Rage Against the Machine, has a marvelous quote when it comes to part of their Ethos, ‘Don’t us revolution to sell your band, use your band to sell revolution!’ As odd as it seems, for me this quote encapsulates quite neatly, with a few steps outside it, how I feel about Christian music. There are many Christians in the music business, and not all of them limited to the Christian industry and its various piggy backing sub-genres. But essentially this quotation emphasises, perhaps my largest hang up with Christian music, it’s obsession with ‘truth’, and it’s obsession with the idea that anything that labels itself that is something they should, without any critical incentive, expose themselves to. It’s pretty much an expression best represented by my father, who knows nothing of his Irish heritage, but buys Irish Springs soap to feel authentically Irish, because it has ‘Irish’ in its title. All the while he’s showering, his ignorance and that soap is washing and wearing away the credible impact of anything to do with being Irish, and reduced it to a material process of buying a bar of soap, as if a squeaky finish nice body aroma are equal to reading and comprehending the Tain Bo Cuihle. On the otherside, and this is much more my point, what does being Irish have to do with Irish Springs being a quality product for anyone? In fact, Ireland is being exploited to sell the soap, just like it is exploited to sell Irish Myst, [though that whisky is outrageously awesome], it doesn’t have any superior naming power than taking a name, like Bailey’s, which happens to be an Irish name, creating an air of credibility and selling the Celticism [even modern and contrived to some extent] as an after thought, or a coincidence.
The same is true for Christian music, the fact of excellence being present, the idea of relationship being present, not to God or ideas but even to history in a profound, well chorded, well worded way, has become not simply coincidental of human beings trying to produce a quality product to both live and to bless others, but entirely Ironic. Not only that, but it’s insulting to regular human beings, who create honest, truthful songs, that speak even to ideals and concepts that Christians would agree with are rejected based on some superiority complex a large number of ‘believers’ have due to a strange sort of intimate connection they’ve developed with a piece of garbage, one only has to listen to Dust in the Wind by Kansas to begin to understand there’s just as much truth of every kind in many forms of music.
The questions faced daily by these artists of face are outrageous- some range from the absurd of ‘Why would you bring people down talking about a real, serious issue, or just the plain fact that sorrow exists and SHOULD affect us all?’ ‘Why did you write this song that has nothing to do with something about church or the grand heavens or [insert other continual rubbishes], where is God in this? Why aren’t you singing more about Jesus?’ and my person favourite, ‘If you’re Christians, why aren’t you a CHristian band? You should be a CHristian band!’ This question statement has missed the mark for two reasons- one, it misses the root of the industry of music- which is ruthless and designed only to procure money, on the marketing level- art has very little to do with it, though most performers are very talented artists. Two, returning to the Rage Against the Machine quote, it points to a much more ironic reality- while the impression would be, ‘Use you band to sell Jesus!’ the truth is, given the market that this music enters, ‘Jesus is used to sell the band!’ and honestly I am so sick of people asking this question, because really, deep inside the heart, I don’t find this statement genuine. How can someone ask a group of artists- ‘I just wish you would be CHristians so that people could BENEFIT, from your music.’ HAve they never listened to James Taylors’ Fire and Rain? There’s more honest strength in that song than I have met in almost all Christian music, honestly, there’s more power there in his brief lines, that Jesus is his only hope for standing up and the only way to make it through a day, than I could find in maybe five better Christian songs, likely NONE of them from this decade.
But the fact of the matter is, the question asked these people of faith is, with a smiling vernier, must more shocking, and should fill every honest person with rage and weeping- ‘Why don’t you exploit Jesus to sell your record?’ and ultimately leads to the statement, ‘I wish they would exploit me!’ Do you encounter is in secular music? No, at least there you have people with the goddamned common courtesy to ask an artist to fuck them with their body instead of their art! What is wrong with a subculture that can’t stand and praise artists for simply being inspired by Jesus and being human to make good music- they are actually disappointed that their Jesus is not for sale! They’re actually disappointed that they don’t seem to be bought, and they’re disappointed they wont provide them with ‘the last temptation of Christ’ deep inside themselves. Can you imagine this- if it were Herr Krishnas, or Hindu people being asked to sell their music by being all about Ghandi, they would be furious- but more to the point, if someone actually did it, they would lose all credibility, not for supporting Ghandis ideas, but for actually exploiting him, and ‘not allowing him to just keep his sol flipflops and remain at peace in the jungle’ as Hell’s kitchen would have us believe- how can ‘Christians’ sell their saviour like that, for a few thirty dollar units here and there, and how can they associate their supposed common experience with one man as encapsulated and worth such a cheap cavalier exchange in the first place?
All that being said, a few weeks ago, Mr. Goulet, a friend of mine of facebook posted a link to a blog on why a person doesn’t like Christian music, these are my thoughts on the article, as well as another clip from tripple X church, and then some closing statements:
I think his whole article can be summed up with: Christian ‘music’, trades expressions of excellence for a few lines of ‘Jesus this and great-gravy-goodness-God!’ that, which amounts to a sunday school lesson for adults. It’s brainwashing, spineless, and everything this person said was absolutely true.
I think however, it misses a few key points of ethics- 1) from personal experience, from lifts taken from Secular music and placed in Christian music- it’s entirely hypocritical- The first song of OC Supertones, Chase the Sun, steals the whole drum introduction from Metallica’s Trapped Under Ice. This isn’t so bad on it’s own, artists steal and rework all the time- but interestingly enough, Secular artists are honest about it. Christian artists listen to more secular music than the subculture they market themselves to- yet they are part of an industry which claims their musical catalogue is more positive beneficial and godly than the secular.
