Jeff Ling

The entire op-ed page section of January 11th’s Washington Post was devoted to two subjects: gun control and the “inflamatory rhetoric” that might have inspired Jared Loughner’s violent attack in Tuscon, Arizona  this past weekend. In his column, Dana Milbank suggested that the heat needs to be turned up on figures like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck:

“While the accusations sometimes go too far …the heat is well deserved. Both are finally being held to account for recklessly playing with violent images in a way that is bound to incite the unstable.” (Emphasis mine)

I am confused as to why Mr. Milbank did not include the hardcore band, “Drowning Pool,” in his indictment. J. Freedom du Lac’s story in the Style section of the Post seems to have gone unnoticed by Mr. Milbank. The story reveals that Jared Loughner made use of Drowning Pool’s song “Bodies” as a soundtrack for one of his final youtube postings which featured someone (possibly him) desecrating an American flag (I assume there were no recordings of Beck or Palin’s speeches available?). If you’re not familiar with the song, it contains the ominous refrain, “let the bodies hit the floor,” which is repeated ad nauseum. Turns out that “Bodies” has shown up before in a criminal case. As du Lac reports:

“The Drowning Pool song served as the soundtrack to a double murder in Oakton where in 2003, then-19-year-old Joshua Cooke cranked the throbbing tune on his headphones, walked out of his bedroom holding a 12-gauge shotgun and killed his parents.”

Drowning Pool maintains that the song was mis-interpreted both then and now. They were quick to release a statement on Monday that they were, “devastated,” by the shootings and their music was misunderstood yet again. According to DP, the lyrics are an ode to a brotherhood:

“‘Bodies’ was written about the brotherhood of the mosh pit and the respect people have for each other in the pit. If you push others down, you have to pick them back up. It was never about violence. It’s about a certain amount of respect and a code.” (DP Statement)

You would expect that the video the band produced would have celebrated that idea with shots of the brotherhood in action. Instead the video takes place in what appears to be a psych ward with the lyrics being screamed at an obviously disturbed person.

“Skin against skin blood and bone /You’re all by yourself but you’re not alone
You wanted in now you’re here / Driven by hate , consumed by fear”
(from “Bodies”)

It seems to pain the band that their lyrics would be confused with any kind of call to violence. and their statement included a judgement on those who would:

“For someone to put out a video misinterpreting a song about a mosh pit as fuel for a violent act shows just how sick they really are.” (DP Statement)

I must confess, the effort required for me not to resort to petty sarcasm is enormous.

In the song, “Hate” off the Drowning Pool 2004 Desensitized CD, the band offers the following:

Bury the priest and burn religion alive …
Forget about the crucifix / My rising sign is 666 …
You want the world I’ll show the way / Just raise your fist and let me hear you say
Hate you want it / Hate you need it / Say hate, you want it…

I’m sure this is only an ode to those who were abused by pedophile priests and should not be interpreted as any call to violence? Besides, anyone who committed a violent act due to misunderstanding the song, well, they would be the sicko. Right?

To be fair, I’m sure many hard core bands would say they are simply giving voice to the angst and anger of young people much like The Who did with, “Behind Blue Eyes,” or the Doors did with “The End,” for an earlier generation. By the same logic, isn’t that what people like Beck and his ilk are doing with talk radio? Aren’t they just giving voice to the angst and anger a certain audience feels?

Sarah Palin uses a graphic on Facebook with cross-hairs and says “Don’t retreat, reload!” This is the kind of stuff that Milbanks and others suggest is poisoning our public discourse. But couldn’t it be that the Jared Loughners of the world might be pumping bands like Emmuer into their headphones? Emmuer’s 2009 release, “Felony,” includes these lyrics in the song “Sunday Bacon”:

Top drawer
I grab the glock
I grab the ammo
Locked and Loaded

Blow your brains right out your skull
I’m addicted to your suffering
I came to bring the f******g pain

And, by the way, that’s pretty mild.

When I was working with the PMRC, artists would routinely decry what they perceived as efforts to censor them. The first amendment was wielded by the industry like Yoda’s light saber against the imperialistic forces of the morality police. The truth was, we simply believed that ideas have consequences, that music is powerful, and while artists have the right to say what they want, it does not mean they have no responsibility for what they are saying.

