Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just rocking out
Speaker 2: worshiping Satan here and stuff you should do.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I believe there's a CoA at the top here.
Speaker 1: Just a trigger warning. This one features you know, content
Speaker 1: featuring drug and alcohol use and suicide, some pretty serious stuff,
Speaker 1: so we just wanted to give listeners a heads up.
Speaker 3: Also a heads up.
Speaker 1: If you want to read a really, really great long form,
Speaker 1: in depth article about this. There's an article called The
Speaker 1: Dreamer Deceiver from nineteen ninety from The Village Voice by
Speaker 1: Ivan Solataroff. It's amazing, fantastic and like really gets into it.
Speaker 1: So thanks to Dave for this and as well as Ivan.
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. Yeah, And like you said, this is
Speaker 2: kind of a heavy subject, but it's also just totally
Speaker 2: fascinating because it comes from that really bizarre chapter of
Speaker 2: American history from essentially the eighties the beginning to the
Speaker 2: mid eighties, where there was a segment of the American population,
Speaker 2: specifically Christian fundamentalists, who were convinced that Satan was working
Speaker 2: as magic through rock and roll music, but specifically they
Speaker 2: eventually came to target heavy metal bands, and I mean
Speaker 2: that was a pretty easy target because at the time
Speaker 2: there are plenty of bands who were using satanic imagery
Speaker 2: or just looked weird so they must be Satan worshipers
Speaker 2: or something like that. There were bands that definitely encouraged it.
Speaker 2: As soon as they figured out that. The more the
Speaker 2: Christian right shouted about how there were Satanists out there,
Speaker 2: that they could sell more records, so they really kind
Speaker 2: of into it. So that's kind of where this story begins.
Speaker 2: And then the other thing you need to understand what
Speaker 2: we're talking about is something called back masking, and that
Speaker 2: is putting essentially hidden messages by that appear when you
Speaker 2: play music backwards. So those two things, the Satanic Panic
Speaker 2: of the early eighties combined with back mask and kind
Speaker 2: of laid the groundwork for what we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: That's right, And if you want to really get a
Speaker 1: background before you listen to this, you can listen to
Speaker 1: our I think one of our best episodes are Satanic
Speaker 1: Panic episode that we recorded and also go to a
Speaker 1: bookstore by our book Sure stuff you should know Colon.
Speaker 3: I don't even know what's the name of it.
Speaker 2: An incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things.
Speaker 3: That's hey, are you looking at edit? Or is that
Speaker 3: for memory?
Speaker 2: Right off the top of my dome? As the cool kids.
Speaker 3: Say, nice work.
Speaker 1: You can go out and get that book because we
Speaker 1: have a really really fun chapter on back masking or
Speaker 1: backward masking and.
Speaker 3: There and yeah, so go read that, Listen to that.
Speaker 3: Now read this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, everybody, and we can talk about the Judas
Speaker 1: Priest trial. But first, even before we get to that,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about California Bill AB thirty seven to forty one,
Speaker 1: the very first bill that said, hey, we should have
Speaker 1: warning labels on records that have backward masking.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It was introduced by a California assemblyman named Phil Wyman,
Speaker 2: who was an assemblymen for decades, I think two different times,
Speaker 2: and he had been contacted by a constituent who'd seen
Speaker 2: a show about satanic messages being subliminate, subliminally hidden in
Speaker 2: music on the Trinity Broadcast network and she was very
Speaker 2: upset about this, and Phil Wyman ended up introducing a
Speaker 2: bill based on that phone call.
Speaker 1: That's right, and part of this bill said the records
Speaker 1: of many rock groups contain anti Christian and pro satanic
Speaker 1: messages transcribed on them by backward masking.
Speaker 3: And I'll paraphrase the rest, because they basically.
Speaker 1: Say, like, while you can't, you can only understand it
Speaker 1: basically if it's played backwards. But when it's played forwards,
Speaker 1: your brain still subconsciously picks up on this stuff, which
Speaker 1: is ludicrous and pseudoscience. We know this for a fact now.
Speaker 1: But they in this bill, which by the way, didn't
Speaker 1: even get put to a vote, thank goodness, this bill
Speaker 1: literally said like, hey, this stuff, your brain is picking
Speaker 1: up on it. Even though it's playing in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1: Your child's brain is still hearing these messages.
Speaker 2: Right and again these are messages about Satan, anti Christian,
Speaker 2: pro satanic messages. And the big fear was that not
Speaker 2: only would it make kids like drop out a heighth
Speaker 2: school and start drinking beer prematurely, but then they would
Speaker 2: drive them to suicide. That was, you know, and to
Speaker 2: the Christian rights credit, they were deeply concerned about teenage
Speaker 2: suicide and they were seeking a way to easily explain
Speaker 2: it because usually teenage suicide is the convergence of a
Speaker 2: lot of different factors. A lot of times it comes
Speaker 2: from people you would not want to identify as part
Speaker 2: of the problem. So it makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 2: And it's a lot easier to just point at heavy
Speaker 2: metal bands and say, you guys are putting messages in
Speaker 2: your music that's causing kids to commit suicide. Right, And
Speaker 2: like you said, there were experts that came and testified
Speaker 2: about this, but the experts with scare quotes, and I
Speaker 2: think you should actually put scare quotes around the scare
Speaker 2: quotes when you write experts when you're talking about these people.
Speaker 2: Because one guy, in particular, William H. Yarrel the second
Speaker 2: was a self taught neuroscientist. That's how he got It's
Speaker 2: it's a I can't say, yeah, okay, this is a
Speaker 2: family podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah he's he's self described as a self taught neuroscientist.
Speaker 1: He does not have academic credentials that are anything close
Speaker 1: to what he has described himself as. And he has
Speaker 1: a a again in quotes, probably scientific theory about these
Speaker 1: messages that they are they can be decoded by the unconscious,
Speaker 1: which already covered if it's hurt enough times. And here
Speaker 1: are the two keys here as far as this is
Speaker 1: going to play out in like a trial situation is
Speaker 1: that he said, once you have decoded this message your
Speaker 1: unconscious mind has, then you process it as truth and
Speaker 1: that these truths can influence your behavior like suicide and
Speaker 1: drug use and any other anti social behavior you can
Speaker 1: think of.
