Ranting and rating

The right tries to label live concerts

by Michael Crowley

Ratings, it seems, are becoming the American way. From movies to music -- and now video games, television, and the Internet -- warnings of "adult content" have become a part of virtually every form of mass entertainment.

Popular music, of course, has put up with those "Explicit Lyrics" warnings on albums for years, thanks to the cultural housekeeping of Tipper Gore. But now the ratings mania apparently threatens to overtake the last refuge of uncensored behavior: live concerts.

An article in Monday's New York Times reported a growing national movement toward a system that would rate the content of live acts at arena-type venues.

Obscene lyrics and lewd gestures are nothing new, of course. But thanks largely to the raunchy, wildly hyped shock tactics of a Marilyn Manson tour this year, cultural conservatives seem convinced that Armageddon is nigh unless they act.

Locking controversial acts out of local auditoriums altogether hasn't really worked -- although it's been tried. This year, a South Carolina legislator tried to ban Marilyn Manson from playing on his state's proud Confederate soil. And a judge had to tell New Jersey that it couldn't block the band from performing at Giants Stadium. Here in Massachusetts, a February 21 Marilyn Manson appearance in Fitchburg brought angry protests and requests that the city council block the concert. But the band played on.

Support is now building for proposals to rate music concerts so parents will know how debauched a night their kids will have in store. In several states, according to the Times, legislators are at work on bills that would require music promoters to warn parents about live acts that feature obscene lyrics, stunts, or props.

At the moment, nobody is sure what form the ratings would take. Proposals range from a system similar to the motion picture industry's (a G for Jewel and an R, NC-17, or perhaps even X for Manson and fellow shockers like Insane Clown Posse) to one that merely flags artists whose records carry "Explicit Lyrics" warnings.

Needless to say, the music industry isn't pleased with these developments. But artists, labels, and promoters are already on the defensive after a new round of attacks from cultural conservatives, including some hysterical US Senate hearings last month on explicit lyrics that centered on the suicide of a North Dakota teenager who shot himself while listening to Marilyn Manson.

Which helps explain perhaps the most significant revelation in the Times story: the statement of Recording Industry Association of America president Hillary Rosen, who said she would (in the Times' words) "oppose any attempts to restrict minors from attending rock concerts but would not object to an efficient parental warning system similar to the one her organization established for albums 12 years ago."

Talk like this suggests that Rosen believes some ratings system is inevitable, and that the best thing to do is preempt insidious (not to mention clumsy) government intervention.

Despite the Manson nastiness in Fitchburg, no organized movement to clamp down on or rate concerts is evident locally, according to several sources in or familiar with area concert promotions.

"I have not heard about this happening here," says Nina Crowley, who heads the Massachusetts anticensorship group Mass M.I.C.

Farell Scott, spokeswoman for the Worcester Civic Center, was unaware of the ratings debate. "We've not even discussed it," she said.

John Innamorato, spokesman for local concert promoter Don Law, declined comment on the issue, saying: "We don't really have a position on it."

Lee Esckilsen, executive director of the Providence Civic Center, said that he would not object in principle to some kind of concert rating system, however. "I think people need to be given more information about the content of what they're about to see," Esckilsen said, noting that the subject had been discussed at a recent convention of auditorium managers. (The current debate, incidentally, appears to exclude smaller clubs, like Cambridge's Middle East, whose liquor licenses already require age limits of 18 or 21 for most shows.)

But Nina Crowley argues that ratings present thorny practical issues. "You can't predict what's going to happen at a concert the way you can when you turn on a CD or run a film," she says. "Concerts change every time they're given. You can't base a rating on what might happen."

What's more, who's to say where an underage kid is truly protected? On a recent November night, former gangsta rap producer Puff Daddy and occasionally riotous punks Green Day played Worcester, and the cheerfully ordinary alt-pop band Everclear was at Boston's Paradise club. After the stage-diving of a certain pro quarterback, we know which show landed a young woman in the hospital with spinal injuries.

And it's not hard to see where all this is going. In Michigan, a state legislator is pushing a bill that would mean fines or even jail time for concert hall owners who admit unaccompanied minors to shows the state deems "offensive" (prompting Pearl Jam to announce this week that they would avoid the state on an upcoming tour). Ratings, critics worry, will quickly become more than just informational: they'll be used to keep kids away from anything local pols can't tap their feet to.

"I think the message that ought to be sent [to parents] by the music industry and these politicians is that you have children and you need to accept the responsibility yourself," Crowley says. "Parents are the only people who know what their kids are able or not able to handle."

Michael Crowley can be reached at mcrowley[a]phx.com.