New Covenant

U2: A Celebration

A post at the Evangelical Outpost, last week, reminded me of a U2 video from way back in 1982. In, A Celebration, we see U2 when it had raw energy... when it was good.

Larry Norman: In another Land

Some people say that God is dead
That He doesn't exist
Except inside your head

I wonder how many gonna be surprised
When they look straight up
And see Him coming through the skies

- Watch What You're Doing

I just found out, via some Facebook wall writing by my friends Ilona and Greg, that Larry Norman has gone to be with the Lord. (see Google News and Christianity Today)

In one sense, it's difficult to imagine how Contemporary Christian Music could be what it is, today, without the influence of Larry. In another sense, it seems that much of CCM is simply a variant form of mainstream secular entertainment - a variety of entertainment foreign to Larry's early work.

One way, one way to Heaven
Hold up high your hand
Follow, free and forgiven
Children of the Lamb

- One Way

Larry, while a talented rock musician, certainly had his faults. Yet it seemed that his life resonated with those who, for whatever reasons, had led difficult and hard lives themselves.

Let the proud but dying nation kiss the last generation
It's the year of the pill, age of the gland
We have landed on the moon but we'll clutter that up soon
Our sense of freedom's gotten out of hand
We kill our children, swap our wives
We've learned to greet a man with knives
We swallow pills in fours and fives
Our cities look like crumbling hives
Man does not live, he just survives
We sleep, till he arrives
Love is a corpse, we sit and watch it harden
We left it, oh so long ago, the garden

- Nightmare #71

I saw Larry perform a few times in the early 1980s. From a venue such as the gymnasium at Biola, to a small grass playground area, at a tiny church in Orange, California. While he was exquisite, in these concerts, he was also noticeably tired. It almost seemed as if he had used up most of his life's energy during the 60s and 70s.

Larry Norman: now resting in another land...

Come to reason, face the day,
Now's the season, old things pass away.

Stand beside us, take His hand,
He will guide us, in another land.

- Hymn to the Last Generation

Judah's Lion

Where does the lion, Judah's golden lion walk?
Stealthy under star by winter night his soft paws stalk.
Out on lonely hills a cold wind howls and darkness scowls;
Shepherds shiver - danger in the dark! - some wild beast prowls.
Suddenly up springs a light; a voice rings like a bell:

"Joy, O men of Judah! Come and see! Noel! Noel!"

Where lies Judah's longed-for lion? "Come and see the sight!
Fear not - you golden one is couched among the lambs
tonight."

- Keith Patman

The Promise

The Lord God said when time was full
He would shine His light in the darkness
He said a virgin would conceive
And give birth to the Promise

For a thousand years the dreamers dreamt
And hoped to see His love
The Promise showed their wildest dreams
had simply not been wild enough
But the Promise showed their wildest dreams
Had simply not been wild enough

The Promise was love and the Promise was life
The Promise meant light to the world
Living proof Jehovah saves
For the name of the Promise was Jesus

The Faithful One saw time was full
And the ancient pledge was honored
So God the Son, the Incarnate One
His final Word, His own Son
Was born in Bethlehem

But came into our hearts to live
What more could God have given
Tell me what more did He have to give
What more could God have given
Tell me what more did He have to give

The Promise was love and the Promise was life
The Promise meant light to the world
Living proof Jehovah saves
For the name of the Promise was Jesus

At last the proof Jehovah saves
For the name of the Promise was Jesus

- Michael Card

Snow

Was it a cold awakening Christmas morning
In a wooden trough,
In spite of straw and swaddling clothes and angel songs?

That was not to be the last time
You'd be laid upon the wood
(There were Herods, Judases from the start
Among the stars and shepherds).

And did they smile, those simple folk,
And kiss your tiny hands and weep delight?
They'd touch those hands again someday,
Believing you through cracks and scars.

Then, oh! the million Christmas mornings
When you'd lie, a babe again,
Beneath a million million trees
And hear the countless tongues chanting your name.

And, oh! the white snow on black shingles
Where icy crystals capture windows
And fires glow and mistletoe is wreathed and strung.

But ah... will they remember crimson
Dripping from the iron nails
And will they pray, and will they know
A whiter white than
Snow?

- Keith Patman

Surf's Up: classic 20th century pop

While on our monthly pilgrimage to Costco, recently, I spied (and picked up) the CD The Warmth of the Sun. It's a compilation of Beach Boys' tunes spanning back to about 1962. I was especially interested in this set because it includes the seminal tune Surf's Up. Not anything like the surfin' safari tunes that established their careers, Surf's Up blends the band's wonderful harmonies with  mysterious lyrics and enigmatic music. Written by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks, the song itself was essentially recorded in three different sessions over the course of several years. The tracks were deftly connected to one another for the 1971 album of the same name.

I found a comment by Leonard Bernstein, after a demo of the song in 1966, to be quite interesting. Bernstein said,

There is a new song, too complex to get all of first time around. It could come only out of the ferment that characterizes today's pop music scene. Brian Wilson, leader of the famous Beach Boys, and one of today's most important musicians, sings his own 'Surf's Up.' Poetic, beautiful even in its obscurity, 'Surf's Up' is one aspect of new things happening in pop music today. As such, it is a symbol of the change many of these young musicians see in our future.

The lyrics,

A diamond necklace played the pawn
Hand in hand some drummed along, oh
To a handsome man and baton
A blind class aristocracy
Back through the opera glass you see
The pit and the pendulum drawn
Columnated ruins domino

Canvass the town and brush the backdrop
Are you sleeping?

Hung velvet overtaken me
Dim chandelier awaken me
To a song dissolved in the dawn
The music hall a costly bow
The music all is lost for now
To a muted trumpeter swan
Columnated ruins domino

Canvass the town and brush the backdrop
Are you sleeping, Brother John?

Dove nested towers the hour was
Strike the street quicksilver moon
Carriage across the fog
Two-Step to lamp lights cellar tune
The laughs come hard in Auld Lang Syne

The glass was raised, the fired rose
The fullness of the wine, the dim last toasting
While at port adieu or die

A choke of grief heart hardened I
Beyond belief a broken man too tough to cry

Surf's Up
Aboard a tidal wave
Come about hard and join
The young and often spring you gave
I heard the word
Wonderful thing
A children's song

A child is the father of the man
A child is the father of the man
A children's song
Have you listened as they played?
Their song is love
And the children know the way
That's why the child is the father to the man
That's why the child is the father to the man

Here is the song as a compilation of studio demos (including the solo demo that Bernstein commented on in 1966).

And here is the final mix, released in 1971, complete with a horn riff at the beginning of the song which paid tribute to Woody Woodpecker (really). The song culminates, in a rich cascade of harmony, demonstrating the beyond pop abilities the group was capable of.

Do you know Da?...

Remember Daniel Amos? DA? Da?

Here's an interview with Terry Taylor, circa the mid 1980s.

Fred Sanders, over at Middlebrow, keeps us clued in as to Terry's latest musings. Sanders is really, I'm mean - really - enthused about Terry Taylor's work (see here, here, and here). Myself, I had fun with it in the early '80s, and tuned in to Daniel Amos' Alarma Chronicles. Sometimes, though, I couldn't see the point Taylor was attempting to sell (as in the putrid Swirling Eddies work). Yeah, I guess those were the times it was a "joke," and I was the sucker (who had just plopped down $15 for a CD). And then there were other times I clearly understood what he was saying and, simply, disagreed.

Regardless, this post is for you, Perry & Marty.