Speaker 2: Right, and so again this is total pseudoscience based on
Speaker 2: nothing like facts, but because they're he was a man
Speaker 2: who presented himself as an expert in this, who was
Speaker 2: willing to go testify as an expert, and was saying
Speaker 2: these things that backed up the Christian rights beliefs. This
Speaker 2: is how like junk science starts to get a hold
Speaker 2: in culture because in a lot of times people don't
Speaker 2: want to be impolite and tell you how ridiculous what
Speaker 2: you're saying is, and so it ends up like on
Speaker 2: the record, and it just kind of grows from there.
Speaker 2: And this is a really good example of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: In the Satanic Pecket Satanic Panic episode, I know, we
Speaker 1: talked about the PMRC, the Parents Music Resource Center, that
Speaker 1: was the group formed in eighty five, not a supergroup
Speaker 1: of musicians, but a supergroup of DC political spouses, notably
Speaker 1: Tipper Gore and then wife of James Baker, who was
Speaker 1: Treasury secretary his wife Susan Baker, when they got together
Speaker 1: and said, hey, we need warning labels on music. Expert
Speaker 1: profane or sexually explicit, V for violent, DA for drugs
Speaker 1: and alcohol, O for a cult, anti Christian or satanic music.
Speaker 1: And this is where we got those very famous hearings
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty five with everyone from Frank Zappa a
Speaker 1: very fired up John Denver testifying.
Speaker 2: I watched some of John Denver's testimony today and it's great.
Speaker 2: I mean, he is fired up in what he's saying,
Speaker 2: but he's also mellow John Denver, Yeah, but he's He
Speaker 2: talks about how his song Rocky Mountain High was banned
Speaker 2: in some places or not played in some places because
Speaker 2: it was taken as like a pro drug song, and
Speaker 2: he said it was banned by people who'd obviously never
Speaker 2: been to or seen the Rocky Mountains.
Speaker 3: Or some good weed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he he really kind of went to bat
Speaker 2: for against censorship. He said, I'm opposed to censorship in
Speaker 2: any form, and especially that's dictated by a self appointed
Speaker 2: group of watchdogs who were telling everybody else what morality is.
Speaker 2: He had some really great messages, but in the end,
Speaker 2: the PMRC prevailed because the warning sticker that parenal advisory
Speaker 2: explicit lyrics that essentially helped sell way more records than
Speaker 2: would have sold had that label never been created.
Speaker 3: Ye.
Speaker 2: That came out of that push by the pmr C.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know what, I didn't mind it back
Speaker 3: then so much.
Speaker 1: I think when the pm R PMRC was doing their thing,
Speaker 1: I was really young and I didn't understand it. Later,
Speaker 1: when the parental Advisory label came out, I was kind
Speaker 1: of like, well, who cares. It's fine, Like it's just
Speaker 1: a rating and parents need ratings as guidelines. But I
Speaker 1: don't know now that I see how it all went down,
Speaker 1: It's really I don't know how you draw those guidelines
Speaker 1: and what is right and what is wrong? Is is
Speaker 1: really kind of the big question for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, sure, I mean, as you're essentially providing
Speaker 2: a service for parents who don't want to go to
Speaker 2: the trouble of finding out what lives are doing, you know,
Speaker 2: at the expense of free speech. Although to me I
Speaker 2: kind of agree with past you where it's like this
Speaker 2: is this barely qualifies as censorship. No one's saying you
Speaker 2: can't say it. Yeah, there's just a warning on there
Speaker 2: that some things might be offensive to some people. I
Speaker 2: don't know how I feel about it, but it's not.
Speaker 2: I'm not as virulently against it as I once was too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: But point being, during those hearings, you had you know,
Speaker 1: Frank Zapp and the gang out there, but you also
Speaker 1: had a group of again you know, quote expert unquote
Speaker 1: people testifying that like, hey, this music will I mean,
Speaker 1: there was one guy, Joe Stucy, that said there are
Speaker 1: scientifics studies that prove that rock music warps young people's
Speaker 1: minds and that these subaudible messages can you know, infiltrate
Speaker 1: the unconscious and lead to suicide. They'd talked about all
Speaker 1: these and these are you know, to be sure, sad,
Speaker 1: sad cases of teenage suicide, but you know, trotting these
Speaker 1: cases out there saying and you know what they were
Speaker 1: listening to Twisted Sister before it all happened and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So And also if you say that there
Speaker 2: are scientific studies and no one asks you to explain
Speaker 2: what scientific studies you're talking about, that's again how junk
Speaker 2: science gets a foothold in the world.
Speaker 3: Totally.
Speaker 2: So I say we take a break and come back
Speaker 2: and talk about how this kind of went from Congress
Speaker 2: into the courtroom. Once this this idea took hold, that
Speaker 2: that musicians were putting dangerous, harmful, hidden messages in their music.
Speaker 3: That's a real pro transition.
Speaker 1: All right, So we're back. We promised to get into
Speaker 1: the courtroom, and we are not going to start.
Speaker 3: With the.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess they were both pretty popular trials in
Speaker 1: the media, or at least captured everyone's attention, but one
Speaker 1: trial went decidedly longer than the first. In nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: Ozzy Osbourne was sued along with CBS Records when their
Speaker 1: son John McCollum these are parents in California, took his
Speaker 1: life after listening to Suicide Solution, the Ozzy Osbourne song.
Speaker 1: It was dismissed very key ruling here on First Amendment
Speaker 1: grounds that basically said, hey, music lyrics are free speech
Speaker 1: and it doesn't matter what they say. You can't sue
Speaker 1: someone for writing a song and singing it. Very quickly
Speaker 1: after this, there were two more pending suicide cases that
Speaker 1: were scrapped.