When you consider it, isn’t that exactly what Mr. Milbank is stating? That people should bear some responsibility for their speech? Aren’t the liberal pundits red faced and furious over the exact same kind of issue that the PMRC was when it was highlighting the lack of responsibility shown by the recording industry?

Enter Keith Olbermann at MSNBC who offered the following:

If Glenn Beck, who obsesses nearly as strangely as Mr. Loughner did about gold and debt, and who wistfully joked about killing Michael Moore, and Bill O’Reilly, who blithely repeated “Tiller the Killer” until the phrase was burned into the minds of his viewers, do not begin their next broadcasts with solemn apologies for ever turning to the death-fantasies and the dreams of blood-lust, for ever having provided just the oxygen to those deep in madness to whom violence is an acceptable solution, then those commentators and the others must be repudiated by their viewers, and by all politicians, and by sponsors, and by the networks that employ them. (Emphasis mine.)

Wow! I was demonized just for saying there should be warning labels on such stuff. I would like to formally offer to echo Oberman’s call for the repudiation of right wing talk show hosts if he will join me in calling on Steve Jobs to quit providing space on itunes for musicians who routinely glamorize rape, brutality, murder, necrophilia, blood lust and genocide. Start with Canibal Corpse; they’re a fun bunch.

Olbermann, Milbanks and others may suggest that political speech is different than entertainment. Not if they stand by their own criteria:

Milbanks: “recklessly playing with violent images in a way that is bound to incite the unstable.”

Olbermann: “apologies for ever turning to the death-fantasies and the dreams of blood-lust, for ever having provided just the oxygen to those deep in madness to whom violence is an acceptable solution.”

I could share countless examples with Misters Olbermann and Milbanks. Words that would hopefully make them as ill as they appear to be over the pundits. Why the double standards? Why do right wing talk show hosts get a pass from conservatives? Why do entertainers get a pass from liberals?

According to the comments by David Horowitz, executive director of the First Amendment group Media Coalition, that appeared in the Freedom du Lac column, speech is free or it’s not.

“The idea that we would diminish the speech that we allow based on how it might be received by the most unstable listener would leave us with little speech whatsoever,” he said, adding that “people commit murders in the name of the Bible or the Koran. To somehow hold the artist, the author, the speaker responsible for how the most unstable person drawn to the music or literature or movie might later act would deprive the 99.999 percent of people who never do anything illegal or violent.”

To top it all off, Drowning Pool comes out with a second statement crying about the Post making them look bad!

“…instead of telling the whole story, the writer decided to edit what we had to say in order to make it seem like we were somehow responsible for what happened last weekend…  We find it inappropriate to imply that our song or rock music in general is to blame for this tragic event. It is premature to make this assumption without having all the facts in the case. It is just as likely that this horrible act was caused by the irresponsible and violent rhetoric used by mainstream media outlets such as the Washington Post. (Emphasis mine)

Well there you go. It’s officially a three-ring circus.

Frankly, I have little stomach for Drowning Pool, Keith Olbermann or Glenn Beck. They all abuse the medium by the same methods. Tap into frustration and fear. Rock it or talk it. Make a bunch of money.

Shame on them all.

There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. (Proverbs 12:18 ESV)

In the 1980′s there were a number of folks who were tackling the issue of rock music from a “Christian” perspective, most notably the Peters Brothers and Bob Larson (before he totally flipped out). I read a lot of books and did a good bit of research on my own. Make no mistake – I was sincere! I truly believed that a voice needed to be raised against what I saw as a highly destructive influence. Let me add that I still believe a voice needs to be raised in warning. Parents who do not monitor the media intake of their children are just asking for trouble, even more so now than when I was doing this back in the 80′s. Music then that was less mainstream is now front and center in Best Buy and still filled with violence and gratuitous sensuality. The levels of pornography that are available to any child with a computer is heartbreaking and staggering. What used to be the fare of those who loitered in adult bookstores plugging quarters into peep shows is now available everywhere via the internet. Is it all bad? Of course not. As this series goes on I’ll make comments on what I see as positive in secular music because I’ve come to see the countless expressions of God’s image in all forms of art. But let me add that even as the arts can be a medium for the expression of beatuty, truth, pain, doubt, joy and sorrow; they have proven to be relentless mediums for darkness, idolatry, hatred, lies and lewdness. Art can enrich and it can also debase.

