rock-n-roll
rec.music.misc
alt.music.alternative
alt.rock-n-roll.hard
alt.music.progressive

RRC is still primarily available via printed format. Subscription information is at the end of this issue--M.L.M.

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LIGHTS, CAMERA, STRATEGY.... Classical music wells up as cops 
on patrol ride slowly past a burning flag-painted building. 
Then we see they re actually riding security in front of a 
long black limousine. Cut to a blacked-out shot of a handgun 
being cocked slowly, and then the squeeze of the trigger.

Pow! You re in the middle of the For the People 
campaign of a politician known only as Freeman. 
It s a wild ride--dinner with bankers, campaign 
appearances with a Jackie Kennedy-like wife, the 
most hideous kiss of a baby ever filmed. 
Throughout, Freeman is beset by the homeless, 
hordes of youth, strikers, and civil rights, peace, 
and environmental protests. 

The police rain violence on all who disturb the 
status quo. But they can t stem the tide, so 
Freeman and his advisors pick up guns and finish 
the job themselves. 

This is the video for Symphony of Destruction,  the 
first single from the new Megadeth album, Countdown to 
Extinction (Capitol/Combat). It would be something 
special if it were simply a combination of a typical 
anti-Big Brother heavy metal video with a typical anti-
cop rap video. 

But  Symphony  is much more--the cops aren t just 
brutes, they re clearly the public end result of private 
corporate decisions. And no other music video comes 
closer to an accurate description of  the class 
alignments of the 90s.  Symphony of Destruction  
explodes the myth that a prosperous white America is 
being dragged down by a black underclass--those under 
attack are black and white, but so are those doing the 
attacking. Along with white fat cats and hard hats,  
Freeman s got plenty of support from black 
professionals--his inner circle even includes a black 
minister. 

But what makes Countdown to Extinction one of the 
best metal albums of this or any year isn t just 
ideas. The music is crunchy, like Metallica, but 
slower, surer, and without guitar heroics. In fact, 
lead guitarist Marty Friedman is the Steve Cropper 
of metal--his solos grab attention but never 
overstay their welcome. As a singer, Dave 
Mustaine s mostly snarl, but he snarls with you, 
not at you. If you ve got a problem, he s got a 
well-written song about it--from the environment to 
the courts to a parachute that won t open.

But Megadeth s more than gloom-and-doomers with chops, 
as Dave Mustaine made clear in a July 27 anti-Tipper 
editorial he wrote for USA Today.  Social unrest is 
alive and well in this country, and music is an ideal 
medium to express our concerns,  he wrote.  Instead of 
attacking an artist for drawing attention to situations 
that exist outside the  American Dream,  let s devote as 
much energy to finding solutions to the root of our 
problems. 

Mustaine s got ideas on who can do it, too:  Artists 
such as Ice-T in Body Count, Public Enemy, and Megadeth 
each represent the opinions of large and potentially 
powerful numbers of citizens willing to stand up to the 
injustices they witness every day. --L.B.

************************************************************

DEMOCRATS TO ROCK N RAPPERS:  DROP DEAD! ... The 
Democratic Party has given Tipper Gore a license to ill. 
Far from being a rehabilitated censor, Mrs. Gore remains 
an officer of a group, the Parents  Music Resource 
Center, whose only agenda is restriction of access to 
popular culture. The PMRC s newsletter just increased 
its publishing frequency from quarterly to bimonthly. 
Sales of its video are up nearly 400 per cent. The lies 
about rock and rap it unleashed are everywhere, and 
musicians, fans and record store clerks have the scars 
to prove it. Tipper may claim that she s no longer as 
active as she once was, but Raising PG Kids In An X-
Rated Society, her 1987 screed against rock and rap, 
will be republished by Bantam this month, unedited, 
meaning that each and every libel she s ever uttered 
will be reiterated. 

Bill Clinton s handlers want it that way. That s why 
she s on the ticket. And make no mistake: It s Tipper 
Gore, not just her husband Albert, who has a place on 
the Democratic presidential ticket. If all Bill Clinton 
wanted was a running mate who sent a youth message, 
several without an overt censorship taint were readily 
available. 