Speaker 3: But then a couple of years, well, I guess wouldn't
Speaker 3: a couple of years.
Speaker 1: It was just a few months later, in December of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, a very tragic thing happened in Reno, Nevada,
Speaker 1: just outside of Sparks, Nevada.
Speaker 2: So yeah, this is a very sad story. This is
Speaker 2: where it gets tragic because there were two boys who
Speaker 2: were best friends. They didn't really like most other people.
Speaker 2: They were just as tight as two people could be
Speaker 2: with one another, though, and they loved Judas Priest. Their
Speaker 2: names were Raymond Bellknapp, who was eighteen, and James Vance,
Speaker 2: who was twenty, and everybody called them Ray and Jay
Speaker 2: because they were essentially inseparable. And I think I said
Speaker 2: it before, but it bears repeating. They loved Judas Priest.
Speaker 3: They did. It was their favorite band.
Speaker 1: These are guys that, you know, if you sort of
Speaker 1: think about the typical metal heads of the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: maybe some anti social behaviors. Like you said, they just
Speaker 1: hung around with each other, hung out in a room,
Speaker 1: drinking and smoking grass and listening to heavy metal over
Speaker 1: and over and over and reading lyrics and looking at
Speaker 1: the posters and you know, number one fans basically. But
Speaker 1: these were deeply troubled kids who were very unhappy. Raymond
Speaker 1: had had one attempted suicide before and that night they
Speaker 1: made a suicide pack that they were going to in
Speaker 1: their lives. They got a shotgun as sawed off shotgun,
Speaker 1: went to a playground after drinking and smoking pot all
Speaker 1: day and went to a playground behind a Lutheran church,
Speaker 1: and Raymond shot and killed himself with a shotgun under
Speaker 1: the chin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's even worse than that though, because, like you said,
Speaker 2: it was a suicide packed. So after he witnessed ray
Speaker 2: shoot himself with a shotgun point blank range, jay was like, well,
Speaker 2: I guess it's my turn. So he picked up the
Speaker 2: shotgun that was covered in blood and gore and ejected
Speaker 2: the shell, put in another shell, and then put it
Speaker 2: to his own chin. And in that article from the
Speaker 2: Village Voice that you cited, the author calculated based on
Speaker 2: the nine to one one call and when the ambulance
Speaker 2: got there, that he probably sat there for a full
Speaker 2: five minutes contemplating whether to do this or not. And
Speaker 2: he said later, because he actually survived this, that it
Speaker 2: was the sound of sirens that essentially hurried him up.
Speaker 2: And I guess the gun slipped or he didn't quite
Speaker 2: line it up the way that he had intended to
Speaker 2: or there was just some little part of his head
Speaker 2: that was like I don't want to die. But he
Speaker 2: did pull the trigger, but he shot himself under the chin,
Speaker 2: out at an outward angle, away from himself. So he survived.
Speaker 2: But he also took off like a significant portion of
Speaker 2: his lower face.
Speaker 1: Yeah, his his chin and mouth and nose. You know,
Speaker 1: he was he was reconstructed as best possible. If you again,
Speaker 1: big trigger warnings here, but if you if you want
Speaker 1: to go look up you know, parts of this trial
Speaker 1: or interviews with this with this kid, you can do that,
Speaker 1: just you know, do so at your own risk.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so Jay survived, Ray died. And it was
Speaker 2: in a letter to Ray's mom that Jay wrote that
Speaker 2: he first said he he he identified the Judas Priest
Speaker 2: record they were listening to over and over all day
Speaker 2: while they were getting trashed as something that prompted them
Speaker 2: to to take their lives. And he said, quote, I
Speaker 2: believe that alcohol and heavy metal music such as Judas
Speaker 2: Priest led us or even mesmerized us into believing that
Speaker 2: the answer to life was death. He also was He
Speaker 2: also spoke to a guidance counselor afterward and told her
Speaker 2: that he had heard do It do It in the
Speaker 2: song in the end that they were listening to. And
Speaker 2: the song in particular is better by You Better than Me,
Speaker 2: which is off of the Judas Priest Stained Class album
Speaker 2: from nineteen seventy eight. And there's a lot to talk
Speaker 2: about with that.
Speaker 1: Song, yeah, there is. It was their fourth record. The
Speaker 1: song is actually a cover song. Maybe ironically it's a
Speaker 1: cover song, and that these weren't even Judas Priest, you know,
Speaker 1: words that they had written. And you know, we'll get
Speaker 1: to the duet part, but well, I guess we should
Speaker 1: just go ahead and say that supposedly at the end
Speaker 1: of like three different lines in the chorus right afterward
Speaker 1: you hear do it. And the boys heard this and
Speaker 1: thought that meant to take their lives. There were also
Speaker 1: four other parts that they thought were backmasked. One that
Speaker 1: said try suicide backwards, not try suicide backwards, Try suicide.
Speaker 1: Suicide is in sing my evil spirit and curse words here,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to clean up for the crowd here
Speaker 1: f the Lord f all of you.
Speaker 2: Some more about that song, Chuck. The other thing about it,
Speaker 2: it's on a Judas Priest album. It's associated with these boys,
Speaker 2: suicide and suicide attempt So of course you'd think, like,
Speaker 2: this is some dark material that you're talking about, And
Speaker 2: like you said, it's a cover. It was originally written
Speaker 2: by Gary Wright, who was a member at the time
Speaker 2: of Spooky Tooth, who recorded it in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 2: That same Gary Wright went on to have quite a
Speaker 2: successful solo career with his number two hit dream Weaver
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy six. That Gary Wright. But it was
Speaker 2: a song. I don't know if it was an anti
Speaker 2: war song. At the very least, it was a look
Speaker 2: inside the psyche of a boy at war, a sensibly
Speaker 2: in Vietnam, who was having such a rough time that
Speaker 2: he couldn't he couldn't express himself to his girlfriend back home.
