The Prisoner: We Are All in the Village

“Where am I?”

“In the Village.”

“What do you want?”

“We want information.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“That would be telling….We want information.  Information.  Information.”

“You won’t get it.”

“By hook or by crook, we will.”

“Who are you?”

“The new Number Two.”

“Who is Number One?”

“You are Number Six.”

“I am not a number.  I am a free man!”

Thus began nearly every episode of classic British TV show, “The Prisoner”, created by and starring the late Patrick McGoohan, most recognizable to this generation as the evil king in Braveheart.  The show, a startling dark satire about the Cold War, politics, the identify of man and his relationship to society, was absolutely groundbreaking.  It feels like what might happen if G.K. Chesterton, in a really cynical mood, decided to write a James Bond novel immediately after hearing the story of Alice in Wonderland for the first time.  I first saw it shortly after finishing college, when I discovered that the local library in Waco had copies of many episodes.  I had heard references to it hear and there in years before that, and my curiosity was piqued.

I was instantly hooked, and devoured all 17 episodes as fast as I could get my hands on them.  And I still remember the day I finally got to see the finale, a hard to come-by episode.  In its last two hours, the highly-philosophical show abandons most attempt at traditional television and storytelling and explodes into almost purely symbolic dialogue and images.  Put another way, the finale follows a thread of a story but is possibly one of the most unsettling things ever written and broadcast.  When it was over, I sat on the couch, shocked, unable to move for probably 15 minutes or so.

The show is largely hailed as one of the true masterpieces of the TV age, and has been highly influential.  The Simpsons parodied the show twice, and the producers of Lost acknowledge the debt they have to the show, this year even giving Sawyer a Prisoner-signature line: “Be seeing you!”  A “reimagining” comes out this fall, with Sir Ian McKellan and Jim Caviezel.

Lately, I’ve been in a Prisoner mood again, thanks largely to my recent visit to Portmierion, the resort in northern Wales where much of the series was shot.  Portmierion IS “The Village”, and I have racked my brains trying to think of another real place that has become such an iconic part of a piece of visual media.  I mean, certain locations in New York City are important to many films, but I can’t think of a single place so tied to a single piece.  Here’s a look:

The opening credits show us a man determinedly quitting his job.  The setting and manor suggest he is quitting a sensitive, important job–perhaps he is a spy?  Why he is quitting is unclear, but he is upset and determined.  He goes home, is in the midst of packing for some long-awaited vacation when a mysterious man in a dark suit walks to his front door and pumps gas through the keyhole.  The newly-resigned man is knocked out.  He awakens, confused, in what seems to be his own apartment, but when he looks out the window he sees a bright and odd village instead of his busy London street.  He is in The Village, where no one is known by name but instead by number.  He is Number 6.  Number 2 is in charge.  Number 2 wants to know why he resigned.  Number 6 wants to escape.  There are hints of a Number 1 behind everything.  Nearly every week, there is a new Number 2, trying a new tactic to break Number 6.

As I said before, behind the plot there is commentary and satire on a man’s relationship to society, with key questions about individuality, personal freedom, the relationship to communtiy, education, politics, art, power, and many other ideas which would dominate the turmoil of the 60s.

Patrick McGoohan, who created the show as well as starred in it, said that there were only 7 episodes he wanted to do, and thus 7 that stuck to the core of his basic idea.  His network wanted more, and a deal was struck to make 17.

The first 13 of the 17 can be broken up into three basic plots.  Sometimes all three are present, sometimes just one.

1. Number Two tries a new tactic to break Number 6.

2.  Number 6 tries to break, humiliate, or outfox Number 2.

3. Number 6 tries to escape.

Then the last four episodes are a bit odd.  One is a western.  Another is a very entertaining spy story taking place back in the real world.  This episode was made in response to criticisms that the show was too intellectual and thus too confusing for the average viewer.  So McGoohan made a goofy, simple spy story, and at the end it is revealed that the story is a tale that The Prisoner is telling a group of children.  At the end he looks straight into the camera and says, “Good night–to children everywhere,” thus calling his critics a group of children.

And then we get to the two-part finale, which as I mentioned before are deeply weird.  Don’t believe me?  Try this clip from part one:

Number Two has forced Number Six to revert to his childhood self in an attempt to pinpoint the moment at which he became so rebellious, and is attempting to get him to confess why he resigned from his job while in that mindset.  But you wouldn’t get that from the clip (skip to the last minute to see the weirdest part).  Context and a study of the dialogue would help it make a bit more sense…but it’s still pretty insane.  And the last hour is even weirder, as Number Six is given the chance to lead a trial over some other numbers, one of whom is obsessed with singing a song based on the Valley of Dry Bones parable from Ezekiel.

Most of my favorite episodes fall outside McGoohan’s “7 Pure Episodes.”  The seven key ones tend to be just a bit stranger, with plots that kind of meander in order to make a point about art or politics or whatever.  The ones that fall outside those seven tend to adhere to more traditional television rules and are therefore more easily entertaining.  Not necessarily a good thing, but TV shouldn’t always be work (I think if you’re going to watch it it should give you something worthwhile most of the time, though.)  Some of those favorites include “A,B,C” in which the new Number Two induces Six into a dream state, and make that dream state enact a fictional party in which he is supposed to encounter three people (A B or C) who might have enticed him to retire.  Six, after a time, realizes what has happened and takes back his dreams in a thrilling climax.

Another favorite is “Hammer into Anvil”, in which Six decides to break a Two he finds particularly despicable.  Here’s a clip, just so you can see that the dialogue on a typical episode was a bit more normal:

I also like “Schizoid Man” and “Change of Mind”, but my favorite is probably the last hour, because it is so stunning, and the statement he makes about the fallenness of man so clear and powerful.  And a bit unexpected.  We are all prisoners, but what does freedom mean?

Do a bit of research on The Prisoner and you’ll find I’m not just blowing smoke.  Look past the dated look of the cinematography and the weirdness that at times borders on silly.  You’ll be glad you did.

Be seeing you!

The Best Records of the First Half of 2009

Well, we’re halfway through the year, and so it’s time to look back and ramble on a bit about the albums that I loved in the first half of this year.  There are some surprises here…at least I’m surprised.  Some amazing stuff so far!  So let’s jump in:

Best Album of 2009 So Far: mewithoutYou: “it’s all crazy!  it’s all false!  it’s all a dream! it’s alright!”

This record may very well end up being the best of the entire year.  It has taken me completely by surprise and has gotten under my skin.  mewithoutYou is somewhat of an anomaly for music associated with Christians, because they are actually original; I don’t know anyone who sounds like them.  They continue to morph from album to album, trying something different each time, but each CD featuring that unique mix of group chants, screaming, talk-singing, and complex lyrics and storytelling that the band has developed.  Some albums are heavier than others.

I have only jumped on the mewithoutYou train in the last two albums.  Brother, Sister is really good, and features some deeply catchy and affecting tracks, but with this new CD they really outdid themselves.  Gone are most of the crunchy guitars, replaced with folk arrangements that might be sung around a campfire if they didn’t have so many lyrics and big words.  And this combination of their unique talk-sing rock with folk sensibilities and folk tales from different cultural traditions has produced the most memorable musical experience of the year.  Everyone needs to get this album.

A warning first: these are not cookie-cutter Christian lyrics.  You may find some things offensive.  One song, dealing with temptation, produces a very vivid image about lust involving the term “birth canal.”  And the final song could fit as a sort of youth sing-along worship tune if it weren’t for the fact that many people would have a hard time with the band’s use of the term “Allah” for God.  (No, they’re not Muslims.)

Some stand-out tracks: “every thought a Thought of You”, the reggae-tinged opener.  ”the Fox, the Crow, and the Cookie” based on an old fable about pride, which I really want to perform live someday, and which has an amazingly creative video that you can see here:

http://music-mix.ew.com/2009/06/mewithoutyou-the-fox-the-crow-and-the-cookie-exclusive.html

Also, I absolutely love “bullet to Binary (part two)” which starts as some sort of story about vegetables talking to each other and then transitions into this brilliant “reap what you sow” chant, including this line, “We all know we’re going to reap what we sow/so may we old-fashionably suggest/the unmarried not undress/we all know we’re going to reap what we sow.”  I don’t undersstand what “Timothy hay” is about, but it’s quite catchy.  ”Cattail Down” is nice with its “You’re everyone else” chant, and the closer about Allah is also quite nice.  But none of the ones in-between are bad either.

Thought-provoking, emotional, catchy, and original, mewithoutYou’s latest may end up being the album of the year.

Best Random Indie Album I am Surprised I Own: The Decemberists–Hazards of Love–This is the biggest surprise on my list, simply because I had heard the Decemberists before, including this entire album performed live on the NPR podcast from sxsw, and hadn’t really gotten into it much.

So why did I buy it?  Well…let’s see.  We’d been in the UK a month.  We finally found a place to live and got someone to take us to IKEA where we researched furniture options, only to return to Sheffield and find out we could not order online most of what we wanted.  Which meant another trip.  And no one wanted to take us.

So on bank holiday in early April, I caught a train to the station nearest the IKEA.  And discovered I was still three miles away or so.  On bank holiday, with little transport.  Finally found a bus station and took the bus to IKEA.  Did my shopping, paid for home delivery, and realized that this trip, to a place 45 minutes away by car, where I actually spent an hour of time doing what needed doing, was going to take about eight hours because of train scheduling.  So I was feeling frustrated and went into the nearby hmv with a £2-off coupon from the McDonalds Monopoly contest that I’d found on the ground, and decided “I’m going to buy a CD.”  And I picked that one.

So it was a “make myself feel better” buy.

I’m not proud.

But the music itself: Hazards of Love tells a story…that I’m not entirely clear on.  There’s a beautiful maiden, and there’s love, and pregnancy, and a shape-shifter, and a guy who kills little kids, and a weird queen, and the ghost of those kids, and in the end the lovers drown.  Okay.  It somehow comes across and not-too pretentious.  Well…mostly.  I mean, the first couple of minutes of the CD are basically complete silence…

But I love concept albums–I love when all the songs link together in some way, and I love the mix of  musical styles here, which makes for some haunting melodies.   The entire first 10 tracks are pretty amazing, but I do get a bit distracted for the last seven, as melody lines are repeated and ideas reprised seemingly ad infinitum. The guitar playing is perfect, and guest vocalists like Shara Worden from My Brightest Diamond definitely shine.  And it takes a special talent to write a song with lyrics as horrific as “The Rake’s Song” that is really catchy and sticks in your head before you realize what it’s about.  (To be fair, it is the villain singing.)  So, Decemberists.  You’re weird, but I like you.   Highlights: A Bower Scene, Won’t Want for Love, Rake’s Song

Best Album That Would Probably Have Been on Here No Matter What, Knowing Me: U2–No Line on the Horizon

Granted, I’m a huge U2 fan, and so they’d have had to release like, I don’t know, an entire album of remixes of “Mofo” to disappoint me.  And the reviews from this album have been all over the place: Paste, which named How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb their album of the year back in 2004 or 5, gave it a pretty mediocre dismissal, but a couple of UK music magazines called it the best U2 album since Achtung, Baby, handing it 5 star reviews.