The Gores were selected to send a message, and it s 
not about anything so benign as a commitment to stop 
ravaging the environment. Neither the governor of 
despoiled Arkansas, with donations from water table-
ruining Tyson s Chicken burning a hole in his pocket, 
nor the junior Senator from Tennessee whose father left 
the Senate to work for Occidental Petroleum has any 
intention of making improvements in the ecology or 
anything else. Albert Gore expressed their strategy 
perfectly in his acceptance speech when he told that sob 
story about his son s car accident without ever 
attaching it to a single sentence--not even a word, or 
for that matter a breath--about health insurance. 
The media told us Gore s nomination constituted a 
counter to Dan Quayle s family values message. But what 
it really did was validate the Quayle critique. To 
counter the family values hoax would mean refuting it, 
showing it up in all its repressive fraudulence. But 
Mrs. Gore agrees with Dan Quayle. So does her husband. 
Based on the Sister Souljah speech, Bill s advocacy of 
record labels, and Hilary Clinton s place on the board 
of that avid anti-rock corporation, Wal-mart, so do the 
Clintons. Most of all, Mrs. Gore s presence says flatly 
that no matter who wins, this sideshow won t stop. In a 
Clinton/Gore administration, the scapegoating may even 
intensify: To vote for Clinton and Gore is to agree that 
America s health is declining not because governors and 
senators work to enrich the wealthy and punish the poor, 
but because rappers and rockers say bad words on their 
records. 

Tipper Gore s presence on this ticket means all 
that and more. It means that her kids will continue 
to buy rap records (as she has admitted they do) 
that she won t let your kids have. It means that 
her son s wounds will heal for free in a federal 
hospital while my kid s cancer results in nearly a 
million dollars worth of bills. 

We should endorse all this because maybe Bill Clinton 
and Al Gore will choose pro-choice candidates for the 
Supreme Court? We remember 1984--when Clinton and Gore 
were both anti-choice, and Gore ran as an anti-nuke 
senator and then voted to fund the MX. Because of 
Representative Al Gore s vote, poor women in the 
District of Columbia still have no access to abortion. 
Because of Senator Albert Gore s vote, we went to war in 
the Persian Gulf. Because of Senator Gore, you and me--
forget about our kids--can t find our favorite records 
in more than one thousand stores in America. 
This is a very sick nation, sicker than any Democrat 
is willing to tell us. America will remain pitifully 
sick until the healing of our divisions begins. That 
process can never start when the candidate-physicians 
prescribe lies about our most destitute citizens, when 
they attack the creative people who have attempted to 
speak on their behalf. YOU cannot contribute to national 
health by continuing to waste your time choosing between 
the lesser of two evils. You can only begin to heal it 
by devoting the same amount of energy and effort to 
building an alternative that is not evil. 
Are we really telling you not to vote for the 
Democrats, to risk another four years of George and 
Dan? Damn straight. You can t build an alternative 
by acquiescing to the bullying vagueness of the 
Tipper ticket, which promises nothing and will 
deliver less. If you want a morally healthy 
America, tell Al and Tipper and their friends on 
both sides of the ledger to go fuck themselves. And 
then set to work creating a system that features 
real choices for a change.

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POLICE RIOT, KILL ROCK RECORD... Let s get one thing 
straight: Ice-T didn t back down when he pulled  Cop 
Killer  off Body Count. Confronted with a record company 
making secret deals behind his back, Ice-T made a 
tactical move. But he also refused to apologize, and 
swore to distribute  Cop Killer  without any help from 
Bugs Bunny, Inc. In short, Ice-T walked it exactly like 
he talked it in  Squeeze the Trigger :  Ban me, try it, 
you might cause a riot/What radio won t play, the 
undergrouainst them, Coffin and Reyes plan to use the 
same square footage to display L7 t-shirts bearing the 
same image, because displays of merchandise aren t 
covered by the law. 

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THE RIGHT TRACK.... Ken Barnes writes: It s easy to 
sneer at the British bedroom boffins of dance music, the 
antisocial souls who spend their waking hours in their 
rooms fashioning otherworldly techno concoctions on 
their synthesizers. (Their sleeping hours, one presumes, 
are spent at all-night raves.) If, as I was, you were 
raised to appreciate guitars and  real music  and all 
those traditional musicianly values, this alien species 
of quasi-musician, with its extended, eclectic 
experiments and--when its practitioners surface in the 
public eye--often-bizarre disguises, absence of 
personality, and general anti-popstar vibe, is unlikely 
to appeal to you.