But I get ahead of myself.

By 1985 I was doing lots of speaking on the subject. A woman by the name of Sally Nevius, the wife of former D.C. council chairman John Nevius, saw my presentation and brought me together with a journalist by the name of Kandy Stroud. Kandy had become concerned about the music her children were listening to. She was going to write a column for the “My Turn” section of Newsweek and Sally thought she should here what I had to say.

She thought things were bad. What I showed her blew her mind.

On May 6th, 1985, this column ran in Newsweek:

Stop Porn Rock
My Turn/Kandy Stroud

My 15-year-old daughter unwittingly alerted me to the increasingly – explicit nature of rock music. “You’ve got to hear this, Mom!” she insisted one afternoon, fast-forwarding Prince’s “Purple Rain” to the song “Darling Nikki.” “But don’t listen to the words,” she added, an instant tip off to pay attention. The beat was hard – and pulsating the music burlesque in feeling as Prince, who has sold more than 9 million copies of “Purple Rain,” began:

I knew a girl named Nikki
I guess u could say she was a sex fiend
I met her in a hotel lobby
masturbating with a magazine

Unabashedly sexual lyrics like these, augmented by orgasmic moans and howls, compose the musical diets millions is of children are now being fed at concerts, on albums, on radio and MTV. Rock stations may play Sheena Easton’s latest hit, “Sugar Walls, ‘ as many as a dozen times a day. “I hate this song,” my 13-year-old, rock-crazed son muttered on the way from school one day as he inadvertently tuned in Easton’s lewd and crude song about genital arousal. My own Mr. Cool was visibly embarrassed. Embarrassed? I almost drove off the road.

I confess to being something of a rock freak I may be a singer of sacred music, but I’ve collected rock since its birth in the ’50s. I’ve danced to it and now I do aerobics to it; I love the beat and the sound. But as both parent and musician I am concerned about the number of hit tunes that can only be called porn rock, and about the tasteless, graphic and gratuitous sexuality saturating the air waves and filtering into our homes.

Which is not to say rock took an erotic turn overnight. Elvis Presley was bumping and grinding his way through “Heartbreak hotel” 30 years ago. “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” by the Rolling Stones, was no innocent ditty. But innuendo has given way to the overt. And vulgar lyrics supported by uncomfortably provocative sound effects result in musical pornography.

“Feels so good inside,” squeals Madonna on her triple-platinum album “Like a Virgin.” Rock’s latest “it” girl hardly touts virginal innocence, as one can gather from her gyrations and undulations on Friday-night video shows. “Relax when you want to come.” the English group Frankie Goes To Holly-wood wails on “Relax,” now the fourth-best-selling record in British history, a lofty position that being banned by the BBC did much to ensure On the album “Defenders of the Faith,” the group Judas Priest sings “Eat Me Alive,” which deals with a girl being forced to commit oral sex at gunpoint. In “Ten Seconds to Love,” Motley Crue croons about intercourse on an elevator. In concert, W.A.S.P.’s lead singer, Blackie Lawless, has appeared onstage wearing a codpiece with a buzz-saw blade between his thighs. During “The Torture Never Stops,” Lawless pretends to pummel a woman dressed in a G-string and black hood, and, as fake blood cascades from the hood, he attacks her with the blade.

Aristotle said music has the power to form character. The Bach B-Minor Mass can be a link with the eternal. But while music can ennoble and inspire, it can also degrade. Some drug programs forbid teen-age patients to attend rock concerts or even to sport the T shirts of rock groups. Some schools where smoking and drinking are prohibited have added rock music to the list of taboos. “At the very least,” says Father James Connor, the pastor, of Holy Trinity Church in Washington. D.C., “rock is turning sex into something casual. It’s as if society is encouraging its youngsters to get sexually involved.”

Dr. Joseph Novello, director of a drug program in Washington, says one of the questions he asks his teen-age patients is what kind of music they listen to. Whether it’s satanic, sexual or drug oriented – it tells him something about the child’s state of mind. In like manner, he says, parents have an obligation to be aware of their children’s musical tastes and “if you take except ion to the words, don’t allow them to listen.”