I tend towards the latter opinion here.  I never was a huge fan of U2’s 90s period weirdness, and though I understand the statement behind it, I think they went too far.  All That You Can’t Leave Behind had some absolutely stellar songs on it, but…forgive me…after the first five tracks, it’s kind of boring.  I rarely go back to those songs.  Atomic Bomb is a more lively collection of tracks, and I think stands up better than most people give it credit.  It was, though, nothing that groundbreaking.

What No Line does so well is combining all of the different U2 eras into one package.  They play to their strengths without sacrificing experimentation.  Instead of just trying something new for new’s sake, or just trying to be what everyone expects, they’ve decided to be themselves as they try something new.  A combination of approaches.

It is an album that demands multiple listens.  It has layers, both sonically and lyrically.  I dig the lyrics on this record more than recent U2 albums.  The title track, opening the CD, is an adequate opener that…I don’t understand.  Track 2, Magnificent, is just that and is a great example of classic Edge riffing.  And I have to say, one thing about this record is that The Edge is cut loose for the first time in a long while!  There are solos!  Lots of them!  And they’re good!

Track 3, Moment of Surrender, clocks in at 7 minutes and tells a story about a guy who seems to meet God while at an ATM machine.  I think.  It has a bluesy, slow burn to it and is quite new for U2 in several ways.  Love this track.

Next comes Unknown Caller, which is weird but good, followed by I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight, which is a pop song (as opposed to the previous rock tunes), and a catchy one at that.

Next is Get On Your Boots, which I think was a lousy choice for an opening single, but somehow, placed here in the middle of the record, the song is saved.  It just works better in the flow instead of isolated as a single.

Stand Up Comedy would be easy to pass over but I think you need to give it another shot.  Some great lyrics: “Stop helping God across the road like a little old lady.”

Fez–Morocco or whatever this is called is the album’s low point.  I’m not sure what they were going for, but…they didn’t get there.

White as Snow–A genuine ballad, like Love is Blindness but more wordy, is quite nice.

The albums two closers, Breathe and Cedars of Lebanon, are both classics.  The former is a weird guitar-heavy track where Bono does this fast speak thing, and the latter is an interesting closer, as much of the album speaks of hope and second chances and this is a pretty grim song.  But it works, and No Line is an overall strong album.

Best Rap Album With a Hit Single that Deserves to go Viral But Never Will: Rootbeer EP

The history of L.A. Symphony is a moving one to me.  A group of guys from the West Coast who banded together to do high-quality underground rap, and do it well, with a common bond of faith in Christ but a goal to be a bit more…let’s say…artistic than the average “Christian rap” album.  Friends with the Black Eyed Peas, discovered by an up and coming record label with a lot of money from a worldwide hit ready to make the Symphony stars.  The dream shattered when the label is bought out and the breakthrough album shelved.  Members drift away, CDs are released with dark thoughts…and then the guys come through it, faith and creativity stronger though the fame completely eluding them.

Two of those guys, Flynn Atkins and Pigeon John, have teamed up to form Rootbeer and have released a five song eponymous EP.  I love Pigeon John–his solo albums are probably my favorite hip-hop out there–and surprisingly, teaming him up with Flynn was actually a brilliant idea.  Every song on the EP is great, but the big single is “Pink Limousines,” which deserves to be a worldwide dance-club hit.  The track starts off with this sort of African bongo beat, but in the last minute the beat morphs for the last chorus, and I defy you not to jump up and down.

Similarly, Flynn has been putting out some small solo EPs on Gotee every couple of months, and I have to say I love, love, love the Dishes EP.  I could tell you what the song is about, but I’d rather quote the chorus: “I do the dishes/You know I love you/Take out the trash/you know I love you/Save all my kisses/You know I love you/My love’s like that, love’s like that.”  I sing it to Ira a lot.

Best Compilation “Dark Was the Night”

The line-up of this CD reads like an indie fan’s dream festival line-up.   Put together for the Red Hot charity, which brings AIDS/HIV education and awareness around the world, this two disc set features all brand-new tracks by such luminaries as The National, My Brightest Diamond, Bon Iver, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Sufjan Stevens, members of Sigur Ros, and many others.  Members of bands team up for new songs–like Feist and Ben Gibbard of Death Cab.  And though I must confess I’ve never actually gotten through the whole thing–it is long–it  is a worthy cause and full of some solid songwriting.  If you know me, you’ll know the best thing about it for me is the existence of a new Sufjan Stevens track.  New music from him has been hard to come by the past couple of years, but here he contributes a nine minute opus called “You are the Blood.”  I believe it’s a cover, but he makes it his own.  He manages to do something entirely new while still sounding like Sufjan–which should be encouraging to those who fear that he might begin to repeat himself.  The song has heavy techno beats and ominous vocals and is beautiful and haunting and worth the price of the album itself.  But then, so are most of the rest of the songs.

Best “Speaking of Sufjan Stevens” Record–Welcome to the Welcome Wagon

So, technically this came out late last year, but it right at Christmas after everyone had already bought gifts, so no one really heard it until January.  The Welcome Wagon is the work of a Brooklyn pastor and his wife…and Sufjan Stevens.  It is made up of modernized versions of songs from a particular denomination’s hymnal and tradition, and some diverse covers–Danielson Familie, The Smiths, Velvet Underground.  It sounds like the brainchild of Sufjan without actually being him.  And it will make you very, very happy.  You can’t really listen to “But For You Who Fear My Name” with all the hand-clapping or “Sold! To the Nice Rich Man” and its deft lyrical turns without smiling.  I just don’t think you can.  You’ll want to sing along.

To be frank, I only really dig half the album, but that half I LOVE.  Not a huge fan of the songs with female lead, for the most part.  But I’ve never liked the Smiths, and the Smiths cover (“Half a Man”) is great!  They are coming to the UK for like one show and I’m sad I’m going to miss it.  Get this record!

So there are some of the great moments of 2009 so far.  With new Derek Webb and Mute Math records coming soon, there might be some stiff competition for best of the year. (Actually, I’ve heard the Derek Webb, and it may just make the latter half best-of.)  But if you want something new, I’ve just given you some things to try.  Enjoy!

The Office, American Edition: Two Seasons of Genius and some other pretty good stuff…

It sounded like a terrible idea.  

It’s an idea the TV studios in the States have had multiple times: take a program popular “across the pond”, and remake it for American sensibilities.  It has worked several times with reality programming, but nearly all the attempts at adapting drama or comedy have failed.  The British way of thinking about this kind of programming is just very different from the American.  Where American studios and networks want to find something that works and run it for years, the BBC is content to take a good idea, develop it, get 12 good episodes out of it or so, and then quit while they’re WAY ahead.  It has worked numerous times: Fawlty Towers, Life on Mars, Spaced (a show I couldn’t quite get into), and several others.

But when it was announced that NBC would be adapting the Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant creation The Office, it seemed especially egregious.  Would that style of humor-in-awkwardness-and-pain translate?  Everyone was pretty sure it would be lame.  And actually, for a short while, it kind of was.

But the producers did one smart thing right off the bat: casting.  When it was announced that Steve Carrell would play the Ricky Gervais role, everyone went from, “No way this is a good idea,” to “Huh.  Good choice.  Could be interesting.”  Carrell wasn’t yet particularly famous–if he was known at that time, it was either for The Daily Show or his scene-stealing performance in Bruce Almighty.  Then they cast a bunch of unknowns for the other major parts–the normal guy in love with the receptionist (someone for the audience to root for and relate to), the weird or dorky guy who sits next to him, and the receptionist herself.  The  producers were smart to sort of create their own dorky guy instead of merely imitate the one from the British version, because the other three leads, at least at first, would be very similar to their UK counterparts.

NBC gave The Office a six episode run for its first season.  The pilot was released.  Though not the only episode to use ideas from the British Office, it is the only episode to follow a British script nearly word for word.  Because British sitcoms are a full 30-40 minutes and American only 22, it is shortened, but hits most of the same beats and jokes as the original.  And it almost works.

There are some problems.  The biggest, I think, is that Carrell’s Michael Scott is a bit too much, a bit over the top.  It’s clear he hasn’t quite figured out the character yet and might be leaning too much on what Gervais did as David Brent.  And, while the first five new scripts have some very strong moments, they haven’t fleshed out the characters enough to make it interesting.

Some things hint at the greatness to come.  The most well-known is Michael’s Diversity Day exercise, where he makes everyone imitate racial stereotypes in order, I guess, to try and expose that there are, in fact, stereotypes.  But I can think of two I like better, both from the episode about health insurance.  

1. Pam and Jim making up diseases to submit to Dwight.  Pam says she is inventing new diseases, and tells Jim, “let’s say my teeth turn to liquid and then drip down the back of my throat.”  And Jim, without a beat, replies, “I thought you were talking about making up diseases.  Because that’s spontaneous dental hydroplosion.”  It’s a scene that both actors play with a real ease and chemistry that hints at how well they’re going to work together.

2. The conclusion of this episode is one of my favorite Office endings ever.  Michael, in a feeble attempt to stay in the good graces of his staff even as he is forced to cut down their health plan, has promised a “surprise” at the end of the day.  After failing to secure a free weekend in Atlantic City, he brings in ice cream sandwiches, but when an incredulous employee asks if that was the surprise, he says, “No…” and puts himself in the position of having to come up with something better.  And what happens when the day ends, and the staff gathers around for the surprise that Michael doesn’t have…well, it’s awkward.  And awesome.

So, after the 6 episode run, no one was sure the show would be back.  The ratings hadn’t been great, but not terrible either, and it fared a little better critically than many people expected.  There wasn’t anything on at that time quite like it, and after tossing it around, NBC decided to give it a full 2nd season.  It was a decision they’d soon be very happy about.