Like most prejudices, this is a dumb one. The  real 
music  argument is ludicrous, as if a record played on 
electrified string instruments and elaborately miked 
full drum kits is somehow more  real  than a record 
constructed from synthesized keyboard riffs. The advent 
of cheap synthesizers has probably done just as much to 
democratize pop music than all the guitars picked up by 
kids emulating Lonnie Donegan, the Beatles, Zep, or the 
Clash.

Polemics aside--and not a moment too soon--
there s also terrific music coming from these dance 
nerds. (Prejudiced? Me?) My apologies in advance to 
the Utah Saints if they re the non-nerdy type; I m 
exploiting them to make a point. And because 
they ve created a monstrous dance pop delight, 
 Something Good,  from a Kate Bush sample.
With Bush s permission, they ve lifted one line ( I 
know that something good is gonna happen ) of the chorus 
of her lovely  Cloudbusting,  distorted the vocal in 
some fascinating fashion so it sounds like  oodle eye  
(maybe it s  Google Eye,  the old John D. Loudermilk 
song semi-popularized by the Nashville Teens. Maybe not) 
over and over, and drowned it all in a glorious clatter 
of rapid-fire drums, propulsive bass/synth riffs, and 
rippling house piano licks. It moves, it moves me, and 
it s moved PolyGram to release it here, so you may 
evaluate its intrinsic quality and  reality  for 
yourself.

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THIS MONTH S HOME TAPING PROSPECTS.... Body Count (Sire)-
-The Law Enforcement Alliance of America wants to know 
who s going to press the singles of  Cop Killer  Ice-T 
will give out at his shows. Meaning, they ll try to stop 
 em. But the real answer is: You and me. It s time to 
take the title of this column seriously. Everybody with 
the Body Count album needs to run off at least one copy 
to distribute among their friends. Roll those dubbing 
decks for freedom! 

Don t Sweat the Technique, Eric B. and Rakim (MCA)--
E&R now invest maximum attitude into political jams as 
well as using their awesome talents to pump up their 
undeniable urban cool. They don t sweat the technique 
because they ve got so much of it--you haven t heard 
better use of stand-up bass since Richard Davis on Van 
Morrison s Astral Weeks and you ve never heard anything 
like the Algerian R&B of  Pass the Hand Grenade. 

Singles (Epic soundtrack)--Sets a pretty high standard 
for the fictional band Matt Dillon fronts in Cameron 
Crowe s upcoming flick, with new songs by many of the 
bands which have made Seattle famous, notably Alice in 
Chains and Pearl Jam. Plus Paul Westerburg s glorious 
return with the near-novelty  Dyslexic Heart  and 
Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell s bizarrely beautiful 
country blues solo turn on  Seasons.  

Method to the Madness, Killer Dwarfs (Epic)--Canadian 
band reminiscent of the late, great early 80s 
congregation Artful Dodger--AOR cliches made fresh by 
strong song writing and plenty of piano (here supplied by 
British session legend Nicky Hopkins). 

Tracks of Life, The Isley Bros. featuring Ronald Isley 
(WB)--Truly glorious. Combines the best of the Isleys  
3+3 period, with plenty of Ernie s guitar and brotherly 
harmony, with a few tracks arranged by Leon Ware that 
very nearly command the presence of Marvin Gaye s ghost. 

Another Latin Timebomb, A.L.T. & The Lost Civilization 
(Atco)--Presumably, A.L.T. s monicker has nothing to do 
with the tribute to  Refried Beans,  but this set of 
party jams ranks with the best of Latin-tinged hip-hop. 
 Tequila  is already a hit,  Summer Breeze  blows away 
bad weather, and as for inspirational verse, both Bruce 
and Mix-A-Lot mighty envy,  I drive a Toyota / That s 
older than Yoda.  