Surprisingly, the majority of parents I’ve spoken to have expressed partial or total ignorance of the music their children are dancing to, doing homework to, and falling asleep to. Most claim they don’t listen to rock or can’t understand the words if they do. They also admit that they don’t want to add another item to the laundry list of things they already monitor -movies, books, magazines, parties, friends, homework.

Dollars: Legislative action may be needed, or better yet, a measure of self-restraint. If distillers can voluntarily keep their products off the public airwaves, then the record industry can also curb porn rock – or, at the very least, make sure that kids’ under 17 are not allowed into sexually explicit concerts.

And what about the musicians themselves? If 46 pop Superstars can cooperate to raise millions of dollars for African famine relief with their hit “We Are the World,” why can’t musicians also ensure that America’s own youth will be fed a diet of rock music that is not only good to dance to but healthy for their hearts and minds and souls as well?

A free-lance journalist, Stroud sings with Washington’s Choral Arts Society

One note regarding Blackie Lawless. He has recanted publicly some of his excesses and claims he will never again preform the “Animal” song again. Quoted by Brian Reesman he states:

“Words are the most powerful things we possess. They shape our very lives and determine who and what we are… I renounce, denounce and pronounce that I will never play that song [“Animal”] live again.” -Blackie Lawless (from Blackie Lawless Renounces His Past Sins by Brian Reesman) Read More

Funny huh? I got labeled an enemy of the first amendment for talking that way…

Read Part 1: Jeff Ling and the PMRC Label Wars Part 1: Intro
Read Part 2: Jeff Ling and the PMRC Label Wars Part 2: Beginnings|
Read Part 3: Jeff Ling and the PMRC Label Wars Part 3:  The guitar was from Sears…

The Christmas the guitar showed up changed my life…

We were living in Albany, Georgia. Christmas was the morning I always awoke before anyone in my family.  By 4 or 5 in the morning I would be surveying the Christmas tree area, assessing the pile of presents, figuring out how many were mine. I fell in love that Christmas when the odd shaped present showed up. The guitar was from Sears…

My mom married when she was very young. In 1956, when I was born,  the sounds of Elvis filled the home. Growing up I remember watching his movies, listening to his music. King Creole was my favorite movie. Anything he sang was my favorite song.  Elvis was king in my musical world  until the day the babysitter brought over THE RECORD. Four smiling faces beamed from the cover. The title read “Meet The Beatles.” I listened to “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and Elvis slipped off the throne.  There is some old movie reel in my parents home that shows my brother and I along with a couple of neighborhood kids lip-syncing to Beatles songs in front of our families. We had guitars made out of  cardboard and drums made from boxes and chicken pot pie pans.  Our moms made us Beatles wigs.  We rocked. I was 8.

Kennedy had been killed the year before and the world felt unsteady…

Through the years music was simply a soundtrack to life. I loved all kinds of stuff. The Beatles and the Stones were tops but The Lovin Spoonful, The Rascals, Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs, Mitch Ryder, Sonny and Cher, the Zombies, the Mamas and the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel were all important.

I even liked the Monkees. It’s true. I liked the TV show cause it was so stupid. I wanted to be Davey Jones because of the chicks but I wanted to be Michael Nesmith because I knew he was the real musician.

I was learning to play guitar all during this time. In 6th grade I did my first public performance. It was the school talent show. I took my electric guitar and amp up on the stage, plugged it in and sang Tambourine Man by Dylan.

My uncles in Georgia played in a band. We would visit and I would sit in their room for hours listening to their stack of LPs. The Who: I Can See for Miles. Cream: Sunshine of Your Love. Steppinwolf: Born to Be Wild.

I couldn’t get enough of it. Tommy James And The Shondells, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Three Dog Night, Led Zeppelin.

The soundtrack became more political as the days grew dark. The Buffalo Springfield sang “There’s something happening here…” and something was. The 6Os were in full bloom. I was old enough to wish I was in the middle of the chaos but young enough that I couldn’t be.

I watched the reports of Woodstock.

Vietnam filled my TV.

Joe Cocker and Janis Joplin were king and queen.