Seasons 2 & 3 of The Office are their genius seasons.  Though not perfect, they are television classics.  I feel the show has shown some weaknesses in the 4th and 5th seasons.  I like the 5th a little better than the 4th.  Both have some amazing moments and some lame ones.  The 4th season is a little bloated in its opening run of hourlong episodes, with Michael becoming a bit too cartoonish, a bit too Homer Simpson-ish.  His gift basket idea, driving into the lake, and his inability to remember that Jim and Pam are dating just don’t seem in character to me.  And season 5 doesn’t give enough for the peripheral characters to do, and some characters (Ryan in particular) act in ways that make them seem like different characters altogether–going through changes that don’t quite make sense.

But here, then, are the top reasons why I love the Office from season 2 onward, the reasons I think it works so well.

1. Michael–I am surprised to say that one of the strongest things about The Office is Steve Carrell’s Michael Scott.  Surprised not because of Carrell, but because I don’t generally like or enjoy Michael.  But as I think about it, this is one of the most complex and brilliant characters on television.

Michael is a terrible boss.  He’s arrogant, he thinks everyone loves him, and he thinks he’s hilarious.  His attempts at humor always fall flat, but he’s clueless to that fact. Or is he?  Many times, they’ve written the character with moments where he reveals that he knows he is lying to himself about his own abilities.  His attempts to be racially sensitive and politically correct make in insensitive and incorrect.  

But we see he’s had a wounded childhood.  And we see no one treats him with respect.

Michael has watched too many movies, and many of his actions are attempts to replicate moments he’s seen in films, moments that have warmed his heart or whatever, but his attempts always fail.  His spontaneous proposal to Carol.  Ripping the textbooks at Business School (he’d clearly seen Dead Poets Society.)  And this is a great touch to the character.

But just when you want him to fail, the writers always manage to make you sympathetic to the guy OR reveal some strength you didn’t know was there.  Michael Scott would be the best boss in the world–if he stopped trying to be the best boss in the world and just relaxed.  He is fiercely loyal, open to creativity, and, when he stops trying so hard, a great salesman and a smart leader.  Watch The Client, or Broke, or Business School (the end part), or The Initiation.  They keep adding layers to the guy, and against my better judgment, it keeps me fascinated.

2. Ryan–Every show needs a villain, and while a case could be made for Jan being the villain, or perhaps Todd Packer, I’m going to make the case for Ryan being the bad guy here.  Jan, while often cruel, is almost too tragic a figure to be the villain, trapped by her own neuroses into loving Michael but only halfway, and then self-destructing.  And Todd, while definitely pure evil, only makes a small handful of appearances.

No, the bad guy is Ryan.  In Season 2, he shows his first hints of it.  At first it was if Ryan was written to be a second Jim, another cool (but younger) everyman that we could like and relate to.  And Michael’s man-crush on him is both hilarious and disturbing, and we feel pity for the guy.  But at the end of the day, one of the main values of The Office is that, since these people spend more time together than they do with anyone else, they are and have to be a sort of family, albeit a bizarre and highly dysfunctional one.  And Ryan is the guy that really, really refuses that value.

It’s the little things in Season 2.  The way he stands at a distance during the Office Olympics and throws away his medal the same day, right in front of Pam.  He doesn’t get it.  It’s the way he says something very young and rude about Kelly when asked if he likes her, but then realizes that the camera is there and becomes the charming innocent again.  We see that his persona is an act for the camera.

It grows in Season 3, the clearest example I can think of being the pompous way he tears apart Dunder-Mifflin when introducing Michael to his business class.  It’s not that anything he says is false, really, it’s just the attitude with which he says it.

And, of course, at the end of Season 3 and into Season 4 his evil-ness is revealed.  After snatching the corporate job, he instantly dumps Kelly, pretending to forget all about her in a vaguely racist way (At one point he TH’s “I think I dated a black girl.”  Kelly is Indian.)  and in Season 4 becomes the arrogant authority directly over Michael, naively trying to make paper buying a hip online activity.  His jealousy of Jim (and Toby’s for a different reason) causing him to try and crush the life of one of Scranton’s best.  His downfall at season’s end is brilliant, as he is arrested for fraud, and it should have ended there.

Unfortunately, season 5 rewrote his character.  At first he is implausibly rehired by Michael (no company would have allowed that), then he disappears to Thailand for awhile, (or does he?), and later surfaces in the Michael Scott Paper Company plotline.  This Ryan, the bleach blonde slacker/stoner, is a good loser of a character, but unfortunately doesn’t really seem like the same guy as in the previous years.

3. Handling of Jim and Pam–And here is where the show could have been ruined.  Just as many TV watchers have been scarred by serial dramas whose mythologies become bloated and eventually implode, so many TV watchers have been burned by on-again, off-again relationships in light comedies that eventually never go anywhere, from Moonlighting to Cheers and so on.   And just as Lost is fixing the former problems by setting an end date and writing the end relatively early on, so The Office has fixed those problems with their Pam and Jim story.

The Office begins with Pam engaged to blue-collar Roy, who takes her for granted, while she and Jim make eyes at each other and laugh together daily in the Office.  Pam is fiercely devoted to Roy, who doesn’t deserve it, and Jim is clearly in love with Pam, but she doesn’t want to admit it to herself.  

At the end of Season 2, with Pam a bit tipsy from Casino Night, Jim confesses her love, she turns him down, and then he tracks her down in the Office and kisses her.  Fade to black.

Season 3 opens with Pam now single, her wedding called off.  But wait–Jim has transferred to another branch.  Pam broke off her wedding but turned Jim down as well.  And when Jim’s branch finally merges with Scranton, he brings with him a girlfriend, Karen.  At the end of that season, he realizes Pam still has his heart, and that she was even hoping to win him when he came back from Stanford, and leaves Karen in New York to ask Pam on their first date.

And here is where producers could have gone deadly wrong.  They could have had their relationship dominate the show, with lots of turbulence, break-ups, get back togethers, cliched conflicts, etc.  But instead, they opted to make the characters stay their likable selves, and give them a gentle, stable relationship, avoiding the cliches but somehow not being boring.  Examples: one episode, when Pam is studying in New York, Jim worries he’s losing her.  He ponders going to New York.  He gets in his car.  We expect confrontation.  In sight of the city, he pulls over, turns around, saying, “We’re not that couple.”  End of conflict.  

And so it goes, leading them towards happy marriage.  And it works great.  Both of the actors carry it brilliantly, and by keeping their moments small–a quick engagement at a rest stop in the rain, a silent pregnancy announcement–they keep Jim and Pam the grounded center of the show.  (And kudos to the writer who happened to name them Pam Beasley and Jim–PB & J!!!!!!)

4. the ensemble–It’s no mistake that while 30 Rock was sucking up every award in site, The Office still managed to win the Actors Guild for best ensemble comedy, for that they are.  At first, the show focuses on 4, maybe 5 characters.  But you can see, right in the middle of Season 2, the writers thinking, “Now wait.  This might go the long-haul.  Ratings are up, lots of downloads on iTunes.  We need more characters.  Let’s give the office drones personalities!”  The first two big ones, after Jan in “The Client”, are Kelly and Creed.  ”The Carpet”, I bet, was written as an excuse to introduce Kelly 2.0, the bubbly, annoying Kelly.  And Creed, probably my favorite character, started getting his personality (the insane old guy who always says something scary) right about that time.  And the rest of the ensemble is just as good…Phyllis, dating Bob Vance and turning from sweet to cruel on a dime; Stanley with his crosswords; Kevin, one of my favorites; the underused Darryl; pretty much everyone but Meredith, who is kind of gross and I don’t think can act that well.  Can’t go without mentioning Angela, who was mistakenly written as a Christian character early in the show but later morphed into the controlling uptight person she is.  

5. The Pranks–the pranks played on this show, mostly by Jim against Dwight (though sometimes vice versa, and sometimes Andy is thrown into the mix) are brilliant:

My favorites include “Dressing up as Dwight” and “Future Dwight.”  And maybe best of all, Jim’s explanation of how he got Dwight to hit himself in the face with his phone.  I really want to try that on someone.

Season 4 had some interesting ideas, despite the flaws in writing that the previous seasons lacked.  Two very interesting ones were connected:

 Michael could be a normal great guy under different circumstances, and Jim is just one step away from becoming a Michael.

We get to see Michael working a second job, and in this job, he is the cool guy.  Everyone wishes he would hang out with them; his jokes are funny.  Somehow, removed from authority, he becomes a highly likable dude.

And when Jim is put in positions of having Michael’s authority–twice–he screws it up and starts acting Michael-like, once with the suggestion to combine birthday parties (he even starts resenting Toby), and once when trying to keep everyone from having to come in on Saturday.  The writers seem to be making the argument that it’s the job and maybe even the people that make Michaels into Michaels.  Very interesting.

Season 5 also has its strength.  Holly Flax is a brilliant character, and I really liked the Michael Scott Paper Company storyline, especially its resolve.  They have done a good job making you root for Michael and showing him actually being competent.  Sometimes.

Keep in mind that this is, surprisingly, a show that needs to be watched in order.  There is a lot more plot than you’d expect, and things develop and change and grow slowly over time.  Running jokes are set up, and if you try and watch from the middle, you’ll miss a lot of what’s going on and what’s being said.  But highlights for me: The Injury, The Client, Drug Testing, The Carpet, The Coup (Dwight and his waffles and his “Crentist”), Branch Closing, The Merger, A Benihana Christmas (maybe my all time favorite), Business School, The Negotiation, Local Ad, The Deposition, Dinner Party (those two are probably the most awkward of all episodes), and Goodbye, Toby.

So anyway.  There it is.  The Office.  Love Seasons 2 &3.  Like Season 4.

Who’s Watching “The Watchmen”? Hopefully Not You.

So…been awhile since I’ve posted anything.  That whole “moving across the ocean and trying to find a home for your family” thing has me preoccupied from really absorbing anything new to write about.  I still owe you posts on Tony Hillerman and The Office at some point, and I suppose I could whip up something about “No Line on the Horizon,” the new U2 album.  (And, as I’ve mentioned everywhere else, I now live in a city on U2’s tour.  And I have four tickets.  Hee hee.)

But today I’m going to write about “The Watchmen.”  I debated even posting this.  In a way, it might not be worth it, and it puts out some information about me personally that I’m not proud of or that might put me in a bad light.

So let me start by saying: Don’t go see this movie.  Seriously.  Don’t.  I mean, I did.  And I probably shouldn’t have.  But I did.  And I’m telling you not to.  It earns its ‘R’ (or in the UK ‘18′) rating on every level–language, sex, and violence, in ascending order of badness.  Not to mention that the worldview underlying the film, practically promoted in it, is nihilism, the belief that there is no meaning and every value is ultimately baseless.  So: encouraging and joyful?  Not so much.

