It is almost too easy to find theological figures of speech, not to mention experiences that are of theological interest, in rock writing, performing, and rock culture more generally. What these figures mean and how they function, however, are typically more complicated. Let me stick with the easier former part for the moment, and just highlight two reviews this weekend by Howard Hampton of recent works on being “redeemed” by rock, including Steve Almond’s Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life (Random House, 2010), and Mark Edmundson’s The Fine Wisdom and Perfect Teachings of the Kings of Rock and Roll (Harper, 2010). Both seem to travel in the atmosphere of what theology might call salvific phenomena, and take rock as a medium.

Hampton references Velvet Underground’s famous take on a life “saved by rock and roll.” Here’s the tune:

Tom Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, United States

Twenty-five years ago, in the middle of my teenage years, I went to a poundingly loud concert in Kansas City, Missouri, featuring lasers, smoke, explosions, and some of the best musicianship that contemporary rock had to offer. Last night, at Jones Beach on Long Island just outside New York City, I had that Kansas City concert in mind as, a quarter-century later, I was attending another concert by the same band, Rush, now as someone entering what is often called “mid-life.”

I have seen this band at least a dozen times, and having discovered their music around age 11, have been listening intently for 30 years now. They are an acquired taste, and often hated by critics, but last night I was feeling more than a little vindicated in sticking with them. Having won major industry awards for bass, guitar, and drums; having received multiple top awards in Canada (their home country) for performance and songwriting; having been the musical inspiration for a recent Hollywood movie and new video games; having been embraced by the Colbert Report, Rolling Stone magazine, and given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; having been the subject of an award-winning documentary; and having more consecutive gold and platinum albums than any band but the Rolling Stones and the Beatles…. This band has never stopped pushing forward. Few bands last this long, and do so with such vibrancy and continually deepened skill into the later stages of their career. Even though two band members are 56, and one is 57, they are currently preparing a new album for release next summer. They remind us that we are still inventing what the rock life can be.

Herein lies one interesting part of the show last night. Jones Beach, like many dates on their current tour, was sold out, and the fact that these rock legends are pushing 60 does not seem to matter to these fans. When seen against the backdrop of the expense of modern concerts and overall decline in the concertgoing business, the fact that Rush is still able to sell out 5,000-10,000 (and in Brazil, 50,000-60,000) seat venues consistently, after nearly forty years as a band, as well as make albums that continue to go gold and platinum, suggests to me that more than fan nostalgia is going on.

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Yesterday, I was walking with M through Bryant Park in Manhattan, and noticed that a show was about to begin, an hourlong revue of new Broadway shows and some longer-running successes. Basically a little live midday advertising for high-end theater. So we grabbed some lunch and a few chairs and joined the hundreds filling the lawn, not sure who we’d see.

It turns out we heard selections from many different shows, including “Falling for Eve,” “Chicago,” and — I couldn’t believe it — “Rock of Ages”. I have written before at R&T of my delight in this musical. Six or seven cast members from the show took the stage as the final part of the revue, bringing raucous cheers from many in the park, and the fist-pumping began almost immediately as they started belting out the rock tunes.

Here is a poor picture I took. It was the best I could do with my cellphone camera.

What interested me most about this event was the “Rock of Ages” star — a bona fide rock musician (and “American Idol” finalist) Constantine Maroulis — was wearing a t-shirt with large letters proclaiming “Rock Is My Religion.” There was a peace sign on the back of the shirt. (Here’s Maroulis and co-star Amy Spanger at the Tony Awards, and then Maroulis and gang in the kickoff to the Bryant Park summer series.)

I have seen what seems like an increasing number of people wearing such “Rock Is My Religion” shirts in the last several years. They are easily available on the Internet. I wondered what to make of the message.

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Burning Fight: The Nineties Hardcore Revolution in Ethics, Politics, Spirit and Sound
by Brian Peterson
Revelation Records Publishing / $18.00 US (list)
[Amazon] [Revelation Records]

The terms “punk rock” and “hardcore punk” bring to mind a variety of images and stereotypes for “insiders” and “outsiders” alike. Cliches abound when the question of “what punk rock is” or “was” is raised, even in accounts written by those who have been key actors in punk rock. This is problematic because the movement has included countless offshoots and submovements, many of which were and continue to be contradictory and in conflict with one another.

