Surrender, but don’t give yourself away
A fable about banning, burning, Cheap Trick, and the eyes and ears of a teenage girl
Warning: The following paragraphs will be a little critical of some things some folks hold dear. It it not meant to offend, or malign your own experience, which I hope is well and good. Rather, it’s about one experience, somewhere in time.
Chapter One
A long time ago a teenage girl sat in a nondescript church, in a nondescript town, for a nondescript catechism class. The goal was to confirm her in the eyes of that particular God. But other stuff crept in too.
She was a quiet kid. Socially awkward at best and hated any sort of attention as she was not good at navigating many situations. More book smart than street smart, many situations made her anxious. But being quiet meant she would often hear and see things as people often forgot she was there.
Like most teenage girls she had a brain full of dreams and silly thoughts. And she loved music of all kinds. The girl often hid a radio near her bed to play softly at night. With that device, she filled her brain with old 50’s and 60’s tunes, disco, rock-n-roll, R&B, country & western; and late on Sunday nights, Dr. Demento’s wacky tunes lulled her in and out of half-sleep. When she had a little money she’d buy the latest trending teenage albums which in the 1980s were hair-metal bands like Motley Crue and Def Leppard, as well as the likes of Prince and K-Tel compilations. Music brought a lot of joy in her life.
“Mother told me, yes she told me, I’d meet girls like you. She also told me stay away you’ll never know what you’ll catch.”
There was no music playing at this particular catechism class, but there was a film. Somewhere the teacher had dug up an after-school special about a satanic drug-taking cult who turned people to the dark side, by listening to rock-n-roll music. Because that, young ladies and gentlemen, was what brought out the Satan in everyone.
The highlight of the reel was some grizzled looking man in his 30’s who stared at the camera and boldly claimed that at the height of his satanic powers he would listen to rock-n-roll and could light a barn on fire…with his mind. The scene faded into his superimposed face floating over a scene of a barn burning, playing Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” in the background.
The cow manure flowing from his mouth was faster than it ever was coming out of a bull’s ass.
“Just the other day I heard of a soldier’s falling off, some Indonesian junk that’s going around.”
As the teenager’s mind tried to make sense of this, her eyes scanned the room from her safe little corner in the back. She saw the catechism teacher nodding in agreement to every ridiculous scare tactic this film spewed. The girl speculated that this teacher must have thought this movie was genius and made her job easier. After all, she once overhead this same woman in the restroom tell another adult “If we get 7 out of 10 commandments in these little (expletive) farm kids, we’ll be lucky.”
She looked at her classmates. Many looked bored, their skepticism wheels also turning. The star students in the front stared ahead nodding, but she knew deep down they were struggling how they were going to square this up with reality and still be seen as A-students.
She looked over at her fellow back row cohort. Some were trying to sleep or fidgeting, waiting for this nonsense to end. Two were likely high as a kite. She’d later decide they were the smart ones that night.
Eventually the lights came on. The class was asked to discuss, but not really. Only right questions and answers would have been allowed. The girl stayed quiet until they were allowed to go. She went home that night, placed a record on the turntable, and with her headphones on pondered how a sound, or combination of sounds could make someone turn satanic. She firmly decided it couldn’t. She wrote in her diary that night “People lie a lot for religion.” And went to bed.
Chapter Two
The months rolled by and a new rock-n-roll trend came on the scene, beyond the satanism the film warned about…record banning and censorship. This particular trend was led by Tipper Gore (former wife of Al Gore), and team Blue. You often saw them on the TV news or in glossy magazines bemoaning the terrible content and lyrics of popular hair-metal music. They held up albums with terrible sexist art, and screeched at finding these records in their children’s bedrooms. Like all nosy mothers of their ilk, they demanded that the U.S. Congress do “something,” and eventually the “Explicit Lyrics” sticker was created for albums.
The girl watched this cultural event unfold and again and again thought about the film. If the film had been right, the country would now be filled with satanists. It seemed more likely that America’s record labels were good at marketing to teenagers. Their economic engine was built on it. And that engine was at the moment, clearly focused on the Los Angeles music scene. A combination of glam metal, punk, anti-disco sentiment, and sweaty heat had produced a cauldron of crunchy guitars, spandex, eye-liner and big, big, hair. This scene would not be bothered with sexual innuendos. It was flat out boldly extolling sex and drugs and any ridiculous nonsense that swirled around in the heads of 18-year-old men (and a few women) with no filters. And as sheltered Midwestern kids, we of course ate it up. Like warm illegal beer, it sounded exciting, dangerous, and our parents wanted it banned. We couldn’t buy that shit fast enough.