So why did I go?  Well, I couldn’t bring myself to resist.  I had kind of been waiting for this movie for 18 years.  

The Watchmen film is based on a graphic novel, which is basically like a deeper, grown-up, more solidly put-together comic book, by Alan Moore, the bizarre dark pagan genius of the comic book world.  He’s also responsible for the anarchistic “V for Vendetta”, among other things, but “Watchmen” is considered his masterpiece.  When Time Magazine put out its “Best 100 books of the Past 75 Years” list, “Watchmen” was the only comic book on the list.  

I encountered it in the late 80s at Comics Outpost, Barre, Vermont’s finest (and only) comic book store.  I went through a two year or so comic book obsession.  And I wanted to buy the Watchmen book, which reprinted all 12 issues of the mini-series.  And the dude wouldn’t let me.  He knew my mom and knew we had standards, and though I was 16 and old enough to buy it technically, he wanted her permission.  He showed her the dark stuff–the attempted rape, some of the extreme violence–and she, much to my chagrin, but wisely, said no.

So I borrowed it from my friend and never told her.

And I didn’t get it.  I mean, I thought I basically followed the story, but I didn’t really.

Sometime between then and now, I bought it.  I don’t remember when.  I have probably read it through about four times, and each time, I understand it more and more.  Though I in every way disagree with its philosophy, I have come to love aspects of it, appreciate its complexity and the genius behind the writing.

So, Hollywood scooped this up and has tried to make a movie about it for fifteen or so years.  Various directors–many of them the cream of the current crop–took passes at it and gave up.  It was largely thought to be unfilmable.  Not helpful is the fact that Alan Moore angrily disavows any of the attempts to make movies of his work.  (Sometimes he is right.  Sometimes he’s just a jerk.)  It’s structure is so dense and tightly woven that to do it justice would require either a complete rewrite or a really long movie.  Studios for a long time tried the rewrite idea.  And all their attempts ruined the story.  It’s also against Hollywood wisdom to make a “superhero” movie that’s not PG-13, and The Watchmen could not possibly be told well and still make that PG-13 cut.  So, the movie floundered and floundered.

Then Zach Snyder came along.  He directed two movies I haven’t seen, but the one that put him on the map was 300, another comic book adaptation.  That got him Watchmen, and he was brazen enough to try and make the whole comic book almost just as it was.  Many of the shots in the movie are just frames from the comic book, which was illustrated in a more cinematic fashion than comic books usually are.

So when the trailers came out, and they looked amazing, I knew I wouldn’t really be able to keep myself from seeing it.  I mean, I knew it would be R rated, but I also knew the whole story and would know when to walk out or turn my eyes.

If you don’t know the story, here’s a synapsis: The bulk of the plot takes place in an alternate 1980s America, in which Richard Nixon has somehow earned a fourth term as US President, and full-out nuclear war between the USA and USSR seems imminent.  America is in extreme moral collapse.  The streets are dark and violent.

A man is murdered, and that man is revealed to have formerly been called “The Comedian”, part of a troupe of normal human beings who decided to dress in costumes and stop crime.  Instead of superheroes (because they don’t have powers), they have been called vigilantes, and throughout the book we see bits of their history.  There have been actually two phases of vigilante groups, one in the 4os, and one in the 60s.  The Comedian was the only one to be part of both, though he also did work for the government (even secretly killing two reporters named Woodward and Bernstien.)  

The group from the 40s, “The Minutemen”, fell apart when some of them were murdered, and one went insane.  

The 60s group came into existence after an accident at a science facility caused one man to actually gain intense and incredible abilities.  This group, “The Watchmen,” was made up of the film’s main characters, but vigilantism was soon outlawed and they have all since gone in different directions in life.  The Watchmen consist of the aforementioned Comedian, Nite Owl II–now a pudgy, lonely guy remembering his glory days while living in New York, Dr. Manhattan (the scientist from the accident), Ozymandias (the world’s smartest man–and note the reference to the poem), Silk Spectre II, who lives with Dr. Manhattan, and Rorschach, who never takes off his inkblot mask and represents the worldview of moral absolutism.  

Throughout the movie we learn the past of most of these characters and how it ties to the Comedian’s murder.  We follow Rorschach as he investigates that murder with other odd things happening in the lives of the other Watchmen.  He, along with primarily Nite Owl, soon uncover a conspiracy with millions of lives in the balance.

So there is the plot.  Loosely.  It took me several paragraphs to describe in almost no detail; that should give you a hint of how complex it is.  And one of the challenging things about this story, philosophically, is the last section: a character does something quite horrible, destroying millions of lives, that results in something very positive and fruitful for the planet.  I don’t want to give anything away, but one of the messages seems to be that the ends justify the means.  

But I wonder if that’s really that hard to disprove.  I wonder if Alan Moore would even see it that way after 9/11.  You remember that right after 9/11, everyone was promising peace and harmony.  I remember the lead singer of a popular rock band at that time pledging to never be angry or hateful again.  And SNL said they would lay off the President.  And magazines declared dead the age of irony.  Something horrible happened–9/11–and people thought peace and change would come out of it.

But the human heart is wicked, and we return to our old ways without a change in that heart.  The Watchmen ends shortly after this huge crime has produced such great fruit.  But I think if Moore were honest with what he saw in the world, he would have to say that that fruit would be short-lived.

Anyway, how does the movie compare with the comic?  Well, much has been made about the change in the ending.  Basically, Snyder has completely changed the horrible thing that the one character does to bear good fruit on the earth.  Completely.  I think he probably did because he considered that thing difficult to film; if it wasn’t done right, it would look horribly silly.    And a lot of people complained about this change.  I even read one critic who compared to changing the ending of Hamlet, which is bit silly but makes its point, and after all, this is sort of the Hamlet of comic books.

As for me, I thought the new version of the ending actually worked really well…in theory.  More on that below.

Structurally, the script is nearly perfect.  The film runs 2 hours and 40 minutes, and another 30 or so is going to be added to the DVD release.  I hope they return the characters of the newspaper vendor and the people around him to the movie; I have a feeling that’s a lot of what got cut.  But what’s on screen works really well.  The story unfolds just as it should, and everything looks amazing visually.

The performances are mostly great.  Especially good are Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian.  Haley nails both the masked and unmasked phases of his character, and Morgan just embodies the moral blankness of the Comedian.  The actor playing Nite Owl II was a lot better than I expected, and Billy Crudup’s Dr. Manhattan is also very strong.  The actress playing Silk Spectre II was…meh.  Not that great.  And I still don’t know what to think of the guy playing Ozymandias.  It’s a key part, and I liked him in the beginning but felt something big was missing in the 3rd act.

But I had some major problems with this movie.

First of all, The Watchmen comic book is already really violent and disturbing, but it seems Zach Snyder was just determined to make it doubly so.  Everything was exaggerated.  For example, there is a scene where Ozymandias is attacked by a shooter at his workplace.  In the comic, his assistant graphically takes a bullet and then Ozymandias wacks the assailant over the head, knocking him over.  In the movie, Ozymandias is in a meeting with several oil industry giants, and in slow motion we see bullets piercing their brains and other body parts, and then Ozy beats the guy to a pulp.  So much more graphic.  Another example: when we learn Rorschach’s history, we see some pretty disturbing stuff, including the story of a murdered girl and two dogs wrestling over a leg bone.  Gross.  But for some reason, Snyder added some things in the film to make Rorschach’s revenge 10 times more graphic.  It really bugged me.

Likewise with the sexual content.  It’s in the book, but Snyder felt the need to make it ten times longer and more explicit for reasons I can’t fathom.  I’ve even seen non-Christians bothered by this.

Ironically, the one place where the violence could have been more drawn out was the ending.  Part of what makes the ending work in the comic book is that you really see, and really feel, the destruction.  And you know the character responsible also makes himself feel it.  It’s vivid.  In the movie, it happens very fast without a lot of visuals, and the impact of what he has done is lost.  It needs to be there.  (Also missing: his reaction to what he has done.  Instead we get another bloody fight.)

So anyway, there it is: I processed my thoughts.  I should not have seen this movie.  I did not realize how explicit Snyder decided to go.  He did a masterful job, for the most part, at pulling off a resonant and complex story about human nature, the ways in which we hold on to or forgive our pasts, and the darkness in modern living.  He lightened up the nihilism of the book while exaggerating the violence and sexuality. 

All in all, a very well done film with some flaws, the biggest being that there was nothing good, pure, beautiful or holy to set my mind on.

So let that be a warning.  Or something.

LOST: The Best Television Show Ever Made

Okay, that’s a bold statement.  Obviously, it’s an opinion.  But it’s my opinion and my blog, so I get to say it and then back it up, or at least explain why I think it’s so great.

I think everyone pretty much knows what Lost is about–or, at least everyone knows what it was about when it first started.  A group of people survive a major airplane crash and find themselves on a mysterious tropical island– a fictional Survivor combined with a suspense thriller.  As the story progressed on the island, we saw flashbacks of events in the lives of the survivors pre-crash.  Often these events shaped what the survivors did or felt on the island.  This theme–how our past too often controls or influences our present–is one of the main ideas of Lost.

Now, the writers of the show, particularly head writers and showrunners Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse (JJ Abrams has never had much of anything to do with the show, honestly–he helped come up with the main idea and directed the first episode, and that was it) have been pretty upfront about how and when they came up with the ideas that now make up the shows mythology.

At first, there was no plan.

Yup, they were making it up as they went along in most of that first season.  All the mysterious polar bears, the smoke monster, Ethan kidnapping Claire–they didn’t quite have a rhyme or reason for it.  

Then they realized they had a hit on their hands.  A huge hit.  An audience willing to give a surreal serial drama a chance–but one that had been burnt before.  Twin Peaks started our similarly strong, only to get so wacky and out there that it lost it’s audience after about 20 episodes.  Likewise, the X-Files racked up Emmy wins and a huge fan base, only to meander on so long that the show’s prevailing mythology became muddled and meaningless.  So Lost had a huge audience–but one that was going to jump ship at the first sign that the writers were fooling with them or stringing them along.

They came up with a plan, fast.

By the end of the first season, they had a good idea of what was in “the Hatch” and many other of the mythological questions posed in the 1st season.

By the middle of the second, they had an overall plan for where the story was going and how it would end.  It is a broad plan, with flexibility to tell new and smaller stories within it, room for characters to be added or taken away as needed, but it is a plan.  There’s a guy whose job it is to track this large board of unanswered questions and story points.  (I don’t envy him.)

