The first musical purchase I ever made was a the Police’s “ Synchronicity.” I bought it on tape. This wasn’t so much because I had incredibly discerning taste as a 9-year-old (in fact, my second musical purchase was “Chipmunk Punk” and I loved it with equal fervor).. it was that I lived in a neighborhood with a few older boys who did have excellent taste in music. Because of these neighbors and their musical taste, I grew up on a steady diet of The Rolling Stones, Journey, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, Run DMC and a whole grip of others including the aforementioned Police.
Of course, they didn’t only pass the music along to me; they taught me to listen to it. Not as background, or something to listen to while heading somewhere else.. It was the destination. I would get in my friend’s car and drive.. headed nowhere in particular.. just so we could listen to music on his stereo. Sure, we were normal boys; we painted our faces and pretended we were spies or Green Berets sneaking through our own back yards. But we also donned black and white make-up, tore up some sleeveless shirts and put on a lip-synced concert of Kiss’ “Dynasty” for the our parents and their friends. I assume they were proud.. between the safety flares we had stuck into the ground and the make-up running into my eyes, I don’t recall seeing their faces. It was in experiences such as this that I learned to love music.
And that was just the beginning.
I remember being at the Warfield in San Francisco in 1987, bummed that we showed up so early to see The Cult. I had never heard of the other band and braced myself for the excruciating boredom often associated with sitting through an opening act. 45 minutes later, I picked my jaw up from the floor and asked the mohawk next to me who that amazing band was. “Dude” he said, placing his huge tattooed hand on my shoulder, which smelled like clove cigarettes and mouthwash, “they’re called ‘Guns n Roses.’ They’re from L.A. They’re aaaaawwwsome.” And they were.
I remember seeing REM at the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum, playing songs from the album GREEN and being transfixed along with about 19,000 others when it got quiet enough in the basketball arena for Michael Stipe to sing “You Are the Everything” without the band… through a bullhorn. We slept in the parking lot of the Coliseum and went to see U2 on the Joshua Tree tour the very next night. The Bodeans opened the show followed by the Pretenders. I held hands with 60,000 strangers and sang “How long to sing this song?” for a solid 10 minutes after the stadium lights came on to tell us that it was time to go home.
More recently, I remember watching Tom Waits sing “Day After Tomorrow” at the tail end of the Daily Show and hitting ‘mute’ as the song faded so that the commercials Comedy Central runs wouldn’t ruin the vibe… I wanted to sit in that moment for a while. There was something special about it.. more than special.. was it sacred?
Well.. I suppose that is something I am comfortable saying about my new album and the song choices I made…
I believe there is as much of God in the songs of Glen Phillips as there is in the songs of Phillips, Craig and Dean; as much of the Kingdom revealed in the songs of Tom Waits as in the songs of Chris Tomlin. It is my opinion that to believe otherwise is to believe in a god too small to truly be God.
In a book entitled “For The Life of The World,” Alexander Schemann (a household name for obvious reasons) writes..
“The world is a fallen world because it has fallen away from the awareness that God is all in all… And even the religion of this world cannot heal or redeem it for it has accepted the reduction of God to an area called ‘sacred’ as opposed to the world as ‘profane.’ It has accepted the all embracing secularism which attempts to steal the world away from God.”
The moments I’ve had with the artists whose music makes up this new project have been sacred… undoubtedly. It is key to note that these sacred moments have, for the most part, taken place outside of the boundaries of the christian marketplace and the ‘area’ generally reserved for the the activity of God. These artists and their songs have been central to the necessary undoing of the expectations and limitations I habitually place on God; expectations of how, where and through whom God is revealed. I recognize God in their art and I believe it is a duty, as an artist and a christian, to point Him out where He is and celebrate Him there.
Here is the track listing:
1. Georgia Lee (Tom Waits)
2. You Can’t Always Get What You Want (The Rolling Stones)
3. Save Me (Aimee Mann)
4. Fly From Heaven (Toad The Wet Sprocket)
5. Wildflowers (Tom Petty)
6. Head Like A Hole (Nine Inch Nails)
7. No One Is To Blame (Howard Jones)
8. Stripped (Depeche Mode)
9. Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want (The Smiths)
10. Freedom 90 (George Michael)
You can PRE-ORDER the album here.
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Ah, good times. I remember buying The Police “Ghost in the Machine” on 8-track.(Did you know the cover is supposed to be Sting, Andy and Stewart in digital form) I also fondly remember buying tickets to see Cheap Trick for $9.50 at an arena! Not to mention the countless metal bands I saw in the little clubs in Upstate, NY.
