By Steve Beard

Back in 2002, MTV announced that the biggest hit in its history was a program called “The Osbournes.” The half-hour show — complete with constant bleeping from excessive foul language — was a curiously fascinating docu-comedy starring the members of Ozzy Osbourne’s family — wife and two teenage siblings (the eldest child bowed out of the show). Ozzy, of course, is the British rock singer acclaimed for his ghoulish heavy metal performances.

The Osbournes had just moved into a new Beverly Hills mansion where they promptly bemoaned the loss of their former neighbor, Pat Boone. Ozzy dottered and mumbled around the house trying to figure out the TV remote control, his wife hired a pet therapist to get the dogs to stop pottying in the living room, and the kids screamed and chased one another around the Osbourne compound.

Truth be told, I found the show captivating in a strange way. Others, justifiably, hated it. The television networks were scrambling to tap into the newly minted genre of “reality” television. At that time, I recommended that the next MTV show should feature Alice Cooper’s family. That’s right, the spooky granddaddy of shock rock who festooned his stage with guillotines, electric chairs, and boa constrictors. Continue reading →

By Steve Beard

“My new Bible study is really testing me. I have never studied the Bible or read my Bible and I really have no idea how to do it,” confessed my friend Tiffany on Facebook. “The language is still confusing and I feel like I’m not really getting the messages.”

The 24-year-old roller derby girl, saleswoman, and mother recently began attending a new church with her husband and she joined a women’s Bible study. “No matter how you word it, the Bible still has very confusing parts. I promise you it is not the version I’m using that is the problem. It is that I am just new with this whole studying the Bible thing. I feel like a freshman that just finished basic math and got thrown into senior calculus.”

As you can imagine, there was no shortage of responses to her post. Tiffany’s Facebook confession was made on the same day I received Disquiet Time: Rants and Reflections on the Good Book by the Skeptical, the Faithful, and a Few Scoundrels, edited by Jennifer Grant and Cathleen Falsani (Jericho Books). In their introduction, the two editors describe the contributors as “nonconformists and oddballs,” comparing them to the characters on the Island of Misfit Toys from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Do you remember the cowboy who rides the ostrich or the toy train thunking along the track with a square wheel on its caboose? The imagery is strangely fitting for this collection of ruminations on the Bible from a wide variety of faith traditions.

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Legendary punk poet Patti Smith, right, is greeted by Pope Francis at the end of his weekly general audience, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Wednesday, April 10, 2013. (L’Osservatore Romano). Speaking to The Guardian, Smith has said: “I like Pope Francis and I’m happy to sing for him. Anyone who would confine me to a line from 20 years ago is a fool!” She continued: “I had a strong religious upbringing, and the first word on my first LP is Jesus. I did a lot of thinking. I’m not against Jesus, but I was 20 and I wanted to make my own mistakes and I didn’t want anyone dying for me. I stand behind that 20-year-old girl, but I have evolved. I’ll sing to my enemy! I don’t like being pinned down and I’ll do what the f**k I want, especially at my age.”

If you have ever been curious about the complicated spiritual journey of iconic punk poet Patti Smith, Ray Padgett’s essay on her version of “Gloria” is exceedingly helpful. This was posted HERE back in 2014. What follows is a shorter excerpt of his article.

Before there was a song called “Gloria,” there was a poem called “Oath.” And the transition from one to the other might never have happened without forty bucks and one loud bass note.

Smith wrote “Oath” in 1970, opening with a line that wouldn’t become famous for five more years: “Christ died for somebody sins but not mine.” A giant kiss-off to her Jehovah’s Witness upbringing, the poem rattled off lines like “Christ, I’m giving you the goodbye, firing you tonight” and “Adam placed no hex on me.” The hostility towards religion that shocked so many in “Gloria” pales in comparison to the text of the original poem.

She performed “Oath” at her very first poetry reading, at St. Marks Church’s prestigious Poetry Project series in February 1971. She opened for Andy Warhol protégé Gerard Malanga in front of an audience that included Allen Ginsberg, Jim Carroll, Sam Shepard, and many other luminaries of the cutting-edge downtown poetry scene. …

Though she kept performing “Oath” in both solo and duo incarnations for the next few years, she must have sensed it was missing something. When she released her first book of poems, 1972’s Seventh Heaven, she left “Oath” out. Her second book the following year Witt didn’t include it either. One would never know “Oath” existed unless they came to see a reading in person – and even then they might miss it, since it usually took all of sixty seconds. Continue reading →

By Steve Beard

Every morning I see a poster hanging in my home for a Triple Crown surf contest in Hawaii. During the last 25 years, I have been to several of the islands, but the small town of Haleiwa on the North Shore of Oahu has been my vision of paradise. We all envision paradise differently: The Mall of America, Fenway Park, Disneyland, Pike’s Peak, the Amazon rainforest. Mine just happens to include shave ice, pineapples, macadamia nuts, and crashing surf.