An especially troubling viewpoint parroted in histories of punk and hardcore is the pinpointing of an early, and often arbitrary, “demise” for the genre, usually the early- or mid-1980s. The documentary American Hardcore, is a good example of this tendency. Most of the hardcore “heroes” interviewed in the film place the supposed “death” of punk in the mid-1980s, only to be followed by “pop” punk bands like Green Day and flavor-of-the-month emo bands.

These features of the dominant “punk narrative” obscure the fact that hardcore punk never stopped and in fact became arguably much more interesting, diverse, and contested, especially throughout the 1990s. Brian Peterson’s mammoth book Burning Fight: The Nineties Hardcore Revolution in Ethics, Politics, Spirit, and Sound is the first account of this decade in hardcore punk, a decade overlooked or deliberately ignored in most previous accounts.

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I am driven to renew some informal reflections on Winger and theology because last night I saw — or rather, was taken to the master class of divine rock glory by — Winger at B.B. King’s in New York City.

Here, in one sentence, is Winger’s history: they started as a cross between hard rock, pop rock, and glam rock in the late 80s, became relatively huge in the MTV-type zone of musical reality for a few years, were knocked off the musical map by the rise of more “authentic” rock like grunge in the 1990s accompanied by a cultural thumbs-downing signaled by the newly generalized ironic perspective on rock as seen in the MTV cartoon “Beavis and Butthead” and their continual mocking of certain 80s “hair metal” bands (opening few seconds of infamous Winger mockery here, comment by B&B’s Mike Judge here, lead singer Kip Winger’s comments here), and then came back in the last decade in a hard-rock return in popular culture not only as nostalgia but as increasing appreciation for truly creative and musically accomplished rock bands of the 80s whose fans never gave up on them and who continue to write fresh material and mentor new bands (in the interview with Kip Winger above, the interviewer observes that the band “is having the last laugh” due to Winger’s persistent hard rock invention and remarkable staying power in the studio and on tour).

I initially tried to drag Rock and Theology into the Winger rockfest with an initial post, “Of Winger and Theology,” part one of which appeared here at R&T fifteen months ago. I suppose that since I am only now getting to part one-plus, that we will have to call this an “occasional series.” I have also posted at R&T about the band in relation to “Aging Rock Gods and Goddesses,” “Your Comfort Food Was My Salvation,” “Sleep in Heavenly Peace,” and “Rockish Help in Letting Through the Painful Truths of the Catholic Scandal.”

Winger’s show last night was a steeping in all eras at once, an overlay of 80s unironic metal muscle and post-80s ironic metal pleasure. It is the kind of musical attitude toward which Tenacious D gestures in their song “The Metal”:

As “The Metal” seems to suggest, I think that many Winger fans (and if some moments last night are any indication, the band, too) would appreciate the interweaving of a consciousness of construction and fiction, a deconstructive attitude, with the passion of direct feeling, the naturalistic or romantic attitude, that establishes the space for this music. Here already is an interesting partner and potential mirror for theology, where what will matter is that we can touch-measure our lives to places compellingly built. I will try to continue this thread in the next several days.

Tom Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York

Do you know what riggers do for rock? I just watched an engrossing documentary that anyone who enjoys learning more about rock culture will savor. I apologize in advance for yet another post that references Rush, but this topic goes beyond my well-rehearsed unironic ironic deironizing of one great Canadian band. I want to talk a little about roadies, about road professionals on rock tours.

The documentary is titled Backstage Secrets, and is more a 5-part television-type documentary than a full film, but those five parts are fascinating. When I used to pore over rock tour books, and in the days when the album credits were part of the art to be absorbed along with listening to the 33-rpm inside, I noticed that bands used to thank so-and-so for “rigging.” I figured it had something to do with pulling ropes. But from Backstage Secrets, I learned that it has to do with hanging chains from the ceiling of arenas! Setting the “points” from ceiling to floor is one task of the advance crew for a rock show, wherein they must correlate the hardware that they need to “fly” (raise off the floor) with the potential places to hang it up on the ceiling of the arena (or outdoor “shed”). The throngs of speakers have to fly, as do the video screens, as do the lights. And that all has to be set first thing on the morning of the show (or the day before, if schedules allow), so the audio, light, and video professionals can get their hundreds of pieces off the truck and assembled and flown, and the instrument techs who handle the well-being of the individual instruments (for Rush, this means guitar, bass, keyboards, drums) can get their stuff set up, and it is all overseen by a tour manager. I have been a rock fan for 30 years, but had only the faintest idea of all this.

