My Life In Records

This guy plays the only guitar solos that are good. Vacilando Territory Blues, out 12/01/08 on Bella Union, will be reviewed next week.

This guy has good lyrics.

I was instructed to destroy this album, with a hammer, after my mother found out I had lied to her about the band name being a metaphor for actively resisting negativity.

There were two good records in my home growing up: Peter Gabriel So and Beach Boys’ Endless Summer. My father loved Peter Gabriel. It was always such a mystery. What did this secular singer possess that made my father so willing to flirt so brazenly with sin? Why was this guy so spiritually benign, while the Beatles and Beach Boys were severely off-limits? It's no wonder I developed a deep and lasting fascination with this unicorn of a record.

This is the first cassette my brother and I purchased with allowance money. The sales representative at the Christian Bookstore informed us that Petra was a Christian "heavy metal" band. According to guidetopetra.com, "On Fire! is about spiritual revival and renewal. It's [sic] a manual that challenges the young Christian to be ablaze with the consuming fire of total love for God. On Fire teaches and applies intense devotion to God. Your life will be changed in these ways as you allow the message of On Fire! to burn in your heart." I'm not sure that my heart was set ablaze by this album but my friends were disappointed to learn that this was what I considered heavy metal.

I was turned on to this album by way of a secular carpool situation, and I loved Soul Provider until my father explained to me that "lover" (as in "how-can-we-be-lovers-if-we-can't-be-friends") was what he was to my mother, and that Michael Bolton did not write "Georgia, On my Mind."

Have you ever seen the movie Darkon? It's a documentary about a community of Live Action Role Players in Maryland. Having been exposed to a toxic level of the ex-hippie turned monk stylings of John Michael Talbot at an impressionable age, it is a miracle that I did not grow up to star in that movie. I mostly credit this to being told stories at my Pentecostal grade school of secular children accidentally being possessed by demons while playing Dungeons & Dragons.

My dad, a guitar player, told my wide-eyed brother and I on more than one occasion that Eric Clapton, a very famous secular guitar player, was once asked how it felt to be the best guitar player in the world. According to legend, he is said to have answered, "I don't know... ask Phil Keaggy." Phil Keaggy is a Christian guitar player whose solos are played solely for the glory of God. He only has nine fingers. All of this somehow added up to an air-tight argument for the existence of God and Jesus. Once, after having attended a Phil Keaggy concert, my father (lower-case) remarked in awe, "I feel like going home and burning my guitar!" and I agreed with him.

Carman is a Contemporary Christian singer from New Jersey by way of Las Vegas who makes music videos of himself physically besting a literal Satan in a myriad of allegorical scenarios. The Champion's title track is a mini-opera of sorts, allowing the listener to experience the crucifixion and resurrection over the course of 12 rounds, with Satan starring as himself and the part of Jesus as a shirtless Italian played by Carmen.

This is the first music I remember hearing, and I believe this particular cassette played in a constant loop every waking moment of my infant life. The fact that bullfrogs and butterflies undergo a scientifically documentable metamorphosis is supposed to serve as an analogy for the equally scientific fact that all children are born into a state of original sin and must be "born again" in order to avoid the special place in Hell God has designed for the suffering of tadpoles.