Reviews

The Standard's Beat Sheet Review and Feature on Parental Advisory
(June 6, 2001)

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Tuesday, June 5, 2001

TOP STORY
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Crazy Little Thing Called Censorship

Author Eric Nuzum's new book examines the history of music censorship in the United States.

By Julene Snyder

If you're looking for utter objectivity in a writer, Eric Nuzum isn't your man. He's up-front about his biases. In both print and conversation, he comes across as blunt, opinionated and downright passionate about freedom of speech. While the latter trait might be due partly to the extensive research he conducted for his new book, "Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in America," Nuzum was quite possibly blunt and opinionated as a toddler.

"People from all walks of life think I'm crazy," he laughs from his office in Ohio. "I get it from the left, and I get it from the right. But speaking with your own voice is important. You just can't say that some speech is more permissible than other speech; that's a line that shouldn't be crossed."

The book is broken down into two parts: "Issues in Music Censorship," a dense, surprisingly readable 12 chapters that cover subjects ranging from the Parental Music Resource Center to MTV to congressional hearings, and "The Chronology of Music Censorship in the United States," which begins with the Civil War and takes us to the end of the latest millennium.

While it would seem to make a fine text for high-schoolers - being concerned with, you know, music and stuff - Nuzum doesn't expect his book to be added to many curricula that aren't aimed at college-age students, primarily due to its necessarily explicit language and images related to the subject matter.

Nuzum makes the difficult tap dance of being both entertaining and informative look easy. "Parental Advisory" is sprinkled with goodies like lists ("Songs That Mention Tipper Gore" and "Fornicators, Blasphemers and Druggies") and images of controversial and banned album covers (such as Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A," which critics said looked like the flag was being urinated on, and the notorious nakedness of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Two Virgins") and is solidly researched and annotated.

In conversation, Nuzum (pronounced news-um) packs a lot of information in rapid-fire bursts of words. It turns out that the book was born from an unexpected influx of visitors to Nuzum's music censorship Web site (Ericnuzum.com) - of course, it didn't hurt that a few weeks after he put it online it was featured as a cool site on Netscape's front door.

"I started to get a 100 to 200 e-mails a day," recalls Nuzum. "One was from a book editor at William Morrow & Co., but I thought it was junk mail and tossed it." Once convinced that the editor's interest was genuine, Nuzum worked up a proposal, submitted it and sat back to wait for the contract to arrive. Whoops! Rejected. Undeterred, he rewrote the proposal and this time got the green light.

Since the publication of "Parental Advisory," Nuzum has expanded his Web site considerably and has added audio interviews from the book, with subjects like a Wal-Mart music buyer, conservative minister Bob Larson and current PMRC head Barbara Wyatt. Nuzum thinks that the interview with the Wal-Mart buyer, who requested anonymity on the grounds that he spoke on behalf of the company and not as an individual, is the most interesting of the bunch.

According to Nuzum, the Wal-Mart chain is the world's largest music retailer and sells "as many as one out of every 10 CDs sold in the United States." It also has a blanket policy not to stock any music product with a parental advisory. The "Mr. Wal-Mart Music Buyer" interviewee says it's all worked out beautifully: "Our company decided not to carry controversial music, and it was the single-most positive marketing thing we have ever done in home entertainment," he tells Nuzum with enthusiasm.

When asked about the role of organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America, which recently was taken to task by the Federal Trade Commission for "failure to institute positive reforms to its self-regulatory structure" when it comes to the marketing of violence to children, Nuzum all but sneers. "The RIAA doesn't care about artists' rights," he says emphatically. "Repeatedly, they've demonstrated that they would do anything against artists. It's all about profits, not about the rights of artists."

As far as his own profits goes, Nuzum is hopeful that his book will sell relatively well. For one thing, he opted to forego printing it in hardcover and instead go straight to paperback. "That was a deliberate choice," he says. "This book needs to be affordable." Whether or not it sells as well as "The Real Slim Shady" (doubtful at best), Nuzum's own star appears to be rising with the publication of "Parental Advisory."

"I did 10 speeches in seven weeks," Nuzum says. And in July, he'll be a talking head on a VH1 special, which will do doubt air when little children are tucked safely in their beds: It's a six-part series on the history of sex in rock music, called "Below the Waist."