The Hour Glass (Liberty/EMI)--The 1967 debut of what 
would become the Allman Brothers Band is more R&B-
oriented than anything that followed. The vocals show 
Liberty wasn t completely stupid in trying to push Gregg 
Allman into a solo career. Check out the masterful 
version of Jackson Browne s  Cast Off All My Fears  if 
you don t believe it.

 4 More Years,  Rude Al and Toymaster (Dr. T s 
Music Software)--Put together by former Blood, 
Sweat, and Tears member Al Hospers and music mag 
publisher Craig Anderton, this scathing collage 
features George Bush quotes both made-up and real 
( I saw Elvis ). You laugh to keep from crying, 
especially considering this record will still be 
prophetic if Clinton wins (124 Crescent Rd., 
Needham, MA 02194). 

Grave Dancers Union, Soul Asylum (CBS)--After several 
indie almosts, their major label debut cracks their 
future open: Graft bar-band soul with the mystique of 
R.E.M. (and comprehensible lyric aphorisms) and you ve 
got a left-field winner. 

Inside Job, Marshall Chapman (Tall Girl)--Smart, 
funny, sharp-edged country-rock from the woman who 
brought us  Pay Bo Diddley  and other classics. If 
you ve had enough of big hatted wimps contact 900 19th 
Ave. S., Ste. 803, Nashville 37212. 

Love Power Peace--Live at the Olympia, Paris, 1971, 
James Brown (Polydor)--Though hardly sloppy, this is 
looser than we ve come to expect from the perfectionist 
JB. Within and among the string of hits, the band gets 
to show off, too: A magnificent Fred Wesley trombone 
solo; guitarist Catfish Collins clatters like a madman 
until he almost invents speed metal a decade early; and 
Bootsy proves he s a genius of psychefunk even when he s 
not wearing star-shaped sunglasses.

Dream On Fire, Dion DiMucci (Vision)--From the doo-wop 
recasting of Springsteen s  If I Should Fall Behind  to 
 What s That Sound,  a loving tribute to the history of 
rock from Robert Johnson to Genesis, one of his finest 
modern albums. Makes you long for the streetcorner--and 
a system of airplay broad enough to give him a chance. 
(13385 W. Dixie Hwy, N. Miami FL 33161)

Back in the U.S.A., MC5 (Rhino); High Time, MC5 
(Rhino)--The grandaddies of punk rock and psychotronic 
metal fusion (respectively) reappear, digitalized and 
annotated by our Editor.

Let the Good Times Roll, Louis Jordan (Bear Family)--
Eight fabulous CDs, a vinyl EP and a lavish booklet, all 
guaranteed to persuade you that Chuck Berry was right: 
This guy really was the hottest thing going in the years 
before rock n roll. And  Open the Door, Richard,  
 Saturday Night Fish Fry,   Keep A-Knockin ,  and a 
dozen more qualify as rock before there was rock anyway. 
Settle for no lame Broadway imitators. 

************************************************************

ALL GAVE SOME.... Since its founding last October, the 
Los Angeles Music Alliance has preached the need to 
ignore boundaries of age, race, and musical style and 
work together. On July 26, the Alliance proved that it 
walks it like it talks it.

 Let the Music Play  92  was staged at a local club 
and featured a lineup of musicians, poets, and writers 
that was stunning in its talent and diversity. There 
were rock bands from Venezuela (Zozoya) and Pakistan 
(Tee M and a Drummer); South Central rappers (MC Shadee) 
and supper club singers (Nadine A.); furious jazz fusion 
(Strokely) and high tech Hendrix (Les July and Ron 
Dorsey); East Side veterans (Ruben Guevara) and 
newcomers (Humanoid Secta); the alternative horn band 
Fyoog and the soul revue Groove Corporation; speakers 
from Option, The Source, KLOS-FM, and youth 
organizations.

The emcees were R&B veteran Mel Alexander and Mike 
Stark of heavy metal station KNAC-FM, with production 
chores handled by Alliance members. Let the Music Play 
 92 confirmed the power of the Music Alliance s 
fundamental vision: Unity of all who are ignored by the 
music industry. 

This includes those from out of town--when the 
Bindlestiffs of the Kansas City Music Alliance 
played a Hollywood club on July 23, an LA Music 
Alliance contingent was on hand to greet them. 

