Ranting and rating

The right tries to label live concerts. Also, Moakley, Kennedy, and Kerry vs. Ocean Spray; and Boston's doom revisited.

Talking Politics 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."

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It may seem like an unlikely matchup, but the heaviest weights of the Massachusetts congressional delegation are throwing around their clout in hopes of influencing . . . cranberry cabal Ocean Spray?

A letter obtained recently by the Phoenix offers a look at political pressure in action. And according to US Representative Joe Moakley (D-South Boston), the arm-twisting is working.

At issue is a classic intercity rivalry that involves big bucks, big P.R. firms, the US Navy, and not a small amount of local pride and political posturing.

The background: for months, Boston mayor Tom Menino and the state's top pols have been hyping the arrival of the Tall Ships for an elaborate festival in Boston in July 2000. But a New York-based publicity company called OpSail is organizing the ships' arrival in Manhattan, and also wants to schedule a docking in New London from July 11 to 16. That's just when the Boston-based firm Conventures wants to arrange a gala here. With Boston once again struggling not to be overshadowed by the Big Apple, local leaders from Menino to Ted Kennedy are trying to play tough guy. (When Menino learned, for instance, that New York City wanted our beloved Old Ironsides for its Independence Day 2000 celebration, he growled: "The ship doesn't belong in New York, and no one better try to put it there.")

That's where Ocean Spray comes in. The company rankled Boston's organizers -- and its politicians -- when it committed to becoming the main sponsor of OpSail's event to the tune of $5 million. Folks around here had assumed that a Massachusetts-based business like Ocean Spray would be glad to give Boston's event a little more momentum, or at least not to undermine it. So the heavies of the state delegation weighed in with the kind of letter that gets results.

Dated October 31 and printed on the official stationery of Senator Edward Kennedy, the letter was signed by Kennedy, Moakley, and Senator John Kerry.

"We are very concerned that Ocean Spray has tentatively offered to sponsor a competing event in another state that could have a devastating effect on the quality of Boston's event," it read. "We hope and expect that a concern of this magnitude can be adequately and promptly addressed."

The powerful triumvirate continued the gentle persuasion: "As a good corporate citizen with a large investment in Southeastern Massachusetts, you could play a vital role in the success of the Sail Boston, Tall Ships events in Massachusetts. With that, we respectfully request a meeting to discuss this situation at your earliest convenience. Hopefully, some agreement can be reached to benefit Boston, Massachusetts, and Ocean Spray."

According to Moakley, the missive worked. His contacts at the company, he says, told him not to worry.

"They assured me that if Boston is not satisfied, they will not go through with the $5 million" sponsorship, Moakley reports.

But publicly, Ocean Spray is holding its ground. Spokesman John Lawlor says the company's position hasn't changed.

"We're still supporting OpSail and their program," Lawlor says. "But we're trying to work with all the parties to resolve whatever issues there are, so the ships can come to Boston."

Sounds like we can count on more wrangling to come.

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I met with a few strange looks and smartass cracks after I wrote a story in June whose title asked, "Is Boston Doomed?"

The piece argued that the threat of chemical, biological, and nuclear terrorism should scare urban dwellers witless. It imagined disasters from a crop duster spraying a sold-out Fenway Park with a fine mist of anthrax to a release of Sarin nerve gas in a packed Park Street T station; in both cases, thousands and thousands would die.

I guess it sounded to some people like science fiction. A few so-called friends likened these scenarios to an attack by giant spiders, or spontaneous combustion. Ha ha.

But since then, a United Nations standoff with Saddam Hussein has taught us some very interesting things indeed about what kind of toys even a backward country like Iraq can acquire in just a couple of years. So for those who may still be disbelievers, I'd like to share a selection of my favorite factoids from the past few weeks:

Iraq told the UN that from 1989 to 1991 it made enough botulinum toxin -- the deadliest substance known to science -- to wipe out the earth's population several times over. The UN suspects Iraq's actual production may have been two or three times that amount.

The "seed stock" for Iraq's biological weapons program, including anthrax, chlostridium botulinum, and chlostridium perfringens, was obtained from a Rockville, Maryland, biotech company -- by mail.

Iraq once tried to fit a MiG-21 jet fighter with tanks capable of spraying deadly germs, and equip it for remote-control flight.

The Defense Department recently counted 25 countries -- including old friends like North Korea, Iran, and Libya -- who now have or are working to obtain weapons like these.

Sweet dreams.

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