Zappa and Witches

A couple of nights back I was re-reading parts of The Real Frank Zappa Book, an autobiography by Frank Zappa. One chapter in particular called Porn Wars was in reference to his battle with the PMRC – anyone remember them?

For a quick reference the PMRC was an organization that was tax exempt and had no members, only founders. It was primarily a group of women, mostly wives of government officials. Tipper Gore, wife of Al Gore was the lead spokesperson of the whole deal and Al Gore supported the actions and even ran the hearings on the issues.

What were the issues? Mainly that rock music (and apparently only rock music was singled out) offended these Christians and so they were trying to first get it banned outright and then to get it labeled as “dangerous.”

A clear affront to our civil liberties and just another witch hunt. But it got very serious and fortunately we had people like Zappa fighting for our rights. I always thought of Zappa as a bit of liberal, but as the definition has shifted some he would probably be considered more of a libertarian.

One phrase in the chapter in particular cracked me up – “…it was about some leather weasel getting cornholed.” Classic Zappa.

But as we all know, the music industry capitulated on this affront and you now have nice little parental advisory warnings on your media. At the end of the chapter Zappa asks “will the artists ever get back in control?”

And this is the point of my post –

This book was written in 1988. Zappa passed away in 1993, just five years later. He never saw the “media revolution” and couldn’t have imaged what we take for granted today.

Due to the advent of MP3s (and other digital formats) and the explosive growth of the Internet I would say that artists have, indeed, regained some control. They (artists) are no longer beholden to conglomerate record companies pulling all the strings. They have their own web sites, their own recording studios, and there is no need to burn CDs anymore - You can distribute everything across the net. I think Zappa would have liked it.

Until the next witch hunt begins and they start enforcing people to putting labels on their web site we are probably OK for a while.