How Quickly They Forget

I was watching Morning Joe earlier today because…. Prince.

Per their usual format, they rotate the people at the table in and out from segment to segment all morning long. Sometimes people leave mid-segment and without anyone acknowledging the departure. This can be somewhat disturbing early in the morning when my attention drifts in and out and suddenly Mika Brzezinski is replaced with Nicole Wallace – as though any intelligent blonde with a vagina will suffice.

Ok, so maybe that particular substitution hasn’t happened before, but there is quite a bit of fluidity to the table occupants and to the discussion and this morning, almost all of the segments drifted back to the topic of Prince Rogers Nelson’s sad and untimely death. This is not surprising as he was a cultural icon and music genius and Purple Rain is the soundtrack to all things that are good in the universe.

So I was drifting in and out with them as I was reading NPR articles – also about Prince – when all of a sudden I heard a very buttoned-up voice say the following words:

“He just put sexy in music.”

When I looked up to see who had spoken this – I think the words and the voice didn’t match in my head and so I had to see what was happening – there was former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele’s face speaking on my screen.

It was really weird. For a moment, there was a robot voice in my head saying does not compute. Surely someone else said what I heard and then before I looked up the camera switched to Michael Steele who immediately began speaking in the same exact voice. And it’s not the first time I’ve had this reaction. I once turned on Morning Joe to see Bradley Cooper discussing foreign policy at the table. I had a similar reaction. The words and the face and the perceptions all crash together in my brain over and over again, like cars backing up and ramming each other in the grill at a demolition derby. When this happens, I have to pause the TV and talk myself back into reality.

These people – for one reason or another – have earned a seat at the grownup table and now the adults are talking.  And I have to sit at the kiddie table with my coloring book and just listen to it, if I can stop the collisions long enough to pay attention. This morning, I was successful.

And why shouldn’t they have a seat at the table? Why can’t Bradley Cooper talk about foreign policy? Why can’t Michael Steele have an opinion on Prince? Policy and culture affect us all and, regardless of their chosen vocations, they are part of the whole. These are the things that I tell myself so that I can survive the American Morning Show Experience.

Do you know what I noticed yesterday about the coverage of Prince’s death (aside that is, from its similarity to the coverage of Buckwheat being shot on Saturday Night Live in 1983)? I noticed that almost everyone had a story about how his music – or his persona -- impacted their lives. They recalled concerts or school dance/class song controversies or buying his first album and hiding it from their parents. 

I have many myself, but the first one that popped into my head was not the time I saw him in concert in 1997. It was a memory of the first jazz piece I learned when I was apprenticing in a dance company at the age of 11. The song was When Doves Cry…and they were crying because of my dancing.  I remember not being able to get the jazz walk just right and I looked ridiculous trying to do the contraction at the end. I was pulled out into the middle of the dance floor while my instructor – bless her – forcibly moved my upper body while I attempted to move my lower body. It was a spectacle –which I got to enjoy because of the full-length mirrors on all four walls of the room – and humiliating because there were college dancers in there and they did not have time for 6^th graders. And Prince was playing through the speakers the entire time.

That’s right, people…I was in a small dance company when I was a child. Now that the secret is out, let’s move on.

Everyone has a Prince story and a memory. John Heilemann, managing editor at Bloomberg, recalled seeing Prince open for the Rolling Stones in Los Angeles in 1981 wearing a black thong (Prince, not Heilemann) and doing his Prince thing. He finished only 3 songs before being removed from the stage FOR HIS OWN SAFETY. The concert promoter came on stage and cussed the audience out telling them how stupid they were and how in 3 years they would want to kick their own asses for being so small-minded and not appreciating the show.

In 1984, for a brief period of time, Prince had the number one single, album, and movie in the country. Probably with help from the same people who had thrown things at him 3 years earlier. They probably told all their friends -- who were hearing Purple Rain for the first time -- how they had been fans since way back when he opened for the Stones and gave that special music-snob-eye-roll every time someone cranked up the radio for Little Red Corvette. They would conveniently forget that they once threw a jelly shoe at Prince's head while shouting MICK MICK MICK MICK, because by 1984 Prince was a superstar. 

But my absolute favorite memory about Prince was his starring role in the formation of the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). You might remember the PMRC for their riveting takeover of the U.S. Senate when Tipper Gore and her Washington wives cohorts testified that the lyrics in the “Filfthy 15” were corrupting ALL OF THE YOUTH EVERYWHERE. 

And what do you think was #1 on that list? You guessed it, Darling Nikki by Prince.

Darling Nikki was VERY DIRTY in 1984. No one I knew was allowed to listen to it and everyone I knew listened to it all the time. We felt like total rebels every time we heard it on our jamboxes from a cassette tape that someone’s parents had bought them before they knew better and that they had dubbed onto a dozen other cassettes which had been dubbed onto a dozen more.

We were Napster before Napster.

Darling Nikki was not played on the radio in Winchester, Virginia, or in Jonesboro, Arkansas, (my homes in 1984) which should come as no surprise to anyone. But it also wasn’t played on DC101 – you know where Howard Stern was a DJ three years earlier. That’s how dirty Darling Nikki was.

Anyway, the PMRC testified before the senate about the moral decay of America and called for printing warnings and lyrics on album covers, forcing record stores to put albums with explicit covers under the counters, pressuring television stations not to broadcast explicit songs or videos, "reassess[ing]" the contracts of musicians who performed violently or sexually in concert, and creating a panel to set industry standards. Opponents, including odd bedfellows Frank Zappa, John Denver, and Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, called it censorship. 

Tipper Gore was labeled ultra-conservative.  PLEASE THINK ABOUT THAT STATEMENT.

Long story short…the music industry agreed to label albums that were considered explicit by the profanity/drug/violence/sex police and they did start printing lyrics inside album covers which was a boon for us all because now everyone could know what Elton John had been saying the for the least 15 years and what the real lyrics to Blinded By the Light were. 

Win-Win.

But back to Prince…

It appears that the same kids who were being ruined by Darling Nikki in the 1980s (along with Madonna and Def Leppard and every other song on the list because teenagers have and always will listen to the music their parents find offensive and dangerous) are the same ones who grew up to be actors, parents, scientists, respected business leaders, journalists, and the freaking chairman of the Republican National Committee.

And this is the case with all people who play at the edges of cultural envelope – especially those who so generously invite other artists into the fringes with them.  Talent and artistry that is considered corrosive and corrupt today may in fact be called early-21^st-century genius on a Wake Up, Mars! virtual cast which will be digitally mapped directly onto your temporal lobe in 35 years.

But please, Lord, don’t let it be Kanye.