Ye Olde Music Miscellany

1. The following forms of sacred music make me hope that there is a heaven:

• Southern Gospel
• African American Gospel
• Bluegrass
• The way some Catholic organists play the Communion Liturgy

The following forms make me feel ambivalent on the topic of heaven:

• Classical hymns
• Modern hymns (19th century onward)
• Celtic

Emergent worship--where the lyrics sound like bad teenaged love poetry and get repeated seventeen times each, and the guy with the guitar does this really intense prayer between each song where every other word is God, as in: "God, we just, God, come before you, God, to thank you, God, for, God, being God today, God."--emergent worship makes me hope there's not a heaven, mostly because I wouldn't want to be stuck with a God who's too passive to smite somebody who'd turn his name into an interjection.

2. Yes, even good emergent worship. I'm not dismissing the genre out-of-hand. I'm just saying it doesn't work for me.

3. South Park did the best parody of Christian rock music:

Cartman proceeds under the theory that, to make Christian music, all you have to do is take mainstream pop songs and change "baby" to "Jesus." I'll bet that's been an inside joke in the CCM industry for decades.

4. The first time I ever heard Michael W. Smith was on Armed Forces Network radio in Germany when I was twelve. The song was "Somebody Love Me." I missed the fact that it was Christian; but since it was a guy singing, and all the pronouns were "he," I just naturally assumed he was gay. And when I was twelve, I was pretty OK with that. I had to become a Christian before I could learn homophobia.

5. Speaking of Christian music and its ill effects, here is what James Hetfield of Metallica said about Stryper's landmark LP To Hell With the Devil:

"It sparked a hatred that will forever scar me. I can't bear to see striped spandex jumpsuits to this day."

And because one good turn deserves another, here's a rare photograph of an authentic Stryper Bible, the kind that Stryper used to fling at its audiences during its shows:

Those guys may have been shitty songwriters, but they knew how to market a brand. And lest we dismiss branding as tacky, the Jacob narrative in Genesis is a fine reminder that God likes a man with good business sense.

(DISCLOSURE: My Hebrew lexicon has a "No Depression" sticker on it.)

"Damn, double damn, and an extra pint of damn for the weekend!"

Busy week at work, which is why my writing here has been rather lacking. Suffice to say that 4:30 p.m. next Wednesday can't come soon enough.

For the pathologically curious:

I'm leaving my job with the State of Wisconsin to take a teaching assistantship in Intro to Judaism at the University of Wisconsin, which will (almost) fund my full-time pursuit of a PhD in Hebrew and Semitic studies there. I'm also hunting for gainful part-time employ to supply me with beer money for the coming year. If that sounds superfluous, then apparently you haven't studied dead languages enough.