Speaker 2: So he was actually talking to his best friend saying,
Speaker 2: like you talked to her, You tell her how I'm
Speaker 2: doing because I can't express myself. It's better by you,
Speaker 2: better than me. That's what the song's about. There's no
Speaker 2: nothing about suicide in there. There's nothing about taking your
Speaker 2: life or killing other people. It's just kind of like
Speaker 2: a soul bearing song about somebody who's going through the
Speaker 2: horrors of war. It's a good song it is a
Speaker 2: good song, and I really like Judas Priest's version of
Speaker 2: it too. It's like, I like Judas Priest, but I'm
Speaker 2: also like, after a while, everything sounds like Motorhead in
Speaker 2: a certain way. This does not. This sounds like Priest.
Speaker 2: You know, it's really yead.
Speaker 3: So it doesn't even it doesn't even sound that metal.
Speaker 2: Actually no, it's it's almost like do wop?
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you say do wop?
Speaker 3: Or do it?
Speaker 2: I said wow, See I said do wop? Everybody. I
Speaker 2: definitely did not say do it.
Speaker 3: Do it? Then.
Speaker 1: I hope there are no bloodsucking attorneys listening, because that's
Speaker 1: just what happened. This is where the story to me
Speaker 1: gets a little gross because in nineteen eighty six, three
Speaker 1: attorneys headed by a man named Ken McKenna, who was
Speaker 1: quoted at one point of saying, I was born.
Speaker 3: To sue people. I guess is the dot dot dot.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a vanity plate.
Speaker 3: It really born number two sue. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they mount a case, file a case rather a
Speaker 1: lawsuit against Judas Priest and CBS Records, which and this
Speaker 1: is just sort of a nitpicky thing, but it is
Speaker 1: specifically was a product liability lawsuit, meaning the same kind
Speaker 1: of lawsuit you would bring if any other product had
Speaker 1: something that made you sick to your stomach.
Speaker 2: Or something exactly. And in this case, the plaintiffs were
Speaker 2: bringing this as if CBS Records and Judas Priests had
Speaker 2: put out a product that had a harmful flaw to it,
Speaker 2: which was these subliminal messages that had brought harm to
Speaker 2: Ray and Jay, which had caused them to kill himself
Speaker 2: and then attempt to kill himself. So that was essentially
Speaker 2: what they were coming at it with, and they drew
Speaker 2: a judge in Washoe County, where Reno is I think
Speaker 2: the courthouse is in Reno. Judge Jerry Carr Whitehead heard
Speaker 2: this case and in pre trial hearings he heard a
Speaker 2: lot of expert testimony. He heard testimony from a lot
Speaker 2: of junk science, scare quote experts, and he agreed to
Speaker 2: hear the case. There was no jury, it was just him,
Speaker 2: but he allowed the case to come to trial, and
Speaker 2: just that was a landmark decision because what he's saying is,
Speaker 2: I think there's enough possibility that what the plainis are
Speaker 2: saying is right that these guys incerted subliminal messages that
Speaker 2: got these kids to take their lives or attempt to
Speaker 2: take their life, that I'm willing to hear lawyer's debate
Speaker 2: whether it's correct or not.
Speaker 3: That's enormous right.
Speaker 1: And that it didn't get bumped because of the ASSI
Speaker 1: free speech ruling because they were specifically because they were
Speaker 1: subliminal messages, which to him, setting this president doesn't count
Speaker 1: as free speech because there's no dialogue that can happen
Speaker 1: where you can determine if something is correct or true.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, even subliminal messages were invasion
Speaker 1: of a right to privacy because the listener didn't know
Speaker 1: this going into it and had no way of avoiding this.
Speaker 1: So mark rulings. Another thing, two things I want to
Speaker 1: point out here was part of this. Part of this
Speaker 1: was because these attorneys stepped forward, of course, and they
Speaker 1: thought they could make a lot of money. Part of
Speaker 1: it was because these parents hated this music. These weren't
Speaker 1: like rock and roll parents who were like, oh man,
Speaker 1: I was kind of into that too, but it turned
Speaker 1: my son wrong. These are people like when you see interviews.
Speaker 1: I watched that documentary on YouTube.
Speaker 3: It's not very good.
Speaker 1: It was sort of from the time though that but
Speaker 1: it showed a lot of the trial and interviews the
Speaker 1: mom I believe it was James's mom.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: They asked her like what kind of music she was into,
Speaker 1: and she liked music that her parents were into, so
Speaker 1: people from like the nineteen forties and fifties, she was like,
Speaker 1: you know, like Ry Rogers and the singing nun So
Speaker 1: the idea of Judas Priest being in their household, they
Speaker 1: hated this, so they're angry about that to begin with.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing that people I don't think
Speaker 1: thought about my which at the time was is that
Speaker 1: Judas Priests like they were devastated by this. These were
Speaker 1: big fans of theirs and Rob Halford and interviews was even like, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, we're not inserting backward messages anyway, but
Speaker 1: if we were, like, why it's ludicrous. Why would we
Speaker 1: have our biggest fans and tell them to kill themselves?
Speaker 1: And he's like, if anything, we would say buy more
Speaker 1: shirts and buy more records. Yeah, and it like it
Speaker 1: devastated them emotionally that these these kids took their lives
Speaker 1: and that they loved Judas Priest and they were being
Speaker 1: blamed for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that really struck me too in reading quotes
Speaker 2: from Rob Halfer is just the amount of empathy that
Speaker 2: he had and that he was able to kind of
Speaker 2: like cut through all the other stuff and be like,
Speaker 2: you guys, don't lose sight of what this is all about.
Speaker 2: These two kids, yeah like died, Yeah, and yeah, but
Speaker 2: also at the same time defending their music and defending
Speaker 2: their other fans too, saying like, don't pick on these
Speaker 2: kids just because they listened to Judas Priests, Like, there's
Speaker 2: nothing wrong with listening to Juwus Priest. It was a
Speaker 2: really strange, awful position that the band was forced into by,
Speaker 2: like you said, those ambulance chasing lawyers who created this
Speaker 2: lawsuit out of whole cloth.