There was only one more problem–they didn’t know how long they had to tell that story.  And so when season 3 began, and we spent six looonng episodes with our three main characters (at the time) locked in separate jail cells, and the dialogue went from cool-cryptic to annoying-cryptic, Lost began to feel like it would drown, like it was stuck in the mud and the wheels were turning.  People began to complain.  Ratings dropped.

So the producers went to ABC with a bold plan–”Let us end your cash cow.”  ABC had wanted Lost to run a minimum of seven seasons.  The producers felt that it would take five seasons to tell the story they wanted.  They begged, pleaded, and in the end, they won.  They would take 5 seasons to tell the story of Lost.  Only, seasons 4 & 5 (2 24 episode seasons) would instead be broken into seasons 4, 5, & 6 (3 16 episode seasons.)  Same amount of episodes, but ABC is given an extra year of programming.

And so with a new confidence, they finished out the 3rd year with a spectacular last handful of eps with a closing scene that seemed merely intriguing at first but became mind-blowing the more I thought about it.  They delivered a nearly perfect 4th season, and we’re now about 4 episodes into a very strong 5th.  Actually, if the numbers stay the same, after the one I just viewed there are exactly 30 left.  

But that’s history.  Why is Lost so good?  Well, partially because I truly believe the writers know what they’re doing.  They didn’t at first, but they realized that they had built a trust with an audience that had been burned in the past.  And it has been rewarding to really stick with the show and watch them unfold the story at their pace and structure.  And a truly complicated structure it is, which brings me to another thing I love:

Lost assumes its audience is smart.

You kind of have to be.  It doesn’t spoon-feed things to you.  I used to think that you could be a casual viewer, watching the story unfold and paying attention to the characters and enjoying it that way, or you could be a devoted viewer, exploring the deeper meanings and following the clues and figuring out what was going on through that.  But now I think that the latter is the only option.  A handful of eps into the fifth season has confirmed that you can’t be a casual viewer and follow Lost at all.  Recently, we were reintroduced to a character who had previously only had one scene, in the middle of season three, and had appeared in a photograph later in the year that you would only notice if you were looking.  We were supposed to know instantly who this woman was and her significance.  

A casual viewer would have no clue what was going on.

And I like this.  Not because I’m a snob who likes being part of the inner circle who “gets” the show, but I like not being spoon fed things and having to think.  I like that a lot of the answers people are demanding from the show have already been given, but they were given in the background, in little comments or signs or moments that you had to think about in order to understand.  When was the last time a network TV show forced you to think?

I also like it because it rewards research.  You can be a “dedicated casual” viewer, who watches the show and keeps close track of the characters just to follow the story.  But the show is also loaded with symbolism, literary references, and other ideas that are supposed to guide you to philosophical ideas.  Routinely are characters–even ones with only a scene or two–named after philosophers or theologians or authors who put forth ideas central to whatever the show is exploring at that moment.  Sometimes, this gets a bit obvious–witness the introduction of “Charlotte Staples Lewis from Oxford” last year.  But most of the time, it will fly right by you if you’re not paying attention.  There is at least one university offering a course in Lost, and with the amount of intellectual ideas coming from the past two seasons, I believe you could build a liberal arts degree around the show.  Recent explorations include the tension between science and faith, the nature of identity, the nature of reality and matter, the writings of several famous and not-as-famous authors.  Recent episodes referenced William Blake, Stephen Hawking, and obscure theories of physics.  (The best writer, by the way, that analyzes a lot of these things is Jeff Jensen over at ew.com.  He writes an essay before and after each new episode.)

I don’t know how Lost will end.  I know that this season is a heavy sci-fi season, and the final season will be a bit more character focused.  But Lost is how you do quality TV.  It’s one of the very few things on the tube that I can watch without feeling like I’m wasting my time.  Years from now, when the show is over and done, people will still be analyzing and finding reward in this dense, complex, intense, and entertaining masterpiece.

What I Wanted to Say at Staff Meeting

I’m a pretty good public speaker, I think–when I’ve planned.  If I have notes in front of me, I love it up there.  Teaching suited me really well, and I’ve loved the chance I’ve had to preach overseas or at my home church in Vermont.  

Spontaneous speaking?  Speaking when I haven’t really prepared?  Not so much.

Ira and I shared at Antioch’s staff meeting yesterday, and I had a lot going on in my heart that I wanted to say that did not come out.  Not that I was unclear or spoke badly…it just wasn’t what I wanted to say.  So I’m going to try here.  Of course, this will be a bit longer than had I actually prepared, because there’s no time limit.  Anyway, here goes.

1. I love being part of this group of people, this movement.  There’s no other people I’d want to be doing missions with.  We are a bit against grain–out on the support trail, as we tore through my aunt’s many Southern Baptist contacts in rural Kentucky, I would explain and explain Antioch and talk about what it was and how much I loved it, and still no one seemed to grasp it.  The only question I would be asked is, “So…you’re not a part of the IMB?”

But so much of what others would describe as unusual I now find normal.  I love love love that I can walk into that office and say, “I’ve been to 19 countries, most of them for missions” and most of the people would respond, “Nineteen?  That’s all.”

I love our movement because we are a diverse and random group of people unified by a common Love and a common mission.  The love of God has healed us, though we didn’t deserve it, and we’ve tasted what life is like when you follow His adventures for you.  And nothing else will do.  In the “natural”, we probably wouldn’t all click or stick together.  But we are a band of brothers and sisters, and all gifts are present.  Leaders, artists, servants, apostles, prophets…all there.  Mixed through all of us.  And so you get this great tapestry of different expressions of the heart of God, and I love it.

I love it also because I trust without question the people I work with, and the people who lead us.

We all know Jimmy & Laura are exactly who they seem to be.  But I want to just say that if you needed proof, look no further than their kids.  (You know how Paul instructed Timothy on the qualifications of an elder?  Sometimes I think we use it as a checklist: “Should Bob be an elder?  Well, let’s look.  Husband of one wife, check, doesn’t get drunk, check.”  But instead, I think Paul was describing the kind of person to look for.  You find someone living like that–there’s your elder.)  

Anyway, their kids are the fruit of their consistent love and discipline.  I taught Abby & Lauren the past couple of years at TCA, and I saw them, particularly Abby, dragged through the fire and shine like gold.  There was one day when Carl came to speak at chapel.  (I love Carl.  He is an anointed and challenging speaker.  And “Otherness” still makes me cry every time I hear it.  ”But I refuse to be caught up in the midst of small stories that seem to be brilliant at the time but soon become faded glory…”  My flesh runs to those stories, but my heart soars to the Real Story and this helps me remember that.  Thanks Carl.)

Anyway, Carl spoke, and he challenged the upperclassmen in a major way to help build community at the school by reaching out and breaking through the clique walls and befriending someone other than the people you hang with every day.  And he gave them a specific call–that day, at lunch, sit with someone you don’t usually eat with.  Get to know them.  He asked everyone to do that.  And it was powerful.

Now, lunch was one period later.  I go into the cafeteria, really expecting, since it was so powerful, to see everyone mixed around.

Nope.  Only one person.  Abby.  Sitting with a group of freshmen girls, trying to enter their world.  Everyone else is in their usual spots, and you can see them kind of guiltily eyeing Abby out of the corner of their eyes.  Abby, who stood like a lone deeply-rooted tree against storm after storm at that school.

The fruit of lives well-lived.  Thanks for being who you are, Jimmy & Laura.

And the same can be said of Kevin & Stacy, of Danny & Kathy, Jeff & Dorothy.  They are who they seem to be.  They don’t lead and talk one way and live another.  They’re the real deal.  

I love our movement because of the way we worship.  World Mandate this year was incredible, and I think that we have the best worship leaders in the country.  It helped us in a major way get our hearts ready again for Sheffield.  World Mandate was so good for us this year, as it happened just weeks before departure.  After Saturday morning’s spoken word thing–the “They said China…but God said…” piece that Vincent was in–Ira and I looked at each other with fire in our eyes.  ”We’re ready,” we said almost simultaneously.  ”Let’s go.”

We are thrilled and honored to be going to Sheffield.  We both realize that there is nothing good in us to help anyone over there.  But we started this support process nine months ago, and God has spoken to us over and over and over again some very big things.  There have been running themes to the words we’ve gotten, and with humility we go over there expecting miracles.

I want to take a second to say how proud I am of my amazing wife.  She really did not want to be called to England, but after it became clear two years ago through all these divine things happening to her, she made a pledge to not speak negatively about the place we were called, and she has honored that.  And it has been fun to watch her slowly go from reluctance to acceptance to vision and excitement.

It is amazing that we serve a God who can take such foolish and broken people and use those people to rock the world.  And we are asking God to use us.  We have faith that we are going to bring joy to the team there, we have faith that we are going to see lives transformed, and that as we go, God will speak so clearly to us that it is as if we hear Him as audibly as Ira heard Him when He first told her about Sheffield.  We are vessels, and though we don’t have a ton of close relationships within this staff, we are so glad we are a part of this particular army at this particular time.

We’re going to Sheffield.  We have hope in our hearts, and we want to bring that hope and abundant life to a people who have decided there’s nothing to believe in. Wait till they see what God is going to do.

Book Review: Body Piercing Saved My Life

Body Piercing Saved My Life, by Andrew Beaujon, a reporter for music magazine Spin, is a fascinating read for any music fan.

For the Christian who also likes “Christian music,” it provides history, context, and criticism to various aspects of the scene as it exists today, and raises questions that are worth wrestling through.

For the Christian who generally doesn’t like “Christian music,” it may cause some rethinking of opinion on some subjects as well as affirming others.

For the music fan who isn’t a Christian, it will probably be quite eye-opening, providing several glimpses into a different world, some of them quite surprising.

For all three, it may introduce you to some bands you just might like.

For the record, Beaujon is not a Christian–at best, he is a lazy agnostic.  He holds to the opinion that he doesn’t really know if there’s a God, but he probably wouldn’t live his life any differently if there was one.

He set out to examine what he considers a truly American phenomena, this music scene called “Christian music” that exists almost within its own bubble.  There is no comparable separate scene in Europe or elsewhere.  He spends time learning the history of modern Christian popular music, explores some of the contradictions inherent in the industry and issues artists wrestle with, and listens to a lot of music.  He goes to Cornerstone Festival, both the original in Illinois and its Florida offshoot, the Festival of Faith and Music at Calvin College, and GMA Week and the Dove Awards in Nashville.  He interviews several Christian music “lifers”, and all through provides opinion and analysis on what he finds.