Several months ago, my family gathered in Maui to celebrate my mom and dad’s 50th wedding anniversary. Before renewing their vows in a beautiful United Methodist sanctuary, I was invited to preach the sermon at the morning service before a congregation of Tongans, tourists, and my extended family.

Because of all the sights, sounds, and smells that surrounded us, I took the opportunity to ask if it was easier or more difficult to find God in paradise. I take great comfort in knowing that the human story told in the Bible begins and ends in the gardens of paradise. The environment surrounding the Tree of Life bookends both Genesis (2:8-9) and The Book of Revelation (2:7).

I love knowing that God cared about creating “trees that were pleasing to the eye” in Eden and that it was his first choice, his first plan, and his heart’s desire. Our search for paradise is God-crafted. There are more than two dozen cities in the United States called Paradise. Why? Because the everlasting soul craves an eternal kingdom.

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By Steve Beard

When we are born we bear the seeds of blight;
Around us life & death are torn apart;
Yet a great ring of pure and endless light;
Dazzles the darkness in my heart.

Sometimes poets drive me nuts. Despite my best efforts, poetry is not my first language. Nevertheless, my heart melts when the poetic swerve makes a complex matter sound wistfully sensible. The stanza above is from the late Madeleine L’Engle, the poet and storyteller behind A Wrinkle in Time, and it helps even a left-brainer like me to conceptualize the theological complexities of the human heart and our journey.

As I grow older, the more I love the image of eternity as a great ring of endless light. Perhaps it is because I am acquainted too well with the darkness and pettiness in my heart. L’Engle’s words conjure up the imagery of someone shouting “Hello!” into a dark cavern where the words are given the freedom to echo on and on.

Everlasting to everlasting is a mighty long time. That is a terrifying prospect to some, and sweet relief to others. Somehow foreverness seems to be etched into our DNA. “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person, and it can never be filled by any created thing,” mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal observed almost 350 years ago. Is that what gives such lasting import to words such as Hope, Mercy, Grace, Love, and Resurrection?

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My son John Paul just turned 18 years old. I fired off my first letter to him when he was four days old. “All of this is to simply say that you were wanted and we are so glad that you have arrived,” I concluded back in 1996. When he turned 13, family friends wrote him encouraging notes of advice as he experienced a non-kosher version of a Protestant bar mitzvah. “I don’t suppose that anything magical happened when you woke up and had officially turned 13,” I wrote. “Nevertheless, this is an important time for me to tell you again how much I love you and how unbelievably proud I am of you.” As he packs up for college, this is some of the letter I wrote to him (shared here with his permission).

–Steve Beard

Dear John Paul:

Rolling Stone recently published a fascinating profile of Annie Clark (who performs her rock ‘n’ roll under the stage name of St. Vincent). When she was young, Clark’s grandmother baptized her in a kitchen sink “with a cigarette in one hand and a martini” in the other. Her parents were not particularly devout Christians, but the baptism meant a lot to the grandmother and her parents believed “it wouldn’t do any harm.”

I laughed because of the similarities and dissimilarities between her experience and your baptism. Your mom and I wanted your grandfather to perform this ancient ritual because it is an outward and visible sign of the inward and invisible grace that brews within you. When your grandfather baptized you in the waves of Maui, those of us on the beach and the nearby sea turtles were witnesses to this sacred moment.

The difference between Annie Clark’s parents and your own mom and dad is that we actually believe that your baptism is significant, sacred, and spectacular. When times are tough, I hope you can remember your baptism. It directly links you to innumerable generations of believers before you from every culture and from every tongue around the globe.

This letter is not meant to be a trite rah-rah cheer for Jesus. You are now an adult. Your life is a runway before you. Take off. Fly. You can choose your own path, cut your own trail, and make your own decisions. Sometimes that will be sweet relief — at other times it will be exhaustingly miserable.

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Brian Setzer’s gorgeous Gretsch guitar has now been inducted into the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Setzer’s guitar – which is actually a replica of his 1959 Gretsch – will be part of the stunning collection of musical instruments at the museum that includes John Coltrane’s saxophone, Dizzy Gillespie’s trumpet, Prince’s Yellow Cloud electric guitar, and Eddie Van Halen’s “Frank 2” guitar.