Sweet memories. Your dates jive with mine, which is funny, ’cause you are X years younger. Well, maybe a small “x.”
My first concert: Wham. I refuse to apologize. Although, perhaps, I admit it with some meekness.
Oddest concert experience – The Scorpions, in Madrid, complete with fishnets. Mine, not theirs.
Particularly fond concert memory – Manly Moondog and the Three Cool Cats, in this tiny place in Monterey. Manly Moondog is/was Woody Harrelson. As he walked in, I asked if he was going to sing “Kelly,” from Cheers. He asked, “why? is that your name?” Completely stumped me. I had absolutely no response. Thus ended my longest conversational volley with a household-name celebrity. I was later pulled up on stage to dance, but by one of the three Cool Cats, not Manly.
LOVE your song picks for the CD. Biggest surprise is the NIN.
And yeah – God gifts every one of us. When we develop and use those gifts, when we infuse them with passion and authenticity, it’s sacred.
I get jealous, actually, of musicians. As a writer, I can make people laugh, cry, maybe give them goosebumps. But there is a place that music takes us, touches us, that transcends words. It’s a very powerful medium.
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Good call on the Glen Phillips… I remember Toad the Wet Sprocket, but didn’t know he did some solo stuff and had to check it out. Winter Pays for Summer is an amazing album.
I read a lot of Schaeffer in the early, formative days of my faith and have always been troubled by the whole dichotomy between the “sacred” and “secular”. It seems some times the church is saying we want to love people like Jesus did, but only if they act like us and behave. And on another level, it’s a tragedy to music and the arts. There are Christians who will never experience Glen Phillips or Bob Dylan because they’re not labeled as “Christian”, and conversely people outside the church who may never hear Rich Mullins, Derek Webb or yourself because we pigeonhole everything into these categories. It’s pretty lame.
I always keep in mind a line I remember from Rich Mullins: “they will say kids need to know about Jesus so they won’t smoke, drink, or dance, or go with girls that do, and all that kind of thing. And I kinda go, ‘That’s not why people need to know about Jesus. The only reason—the only possible excuse for talking about Jesus is because we need a Savior.’”
Got the CD today. The NIN cover remains the biggest surprise. It’s all good, brudda, all good.
From Jacques Maritan’s -Art and Scholasticism- “If you want to make a Christian work, then be Christian, and simply try to make a beautiful work, into which your heart will pass; do not try to “make Christian.”
http://www2.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/art8.htm
I have Chipmunk Punk on vinyl. Still! The album is wonderful, Justin.
My sacred/profane line started blurring about the same time I read Simplicity by Mark Salomon (which, in turn, encouraged me to read Addicted to Mediocrity by Frankie Schaeffer) and I wondered “Am I really better off because I smashed all my ’secular’ CDs in college?” Sure, maybe Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic” didn’t set my mind on things above, but other albums used to take me to another place…
I finally saw Michael Jackson’s “This is It” a few weeks ago and all I wanted to do for the next week was listen to “Human Nature” over and over and over again. That’s what great art does
Absolutely loved this album! Tom Waits, the Stones, the amazing Aimee Mann and the Smiths are all favorites of mine, but I gotta love that you slipped George Michael and Depeche Mode in there. Inspired song choices. Thanks so much for sharing these sacred moments with us.
hopefully you get notifications of comments and you’ll get to see this. Because I think my comment fits best on this post.
No doubt you know who Christopher Hitchens is. Have you heard of his brother, Peter Hitchens? He is a reporter/writer that is a christian. He has written a book that will be released next month, I believe, and I’ve seen some videos (http://vimeo.com/10354237) and read interviews about his book and him in general. His conversion to christianity was initiated by viewing a piece of art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Judgment_%28Rogier_van_der_Weyden%29). Granted, it was a ‘religious’ painting, and not ’secular’ art. But he saw that piece of artwork, and it shook his foundations. It unsettled him. He was undone by the art. And it lead to him accepting Christ as Saviour.
I thought it was a great story, and I thought it was especially relevant to your project here.
Thanks, man. I’d not heard of Peter Hitchens. His conversion has to be a very interesting subject at family gatherings.
Justin, thank you yet again for your gift to us! I loved the CD so much I immediately got one each for my kids. I love your perspective and how you communicate truth.