Still this banning frenzy and national hand-wringing caused issues for her. The girl had to hide her albums at times when her mother watched these record banning groups too much. She began to be concerned with the effects of these groups on the adults in her life. As she would often hear adults bemoan what the world was coming to…continually.
Throughout this time, she continued to listen to music and patiently waited to see if how she interpreted these events was wrong. Would she turn into a satanist? Would her peers? After all, she still loved that Cheap Trick record.
But strangely few of her classmates turned to Satan. They still had the typical bad ideas and thoughts teens have, but many wisely chose not to act on them. The teenagers around her were learning how to use our brains to think about things. And none, as far as the girl knew, were able to light a barn on fire, with the sounds of Cheap Trick.
Eventually this craze of banning albums and explicit stickers faded. The sticker was placed as small as possible on vinyl and cassettes for death metal and hip-hop albums. The girl’s Prince albums survived and the world moved on…again. No barns burned and Cheap Trick continued to thrive and tour. No satanists came forward.
Chapter Three
The girl grew up and continued to love rock-n-roll music. Her tastes and experiences grew as well.
Years later, the woman started to hear about how books need to be banned. This time Team Red led the charge. A cadre of hand-wringing parents have come together holding up books about kids being gay or parents being gay or someone who may be trans or gender fluid. This banning trend is concerned if their children would see these words in these sentences put together in this way, it will lead to questions they are not ready to answer or cannot answer quite yet. And if that happens, they are convinced their children will turn into something? Besides themselves? She’s not sure she understands.
“Whatever happened to all this season’s losers of the year? Every time I go to thinking…where’d they disappear.”
The woman has sympathy from aging. She understands many parents feel beleaguered with so much out of their control. Today’s children are inundated with advertisements, ridiculous Tik-Tok/Tide Pod videos, and capitalistic pursuits everyday. A whole industry of products is marketed to kids everyday, putting parents at a clear disadvantage.
Plus there was a pandemic. An incredibly disruptive, hopefully once in a lifetime event, that upended all of our lives. And it brought up a lot of mortal anxiety of how much of life is truly out of our control.
And the woman also knows some of these parents may not have the skills to talk to their children about difficult subjects, and wonders if they know it will not get easier. She wonders if they spent the same about of time acquiring those skills as they do fighting to remove these books from libraries, would the outcome be different?
From her own experience she knows that the questions kids ask only gets more challenging as they get older. She also learned from her former experiences, right and wrong, that once children realize adults lie, it changes their relationship with trust. And that can cause more damage in some circumstances. Particularly when it comes to banning things.
And the bookworm in her knows, while the purpose of a library is to expose kids to ideas and enlighten, you just can’t read every book. So you choose what interests YOU. If makeup tips, Norse mythology, or Hockey-Hot Bodice rippers (this is a real thing, check it out) is not your thing, you’ll ignore it and choose something you are curious about. But the other things, like images and sounds everywhere will still exist.
But these are just her thoughts as a middle-age woman. There are other perspectives. She stays quiet.
“Now I have heard the WAC’s recruited old maids for the war….but Mommy isn’t one of those, I’ve known her all these years.”
While this new trend surges, the woman goes grocery shopping. As she is pushing the grocery cart through the store, the music system overhead launches into “Girls, Girls, Girls,” a little ditty from the 1980s by Motley Crue about strip clubs. Apparently this is now nostalgia rock aimed at her demographic. She smiles and thinks about the explicit lyrics sticker on this album and her mind confirms times have changed and yet they have not.
“Then I woke up, Mom and Dad are rolling on the couch…rolling numbers, rock and rolling, got my Kiss records out.”
She leaves the store, cues up her music app to play Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” and hums along as she heads home.
“Mommy’s alright, Daddy’s alright…they just seem a little weird…surrender, surrender…but don’t give yourself away!”
She continues to live happily and keeps the barn burning in her heart for another day.
The End
P.S. Special thanks to Rick Nielsen and Cheap Trick quoted in this article. As always, I love your rock and roll.
