Dumb Music Stuff - What I Left Behind

by Stephanus 16 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Stephanus

  Today I went out and actually bought 3 CD's! (I'm not a great listener to music at the best of times) However, today I went into a music shop and picked up some CD's which contained music from my lost youth. As I sit here assaulting my eardrums with early Status Quo songs such as Pictures of Matchstick Men, Green Tambourine, Mean Girl, and Gerdundula () at full bore through the tinny speakers on my laptop computer, I'm struck by a wave of nostalgia/nausea as I remember my past in a repressive religious environment.

  In my late teens I moved into a house run by a leader appointed by the church that rented out the house from the Housing Commission and sublet to us. This was the time of my life when I should have been playing as much musical crap as I could lay my hands on at full volume. However, the house had been a "discipleship house", one where people staying there had to work towards becoming "better Christians" and were subject to disciplers. That state of play wasn't in force when I moved in, but there were still some stupid rules left behind. One such was the one about music. You could play Christian music (back then it was Larry Norman, 2nd Chapter of Acts, Keith Green, Amy Grant, Chuck Girard and Bob Dylan's Christian phase), but no secular music. Not at all. Not quietly. Not in your own room. It might affect the "spiritual tone" of the house if you played "worldly music", you see. There was an exception: you could play the radio quietly in your room. As I explained to the house leader, that made no sense; if you choose and play your own music, you've got control over what you hear, but you have no such control over what's on the radio; it meant that the radio DJ had control over the house's "spiritual tone". I tried all sorts of ways of undermining the rule. One night I had the radio in the kitchen where I was doing something - I had the ethnic radio station on which at the time was playing some Macedonian music. The house leader walked in from being out and told me to turn it off because it was non-Christian. I asked him how he knew? (He didn't know Macedonian!) He said that it doesn't matter what the words are, the music can impart a spiritual influence. The only other exception to the rule was classical music. I used to play Saint Saens' Danse Macabre all the time and never got any lectures about imparting the wrong kind of spirit!

  During the years I was there, I collected records in the second hand shops in the hope that I could one day play them. One such was A Golden Hour of Status Quo - it had Pictures of Matchstick Men and Green Tambourine on it. I've had to wait nearly twenty years to play those songs!

  Most people here know all about spiritual repression, so nothing I faced should sound out of the ordinary here. Does anyone have specifically Dub experiences of this kind?

  Edited by - Stephanus on 16 August 2002 4:25:19
• 

  mevirginia

  I wish I had something to share that was relivant to the topic but all I could find was a Picture of Micheal Jackson
• 

  Stephanus

  For some reason while typing the above post, I kept thinking of Farkel. What must it have been like for a gifted musician trying to turn Watchtower dirges into something fit for human consumption!

  I was still playing bass guitar and jamming with some friends when I first moved into the house. One Saturday morning I invited them around to the house for a session (the loungeroom was quite large - the house had formerly been an illegal casino); can you imagine how long that lasted when the house leader heard it??
• 

  mevirginia

  I would imagine the whole town heard it. Gee, I can almost hear it now
• 

  Prisca

  Welcome back Steph

  Mevirginia - LOL at your "Michael Jackson" pic

  During the 80s there were a variety of articles in both the WT and A! magazines that dealt with "debased music". It lead to a huge controversy over what was acceptable and unacceptable music for Christians (namely us, since only JWs are "true" Christians (yeah right)).

  I was allowed to listen to the radio, but any songs that even hinted at immorality, drug use etc had to be turned off. Any records I bought were thoroughly scrutinised by my Dad. My older sister was just as bad, so the music I listened to was monitored all the time.

  As for classical music, even that was scrutinised, as my Dad was a classical music lover, and knew a fair bit about the various composers and the music they wrote. Thus he never played a certain piece by Wagner (the name escapes me right now) because it was about the underworld.

  Thing is though, even though I am no longer a JW, I don't listen to heavy metal or anything like that as it's just not my preference. I enjoy music of all genres, but at least now I don't have to worry if a certain musician's lifestyle is going to "interfere" with my spirituality or not!
• 

  Stephanus

  A musically literate police force would have been murder.

  How could anyone have troubles with a song like this:

  When I look up to the sky
  I see your eyes, a funny kind of yellow
  Rush home to bed, I soak my head
  I see your face underneath my pillow
  I wake next morning, I'm still yawning
  I see your face come peeking through my window

  Pictures of matchstick men and you
  Mirages of matchstick men and you
  All I ever see is them and you

  Of course, without the 60s psychedelia accompanying it, it loses a little something in the translation.
• 

  Stephanus

  BTTT

  Now do you see why I retired??

  Should I start another "Wife's pussy" thread?
• 

  Satanus

  You could probably get al kinds of old stuff through kazaa. Other people share stuff through it. Download it here http://desktop.kazaa.com/en/download.htm

  To clean the adware, which slows it down, use kazaa tap, from http://kazaa.hydrantbox.com/

  Did you ever post how you got out of that religion? I guess i missed it, if you did.

  SS
• 

  jws

  I guess I was lucky when it came to a lot of this - and careful too. My brother and I were pretty much free to pick and choose what we wanted to listen to. My parents didn't seem to know or care too much, although I think most of that was out of ignorance. My mother bought my brother his first AC/DC album when he was about 12. I honestly don't think she had a clue who they were or what was on the album (Dirty Deeds).