If you re tired of being alone, why don t you 
stop complaining and start a chapter of the Music 
Alliance in your city? For more information, call 
310-204-0827 or 913-383-2549.

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THE RAT WHO BECAME A SKUNK... Tipper Gore is bad enough. The 
traitorous music industry executives who support the ticket 
she lurks behind are worse, because they know the poison that 
Tipper and her stickers have spread, and will continue 
spreading. These guys are skunks. 

The biggest skunk is Danny Goldberg. Goldberg ran 
Gold Mountain Management, whose clients include 
Bonnie Raitt and Nirvana, before becoming an 
Atlantic Records executive early this year. He is 
also the president of the Southern California 
branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. 
Goldberg is an insider at a record company that s had 
hundreds of thousands of copies of its product kept off 
the market by censors and an officer of the most 
respected pro-First Amendment organization in the 
country. Yet Goldberg told CNN that  In recent years, 
Tipper Gore has really stopped being a public enemy of 
the entertainment business.  

Not even Tipper backs him up. During the convention, 
Gore told the Associated Press that she remains  proud  
of the PMRC. Tipper may no longer be quite as prominent 
as the organization s spokesperson--that s why Goldberg 
was careful to weasel with the words  public enemy --but 
Tipper Gore s name remains synonymous with censorship. 
The front page of the current PMRC newsletter features a 
letter, signed by Mrs. Gore, boasting of the group s 
ongoing poison-spreading.

But at least Danny gave CNN a half truth. When 
Goldberg told Variety,  Tipper Gore got what she 
wanted when she got warning labels on records and 
then the PMRC backed off,  he was lying and he 
knows it. The PMRC remains rap and rock s most 
active opponent, tirelessly spreading musical 
misinformation, with distribution of its video up 
almost 400% and the frequency of its newsletter 
recently doubled. 

This isn t Danny Goldberg s first experience at 
retailing less than half of a story. Look at his role 
with the ACLU, which has an official position of 
complete opposition to record labeling. Goldberg told 
Billboard he is  not backing away from  previous 
objections to record labeling but that s because he s 
never really opposed all of it. In July 1990, he made a 
rare public confession, writing anti censorship activist 
Phyllis Pollack that stickering  has not been that big a 
problem because stickers have been limited to albums 
with repeated four letter words, and I am not aware of 
an artist who has complained about those stickers.  

But Goldberg knows that artists such as Frank Zappa 
and Dee Snider vociferously opposed stickering from the 
start. Today, we know definitively that Tipper-stickers 
are the first step to the kind of political censorship 
currently faced by Ice-T and Sister Souljah. We know 
that these stickers were initiated by the PMRC, and that 
the continued existence of that group is what keeps 
these guilty pleas in effect. And Danny Goldberg tells 
the world that the PMRC has dried up and blown away!
Danny Goldberg also knows the reality of a Gore 
campaign promise, although he currently won t admit it. 
In 1984, when Al Gore ran for the Senate for the first 
time, he approached Goldberg for a donation.  I told him 
my friends and I didn t really care about home-taping 
legislation,  Goldberg said in 1985.  What really 
mattered to us was not having a nuclear war and not 
invading Central America.  Gore said that a nightmare 
about nuclear war had changed his life. Goldberg wrote 
him a check for $250.  So when he goes to Washington, 
the first thing he does is vote for MX and now he comes 
around pissing on my doorstep,  Goldberg said. 
Danny Goldberg must have amnesia. But there s no 
reason to let it be contagious. DON T forget what Tipper 
Gore has done to the music you love. 

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10 REASONS TO WRITE-IN ICE-T FOR PRESIDENT:

1. Ice T will tell the truth. Except maybe about his 
age. But he s definitely old enough to run the country. 

2. Ice-T is the only candidate who will honor the 
First Amendment by putting an end to censorship. The 
Democrats have Tipper Gore. The Republicans have George 
Bush, who s bashed rockers (including Ice-T); James 
Baker (Bush Secretary of State/campaign manager), whose 
wife started the PMRC with Tipper; and Fred Malek 
(campaign chairman), a PMRC donor. Ice-T will also be a 
better protector of the Second Amendment--The right to 
keep and bear arms--than the National Rifle Association, 
which attacked him for writing and singing  Cop Killer.  

