Do you remember when this Democratic leader led a crusade against Prince as a public menace? Send this to the liberals in your life who like to pretend that they are oh-so ‘open minded’. Check this out by Nick Gillespie:
In the wake of the social progress of the past several decades, it’s hard to recapture how threatening the Paisley One once seemed, this gender-bender guy who shredded guitar solos that put Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton to shame while prancing around onstage in skivvies and high heels. He was funkier than pre-criminality Rick James and minced around with less shame and self-consciousness than Liberace. Madonna broke sexual taboos by being sluttish, which was no small thing, but as a fey black man who surrounded himself with hotter-than-the-sun lady musicians, he was simultaneously the embodiment of campy Little Richard and that hoariest of White America boogeymen, the hypersexualized black man.
No wonder he scared the living shit out of ultra-squares such as Al and Tipper Gore. In 1985, the future vice president and planet-saver and his wife were, as Tipper’s 1987 best-selling anti-rock, anti-Satanism, anti-sex manifesto put it,Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society. Tipper headed up the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), whose sacred document was a list of songs it called “The Filthy Fifteen.” These were songs that glorified sex, drugs, Satan, and masturbation and could pervert your kid—or even lead them to commit suicide. At number one on the list was Prince’s “Darling Nikki,” from his massive soundtrack record to Purple Rain (jeezus, wasn’t that movie a revelation? Of what exactly, I can’t remember, but finally, it seemed, a rock star had truly delivered on the genius we all wanted to see emerge from pop music into film).
On page 3 of Raising PG Kids, Tipper explained why that particular song had moved her to create an organization that would use the the threat of government action to clean up “sex and violence in the media”:
In December 1984, I purchased Prince’s best-selling album Purple Rain for my 11-year-old daughter….When we brought the album home, out it on our stereo, and listened to it together, we heard the words to…”Darling Nikki”: “I knew a girl named Nikki/guess [you] could say she was a sex fiend/I met her in a hotel lobby/Masturbating with a magazine.” The song went on and on, in a similar manner. I couldn’t believe my ears! The vulgar lyrics embarrassed both of us. At first, I was stunned—then I got mad!
Of course, when you’re the wife of a second-generation U.S. senator, yourmad counts for more than most of the rest of us. In 1985, the Senate wasted its time and our money by holding a hearing on the dread menace of dirty lyrics and the whole bang-the-gong medley of backward masking, rock-induced suicide, and sexual promiscuity. Just a few years later, Al and Tipper would reinvent themselves as diehard Grateful Dead fans, the better to look hip while campaigning with Bill and Hillary Clinton (another couple of revanchist baby boomers who burned a hell of a lot time in the 1990s attacking broadcast TV and basic cable as impossibily violent and desperately in need of regulation).
Read more: Reason
You can watch CNN’s Wolf Blitzer remember Prince’s song as “Purple Haze”:
Wolf Blitzer: "All of us remember Purple Haze and what that did for the world of music." pic.twitter.com/f4v9bzLvzE
— Stefan Becket (@becket) April 21, 2016
Here’s ten songs that we bet you didn’t know were written by Prince:
1. Sinead O’Connor — “Nothing Compares 2 U”
https://youtube.com/watch?v=auUPqxI1vqg
2. Chaka Kahn — “I Feel For You”
3. Alicia Keys — “How Come You Don’t Call Me Anymore”
4. Tom Jones — “Kiss”
5. Madonna — “Love Song”
6. The Time — “The Bird”
7. Cyndi Lauper — “When You Were Mine”
https://youtube.com/watch?v=nRUd247zj44
8. The Bangles — “Manic Monday”
9. Tevin Campbell — “Round and Round”
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZFzQNWwNsZM
10. Apollonia 6 — “Sex Shooter”
Here is another amazing performance by Prince:
