ROCK WARS SEQUEL: Misery loves company, so...

ROCK WARS SEQUEL: Misery loves company, so it’s nice to see Pop Eye’s not the only one reacting to the recent wave of self-righteous pop detractors who have blasted rock ‘n’ roll as promoting everything from drug abuse and pornography to child abuse and grave robbing. The Sept. 19 issue of BAM magazine is devoted to a wide-ranging examination of censorship, both here and abroad. In addition to a thoughtful editorial by Managing Editor Bill Forman, titled “Waiting for the Clampdown,” it offers:

An assessment of a recent report on gang violence by Gov. Deukmejian’s California Council on Criminal Justice, which labels heavy metal and punk groups as a “new gang phenomena,” while acknowledging that “valid data collection” proving this link is “unavailable.”

A look behind South Africa’s Apartheid Curtain, where political groups like the Kalahari Surfers can sell their records, but only as imports, since no local pressing plants will touch them.

Other topics include restrictions on rock in the Soviet Union; interviews with Parents Music Resource Center leaders; CBS Records forcing bad-boy rappers, the Beastie Boys, to change an offensive title of the group’s latest album, and a profile of embattled Dead Kennedys front man Jello Biafra. Biafra finds himself a “First Amendment guinea pig” after being charged with distributing material harmful to miners--an album with a poster inside depicting copulating genitalia.

Meanwhile, the October issue of Spin magazine (due next week) features an interview with another noisy rock adversary, TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. The issue also contains a heated editorial by Editor-Publisher Bob Guccione Jr., who refers to Swaggart as a “modern-day carpetbagger” with the “sensual hypnotism of the snake.” We’d love to see Swaggart’s reaction to the illustration accompanying the story that depicts him as Tim Curry’s mad transvestite scientist from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” complete with high heels, torn fish-net stockings, black bikini briefs and a string of pearls around his neck.