A handful of times, I have snuck into Rush soundchecks. The first time was probably Kemper Arena in Kansas City, when I showed up around 2:00, walked around the arena for an hour, and then walked in with the beer man through a side door around 3:00 and sat there until the soundcheck started a little after 4:00. Seeing a major band in the informal setting of a soundcheck, playing intently but without flash, checking out sounds and settings, each in their own preoccupied headspace, hearing them talk to their techs, I loved seeing that part of the rock world. It gave me the briefest taste of how much pre-production goes into making an evening of rock go off so enjoyably. My last time was probably the Fleet Center (formerly Boston Garden) in Boston about seven or eight years ago. I walked around to the back of the arena through an open gate, and to the backstage door. There were the tour buses, there was (drummer) Neil Peart’s motorcycle trailer. I walked in and found my way to the arena and sat down. The sound of loud static came out of the speakers as the audio checks were underway, and the lights were flash-glittering all wondrous-like, then there was a pause, and then the band came out and started the soundcheck. I probably did this five or six times total. Each time, I was eventually escorted out by security. And I have noticed that in the past decade, pre-concert outdoor security at arenas has definitely ramped up. I doubt I could get in now, and now there are so many fans who are trying to do so that it is almost impossible. When I first tried around 1988, I was one of just a few fans hanging out around Kemper Arena, and the others were by the backstage door hoping for autographs. The pre-concert fan scene has grown more intense since then, probably for better and for worse. Any primer I could have once written on getting into soundchecks would now be mostly obsolete — although still fun to write.

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While in Cleveland a few days ago, I went with B to see the new Rush documentary, “Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage.” I have at least two biases to report that will influence what I have to say: [1] I have seen a lot of rockumentaries; [2] I am an irrationally exuberant fan of Rush. That said, this was perhaps the best rock documentary I’ve ever watched, and it was certainly the most enjoyable.

The film takes you from the humble beginnings of Rush, in the Toronto suburbs, through their cultural coolpoint circa 1981, forward into their continued musical evolution in the 1980s and 90s, their several-year hiatus, and their 21st century resurgence into perhaps greater critical and popular appreciation than ever (judging from South Park, the Colbert Report, Rolling Stone, movies, musical awards, and much pop-culturish more — and, lest we forget, those staggering album sales, too (around 40 million sold, from some 38 total gold and platinum records)).  (For a good overview, see their Wikipedia entry here.)

It was a thrill to see this substantial (close to two hours) documentary in the midst of a very appreciative Cleveland crowd, for whom rock and roll has long been a hometown passion. The crowd was as I would have expected: mostly white men, with some women scattered about, and almost all between the ages of 25 and 55. Rush listeners have been drawn from the ranks of creative types, scientific types, romantic loners, and musicians for several decades, and as guitarist Alex Lifeson jokes in the film, the audience’s makeup has stayed remarkably similar over that time. (But I can only make that observation based on U.S. culture; it would be interesting to do a comparative study of their fans across continents.)

I have written on this blog and elsewhere about the importance of Rush music for my own happiness and at-home-ness in the world. Many others derive similar consolation and motivation from other rock bands or genres of music. What I noticed most about watching this documentary was how immediately the eras of the band — whether measured in distinctive sounds, songs, albums, or outfits — brought out an emotional recapitulation of turning points in my own life. (I have written earlier on this blog about their song “Subdivisions.”) The salvific placement and healing meaning of these sounds are inseparable from the swampy pacing of my own life. This ever common, but always particular, experience of popular music fans is one of the most important reasons that theology must better understand secular music.

There were a few lineup changes at the teenage beginning of Rush, and their original drummer John Rutsey left after the first album, making way for Neil Peart. But once that trio of Peart, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson was in place by the mid-70s, they have stayed together for 35 years, and are preparing a new album and tour for this summer. Such permanence of creative and committed adult relationship is unusual in both rock and life, and as I sat drunk with delight in the dark theater, I was aware what a strange gift it was to have had my emotional, psychological, musical and spiritual life so interwoven with their music for over 30 of those 35 years. It’s a peculiar thing to have happened in a life and in a culture, but for hundreds of thousands of us, even millions, in North America and around the world, this is indeed what has happened. And it happens daily for millions in their own way. Thank the-artist(s)-formerly-known-as-God for that!

Tom Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, United States

File this under “rock’s Christian unconscious.” There is currently a dramatic production here in New York City called “Get Mad at Sin!”, in which the actor Andrew Dinwiddie apparently reprises a stormy 1970s sermon from evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. Being a fan of Reverend Billy and other virtual preachers — whose Christian simulacra provide the tidy irony that many contemporaries, myself included, need to gain fresh and critical vantage on both Christianity and contemporary culture — this is the kind of show I would like to see.