The Beatles were the cultural calendar for me. They changed. I changed.
The White Album (wow), Abby Road (wow,wow)
I knew that Paul was dead. Found all the clues. I still don’t know who this imposter is but he’s pretty good.

In my teens I was getting angry. A couple of reasons stand out. First, the world was getting wacky and I was unsettled but more than that, my ADD, which couldn’t be diagnosed properly at the time, was a major culprit in making school a painful and disappointing experience. By the time I reached High School I was so angry that I didn’t care and my grades showed it. The only thing that made the day better was music. It comforted me, consoled me and spoke my rage for me. “Behind Blue Eyes” by The Who became my personal theme song.

I played the guitar. I sang. I played in bands. They were stupid garage bands that never amounted to anything. In Jr. High it was “Liquid Fire” and in High School it was “Cousin.” I sang in choirs in church and at school. It was the only thing I got strokes from. I finally started doing solo work in bars to make money.

My tastes focused more on the folk rock of that time frame. James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Crosby Stills and Nash, Neil Young, Arlo Guthrie, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez and Dylan.

When Jesus Christ captured my heart at the age of 17, I had been into  some of the different  vices that kids were doing.  I wasn’t consistently into anything destructive substance wise.  I smoked some weed, did some acid, got drunk a few times, but I never went way down that path like some of my friends did. My problem was the anger, the frustration, and the apathy over education.  I just wanted to get out of  High School and play music.  As a senior I was playing in a group that was doing “Christian” music and I could have just done that forever.

Fast forward. Went to college – did my degree in telecommunications. Don’t ask me why. All I did was play music and lead worship.  I was in love with Jesus and happy to lead people in his praise. Fortunately, the Jesus Music scene had busted loose out of Calif. and I found good stuff to listen to.

By the time I got to Church of the Apostles in 1980, I was a different guy. More radical, more narrow. The world was changing again. There was something in the air that seemed despondent, almost nihilistic. I had watched MTV broadcast it’s first music video. Darkness seemed to be creeping in. Lust that had seemed restrained now appeared to be a raging torrent. Occult refrences were popping up more and more.  Something was happening in music that seemed so dark to me and I knew that I had to step back. When I evaluated what I saw, what had been a friend became a foe. Secular music became the enemy, the tool of unholy forces that were seeking the destruction of a generation I was not too far removed from.  I began getting rid of my old albums and talking to the High School students I worked with. I became convinced that since music was a gift from God it should only be used to glorify God or instruct others in the ways of God. I collected information on music, took pictures of album covers, gathered samples of “back masking”, developed a “theological perspective” on music and began speaking on the subject to church groups. Know what? It doesn’t take much to alarm a bunch of churched adults. It would take much more to alarm the broader community.

The cause was engaged.

Read Part 1: Jeff Ling and the PMRC Label Wars Part 1: Intro
Read Part 2: Jeff Ling and the PMRC Label Wars Part 2: Beginnings

Read Part 4: Jeff Ling and the PMRC Label Wars Part 4: The Ball Gets Rolling

The picture to the left was taken in my office at Church of the Apostles back in ’84 for a front page story in the Fairfax Journal called  ”A Pastor’s War on Rock Music.”  At the time I was full force into my “crusade.”  I’ll discuss what was going on later but I thought I would just run this article  for a peek into the past.  The content of my presentation back then had been geared strictly to a church audience but requests from anti-drug/alcohol groups were rising.  The comment: “Sadomasochism is and will be the sexual trend of the ’80s,’ Ling predicted”, was more on the money than I knew. What began to occur late in the 80′s was the rise of hip-hop that gave way to rap which would carry a very violent tone toward women. Along with that, heavy metal also featured songs that lauded sexual  violence and rape.  My way of expressing myself on the issues at 27 reflects some immaturity and the article reveals some of that.  As with most press, there is a good bit of misstatement and window dressing but you’ll get the idea.

Churchman sees link to drugs, sox, violence

By Jeff Baron
Journal staff writer

Armed with a slide show of rock album covers and quotes from rock musicians, the Rev. Jeff Ling is carrying a warning to Northern Virginians.

His message: Rock and roll music gets young people hooked on drugs, alcohol, sex and violence. Tuesday night at Robinson Secondary School, Ling took his message to a receptive group: the Parents’ Association to Neutralize Drug and Alcohol Abuse (PANDAA). The group plans to help Ling spread the word to local schools.