Speaker 3: Basically. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other thing too, from watching the documentary was just
Speaker 1: the complete lack of and I'm not saying like parents
Speaker 1: are responsible if a child takes their life, because there's,
Speaker 1: like you said, there's so many things at work here,
Speaker 1: but the complete and utter lack of these parents' ability
Speaker 1: to look at the environment they were raised in was
Speaker 1: just startling.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: The stepfather of James was an alcoholic and had a
Speaker 1: gambling addiction, and when they asked her about it, in
Speaker 1: court and cross examination, she couldn't even say the word alcoholic.
Speaker 1: The wife she was just like, well, he had a
Speaker 1: drinking problem, but James the quote was James would make
Speaker 1: extremes out of situations. And then it cut to an
Speaker 1: interview with her on the couch with her husband that said,
Speaker 1: big deal, you had drinking problem, and like a lot
Speaker 1: of people have drinking problems and their kids don't kill themselves.
Speaker 1: And she said, everyone tries to blame everything on me,
Speaker 1: and none of this is my fault.
Speaker 3: And you know, I'm having empathy for her.
Speaker 1: Because she lost her child, but also just like the
Speaker 1: utter lack of like it's all this rock band's fault
Speaker 1: and nothing had to do with this. And the kids said,
Speaker 1: like being raised in that home was awful, Like he
Speaker 1: said that, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and not just him. I think his siblings also
Speaker 2: were basically in the same boat. Yeah, and for sure
Speaker 2: I read I read an article in Skeptical Inquirer by
Speaker 2: one of the psychologists for the defense for Judas Priest
Speaker 2: who was saying, like, this is not blaming the victims.
Speaker 2: We're not blaming the victims here, but you can't not
Speaker 2: take into account all of the other factors in these boys'
Speaker 2: lives that made them extremely high risk for suicide. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and to instead just ignore all that stuff like an
Speaker 2: inability to stay employed, engaging in tons of crime, fighting,
Speaker 2: trouble at school, fighting, being beaten at home, all of
Speaker 2: these things put together. You can't just throw those out.
Speaker 2: And it doesn't mean it's these kids' fault. And you know,
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways it doesn't necessarily make it
Speaker 2: the parents fault either, but it's certainly not the band's fault.
Speaker 2: Like you're really failing to take any sort of tountability
Speaker 2: if you're like you said, you're placing all the blame
Speaker 2: on Judas Priest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely so, totally all right. So they go to court.
Speaker 1: The thing that they had to do to persuade Judge Whitehead,
Speaker 1: they really had a four prong approach that they had
Speaker 1: to prove in order to prove that Judas Priest and
Speaker 1: CBS Records had at pay money. One is that there
Speaker 1: was definitely a physically present message on that song that
Speaker 1: you could identify. They brought in this guy, William nick
Speaker 1: Loff Junior, who this is For some reason this struck
Speaker 1: me as funny. He had a business that specialized in
Speaker 1: detecting subliminal messages, but it went out business.
Speaker 2: He also made money selling subliminal message tapes himself, those
Speaker 2: self help tapes that supposedly help people that quit smoking
Speaker 2: and lose weight. Right, He also made money doing.
Speaker 1: That, right, So he supposed he was an expert at
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. He you know, isolated and slowed
Speaker 1: down and amplified the parts of the song that supposedly
Speaker 1: said do it. We'll get to you know, the outcome
Speaker 1: of that later. And then he also played some of
Speaker 1: the backward masking stuff in court.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's really important too, Like there were two
Speaker 2: components to this. If you listened to it regularly, you
Speaker 2: heard do it. If you listened to it backwards, you
Speaker 2: heard all of those other satanic messages right, right. That
Speaker 2: wasn't clear to me at first. It took a little
Speaker 2: while to kind of sink in. So they were trying
Speaker 2: to get them both ways, forward and backward.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But the one thing that I don't get is
Speaker 1: in try well, they were talking about just lyrics in general,
Speaker 1: and that's the stuff that should have been protected by
Speaker 1: free speech. Because the judge even said at the beginning,
Speaker 1: like nothing that the only thing that matters here is
Speaker 1: the subliminal messages. That's the only thing this case hinges on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think back masking would fall into subliminal
Speaker 2: messages too. Well.
Speaker 1: No, no, I'm saying they were just talking about regular lyrics
Speaker 1: on the album.
Speaker 2: Oh gotcha, probably just prove the case or established the
Speaker 2: case that Judas Priest was evil.
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that really helped the plaintiffs
Speaker 2: that came from Rob Halford is on the stand. He
Speaker 2: was asked like, have you ever included any back mask
Speaker 2: lyrics and he said, yeah, we actually have before. And
Speaker 2: it was not too hide any kind of secret message
Speaker 2: or anything like that. But it was a cool effect
Speaker 2: playing something backwards when you listen to it forward. That
Speaker 2: was the point of it. But the plaintiff lawyers were like,
Speaker 2: case closed basically, and of course the case wasn't closed,
Speaker 2: but it was not. It was not. It didn't help
Speaker 2: the defense at all.
Speaker 1: No, for sure. And that was the second prong. First one,
Speaker 1: like I said, was there was an identifiable message. The
Speaker 1: second one was that they deliberately put it there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if they're going to be held liable, so yeah, just
Speaker 1: the fact that they did that at all, does it
Speaker 1: mean anything, because a lot of bands were doing that
Speaker 1: kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just read our chapter on backmasking, go do it.