But I doubt I can get there before it closes this weekend at the Chocolate Factory in Queens. So I have to settle for Jason Zinoman’s helpful review yesterday in the New York Times. Therein I found an R&T-worthy paragraph:

“When inveighing against the evils of pop music, Mr. Swaggart (a cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis) seems to be aping Mick Jagger, providing a reminder that great public performances of all kinds often share certain qualities.”

But it is also a reminder, I think, of something more specific: that the Rolling Stones do what they do under the historical pressure of the Christian forms of experience that are ingredient to the birth, power, and longevity of rock and roll. As a constitutive dimension of rock culture’s unconscious, it is no surprise that Swaggart would be Jagger’s avatar, or rather, Jagger as Swaggart’s offspring.

Even the lusciously assonant surnames “Swaggart” and “Jagger” — put them together in different sonic combinations in your imagination — sound like they belong to the prayerful-pelvic gospel-rock tradition symbolized by Elvis Presley. In addition to being “public performances,” and given rock’s history, these practices are also theurgic exercises.

Tom Beaudoin
Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, United States

For this past Sunday’s New York Times, music critic Jon Pareles wrote a galloping, thoughtful synoptic take on Broadway’s turn to rock. In it, he pulls together “Hair” (R&T take here), “American Idiot,” “Fela!”, “Memphis,” “Million Dollar Quartet,” “Rock of Ages” (censed here at R&T), “Spring Awakening,” “Passing Strange,” “Rent,” and more, including mentions of rockish musical theater shows on the way, from Bono+Edge of the band U2 and Serj Tankian of the band System of a Down.

Pareles argues that whatever the cultural meanings, possibilities for creative invention, and built-in limitations of rock’s increasing dominance of Broadway, there remains something important the theater has trouble registering in rock: the incalculable, the spontaneous, the unrehearsed.

This is another space of overlap with theology: philosophical theology has been quite interested in denominating the theological valence of “the event” (for example, see John Caputo’s The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event), which is roughly translatable to, but not reducible to, the incalculable, the unrehearsed, the “unruly” — which leans us forward toward the future.

I am not so sure that rock in musical theater cannot offer revelatory spontaneity. For example, the rough divide Pareles draws between nostalgia and newness is frequently not simplistically borne out in studies of fans. Placing the event — in advance — is difficult.

Tom Beaudoin

New York City, New York, United States

Recently in the New York Times, theater critic Charles Isherwood reviewed (extraordinarily positively) the new Broadway show “American Idiot,” based on the music of punk-rock-pop band Green Day.

(Note: I do not know Green Day that well (although I was present for their set at the infamous mudfest of Woodstock ‘94), but have been following the reviews of the musical, and it may be that we need to return to Green Day’s song “Jesus of Suburbia,” and its relation to the musical, at Rock and Theology.)

Something of rock’s spontaneity, resistance, and suspension of (certain) norms is undoubtedly lost in bringing rock to musical theater as rock opera (paging “Hair,” “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “The Who’s Tommy,” “Rock of Ages”!). But — against the sensibilities of many of my most rock-infested friends, and as the remarkable success of many of these musicals attests — something else about rock comes through when it is put into this format. I think Isherwood’s review smartly captures the way in which the change of format actually brings through rock’s native theatricality, and helps foreground the emotional literacy of rock music, something the theater demands for it to be able to succeed in translation. “Rock music exploits heightened emotion and truisms that can fit neatly into a memorable chorus.” Rock works creatively with the space of young adulthood as a “turbulent time when ecstasy and misery almost seem interchangeable states, flip sides of the coin of exaltation.”

The limit of the review, as I see it, is that Isherwood gently limits rock’s heart to the essence of (Western) young adulthood. That’s progress over reviewers who used to cast it as teen spectacle, but regress in face of the many ways rock ranges now across many different forms of adult experience (when in doubt, think of Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Dug Pinnick, or Robert Plant). The varieties and vicissitudes of “ecstasy,” “misery,” and “exaltation” are — as churches and theologians in secularizing contexts slowly come to accept — no longer the preserve of Christian direction and governance, if ever they were. Here is where “American Idiot” and the “Divinamente” festival here in New York City this weekend share something in common: a popular call to life’s wild “more” apart from received religion.

Tom Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, United States

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