Second, on pure ethics- the Christian industry is not Godly. Secular record companies operate this way- they sign you, co-sign a loan for you to produce market distribute your album, say for example a hundred grand. They will bank roll a portion of your touring costs too. But at the end of the day, the price break down of where the money goes- is they get everything and you might be left with 1% of the total cost of every unit sold. And while they wrack up thousands, ideally millions of dollars from your hard work, that 1% has to feed you, clothe you, and pay off your initial loan. The only way to make money at all, which also has to in majority do the same thing, is to lose your humanity becoming ridiculously famous, or tour so extensively with almost no opportunity for rest. When you hear about groups touring for eighteen months, two or three years between albums, you’re not looking at someone who is doing it for the sheer fun, sure there’s a euphoria to it, but it’s the only way they’re going to make any money- many of them, esp. new comers, it’s the only way they are going to make money to get out of debt, and then get back into debt to meet the quota the record company will asign them if their album succeeds. Fail and there’s hell to pay- you still have to pay off the debt. And the Christian Industry operates in the same exact way, in fact they took their frame work from the secular industry- they’re on in the same- it’s all about money, and fuck you if you fuck them.
I have written alot here, so I wont get into the problem of people being sold their Christian identity- through hill song or some artist’s next worship album. I mean there’s something in the bible about paying for the power of Christ, and the Apostles called it insulting to the Power of the Holy Spirit. What happened to ‘…one person brings a song!’? The frame work of secular industry has convinced us all that only performers play music and we in the crowd watch and mime- and the gifts of local communities go untapped for money!
And I wont start on how the Kingdom of heaven, forgiveness, and real life altering power is not to be found in these songs.
Christian music died with Rich Mullins. It ruddy well sucks, it comes from a corrupt and money hungry industry, it doesn’t say anything, it has no standard for excellence, it exploits Jesus to sell units and above all, it inspires people to go out and buy a cultural identity of being a Christian, which does not exist- you’re buying your identity from people, the power to worship God, you’re paying someone, and what was told to Simon Magus when it tried to buy the power of the Holy Spirit- he was chastised for his extremity of wickedness! Praise God from a heart striving for heart felt excellence in your own words as a human being- bring that song to your church and sing it, play it, hand out copies, heck even better keep it between you and God! Who cares about Hillsong and all these other pieces of glazed feces, we have become a people, supposedly belonging to God who have more a common connection based on the bands that are and are not listened to than a connection with a man called Jesus. CHristian music is just audio porn for your warm wet bed inside you, just like porn is your escape from reality when it comes to the fact you don’t have companionship and intimacy, mass produced worship is the sure sign you don’t have God.
I recently picked up a copy of Ozzy Osbourne’s Blizzard of Oz, the opening track on it is ‘I don’t know’ and you know what, whether Ozzy is humble or not, I’ll take the humility of the song telling me it’s more complex than a simple name, from which I can gather in my own desires and directions, ‘because there’s more to a person than name’. And hence, there should be more to music or a sub genre of music that ‘Jesus’. The thing I most do not understand, is that, go head out and rent a copy of Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist. There’s a Jewish group in this movie, who clearly don’t give a shit in the deep meaningful way they portray themselves about being Jewish, they make ‘Zionistic’ from what it appears, ‘metal’ in order to exploit the record execs, and well, you can imagine- Jewish youth, [which for some reason the very concept is humourous to me, just at its value not to do with the issue] I mean, what happened to Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley [bet you never thought you'd ever see those four names in the same sentence] just happening to be Jewish, it has nothing to do with excellence of music [ excellence here, ehn, work ethic undeniable] or the fact that making music should have anything fundamental to do with being Jewish, the same is true for Christian music. Which seems somehow to enivision itself making the world CHristian, envisions itself ‘taking it back’, and yet, they don’t give anything of quality and so much more for cornering the market, when the only market they have is themselves. Examine U2 for just a brief moment, every member is a CHristian, yet, they are not a CHristian band, they have enormous Credibility to their faith and music, which sometimes intersects as a given, but not an intention- their sound is forged by the Troubles, just as much as anyone who understands that, knows that a faith that is going to retain itself honest in those conditions, is alot deeper and selfaware than a bar of Irish Springs – envision them then, beginning to sing and compose the songs sung in our churches, I don’t mean an honest expression to God, I mean the songs sung in our churches, and you’d actually get an enormous picture of how insulting in unjust every line would be to anyone who had a heart for God in country such as that, it would be a total mockery of honest people on both sides who have lost family and homes, and somehow, hold our hope for unity that has nothing to do with Catholicism or Protestatnism, but Christ, and still retain a quiet faith. What exactly then should we do? Shall we sing these fluffy songs, which are a clear expression of the irrelevance of our religion on this continent and a sheer, whipped cream mockery of those in other countries who know that faith, and God, and singing a certain song is something people kill for? Honestly I look at the songs we sing, and no one ever will murdered for them, because seriously you have to say and be something to be murdered, but I do find it fucking absurd that our expression of worship mocks the reality in the rest of the world, where people have their breasts cut off because a neighbouring tribe didn’t like that they became Christians. So what I will be doing is sticking with my Ozzy album!