It may feel, to the believer, a bit intimidating to have someone who doesn’t believe in God at all analyze this scene.  But I was impressed.  Beaujon is extremely fair.  When something is bad or confusing, he says so, but never meanly.  He treats everything with a lot of respect, and says some surprising things.

These lines, from a section where the author shares what he believes and talks about what he feels about people sharing the Gospel with him, may put you at ease.  After confirming that he believes there is no afterlife, he says this:

This is the kind of talk that makes my Christian friends unbearably sad, and that’s what I love about them–they really, really, really don’t want anyone to die, and that’s why they can sometimes be such a raging pain…So next time a Christian tries to save you from the fate that awaits you, don’t get irritated–remember that it’s because they care about you.  Seriously.  If you take nothing else away from this book, remember that.

One of the main themes of the book, probably developed because so many artists talk about, is the wrestling of spirituality and commerce, expressing Truth without conforming to the Bubble.  Christian music’s propensity to award mediocrity is also at long length discussed.  On the other hand, is he also quick to agree that there can be a certain amount of prejudice on the other end–most music magazines won’t pay any attention to an artist associated with Christian music in anyway, and Beaujon feels that this is also unfair, as some of the artists he finds are, well, awesome.

Beaujon certainly likes some bands and artists more than others.  He interviews controversial figure David Bazan (formerly of Pedro the Lion) multiple times.  He falls in love with Mute Math’s live show (and rightly so.)  He gets into mewithoutYou pretty heavily as well, and shows Steve Taylor some admiration–again, on both counts, rightfully so.  Even the too-weird-for-me Danielson Familie gets some attention.

He grows tired of hearing derivative bands, but admits that even Stryper had some pretty good tunes.  

He conducts longer interviews with Doug Van Pelt, Steve Taylor, Jay Swartzendruber (editor of CCM Magazine), Bill Hearn, and Stavesacre’s Mark Salomon.  

One of the most interesting sections, to me, is a two chapter look at the phenomenon of Worship Music.  He struggles to understand it, and although he finds “Blessed Be the Name” by Matt Redman incredibly catchy, singing it for weeks, he finds the worship experience to be insular, unwelcoming to the outsider. Later, HM editor Doug Van Pelt challenges him on this point, saying that worship times weren’t meant to be for outsiders–just as you wouldn’t go to a club for expensive car enthusiasts and find them simplifying things so you understand.  So, Beaujon gives it another chance, going to several David Crowder Band concerts, including one of the shows DCB plays in the week after Kyle Lake’s tragic death.

It is there that worship music finally clicks for him.  He tells how, during DCB’s closing number, Crowder disappears to the floor, as he uses his various pedals and instruments to make all these noises.  The audience stays enraptured, even though the frontman isn’t in view–nothing visual is happening.  ”And that, my friends, marked my conversion to, or at least my enmity to, worship music.  Here’s a guy surrounded by rabid fans who’d have done anything to get close to their worship leader, consciously removing himself from the spotlight.  There was only one star at that evening’s show, and he hadn’t been onstage at all.”

Not everyone comes out looking great.  He is finds Switchfoot’s attempts to pretend they’re not associated with Christian music to be a bit off-putting.  And his time at GMA Week and the Dove Awards make the idea of a Christian Music Industry look a bit silly (which it is, imho).  He sees a lot of mediocrity and hypocrisy there, and even a bit of racism.  (Some of the worst examples include the horrid rewording of the Dove eligibility requirements that occurred when the Association didn’t want to give the song “Kiss Me” by Sixpence None the Richer any recognition, and the fact that the majority of the “Best Rap” awards at the Dove’s have been won by white guys.)  

Another somewhat telling thing from that week is that one of the rappers he meets decides to give him a tract and share the gospel, and he realizes that in all the time he was working with Christians on this book, that was the first (and I think only) time that happened.

Only one chapter seems a waste of time to me, and that is a late chapter where he goes around Washington with several abortion protestors.  It seems a bit random and out of place, and not as well written or as gripping as other sections.

Jesus calls us to be in the world, but not of it.  It seems with the somewhat accidental creation of a “Christian music industry”, we have gotten that backwards. Getting out of that trap will take boldness from artists with originality.  Body Piercing Saved My Life gives an outsiders perspective on this curious aspect of American culture , looking at it from all angles, asking important questions and highlighting artists who have been unfairly shunned because of their worldview.  It’s a great read, and I recommend it.

My Thoughts on Our Outgoing President

Ooh…controversial.

We’re at the very end of the Bush years.  I don’t see Jeb stepping into the Presidency anytime soon.  Obama is about take office, and for all intents and purposes, he’s already leading the country.  Meanwhile, George W. steps out with one of the lowest approval ratings a President has ever left office with.

And I don’t think it’s justified.

Now, before we jump into this, I want to say that I have friends on both side of the political fence.  I have friends who have stuck by the President from the 2000 Supreme Court Election through Abu Ghraib to today.  And I have friends who never quite trusted or agreed with the guys, and have intelligent reasons for doing so.

There are people on both sides who have thought through their opinions on Bush, who have listened to facts and reasoned why they have liked or not liked the policies or persona of President Bush.  And that is as it should be.

But I don’t think that’s the case for most people.

I would say that most Americans base their political opinions on a few emotional things.  They don’t pay much attention to the real news, or if they do, it’s to only a select few sound bites selected to sway their opinion.  At the risk of sounding arrogant myself, I think most people haven’t taken the time to educate themselves on the facts.  

Many of the people who disapprove of President Bush don’t know why.  (I would say the same for many who like or dislike Obama.)

Maybe they don’t like the way he talks or where he’s from.  Maybe they’ve heard a couple of things, or noticed that everyone else dislikes him.  But for them, there’s no real reason.

Now, before you jump all over me, I will say I do not think by any stretch that George has has a perfect Presidency.  Some of the bad points:

1. Our entrance to the Iraq War was with a great amount of naivety at best, and at worst a sinister and badly planned foray designed to, I don’t know, get control of oil, oust Saddam Hussein as revenge for his attempt to kill George Sr., give contracts to weapons manufacturers, or something else.  The first several years were mishandled.

2. Afghanistan–on the other hand, not enough attention was given to completing the job in Afghanistan, which has put the country in the precarious position it is in now.

3. Obviously, many of the abuses connected with POWs in the Iraq War have been pretty atrocious.

4. I’ve watched the whole Spike Lee documentary on Hurricane Katrina, and while I don’t believe that the government’s handling of that situation was intentionally racist, it was completely bungled and showed how unprepared Bush and FEMA were and how out-of-touch he was with what was happening.

And I’m sure numerous other things could be added to the list.

That would seem like enough to permanently tarnish anyone’s Presidency.  But is it the whole story?

No.

There is a lot more to the story than that.  There are some things that, regardless of what the rest of the world says, Americans can hold their head up high about when talking about President George W. Bush.

Why aren’t these things (which I will discuss below) more talked about?  Well…I have a theory about that.

Yup: the liberal media theory.

Of course, this isn’t a theory that applies or across the board or isn’t even that provable.  But I need to give you some background as to why I believe it.

I went to a high school (U-32 Jr/Sr High) in Vermont that was started by former hippies in the early 70s.  It is a pretty “liberal” school, even for a public school in Vermont.  For the first year of the school’s existence, there was a “no homework” policy.  They soon realized that was a bit silly.

But we called all the teachers by their first names.  And instead of “study halls” when you didn’t have class, you had “free periods” where you could wander around or sit in the student lounge and play cards or whatever.  My senior year, two days a week I had 3 classes and 6 free periods.

I took journalism there and even acted as co-editor of the school’s paper.  It was a serious program, with a regularly released newspaper that won its share of awards. Our teacher, Joanne, a die-hard liberal democrat who sometimes got a bit tipsy on field trips, drilled into us one thing that I remember about journalism to this day: 

Unless you are specifically assigned commentary, reporting had to be completely free of bias.  That meant that quotes and facts were needed on both sides of an issue.  That meant that our own opinions were not to enter into it.

And I mean it was drilled into us.  Later, I worked as a stringer for a news radio station in Vermont.  That meant that I was basically assigned a story a week that I could do at my leisure.  My biggest moment came when I was assigned to go get some sound bites from a press conference being held by Congressional candidate Bernard Sanders, the socialist mayor of Burlington.  It was his first press conference after a nasty incident in which he yelled at some reporters he felt were being unfair to him.  When he saw me, a 17 year old kid who went to high school with the son of his opponent, he made sure I knew that I had to report things fairly. But for me, it was a no-brainer.  That’s what reporters did.  (Sanders is still in Congress, incidentally.)

My co-editor for part of that year was my best friend Dan.  It is somewhat odd that Dan and I were so close, as we are polar opposites in almost all of our values.  But we talked on the phone recently, and one thing we agreed on was how very bias the media was–some to the left, some to the right.

But let’s not kid ourselves.  ”Some” to the left is an understatement.  Statistics show that somewhere between 80-90% of the reporters working in prominent news media lean to the left.  This is disproportional with the way American leans.

And here’s what I think happened.  Bush’s victory in 2000 was a strange one at best, and although many (but not all) of the post-Supreme Court recounts suggest Bush really would have won, the whole thing felt a bit tainted from the start.  And many of the press immediately disliked the President.

He had a grace period after 9/11 where even Saturday Night Live made a short-lived pledge to no longer mock him, but that quickly ended and the reports about the President focused on mistakes, with very little of his successes (and there are many–see below) emphasized.  

Anecdotal evidence: someone I know was in Iraq shortly after Saddam was driven out of Baghdad.  The military had taken up posts at some of his opulent palaces, and this person happened to be at a press conference where a high ranking officer was updating the press on things happening in the country.  The officer was reporting on some of the good things happening at the time–public services that were going up, people being helped (including–bet you didn’t know this–the 130 or so children freed from a prison, where they had been held for months or years for not participating in Saddam’s youth Baath Party activities, and returned to parents).  

The reporters sat, bored, not writing much down.  When the officer finished, the reporters came to life, immediately asking questions about some of the bad things that had happened, or rumors they had heard.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with presenting the bad with the good.  But when the bad is all that is reported, something is wrong.  It’s not the whole picture.

And so the press, who mostly live under a different value system than the President or others who may support him, focused on the bad.  And the country, hearing only the bad, started believing that only bad was happening, until the fact that the country disapproved became the news story, causing more people to disapprove without actual, factual reasons.

So what has the President done right, if I am so convinced?  Let me mention a couple of things, all of which can be summed up by this quote: “We are a better nation when we save lives.”  That’s Bush speaking in an interview about item #1 below.