3. Ice-T is the unity candidate. He s a rapper and a 
rocker. That means he s comfortable speaking to both 
black and white Americans. Unlike any of his opponents.

4. A vote for Ice-T will send a high impact message to 
Tipper, Bill, George, Dan, Al--even the PMRC--cheaper 
than AT&T, Sprint, MCI or Western Union.

5. Ice-T is guaranteed to make the most exciting 
inaugural address since Lincoln. 

6. Ice-T is the peace and justice candidate. 
Unlike Bill Clinton, he has never personally 
overseen the execution of any citizen, let alone 
one with brain damage. Unlike George Bush, Dan 
Quayle and Al Gore, he has never instigated a 
purposeless war where several hundred thousand 
innocent people died. 

7. Darlene, Ice-T s wife and album cover model, 
puts every other first lady away--she s smarter and 
more beautiful than the rest combined. She ll lend 
new meaning to the term  running mate. 

8. An Ice-T presidency is the only one that GUARANTEES 
change in America. The guy s probably never so much as 
voted himself, which means none of the idiocy and 
corruption of our present government is in any way his 
fault. On the other hand, he s still open-minded about 
the process. As the man said last year on behalf of Rock 
the Vote,   We ve got two options. Voting or hostile 
takeover. I m down with either one.   

9. We need a REAL choice, not a way of picking between 
branches of the PMRC (Tipper s vs. Susan Baker s), or 
corporate America (Clinton s Wal-Mart vs. Bush s 
Pennzoil). 

10. F*** tha police.-- L.B.

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TEMPLES OF THE DOGS.... Over the past year, the movement 
against music censorship has moved away from simple 
protest and thrown some blows of its own. To accelerate 
the shift to attack, an Anti-Censorship War Council was 
held August 8 at Chicken s Night Club in the east Ohio 
hamlet of Midvale, drawing fans and musicians from as 
far away as Florida and Missouri. After an intense 
discussion of how to deal with a hostile two-party 
system, it was voted overwhelmingly to stage a two-part 
action in Washington, D.C. on Halloween Eve. 
Phase One will be the presentation of the anti-
labeling petitions to the Recording Industry 
Association of America, the chief music industry 
censors, at their Washington office. 

Phase Two will be a demonstration outside PMRC 
headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. The PMRC, as a 
secret arm of the government, will be directed to 
disband or see economic sanctions taken against its 
supporters. 

A variety of related events will be staged in 
conjunction with the Washington actions. Already, 
plans include  solidarity shows  at clubs, 
demonstrations at local chain store outlets, and 
flying the American flag at half-mast. To get 
involved, contact Rock Out Censorship at Box 147, 
Jewett, OH 43986 (614-946-6535). 

************************************************************

THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND?... Sunday, July 12 was one of 
the most gratifying days of my life. That stormy 
afternoon, as Democratic delegates began showing up for 
the convention, Central Park Summerstage staged an 80th 
birthday party concert for Woody Guthrie. More than 
25,000 turned out to hear Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie, 
Billy Bragg, Suzanne Vega, Nanci Griffith, Dave Sharp of 
the Alarm sing, and Jim Hightower, Rev. Jesse Jackson, 
Ruth Messinger, Dennis Rivera and myself speak. Best of 
all they heard Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy explode 
the cultural context of the day, slaughtering 
preconceptions about Woody Guthrie s influence with 
their slash n burn hiphop/industrial rock fusion and 
Michael Franti s clenched fist salute:  Maximum respect 
to Woody Guthrie! 

As one of the producers, responsible for 
appearances of the Heroes, Hightower and Jackson, I 
left the day drained but with some of the bad taste 
of Tipper Gore s annointment temporarily washed out 
of my mouth. 

Unfortunately, an ugly encounter with Rev. Jackson 
marred the day. He appeared backstage with tremendous 
fanfare, swiftly took the stage and spoke his piece, and 
even agreed to stick around to sing  This Land Is Your 
Land  with the assembled cast. He was shaking my hand 
when I looked him in the eye and said,  Reverend, you ve 
got to do something about Tipper Gore.  

Jackson dropped my hand. He looked straight down at 
the ground.  I m not touching that one,  he said. 

