"Lock the doors and close the blinds -- we're going for a ride..."

We tried a new Chinese place this evening. Awesome vegetarian entrees -- and not too far away from the house!

On the way there, I was listening to one of the local stations playing their "Saturday Night at the '80s" program. A certain song came on which made me start thinking...

This song was, in its day, one of the heavier, more controversial heavy metal songs of its time. The band members were scary looking. The video had many instances of cartoon violence of a son against his father, throwing him out windows and such. (He kept on getting up.) If you had to think of a song and video pair that was really the most widely taboo of its time due to unnecessary violence, you need not have looked further than Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It."

In fact, Dee Snider, lead singer of the band, was one of the three artists who testified in front of Tipper Gore's PMRC hearings about offensive music lyrics in 1985.  He was certainly the one who stood out of the three, flanked by Frank Zappa and John Denver -- but all three of them were trying to defend their First Ammendment rightsto express their lyrics as they saw fit.

So -- this was one of the hardest, rockin'est songs of its day. And I listened to it this evening. The song doesn't have near the hard rock edge of even the more mainstream groups of the late 1990s and this decade. Twisted Sister's metal would fizzle next to even Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit or Nickelback. And the violence portrayed it the video for "We're Not Gonna Take It" pales in comparison to most others out there.

In fact, the song sounds more like something a high school marching band would perform. Something a show choir might perform. I mean, take a look at the lyrics:

We've Got The Right To Choose And
there Ain't No Way We'll Lose It
this Is Our Life, This Is Our Song.

We'll Fight The Powers That Be Just
don't Pick Our Destiny 'cause
you Don't Know Us, You Don't Belong.

We're Right / yeah
We're Free / yeah
We'll Fight / yeah
You'll See / yeah

Sure, it talks about rebellion and critical applied thought. But it feels more like a cheer! I can envision pom squads and dance teams doing routines to this song!

Which is also why the opening percussion of the song made me accidentally think that, instead of "We're Not Gonna Take It," the song playing was actually "Mickey" by Toni Basil. The songs play almost transparently over each other! I wouldn't be surprised if there was already a mashup with these two songs intertwined already.

The point being? The music industry figured out that pushing the envelope sells. And what was once at the edge twenty years ago is nowhere near the edge now. And in another twenty years? People will likely look the same way at System of a Down or Audioslave.

It also goes to show you how completely out of touch I am with the current music scene. I never thought I would become "one of those people..."