Speaker 2: But they couldn't. But they rob however, couldn't say no,
Speaker 2: we've never done this, right, which would have been really
Speaker 2: helpful if you've done it once, who knows if you've
Speaker 2: done it before, right, So there was another one. The
Speaker 2: next part that they had to prove was that these
Speaker 2: messages were in fact subliminal, because the point of them
Speaker 2: being subliminal is that you couldn't resist the messages you
Speaker 2: were getting because you couldn't identify them, and you couldn't
Speaker 2: be like, this is not this is not right. And
Speaker 2: so the idea that there was such a thing as
Speaker 2: subliminal messaging. Apparently there was a guy named Wilson Key
Speaker 2: And I don't know, did you say that he didn't
Speaker 2: actually testify at the trial, but he was an advisor
Speaker 2: to say like William nick Lough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he basically he literally wrote the book
Speaker 1: on subliminal advertising. Yeah, and they interviewed him a lot,
Speaker 1: like he never took the stand, I think, but they
Speaker 1: used a lot of his like quoted testimony to back
Speaker 1: up their case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he was a hammer, and subliminal advertising is
Speaker 2: the nail. Like he saw it everywhere. He saw the
Speaker 2: word sex and the ridges of a Ritz Cracker on
Speaker 2: the box, that old chestnut. That like there was a
Speaker 2: naked woman hidden in the ice cubes of a Johnny
Speaker 2: Walker ad that came from him. He said, it was
Speaker 2: in the Sears catalog, as in the assistin chapel. It
Speaker 2: was everywhere. That just subliminal messaging was everywhere in the
Speaker 2: media and it worked. That was the point then that
Speaker 2: really helped bolster that plaintiff's case that the messages were
Speaker 2: and then they also needed to show that subliminal messages
Speaker 2: could create the impulse to die by suicide.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the way, I got a quote, a real quote
Speaker 1: from Wilson Okay, Wilson Key on science. He said, science
Speaker 1: is pretty much what you can get away with at
Speaker 1: any point in time.
Speaker 2: At least he didn't say that he's a self taught neuroscientist,
Speaker 2: but it's definitely in the same ballpark.
Speaker 3: That's a good point, all right.
Speaker 1: So you said they had to prove that they contributed
Speaker 1: to that impulse, those messages contributed to the impulse to
Speaker 1: take someone's life. They brought in the plane was brought
Speaker 1: in a guy named Howard Chevron. This guy was an
Speaker 1: actual legitimate clinical psychologist, very respected guy. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: is the guy that basically in court showed experiments that
Speaker 1: showed how the unconscious mind and the conscious mind operate
Speaker 1: and how they're separate, but how they do interact with
Speaker 1: one another, and that subliminal messages are potentially very very
Speaker 1: powerful because your brain is confusing it.
Speaker 3: And here's it as a truth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this guy, like you said, he was legit.
Speaker 2: He back in the sixties, he in a colleague essentially
Speaker 2: proved that Freud's theories on the unconscious mind were right,
Speaker 2: that we do have an unconscious mind. They detected it
Speaker 2: by showing subliminal messaging to people or images and then
Speaker 2: you know, analyzing their brain waves and they were like, yep,
Speaker 2: this is actually a thing. He went too far, though,
Speaker 2: and he attributed way too much potency to subliminal messages
Speaker 2: on the unconscious mind. And he essentially said that when
Speaker 2: the unconscious mind gets its hands on a subliminal messager,
Speaker 2: is presented with a subliminal message, it doesn't understand that
Speaker 2: it's just been it's just taken. It externally and so
Speaker 2: the mind confuses it as an internally generated thought and
Speaker 2: it gets all it's accorded, all of the importance that
Speaker 2: your own thoughts and beliefs are given even though somebody
Speaker 2: else told you to do it. You just don't understand
Speaker 2: it like that. So yeah, ergo, if you suddenly have
Speaker 2: this idea like, oh, I should kill myself, even if
Speaker 2: it's subliminal, you might act on it.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, too far.
Speaker 1: I believe he was a guy in court too that
Speaker 1: said that was talking about just their lyrics and their
Speaker 1: anti religious connotations, which I didn't you know, it just
Speaker 1: cut right there. So I don't see if the judge
Speaker 1: was like irrelevant or whatever, because again that's the part
Speaker 1: that was supposedly not on trial.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Should we take another break?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's take our break.
Speaker 1: All right, let's take our final break here, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about the defense case and the ruling right after this.
Speaker 2: Okay, So we went over the plaintiff's case and judas
Speaker 2: priests had defense pretty well established. One. Essentially, they had
Speaker 2: to show number one that the words do it were
Speaker 2: not actually the words do it, that they were random
Speaker 2: sounds that to the ear, especially once somebody pointed it
Speaker 2: out to you that it sounded like do it. You
Speaker 2: would hear is do it? And so I couldn't find
Speaker 2: it anyway.
Speaker 3: I couldn't either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I listened over and over to that section, and
Speaker 1: I just don't hear it at all.
Speaker 2: But apparently if somebody is pointing it out, especially if
Speaker 2: they're slowing it down and isolating it and all that, yeah,
Speaker 2: you supposedly hear do it. It was played over and
Speaker 2: over again in the court, So there is something there
Speaker 2: enough that no one said objection, this doesn't sound anything
Speaker 2: like it. And it became like just one of the
Speaker 2: central components of this, like do it is? Do it there?
Speaker 2: Is it purposely there? And then conversely, on the defensive side,
Speaker 2: does do it even exist? Like are these actual words?
Speaker 2: And so a lot of weird stuff happened. Rob Halford
Speaker 2: sang better better buy you better than Me in the
Speaker 2: witness Box, and he was basically showing how he likes
Speaker 2: to say ea at the end of like every line.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a very interesting part because they were like,
Speaker 1: you know, and why do you do that? Like it
Speaker 1: was an implication. He was like, he's like just the
Speaker 1: emotion of the song, and you know, like basically, I'm
Speaker 1: just a singer man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Satan told me to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well he shouldn't have said that, but he let
Speaker 3: it slip.
Speaker 2: So, just like how the Plainliffs brought in nick Lough,
Speaker 2: William Nicklough as sound engineer, the defense brought in their
Speaker 2: own sound engineer, and they managed to slow it down
Speaker 2: and essentially prove that do it was just a random
Speaker 2: combination of sounds, not even speech.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it was a.