1. President Bush has done more than any President before him, and more than almost any world leader, to help turn back the tide of AIDS in Africa and bring treatment to those suffering.  The main program he pushed forward  is called PEPFAR (The President’s Emergency Plan For Aids Relief), that has brought help to over 10 million in Africa since its inception.  Countries like Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania will never be the seem, and in those places the President is a very popular man, as the effects of his work are seen everywhere.  There’s a great article here: http://relevantmagazine.com/releblog/cameronsqa/president-bushs-unexpected-legacy/ that includes an interview with the President.  

Incidentally, I have a couple of friends who were in the national limelight a few years back, and in addition to the weirdness of being on the View and Larry King, they got to meet the President.  He gave them a tour of the historical objects he had chosen for his Oval Office, and the President they met along, face-to-face, is very much the man you never see in the press (is it a great crime to be a poor public speaker?), but it is the man you see in the interview I linked to above.

2. In May of 2006 I saw a piece in The New York Times of all places (not exactly a friend to the Bushes) that asserted that some of Bush’s positive contributions were being overlooked.  It took time to highlight that he had, again more than any other President, done a lot to combat modern slavery (human trafficking), pushing forward money and programs to fight it worldwide.  As there are currently more slaves on the planet than there have ever been at one time previously, this is a thing to be proud of.

3. This isn’t a positive, but rather a correction of a misperceived negative: it is not primarily Bush’s fault that the economy is in the state it is currently in.  The whole mess, which I can’t begin to understand fully, began with the deregulation of several industries, including the home mortgage industry (you’ve heard the term “sub-prime mortgages”).  This happened in the waning years of Clinton’s administration.  Just a few years ago the Republicans of the House warned something like this mess might happen, but it fell on deaf ears.

4. The Kurds are free.  Whatever the motivation for the Iraq War–and I’m sure it was mixed–one thing that came out of it is that a tyrant who–let’s be honest–wasn’t going anywhere through diplomatic channels was overthrown.  This is especially good news for the Kurds, an ethnic group focused in southern Turkey and northern Iraq and targeted for genocide by Saddam Hussein.  In the early 90s the Iraqi military received orders to wipe them out gradually, and villages were gassed with chemical weapons.  They say that not a single Kurdish family went through this time without at least one loss.  And this is why, after the invasion and overthrow, Kurdish women were naming their babies “Bush” and Americans were celebrated in the streets.  The region has remained mostly free of the violence that has plagued the Sunni triangle.  And the Kurds are free.

Speaking of Iraq, it is going much better today.  ”The Surge” has largely worked, as well as the recruitment and training of many former insurgents to police and keep safe their own neighborhoods.  

Bush operated under a policy I agree with.  America is the richest, most powerful nation that has ever existed, and it is our calling to use that not to keep our 401Ks stocked and our lives comfortable and fridges overstocked, but to bless and help the unfortunate all over the earth.  And though this has not happened perfectly–and won’t under any human leader–I applaud our President for helping the unfortunate of Africa, the trapped women of East Asia, the targeted of the Middle East, and even the homeless of America.  

And though the rest of the world hate him and look at the very real negatives, I say, thank you Mr. Bush, for these things.  Thank you for not letting another Rwanda happened because it doesn’t look popular on TV to have our soldiers killed.  Thank you for using your time to do good where others would use their time to do what wins points.

Thank you.

BONUS THOUGHTS: Real quick–I’ve been watching, over the past two years, the first 4 seasons of Saturday Night Live on DVD.  Well, watching is an overstatement. Skimming is more like it.  And guess what: they stink as bad as SNL has ever stunk!

I know its popular to consider the first five years the greatest of the show’s history, but that’s looking at it through rose-colored glasses.  There are great characters, actors, and classic skits.  As there are almost every year.  But there are also skits that drag on WAY too long (many pass the 8 minute mark, unheard of today), recurring characters that have one note and recur way too often (like today), and lots of laughless moments.  There are missteps, like letting the then-very-arrogant Chevy Chase mug his way to dominance in the first year, and like doing what seems like 23 different “Cheeseburger” sketches long after they aren’t funny, and…just the endless repetition.  Not to mention that I know fully believe that Jane Curtin and Bill Murray are the worst Weekend Update hosts in the show’s run.  No timing, more vulgar than the show is today, believe it or not, and worst of all, just not funny.  Plus, can we draw the line at 20 identical Roseanne Roseannadanna commentaries?  It’s awful.  As good and as bad as SNL ever was.  Thus ends the killing of a sacred cow.  

Thank you.

O Subversive Night

It’s Christmas Day.  Packages are unwrapped, my wife and baby are both dozing…and I’m listening to “O Holy Night” for about the 50th time this Christmas season.

I’m not sure why suddenly this song has grabbed me by the heart, throat, and anything else it can metaphorically grab.  I’ve always liked it–nice melody, complicated chord structure, good opportunities for harmony.  I probably have ten or so interpretations of it, my favorites this year tending to be Kendall Payne’s and Andy Zipf’s.  

But suddenly the lyrics are just…well, they’re wrecking me.  

This song has reminded me of the very subversive nature of what Jesus really came to do.  Too often Christianity in the late 20th/early 21st century West has mixed with commercialism and rigidity.  Whether or not the analysis is true, many outside the church think that it’s about rituals and behavior, trying to find hope in ancient stories, blocking the influence of the world while simultaneously trying to “Christian-ize” it.  

Missing from most people’s understanding is…well, is the whole point.

Listening to “O Holy Night”, I am struck that no human could have made up this Savior, this Story.  Had he been made up by humans, He would come in a blaze of glory, weapons at the ready, prepared to topple the system.  He would put people in line or kick them out of the kingdom.  He would pick followers based on their abilities, potential, behavior.  

He did none of this.

He came in humility, lived in humility, loved all people but especially those who were forced into poor and humble circumstances.  He taught His followers to live humbly, to serve, and to give up everything.  Then He gave up everything, suffering an excruciating (the very word has at its root crucify) death that He didn’t deserve.  I did.  You did.  Everyone He loved deserved it, but He loved them–us–so much that He took it for them.

Even when He resurrected, He showed humility.  He didn’t go to the leaders of Rome and say, “Aha!  What now?”  He didn’t fly around glowing.  He knew something that I have since discovered–even when presented with clear evidence to the Truth of Christ, if a person doesn’t want to believe it, he won’t.  I remember seeing a powerful and inarguable miracle on a mission trip, and coming back to Vermont to tell my best friend from high school, a friend I love very much even though we don’t always know what to say to each other, and his only response was, “Hmm.  Sure wish you had documented it.”  He doesn’t (yet) want to believe.

There are three verses to the song, but most people skip the middle verse.  But all this truth is right there in the song.

In the first verse: “Long lay the world in sin and error pining/’Til He appeared and the soul felt its worth/A thrill of hope–the weary world rejoices!”  A hopeless world, a world stuck without a path of redemption, is given a second chance.  Falling on your knees is a natural response if you grasp this.  It takes me about 30 seconds of television–any station–to be reminded of how hurting, lost, misguided, broken, empty, deceived, and shallow this world is.  People are living for nothing but poison because they don’t know something better is exist.  They’ve been taught it’s naive and ridiculous to think so.

And then the third verse: “Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother/and in His name all oppression shall cease.”  What a claim.  But a claim I whole heartedly believe.

I am a person He has freed from chains.  Chains of lust, selfishness.  I am not the person I once was, and I was changed not by my own efforts, but by the love of Christ, who was both God and man, carrying Mary and the Holy Spirit’s DNA.  

But I think this claim is even more subversive than that.  I think it speaks to those in literal chains.  

There are more slaves in the world today than there have ever been in the history of humanity–the number is in the 10s of millions.  There are even slaves in America–locked in sweatshops in New York City and L.A., forced into sexual slavery in Chicago, held in compounds in Florida, picking fruit for nearly no wages.  

It is safe to say that without the efforts of Christians like William Wilberforce, men and women who truly believed the gospel was meant to give hope to every human, that every human was equal because they were image bearers of God, slavery would at least have lasted longer in England and the rest of the West than it actually did.  And that is just one example.  I amazed at the ignorance or vindictiveness of those who claim that Christianity has been responsible for most of the world’s ills, as they conveniently overlook the good real Christians have done, confuse the work of greedy men working in the name of the church, and ignore the horrors of the 20th century that can be directly pinned on the turning away from Christianity.

And we are meant to be setting captives free today.  We have been set free.  How can we stand by while others are crushed by injustice.  How can we drink bottled water out of plastic bottles that suck the world’s resources, when we have the cleanest drinking supply in history, and the money used yearly could provide wells with clean water to every village in Africa, where people die daily from a lack of clean drinking water?

Christ came to turn the world upside-down.  A baby is born in a feeding trough in a small town in Palestine, and the ripples are still felt today.  And His followers are meant to turn the world upside-down today.  Let’s do it in 2009.  Let’s live by the law of love and gospel of peace.  Let’s break chains, knowing every slave–whether they be a literal slave or a slave to consumerism or whatever–is our brother.  Let’s stop oppression.

Let’s not waste what we’ve been given.

Christ is the Lord.  Praise His name forever.  His power and glory evermore proclaim.

The (Relatively) Unsung Classics of (the first half of the) 90s “Christian” Music

Look, I don’t want to get it into it.

I know that the fact that there is a category of music labeled “Christian” is somewhat egregious.  I know music can’t be saved from sin, and I know that this is the only label given to music based on its content and not on its style.  

I also know that the most of the music labeled “Christian” tends to be over (or under) produced, syrupy, derivative, and often without depth.  

So I guess I have gotten into it.  I feel like it’s okay to say “Christian music” because that’s the way it is, and it takes too long to say “Rock (or punk or rap) music that is made by someone who considers themselves a Christian.”  But that is what I mean by it, and that definition broadens both the number of bands (Thrice, anyone?) and the possible subject matter, as it cancels out illegitimate requirements like “they have to say Jesus six times for it to be a Christian song.”

There are those of us out there who both love quality, original music and appreciate music addressing the worldview we think is capital T True.  We love passion and edge in our music, but we loathe the content of most popular music, with its unrelenting focus on sex, romantic love as the answer to all things, boastfulness, and, in other genres, depression and hopelessness.

And those of us who fit that description see signs of life in the music world–we know that there are excellent musicians out there, producing some really great stuff, who also call Jesus Lord.  They tend to shy away from the “Christian music world.”  Sometimes they operate in it, sometimes they don’t.  We are encouraged by the presences of Sufjan Stevens, mewithoutYou, Mute Math, Pigeon John, P.O.D. (sometimes), Jon Foreman and Switchfoot, and numerous others who are shattering the imaginary barrier people have set up as “Christian” and “secular” music.