As a lifelong fan of the Stray Cats and the big band sounds of The Brian Setzer Orchestra, I could not be happier for the innovative Setzer. As a young rockabilly musician, I lusted after that classic Gretsch guitar – that garish orange body with those two dice that he drilled to replace missing tone knobs and the Lucky Lady, skull and crossbones, and Black Cat stickers. As to the replica guitar that will be at the Smithsonian, apparently his original guitar began to age and became unplayable. A master guitar builder replicated every detail of the original and created an exact replica in 2006 that Setzer has been playing. Congratulations, Brian Setzer! Rockabilly rules!

By Steve Beard

At the age of 77, the righteous Queen of Rockabilly is still tearing it up with 60 to 80 concerts per year. Considered to be one of the first women to record rock and roll, Jackson is a sassy music legend who toured with Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, and, most recently, Adele. It was her boyfriend, Elvis Presley, who convinced Jackson to migrate from country music to rockabilly.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Jackson growled out hits such as “My Big Iron Skillet,” “Tears Will Be the Chaser for your Wine,” and “Fujiyama Mama.” Ten years after their marriage, Wanda and her husband Wendall began attending church and dedicated their lives to Christianity in 1971. “We were headed down a pretty rocky road,” she told Smithsonian Magazine. “The main thing that God does for you when you really sell out to him and want to live for him is he sets your priorities up right.” Over the next decade, she recorded half a dozen gospel albums and devoted their talents to churches and revival meetings.

When the rockabilly revival of the 1980s was launched, Jackson was recruited to tour all over Europe. With her legendary status as a rock pioneer, she was periodically invited to play at music festivals and to collaborate with other artists such as Rosie Flores and The Cramps.

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• Lecrae: ‘Christians Have Prostituted Art to Give Answers.’ Thoughts on rap and God from the 34-year-old musician, who was the first to ever simultaneously land an album at the top of the gospel music charts and the Billboard 200 (The Atlantic)
• Digging: Record shopping with Imelda May (The New Yorker)
• A New Museum To Celebrate Southern Food (And You Can Eat The Exhibits) (NPR)
• Reviving the Tiki Tradition: The 14 Best Tiki Bars on O‘ahu (Honolulu)
• Confessions of a Pastor’s Wife: I hate Sundays by Kirsten Oliphant

Bob Dylan – Azkena Rock Festival. Creative Commons.

Excerpt from Stephen H. Webb’s thought-provoking article, “The Sound of Salvation: A Proposed Theology of Rock and Roll” in First Things, October 2014.

Like King David, who used music to explore his own personal ambitions and failures, rock singers lament and accuse, protest and praise, with candid self-revelation and unembarrassed passion. Although not all of the Psalms were written by David, each expresses in musical form a highly individual voice. The Psalms even think of God in vocal terms. God is always thundering from the heavens, and in Psalm 29 alone, God’s voice breaks cedars, flashes forth flames of fire, shakes the wilderness, and causes the oaks to whirl. God was doing to nature what Jerry Lee Lewis would later do to pianos, and the appropriate response in both cases is the same: Glory!

Even the differences between the Psalms and rock songs are instructive. The Psalms are to the love of God what rock is to romantic love. Scholars think that many of David’s songs were written while he was in exile from King Saul or during his son Absalom’s revolt, which forced him to agonize over God’s faithfulness to him. Rock was born when popular music shifted from sentimental tributes to puppy love and stolen kisses to brooding reflections on the unsteadiness of sexual desire as a guide through the twisting passages of youth.

The best rock songs associate sex either with the cause of adolescent confusion or with its solution, but when they strip sexual desire of any higher purpose, they inevitably end up treating it as little more than a highly addictive narcotic. That is why rock needs religion. Rock has plenty of energy, but it often lacks soul. When it is not being infused with intimations of the divine, it is hardly anything more than whatever happens to be popular at the moment.

Rock can get religion only if it is already in some sense religious—which it is, due to its commitment to the irreducible mystery of the human voice. The role of the spoken (or sung) word in Christianity hardly needs emphasizing. God speaks, and Christians are supposed to proclaim what he says. Every religion, arguably, imposes its own theological shape on acoustic experience, and Christianity has a decidedly vocal sound. It does not have just one sound, of course, given the variety of its acoustic expressions over the centuries and across the globe, just as our vocal folds can generate more than words. Still, the Gospels and the spoken or sung word go hand in hand.