Speaker 2: Combination of a guitar sound and Rob Halford the lead singer,
Speaker 2: exhaling on the line, and that you put those together
Speaker 2: if you listen to a certain way, especially if somebody
Speaker 2: said sounds like do it, doesn't it? You could hear
Speaker 2: do it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were like three more things though. It was
Speaker 1: in that big, big article from the Village Voice. I
Speaker 1: just can't remember. I know, the high hat that had
Speaker 1: something to do with it, and like some sort of
Speaker 1: an echo. But yeah, the point is they were like,
Speaker 1: do it's not even in here? So why are we
Speaker 1: even in here? Is what they were thinking.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, again, still having empathy this whole time. One of
Speaker 1: the most troubling parts of this trial for the defense,
Speaker 1: of course, is having to you know, cross examine these
Speaker 1: families and talk about the history of depression and these
Speaker 1: anti social behaviors that these boys had. Like one of
Speaker 1: these guys, and this is seven years before Columbine, one
Speaker 1: of them. I don't think it was Jay, I think
Speaker 1: it was Raymond. It was Raymond talked about getting automatic
Speaker 1: weapons and like shooting up large gatherings. And you know,
Speaker 1: the defense attorney's asking this this mom, like, like, can
Speaker 1: you agree that to hear something like this, you know,
Speaker 1: something is wrong with your son. And she's like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't understand what your question is, Like, what do
Speaker 1: you mean something's wrong with them? And she was just
Speaker 1: you know, it was a tough tough thing to bring
Speaker 1: the sister out and say, like, you had two previous
Speaker 1: suicide attempts and you never listened to this music, right.
Speaker 2: She's like, no, I just listened to Roy Rogers.
Speaker 1: It was all very hard to watch because they had
Speaker 1: to paint a picture of their unhappy home life and
Speaker 1: their unhappy childhood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it was I mean, there was just no
Speaker 2: way of mounting a defense without of course doing that,
Speaker 2: you know. But yeah, from what I could tell in
Speaker 2: that Dream Deceiver long form article, the all members of
Speaker 2: Judas Priest found it very distasteful.
Speaker 3: But yeah, they all.
Speaker 2: Seemed to understand they had to do this, but none
Speaker 2: of them were happy about doing it. Yeah, and they
Speaker 2: were all I mean, it wasn't just Rob Halford, like
Speaker 2: all of them were deeply affected by this and having
Speaker 2: to hear the story of what happened to these kids,
Speaker 2: and like it haunted them. For sure.
Speaker 3: They were mad in there.
Speaker 2: They were mad that they had been dragged into court
Speaker 2: across the pond over this ridiculous stuff. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, they were definitely affected by what had created
Speaker 2: this whole kerfuffle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw too. Halford was really just upset that
Speaker 1: it was America. He was like, this is a country
Speaker 1: that was always so good to us, and we loved
Speaker 1: America so much, and you know, to be taken to
Speaker 1: court in America was just really hard for us. And
Speaker 1: you know, they sat there every day in the trial.
Speaker 1: And I wasn't the biggest Judas Priest guy because I
Speaker 1: just didn't listen to a lot of that kind of.
Speaker 3: Music, But like they were good dudes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, yeah, I've always respected Rob Halford for
Speaker 2: coming out in the metal community. You know, like he
Speaker 2: was as far as I know, the first and maybe
Speaker 2: even still the last so far.
Speaker 1: I mean, can you imagine if they knew he was
Speaker 1: gay at the time, what they were done in that trial.
Speaker 2: No, because this was a really bizarre time in American history,
Speaker 2: and there was just so much boldness to take somebody
Speaker 2: to court over things like free speech, over things like obscenity,
Speaker 2: just over moral policing. There was no qualms about taking
Speaker 2: somebody to court over morality. So, yeah, you're right, who
Speaker 2: knows that they would have done? Yeah, for sure. So
Speaker 2: there was also the point of essentially debunking all the
Speaker 2: pseudoscience that the plaintiff's witnesses had spouted from the witness stand,
Speaker 2: And luckily they were basically able to do that. They
Speaker 2: were All they had to do was say, there's zero
Speaker 2: body of literature in the scientific corpus that suggests that
Speaker 2: this is even remotely possible that at best, studies that
Speaker 2: have shown an effect from subliminal messages could maybe disturb you,
Speaker 2: could maybe trigger anxiety in you that certainly couldn't actually
Speaker 2: create behavior, and certainly not behavior as monumental as suicide.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. And they use like the opposite just
Speaker 1: help prove their point. They were like, when people like
Speaker 1: want to lose weight and quit smoking more than anything else,
Speaker 1: and they buy these books and tapes with subliminal messages
Speaker 1: supposedly to help them do it. They're trying to do
Speaker 1: this and using it as an aid, and it's still
Speaker 1: not helping them achieve that goal. It doesn't work. It's
Speaker 1: not working.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that definitely helped their case too. So the defense
Speaker 2: put up a pretty good well defense and just kind
Speaker 2: of picked apart a lot of the plaintiff's case. But
Speaker 2: ultimately it was up to Judge Whitehead, who, from what
Speaker 2: I read in that article was just his face was
Speaker 2: totally impassive. He didn't let on anything that he'd taken
Speaker 2: in on any given day, and so I don't know
Speaker 2: that they had any clue how it was going to go.
Speaker 2: And so he ruled in favor of judas priests. He
Speaker 2: ruled against the plaintiffs, and like you said, the plaintiffs
Speaker 2: that brought this is essentially a product liability case, but
Speaker 2: Whitehead viewed it instead as an invasion of privacy case.
Speaker 2: And the big difference between those two is intent. And
Speaker 2: I think Attorney McKenna put it like, if you're in
Speaker 2: a Ford. Pinnow that blows up. It doesn't matter whether
Speaker 2: Ford didn't mean for that to happen, it still happened.
