In the course of the never-ending battle between Darkness and Light, both sides employ agents of change. Good vs Evil. God vs Devil. Punk vs Disco. Now, why does only that third example sound silly? They all are, really. All simply archetypes dressed up, by us, in the garments of what we love and hate or more correctly what we aspire to as opposed to what we really are. Failed, flawed and all-too-human, we struggle towards our better selves from the starting point of our own nature. 

Religion, at least when it's looking good on paper and not raping little boys, or disfiguring female genitalia or generally being the type of divisive force that compels people to fly airplanes into buildings (and there were 15 true believers, you can bet the farm on that!), is supposed to give identity, if not community, and bring comfort to the troubled soul. 

Unfortunately, people got involved in it and have, through the type of social and corporate machinations that the Enron boys can only dream about, taken the teachings of great teachers like Jesus and Buddha, words of peace and enlightenment, and twisted them into a blueprint for heartbreak, if not mass destruction.  "All life is sacred!" cries the born-again activist as he/she bombs an abortion clinic.  People, we got something
wrong here. 

The thing about Roman Catholicism, (the religion I'm most conversant in having spent 8 years in Catholic School -- and all that implies), that gets me is how, through the concept of Original Sin, we're all doomed from the start. For the uninitiated, Original Sin is a peculiarly Roman Catholic concept that states basically that we, as Catholics, are born with the ‘stain' of the Original Sin, that is when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. We are also told in Catholic School that Jesus died for our sins, that we may be redeemed. 

Now even as a 6 year old kid in 1961, I smelled a rat there. "Jesus died to wash our sins away that we would be redeemed, right?" I would ask Sister Mary Whatever. "Yes, Timothy." she would answer. "So," I'd continue, not knowing when to shut up even then, "then why are we born with Original Sin if Jesus died to wash our......" Well, I never got an answer, although my parents did get a lot of phone calls about my disruptive nature. But couple that paradox with the whole "Free Will" vs "Predestination" crap and one starts to see the sense in the words of Archie Bunker when he said "Faith is when you believe something no one in their right mind would believe."

So what you get with the Catholic Church is a massive Empire, older and more powerful than any mere America. Ancient, corrupt and weak at the knees, still trying to rule over it's constituents through the twin swords of guilt and the promise of better times to come. Crap, I say. What people need today is a reason, a real reason, to feel good about themselves. The last thing we need is an antiquated, obsolete group of rich White guys (and there's always rich White guys involved when the masses are getting screwed) in Rome telling us how we are not worthy and that if we don't get our acts together we will be consigned to an eternity of hellfire and agony by their Just and Loving God. This seems to me to be a form of Spiritual Terrorism. What I want from a god is reassurance that I'm alright, not that I'm a sinner at the age of 6. I mean, come on, what the hell could any 6 year old be guilty of? Ending a sentence with a preposition?

Which brings me to Counting Crows, one of the few 90's bands that held my interest past three songs. Their debut August and Everything After was an instant Classic Rock record to me. The band thrummed with the ease and power of the Band of Big Pink and singer Adam Duritz sang his literate and evocative lyrics of loss and pain and woe in a voice half Van Morrison, half Patti Smith (no, really, can't you just hear Duritz and Patti singing together? Now that's my kind of Rapture!). For all the joy that record brought me, I'd always get a nagging feeling about it, something in the back of my mind that wanted to scream (again, as much as I love the record) "Stop whining about it and DO something. You don't need a raincoat, man, you need a chainsaw to cut through all that sensitive singer songwriter stuff!"

As I mentioned previously, I was a great fan of the Afghan Whigs, and I kind of always saw the Crows and the Whigs as the Beatles and Stones (or Good and Evil) of the 90's. Where the Whigs would rail against and lash out at anything that moved, the Crows would meditate and analyze and poeticize their take on the Zeitgeist until all that was left were pretty words and the spiraling echoes of the sainted B3. Where the Afghan Whigs, rightly or wrongly, dealt with the dark night of the soul by setting it on fire, Counting Crows make records that praise the ashes. As good as I think Counting Crows are, and I really like the sound of their music, I can't get behind what I perceive as the intent of their records, and by that I mean the stance of the suffering saint, the tortured soul too beautiful for this world. It's this kind of beaten down psyche that (make no mistake about it) cults like the Catholic Church feed on. Pretty music and pretty words in the service of
self-flagellation, when lacking even the humor of, say, a Morrissey, is a recipe for weak hearts and weak minds.

Just the way God planned it?

You can read more from Tim at Punk Rock Blues. Be sure to check out the articles on Johnny Rotten and Lester Bangs and take a listen to his new CD and even read excerpts from his novel. The guy never sleeps!

Your turn. 

Fan Speak:

Posted by tim:
Mr Cool, How much is too much. Keep talking.