What many of us may not realize, though, is that there have been groundbreaking and talented bands since the beginning of “Christian” music (I will relentlessly use quotes here) in the late 60s/early 70s.  You just had to look harder for them.  They got less attention, and were less successful.

My car has only a tape deck.  For awhile we had an iPod adapter in the car and I could play my latest downloads of Lecrae, Radiohead, or Bon Iver.  But it broke.  And we decided not to buy a new one.  So guess what?  I’ve been listening through my cassette collection.  And guess what?  Some of the old albums stand the test of time.

I present to you some of the relatively unsung classics of the 90s underground Christian music world.  If you’re in the mood for something new, get something slightly old!  Many of these albums are hard to find or out of print, but some are still available.  Here we go, in no particular order.

Scaterd Few–Sin Disease (1990)–This is the first CD I ever owned.  Scaterd Few was punk band from Los Angeles.  The lead singer, Allan Aguirre (who went by the name Omar Romkus), was friends with HR of a somewhat similar band, Bad Brains. But Scaterd Few brings their own style and sound to the punk genre–think of this as punk with hints of reggae and complex musical arrangements.  Think of this as punk with talent.  And Sin Disease is an amazing, blistering record.  16 tracks, many of them under two minutes long, fly by with no skip tracks (except maybe the bizarre seven minute finale.)  Allan sounds like Peter Murphy with a greater range, and he covers topics ranging from drug use and gang violence (Glass God, Lights Out) to the theology of sin (Kill the Sarx) with weird poetics.  There’s a reggae track and one or two haunting acoustic moments, but for the most part this album flies by with a fierce intensity and a sound all its own.  The band would never top this record.  Stand-Outs: “Kill the Sarx” “Self” “Lights Out”

The 77s–Sticks & Stones: The 77s, fronted by guitar impresario Mike Roe, have existed in one form or another since the late 70s, and are still putting out albums today. At one point, they were labelmates with U2, and The 77s debut album on Island Records had the unfortunate luck to be released at the same time as The Joshua Tree, whose success distracted the label from promoting The 77s at all.   

The 77s talent is broad.  They can do aggressive blues rock (including a cover of “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” that I believe tops Led Zeppelin’s version), moody and mournful alternative, and gospel jams.  

For a long time, their drummer was the legendary Aaron Smith, who recorded with Ray Charles and was the drummer for the Temptations’ “Papa Was a Rolling Stone.”  A pair of his drumsticks are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame right next to Ringo Starr’s.  

They have many strong moments, but for me, nothing tops Sticks and Stones.   This is an album that shouldn’t work.  It is basically a collection of tracks that never got finished, got thrown off of albums, B-sides, and that sort of thing.  And it is brilliant.  You hear the band’s whole range, from straight soulful rock songs like “MT” to Jerry Lee Lewis-tinged blues (“Perfect Blues”) to experimental alternative songs like “God Sends Quail” (which opens with a 2 1/2 minute guitar solo that is my favorite guitar solo of all time).  Lyrically the album is strong, covering themes of loss, failure, redemption, and love.  In fact, the only misstep is an instrumental called “The Loop” that never really hooked me.  Overall, this is a great collection of songs from a great band.  Stand-Outs: “This is The Way Love Is,” “God Sends Quail.”  For Further Listening: Try their 1992 album, which they were forced the self-title but is really called “Pray Naked.”  There is an even broader range of style here; the album is a bit bleaker than Stick and Stones.

Adam Again–Dig (1992): Fronted by the late Gene Eugene, a child actor whose credits included Bewitched, Adam Again was one of those bands that seemed to change styles from album to album.  Some consider their last album, Perfecta, to be their best, but I find it boring with the exception of two songs, one being the opener, “Stone,” which might be the best song the band ever recorded.

No, I consider Dig to be their masterpiece.  Imagine, if you will, REM’s Michael Stipe fronting a guitar-driven jam band that sings only esoteric Dylan-esque lyrics with an edge of sarcasm, and that’s what you get here.  The songs flow, and the lyrics demand attention and thought.  They also must have been a pain to memorize, as they are complicated, full of strange imagery, and vital to the rhythms of the songs.

You may have heard at least one of these songs.  Jars of Clay covered the title track on its “Furthermore” record.   But there are 10 tracks here, ranging in theme from broken relationships (which makes for a slightly awkward concert experience, as the backup singer is Gene Eugene’s ex-wife) to desparation to…a bunch of songs I don’t fully understand.  But there is much to chew on, and as you do, you’ll want to sing along.  Stand-Outs: “Hopeless, Etc., ” “Worldwide,” “River on Fire,” “Deep,” “So Long.”  Okay, that’s half the album.

The Violet Burning–Strength  (1992) The Violet Burning is a California band that still puts out albums today.  They’ve gone through several line-up changes, but really the Violet Burning is mostly the work of Michael Pritzl, a brilliant musician and songwriter.  The band has gone through several phases, some dark, some light, some worshipful, some moody, and mostly all of those combined.  

Strength was the last thing Pritzl did as part of the Vineyard Church and their music label.  I know they had a falling out at some point, and that may be one of the reasons why this disc is no longer available, though you can order a disc through the band’s website of the current band playing through it live.  The original album runs about $50 on CD.

And it would be worth it.  This is basically a musically original, emotionally thick worship album.  Don’t misunderstand that–this does not sound like “worship music”–it sounds like alternative music, whatever that means.  It is intense, soulful worship, with lyrics that are somehow both introspective and completely upward focused.  Pritzl’s voice is an original, sounding a bit like some holy union of Robert Smith and Thom Yorke.  

It starts with “There is No One Like You,” and doesn’t let up.  Towards the end, “Song of the Harlot” uses the story of the woman who anoints Christ’s feet as a metaphor for the human condition.  The singer confesses how “many times I’ve loved the world, so many times I’ve been the whore.”  The song climaxes with the line, “And if I could be anyone at all, then let me be the whore at Your feet.” 

The band on this record is my favorite incarnation of TVB, and includes Shawn Tubbs, a secret treasure in the guitar world whose solos are some of the best things on the record.  The only misstep is a cover of the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” that feels a little out of place.

I’m not sure how to talk you into buying this record.  Hunt it down.  You will not be disappointed.  Stand-Outs: “There is No One Like You,” “Stay With Me,” “As I Am,” “Song of the Harlot”…and everything else.

 The Choir–Circle Slide (1990)–For a long while, the Choir was my favorite band of all time, largely because of this disc.  It is rare for Christian musicians to be ahead of their time, but there wasn’t anything happening in 1990 that sounded quite like this, with Derri Daughtery’s heavenly voice, Steve Hindalong’s amazing lyrics and even better drumming, and Dan Michael’s spacy lyricon and saxophone talents.  Even today, this album sounds, at least to me, new.  The Choir has other strong albums, and even their most recent, 2006’s “Oh How the Mighty Have Fallen,” is a good effort.  But some of the records sound dated, and others aren’t as cutting edge or original as Circle Slide.

The album is full of Hindalong’s poetic imagery that typically runs on three basic themes: a. his love for his wife (“Sentimental Song,” “Tear for Tear”), b. his love for his family/kids (“If I Had a Yard,” “Laugh Loop”) c. his desperate need for God, a God he’s not always sure is there (“Blue Skies,” “Restore My Soul.”)  

To me, the Choir’s biggest strength has always been melody, and they give it to you in droves here.  The title track opens the album, and while it’s good and sets the tone for the album, it’s not my favorite.  Starting with track 3, though, the record is perfect.  From the sparse “Blue Skies,” mostly made up of drums and vocals, to the jamming closer “Restore My Soul,” the album does not let up.  Stand-Outs: “Sentimental Song” “Blue Skies” “Restore My Soul”  For Further Listening: “Speckled Bird” “Free-Flying Soul” and “Wide-Eyed Wonder”

Squint–Steve Taylor (1994)–Steve Taylor has been referred to as the clown prince of Christian music, and rightfully so, but more than that he is just a ridiculously talented guy.  This was his last record of new material, with most of his albums coming out in the 80s, (and, as classic as they are, sounding like they came from the 80s).  He is now focused on directing, currently working on a film version of Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazz (yeah, I don’t know how that will work either.)  His previous directorial effort, The Second Chance, though not perfect, puts many other so-called Christian movies to shame in that Taylor seems to have a director’s eye, trying out different shots and angles and ways of communicating what he wants.  The direction seemed anything but rote.  Plus, I’ll never be able to hear “Come Now is the Time to Worship” in quite the same way.  (Before that, Taylor directed a ridiculously silly film for the Newsboys.)

But to me, the best thing he’s ever done artistically is 1994’s Squint.  I’ve said this before, but again, this album does not sound dated–it’s a modern rock spectacle with ten strong tracks…and the occasional prog-rock and reggae influences.  But what makes Taylor a cut above is his lyrics, at once satirical and confessional.  ”Bannerman” takes a tongue-in-cheek look at the guy with the John 3:16 sign at football games.  ”Smug” points the finger at celebrities both in Hollywood and in the church.  ”Cash Cow”, called a rock opera in three parts, is a satire of the materialistic hunger prevalent in American culture.  (But to Taylor’s credit, he is always as quick to include himself in the things he is criticizing, confessing that he falls victim to that greedy spirit “every time I utter those three little words, ‘I deserve better’!”)

To fully understand all the lyrics, one needs to know a bit of Taylor history.  His previous project had been the band Chagall Guevera, whose eponymous record had been released by a major label and gotten strong reviews in Rolling Stone magazine only to get no advertising push and fall apart almost before it began.  This left Taylor reeling, and wondering if he had gone for major label success for the right reasons.  Knowing this brings clarity and poignancy to “Jesus is For Losers” and “Sock Heaven.”

But the stand-out cut is far and away “The Finish Line.”  The song is basically tells the story of a modern-day prodigal son using the metaphor of a marathon runner.  It is musically complicated, going through multiple key changes and many, many chords, lyrically evocative, and probably one of my 10 favorite songs of all time by any artist.  (If you don’t believe me when I say this song is amazing, ask Chris Mann.)

Stand-Outs: “The Lament of Desmond R.G. Underwood Frederick IV,” “Jesus is For Losers,” “The Finish Line,” “Cash Cow”.

Well, that’s it for this entry.  I’m sure there are other records from the first half of the 1990s that belong on this list.  In fact, I’ll give an honorable mention to “The Grape Prophet” by LSU.  Make suggestions!  Maybe I’ll do a part 2.  But for now, hunt down any of these CDs.  You won’t be disappointed.