Speaker 2: The harm was done. But if it's invasion of privacy,
Speaker 2: there has to be intent. And so Judge Whitehead essentially said,
Speaker 2: I believe that subliminal messages are real. I believe that
Speaker 2: they can impact behavior, but I don't think judas priests
Speaker 2: intentionally put these in there. And I'm ruling in favor
Speaker 2: of judas priests.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, looking back, it was a totally sensible
Speaker 1: decision on a case that never should have been brought.
Speaker 1: But it still feels like a bit of a brave
Speaker 1: decision for a a loone judge to make without the
Speaker 1: assistance of a jury, don't you think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I mean he added to the free
Speaker 2: speech body of law. That's enormous. That's an enormous ruling
Speaker 2: just from that, just by ruling that subliminal messages are
Speaker 2: not protected speech. And then yeah, in his ruling, he
Speaker 2: didn't do anything to debunk the idea that there were
Speaker 2: subliminal messages and that they could affect us, and that
Speaker 2: metal bands are putting them in their records. So the
Speaker 2: fact that he didn't say that that wasn't correct. Actually
Speaker 2: bolstered people's viewpoints of that later on in other criminal cases.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the end, Judas Priest spent about a quarter
Speaker 1: of a million bucks in their defense.
Speaker 3: Did not do the conversion on that for some weird reason.
Speaker 3: But i'd sufvise just to say it's a lot more
Speaker 3: now I feel hollow.
Speaker 1: CBS was ordered to pay forty thousand dollars to those
Speaker 1: plaintive attorneys as cost reimbursement for not complying with discovery reorders.
Speaker 1: It all came down to their providing the master tapes
Speaker 1: for the song. They went back and forth saying that
Speaker 1: they didn't have them, and then finally I think after
Speaker 1: a long time, they did provide them, but there was
Speaker 1: chunks missing that, you know, the conspiracy minded plane of
Speaker 1: attorney said was them sort of whitewashing it.
Speaker 3: And they said when they did receive the.
Speaker 1: Master tapes they were sort of like flaking apart, and
Speaker 1: that they didn't want to even they didn't even play
Speaker 1: them because they didn't want to assume any responsibility for them.
Speaker 1: So it was just sort of a mess in that
Speaker 1: discovery period. So they ended up having to pay them
Speaker 1: forty grand.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, so the Christian Wright kept going after
Speaker 2: metal bands for a while after this, and you might say, like, well,
Speaker 2: how did this ever stop, Like how did it end?
Speaker 2: It didn't, and they just changed targets and once rap
Speaker 2: music became a thing in the late eighties, yeah, they started.
Speaker 2: There was a new moral panic, and in fact, that
Speaker 2: same year, in nineteen ninety, two Live Crew was arrested
Speaker 2: for obscenity in Florida and went on trial and ended
Speaker 2: up prevailing. As well.
Speaker 1: I had a great idea the other day that I
Speaker 1: can't remember now that had to do a two Live Crew.
Speaker 2: Probably their free speech Crusade.
Speaker 1: Wasn't a podcast episode, it was something else. It was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it was a good title for something
Speaker 1: that had to do.
Speaker 3: With Two Life Crew. Okay, hey we want some podcasts?
Speaker 2: Was that it miso podcast?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: Sadly we should mention that. As for Jay, he only
Speaker 1: lived a few years after that.
Speaker 3: He went to.
Speaker 1: A mental health facility for depression, and it's very hard
Speaker 1: to find out exactly what happened because they, I know,
Speaker 1: he suffered from an overdose, went to a coma for
Speaker 1: a few days, showed no brain activity and died, but
Speaker 1: there is dispute between the parties over whether or not
Speaker 1: that was a suicide or whether it was an accidental
Speaker 1: overdose of methadone, whether or not the plug was pulled.
Speaker 3: Like I couldn't get any straight answers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems that for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they wanted that lawsuit to continue, they appealed,
Speaker 1: of course, and I imagine a suicide probably would not
Speaker 1: have helped their case any So maybe that had something
Speaker 1: to do with that.
Speaker 2: I don't know. And despite feeling betrayed by America, Judas
Speaker 2: Priestill tours here and if you want to see them,
Speaker 2: they will be at the Alliant Energy Powerhouse in Cedar Rapids, Iowa,
Speaker 2: September twenty first.
Speaker 3: I've never seen them. I'd love to.
Speaker 2: I bet I would love too.
Speaker 3: Well, you got anything else, nothing else.
Speaker 2: Nothing else here either, which means, of course, everybody, it's
Speaker 2: time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: Appropriately you're going to talk about streaming music. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: went to your New York show the highlight of my year.
Speaker 1: I've worked in the music industry for nearly a decade
Speaker 1: and must give you guys kudos for summing up the
Speaker 1: streaming debacle so well well I have a few additions
Speaker 1: that may add color to the situation, namely that it
Speaker 1: was a crisis for the industry and Spotify is credited
Speaker 1: with saving the fan consumption model for music. Still, Spotify
Speaker 1: is in a power struggle with the labels, and because
Speaker 1: they pay out seventy percent of the total revenue to labels,
Speaker 1: they lobby for lower payout rates for musicians and songwriters
Speaker 1: to achieve profitability to a loophole involving audio books and bundles.
Speaker 1: As of May twenty twenty four, Spotify will be paying
Speaker 1: songwriters approximately one hundred and fifty million dollars less per year.
Speaker 1: Spotify is kind of in a three way standoff with labels.
Speaker 1: Without label owned content like Drake and Taylor Swift, no
Speaker 1: one would use Spotify, but labels need stores like Spotify
Speaker 1: and Apple for fan consumption. It's a convoluted power dynamic
Speaker 1: that has trickled down effects on music that most fans
Speaker 1: don't even recognize.
Speaker 3: Keep finding the good fight, guys. That's from Nate in
Speaker 3: New York, New York.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Nate, thanks for that email. Thanks for
Speaker 2: coming to see us too. That was a fun show.
Speaker 3: A town hall totally.
Speaker 2: If you want to be like Nate. You can come
Speaker 2: see us too wherever we perform live in the meantime,
Speaker 2: You can also send us an email send it off
Speaker 2: to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.