  But we sort of policed ourselves too. We tried to stay away from most of the more satanic type groups of our own will, with a few exceptions, like the Stones, Led-Zep, and AC/DC. And we were also careful. If we were listening to a new Stones or AC/DC album, we'd listen to it with headsets first so we didn't get it taken away.

  At one time, my brother-in-law (20+ years older than me) was an elder. But was asked to step down because he was deemed a bad influence on the young men of the congregation. He would take them to concerts, late-night rock movies and taught some of them to play rock guitar. He really loved the 60's and early 70's rock bands. He was basically judged a bad influence because he taught kids how to play things like Beatles and Who songs.

  Our parents let us go with him to those movies and concerts (which started when he was still an elder). We'd see the Who's Tommy and Led-Zep's Song Remains the Same, Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps, Beatles movies, and so on. Of course, he was an elder. And we went to a "World Series of Rock" concert with him as well, featuring 4 bands with REO speedwagon headlining.

  While we went to these things, our parents (and my father was an elder too) told us not to tell people at the Hall. Well, the morning after the "World Series of Rock", we were just too excited. We were on our way to the Kingdom Hall and we normally gave a ride to this older sister. She was a very self-righteous woman and also one of the 144,000. ("Well I never" was actually one of her favorite phrases). My brother and I are talking to each other about the concert. She asked what we were talking about and when we told her, she got all bent out of shape about it. Told our parents SHE would never let HER child go to such a thing. To which one of my parents (forget which one) said that WE weren't HER kids. (Bravo!) And to one of the "annointed" too!!!

  Fast-forward to our years above age 18 at a new hall. By now, we're not only going to concerts a lot more frequently, I'm even working security for some of the bigger concerts (not only see the show for free, get paid!!!). Our congregation once gave a special talk about my brother and I (not by name) which denounced such things as listening to rock music, going to rock concerts (and lifting weights and hair styles and dress and a bunch of other things). I think my stereo was cranked up all the way as I pulled out of the hall that night, blairing something like AC/DC.

  A few years after this, I had moved out from my parents, leaving a lot of stuff like old vinyl records back at my parents. One summer, my sister and brother-in-law (not the one who loves rock) visit from out of state and stay at my parents. My brother-in-law (who runs from zealot to passive as a JW and back and forth) is now in holy-roller mode. He determines he feels evil in the house and moves all of our records out to the garage because he "doesn't want to be under the same roof as those albums". It was probably my father who had him put them out in the garage. I think he would have smashed and tossed them if he had his way.

  The impression I got from a lot of my JW background was that even certain types of music were bad to them. Disco was said to be bad because of it's beat which supposedly represented fertility dances. Maybe it wasn't said by the JWs themselves, but the good old brothers and sisters in the congregation gave the impression that rock music itself (wailing guitars and a drum beat) were bad in itself. Not sure, but I sort of get that impression that a lot of religious types are like this - not just JWs.

  The interesting thing is there's a new station in town that plays Christian rock. This isn't the mellow stuff that sounds like folk music. This is bonafide rock. The music (not words, just music) sounds like a lot of rock stations. The main difference is I'm not familiar with the songs or performers. So, if the lyrics are spiritual and presumably the artists are too, I wonder how these self-righteous types view this type of music.

  At this point, I listen to what I like. I now believe most of the stuff about music or beats being bad is simply untrue. Made up because it was new and different and the old folks didn't like it. Instead of saying "we're out of touch and don't like it so we don't want you to either", they make up things to demonize it. I've also listened to so-called backwards masking and can't make out anything. *maybe*. Big "maybe". But if I can't even make it out without hints when played in reverse, how am I supposed to make it out when it's backwards? I conclude that music itself does not have an evil affect. Lyrics might. But not the instrumentals.

  Oh well, free from churches and pious attitudes now. I listen to what sounds good and I enjoy it.

  -jws
• 

  Stephanus

  Sounds like you had it pretty well all together, jws. A pity your elder got demoted. As you can see from a lot of Metatron's posts, he believes that it is the denial of any outlet for youthful energy other than the "worldwide work" that is a major factor in the loss of youth from the congregations. There was a hotshot pastor in the church who took over the youth group of that church in about March one year. He introduced a whole lot of new and innovative ideas designed to really set the youth "on fire". They were really just a lot of rules and regulations aimed at channelling their energies in a way which this pastor saw as positive. The night he took over the youth group there were 130+ people at the Young Peoples' group. By the end of the year there were less than 20 at the Christmas party, and they were all the pastor's newly appointed "leaders" (favourites).

  The Christian radio station where I live has finally been granted a permanent license to operate, but for many years had to go through a period of test broadcasts. It was called 104.5 Living Sound and back then it played "easy listening" music. We called it "104.5 Boring Sound - Where the frequency is the average age of the listeners". Back then I had a video camera, and a friend and I would make sketches lampooning whatever or whomever we found funny around us. We did a "Boring Sound" sketch where I was the DJ doing a phone interview with the head pastor of our church (the voice was my mate off camera making FlowerPot Men type noises instead of words - easier than making up a script, and a time-honoured comedy technique). When the house leader saw this tape, he asked if I thought it was appropriate to be making fun of speaking in tongues? I was horrified that he would make that assumption - back then I was a good little charismatic and would never have lampooned something as sacrosanct as tongues!

  I can see how being road crew would have been frowned upon in a high control environment. How long was it between the special needs talk and your leaving?