And you shouldn t touch the Democratic ticket 
Rev. Jackson has blessed.--D.M.

************************************************************

CENSORSHIP ZONE.....
In RRC 57, we detailed how, in February 1988, Mister 
Mister was thrown out of Chile by the Pinochet 
dictatorship for uttering a few on-stage words of support 
for persecuted Chilean artists. Pinochet is gone but 
Chile hasn t changed much--the Catholic Church forced 
cancellation of a July 23 Iron Maiden concert in 
Santiago, claiming the band was  satanic. ... Police in 
Greensboro, NC told a local Peaches Records outlet that, 
if they kept selling Body Count, the cops would not 
respond to any emergency calls at the store. So Peaches 
pulled it... In response to  Cop Killer,  the Ramapo, 
NY, Town Board has set up the Council of United 
Americans to censor records, videos, and books.... Don t 
the geeks at Spin ever feel like idiots for acting as 
Jack Thompson s mouthpiece? In the August issue, 
Thompson is granted space to opine that  we re getting a 
hell of a case together [against 2 Live Crew] in Omaha.  
Yeah, hell of a case there, Jack. It s been dropped. 
Same thing RRC readers should do with their subs to 
Guccione Jr. s pro-censor rag.... Billboard s truth, 
justice and freedom loving editorialists finally got 
around to commenting on  Cop Killer.  Coming to the 
conclusion that  there is no evidence that the revenge 
fantasy embodied by Cop Killer  or... any other songs 
have ever driven anyone to commit a violent crime,  they 
nevertheless decide, that  Cop Killer  is founded on a 
bad idea...  Funny, nobody around here remembers editor 
Timothy White taking quite the same attitude towards the 
philosophically-identical  I Shot the Sheriff  in his 
Bob Marley biography.... Billboard s Chris Morris 
resigned from the NARAS (Grammys) Rock Committee because 
NARAS prez Mike Greene endorsed the Tipper ticket....  
Personal to everyone bugging us to support Bill Clinton 
because he ll appoint liberal judges: Slick Willie told 
MTV viewers he favors record labeling, and that his 
first choice for the Supreme Court would be New York 
Governor Mario Cuomo, who condemned  Cop Killer  as 
 ugly, destructive, and disgusting  without hearing it.

************************************************************

LETTERS.....
After reading your piece on Elektra president Bob Krasnow s 
support of Ross Perot, I was curious what Elektra artist 
Billy Bragg would have to say about it at a free outdoor 
concert in Philadelphia on July 18, two days after Perot 
withdrew from the Presidential race.

As usual, Bragg had plenty to say about American and 
European politics. In fact, it sometimes seemed as though 
he d rather lecture than sing, and the show suffered as a 
result. But when it came to Perot, his comments were 
incisive, even if Krasnow wasn t mentioned. Although he 
thought Perot  wouldn t have gotten more than 9% of the 
vote,  Bragg, a socialist, said he enjoyed the spectacle of 
someone trying to buy the Presidency. He also said he thought 
the most telling moment of Perot s campaign was his  your 
people  remark to the NAACP convention. Bragg talked about 
how England had been torn apart by Margeret Thatcher, a 
leader who saw everyone  either with her or against her.  
Thatcher s divisiveness, he said was the same as Perot s, and 
the world can no longer afford it.

Bragg closed his show with a medley of songs by  some of my 
favorite songwriters --Curtis Mayfield  ( People Get Ready ), 
Van Morrison ( Tupelo Honey ), Bob Dylan ( Girl From the 
North Country ), and Marvin Gaye ( Lets Get it On ). As the 
lyrics blended together and rock, folk, and soul became one, 
Bragg proved his point. He brought  we people  together with 
a type of politics Ross Perot, that  man of the people,  
could never hope to understand.--Tim Dunleavy, Rydal, PA

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THE STAFF

Editor.         Dave Marsh

Associate Editors    Lee Ballinger, Sandra Choron, Michael Leo McHugh

Contributing Editors    Danny Alexander, James Bernard, David Cantwell, Walter Dunn, Jr., Ben Eicher, Steven J. Mesick, Steve Perry

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Electronic edition prepared and edited by Michael Leo McHugh.

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