“In their ongoing effort to be naughtier than the Beatles, the Rolling Stones began making satanic allusions in 1967 . . . Jimmy Page, the lead guitarist of Led Zeppelin, was a Crowley fan even before he accepted the Lucifer Rising job . . . By this route Satanism became heavy metal’s semiofficial religion, observed …
In Other Words, Not Breaking On Through to the Other Side
“Morrison never made the sustained effort needed to write even passable free verse, and his emotional range—from petulant narcissism to dead-serious angst—is far narrower than that of the least of his poetic idols . . . booze became the formaldehyde in which his adolescent hangs-ups were preserved” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, p. 238).
Bureaucratic Bishopric
“This is the besetting sin of American presbyterianism. When an association of independent churches, or the representatives of presbyterian churches, makes the mistake of establishing a permanent headquarters somewhere (minium requirements: one desk, one phone, on file cabinet), a certain type of bureaucratic mind is immediately attracted to the important task of getting the papers …
Ain’t It the Truth?
“Like free jazz, art rock proves once again that total freedom is enabling for a handful of geniuses, but disabling for everyone else” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, p. 222).
Labels and Bottles
“Having gotten this straight, we must then factor in the problem of labels and bottle contents. In a perfect world, things would be what we called them — health food would be healthy, guaranteed savings would be, and so on. But this is a fallen world, and we can find, for example, both ‘independent’ and …
Idol Place
“If the desert is the place of demons, the city is the place of idols” (Ellul, The Meaning of the City, p. 54).
That, and Singing Through Your Nose
“The truth is that Dylan, like most of his generation, learned most of his folk music from records . . . But to folkies bewitched by the blues, roughness epitomized authenticity” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, p. 212).
Aluminum Discipline
“We must beware of a too great reliance on a systematic reconstruction of the various references to discipline in the New Testament. matthew 18 is not a paint-by-numbers kits, and we should not assume that when we get to ‘stage two’ in a discipline process that we are at the second rung of a metal …
Even At Their Saltiest
“Add the guitar-centeredness of the rest of early rock, and you have a significant shift: away from an emotionally expressive vocalism and toward and athletically aggressive instrumentalism. With hindsight, we can see some rather striking sexual connotations in this shift. The controlled vocalism of genuine blues suggest power, intensity, and energy being harnessed—as opposed to …
Death in the Fine Print
“But when rules and procedures multipy, students of history should see it as the manufacture of rope for possible judicial lynchings. Complexity in law is a friend to lawyers, not a friend to the accused” (Mother Kirk, p. 160).