Ling, 27, is a Fairfax resident who graduated from Robinson 10 years ago. Now he’s youth pastor of the Church of the Apostles in Fairfax and director of Asaph, an organization that studies the content and impact of rock music. (Asaph, according to the Bible, was a celebrated musician of King David’s time.)

“Some of what you see and hear may be offensive,” Ling told his audience of 300 parents and children at the PANDAA meeting. “My hope is that you will be very offended. My hope is that you will be very concerned.”

What followed was a 90-minute tour of rock mu¬sic, with an emphasis on some of its favorite themes: sex, rebellion, drug and alcohol abuse, violence and the occult.

Many of the younger parents in the audience grew up on rock music in the 1950s and ’60s, as Ling did, and he said it served a purpose then: “All through this period, the music helped us,” he said. “It told us how we felt, and it told us how to feel.”

Rock continues to guide the thinking of teenagers, and that can help them, Ling said, but he warned that since the early ’70s rock has lost much of its constructive force. “The disco replaced the protest march as the place to be and the place to go,” he said.

Ling said rock music now is a powerful influence in the areas parents worry about most:

Sex – “Young people are bombarded with the message that sex equals love and love equals sex,” Ling said. He cited such hit songs as Queen’s “Body Language,” Olivia Newton-John’s “Let’s Get Physical,” Irene Cara’s “Too Much Talk,” and Prince’s “Let’s Pretend We’re Married.” In each one, the singer persuades a lover that sex is more important than talk. As a side issue, Ling said that such rock stars as Boy George cause confusion of sex roles, making homosexuality more acceptable.

Alcohol and drugs – “Rock music and substance abuse go hand in hand,” Ling said. Some albums, like the Beatles’:”Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” even take drug use as their theme, he said. Some groups and rock stars drink heavily onstage and advocate, heavy drinking and drug use. The Doobie Brothers even took their name from the slang term for a marijuana cigarette, Ling said.

Violence – “It seems that we are growing tired of the free love of the ’50s an4 ’60s, of the homosexuality of the ’70s. Sadomasochism is and will be the sexual trend of the ’80s,” Ling predicted. He read song verses and showed album covers from rockers who have glori¬fied violence, including the Rolling Stones and such lesser-known groups as Rosemary’s Babies, which recorded the song “Let’s Molest 10-year-olds.” Self-inflicted pain and suicide also are increasingly common themes of rock music, Ling said. “At least one reason (for the increasing suicide rate among teens) is the glorification of suicide in rock music,” he said.

Cults – “Heavy metal” bands, those that play extremely loud music, may say their celebration of the occult and the devil are gimmicks, but Ling said their influence is dangerous nonetheless because many of their fans are too young to know that. The groups urge the fans to mobilize in a “worldwide metal underground,” Ling said.

Most of the audience was impressed. “I think it’s great that they’re starting to reveal what’s in rock music,” said 16-year-old Anna Gierich of Springfield, an Annandale High School student who said she listens to Christian rock.

Bill Simko, a 16-year-old from Falls Church and a student at George Mason High, said he doesn’t listen to rock music because that would condone what rock musicians do. “Most of the people you have trouble with at school, most listen to heavy metal and the new-wave stuff,” he said. “I hate to generalize like that, but that’s the way it usually is.”

Donna MacGowan of Fairfax City, a 28-year-old teacher at Little Run Elementary School in Fairfax, said she was shocked by what she saw. “Rebellion is part of growing up. Rebellion is normal. But carried to these extremes, it’s not normal,” she said.

Ling himself was “a rocker and a druggie,” he said, when he graduated from Robinson. But 10 years lager, he sees rock music as a cause of many ills. And while some argue that rock serves as an escape for teenagers, just as gruesome fairy tales enchant younger children, Ling doesn’t agree.

“When a 10-year-old or a 9-year-old goes to a concert or buys an album, is that sort of escapism good for them?” he asked.

Read Part 1: Jeff Ling and PMRC Label Wars – Part 1: Intro
Read Part 3: Jeff Ling and the PMRC Label Wars Pt. 3: The guitar was from Sears…