Truly Seriously Geeky
Jan. 31st, 2004 04:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2As the sun is forced to exile, in a blaze of bloody fire
Disturbing visions mystify when conscience thought retires
I heard a tattered echoing from voices long since dead
Another night of wonder in the moonscape of my bed
I dreamed I was in Israel two thousand years ago
A festive flair was in the air; the great Passover show
Every pew was taken, and we wore our Sabbath best
As we partied long into the night, on a skull-shaped hill of death
Jealousy was dressed to kill, with Vengence at her side
While millions of tiny lies cavort in shiny white
At first this all seemed strange to me, then suddenly I knew...
I killed Jesus Christ
Yes I did, its true
I killed Jesus Christ
And you were with me, too
(Barnabas, The Dream)
I used to listen to a lot of Christian rock and Christian metal. One of the earliest of these bands that was really seriously heavy and not only that, but quite good, was Barnabas. They were one of my favorite bands for a while... great music and also well-crafted lyrics.
I still own a lot of my old music and listen to it on occasion, but a lot of these bands, even if they were quite talented musically, were not always so talented in the lyrical department. You know, bands like Stryper who thought "To Hell With The Devil" and "In God We Trust" (it's written on our money!) were clever ideas to craft songs around. Bands who wrote mostly in cliches or Biblespeak... and let's face it, they weren't much different from the Warrants and Bon Jovis of the world, who also wrote lyrics which required no thought and had little to say.
As you can see from the above lyrics, while Barnabas was of course writing songs about their Christian faith, they weren't simply writing John 3:16 lyrics or "believe in God or go to hell". I listened to a lot of other bands that essentially wrote like that, and those bands are mostly forgettable. But not Barnabas. Their last three cds were especially good, but even on their 2nd cd the songwriting was very strong.
That 2nd cd, "Find Your Heart A Home" was recorded by a Canadian Christian rock label called Tunesmith that specialized in really really crappy recordings and production. I'm not exaggertaiting... I bought maybe ten or twelve of their tapes or records, and while in some cases (as with Barnabas) you could tell that the band was talented, the recording quality itself always sucked beyond suckiness. Add in the fact that at the time they really didn't have a great guitarist (Brian Below who would join within the year was an awesome one), and you have a cd which was much less than it could have been.
So I always liked "Find Your Heart A Home" because it contained good songs... but I always wished that there was some way I could own a better-recorded version.
So anyway I'm not the only one who gets nostalgic about obscure Christian bands from the eighties. There are companies that have been going back and reissuing these out-of-print recordings on cd, and there's an outfit named Radrockers that specializes in this kind of stuff. Every once in a while I order some cds from them. Usually it's stuff that I like more for nostalgia than because it's great music, but some of it is still pretty good. Like Barnabas.
And so I ordered a few cds last week, and they arrived this week. Among them, two cds by a Queensryche-like band from Sweden called Veni Domini, the only two cds ever produced by a band named Trytan led by someone who wanted to be Geddy Lee (sounds a LOT like Rush overall), the second and last cd by an all-female thrash band named Ordained Fate which was surprisingly good, and a cd called "Artifacts and Relics" by Barnabas.
This last cd is where I got the title of my post, because only a supreme geek would own such a thing. Why? Well, it's a limited pressing (1000 copies only) of a bunch of rare and obscure tracks related to Barnabas. You have two tracks by "The Bethelehem White Sox" which was a band that predated Barnabas. You have three tracks from Barnabas lead singer Nancy Jo Mann's attempt at a solo albumn. Finally you have three tracks that, as they put it, were "Captured on a battered AM/FM cassette recorder behind the drum kit during rehearsals for an upcoming New Year's Eve concert in Minneapolis, 1982".
The first five tracks are nothing to write home about. In fact they're very forgettable. Then we have the last three tracks... actually four songs on one track, because the label that put this out didn't bother to chop it up into seperate tracks. So you not only get seriously badly-recorded lives songs from a practice session, you get to hear the band members in between discussing who should do what when, and is the coffee ready yet? And when it is, there's also pumpkin pie.
This was also one of the first sessons with their new guitarist Brian Below. So it's cool because you get to hear him playing some of their earlier material.
Sort of. I mean, the tracks are almost pure noise.
Really, why would anyone own a cd like this? You'd have to be a complete geek.
And I am. I've always loved this band. I was happy listening to almost pure noise and thinking, "Wow! Brian Below playing Directory Assistance and Conflict of Desire. That's sooo cool!" ^_^ And if I ever meet other fans of Barnabas I can say, "Guess what I've got?" It doesn't really matter that it's mostly unlistenable. It's cool!
I once saw Barnabas in concert. It was their only visit to the Northwest... in point of fact, they played live a total of maybe fifty times. And I was present for one of those fifty times. As a fan and a geek, that fact ranks pretty high on my list of personal achievements.
And it occured to me that I had wished for many years for a better-recorded and better-played version of some of the songs from "Find Your Heart A Home". Now, twenty-five years later, I finally have something... recorded versions of two of those songs that are in terms of recording quality, infinitely worse.
How cool is that?
Disturbing visions mystify when conscience thought retires
I heard a tattered echoing from voices long since dead
Another night of wonder in the moonscape of my bed
I dreamed I was in Israel two thousand years ago
A festive flair was in the air; the great Passover show
Every pew was taken, and we wore our Sabbath best
As we partied long into the night, on a skull-shaped hill of death
Jealousy was dressed to kill, with Vengence at her side
While millions of tiny lies cavort in shiny white
At first this all seemed strange to me, then suddenly I knew...
I killed Jesus Christ
Yes I did, its true
I killed Jesus Christ
And you were with me, too
(Barnabas, The Dream)
I used to listen to a lot of Christian rock and Christian metal. One of the earliest of these bands that was really seriously heavy and not only that, but quite good, was Barnabas. They were one of my favorite bands for a while... great music and also well-crafted lyrics.
I still own a lot of my old music and listen to it on occasion, but a lot of these bands, even if they were quite talented musically, were not always so talented in the lyrical department. You know, bands like Stryper who thought "To Hell With The Devil" and "In God We Trust" (it's written on our money!) were clever ideas to craft songs around. Bands who wrote mostly in cliches or Biblespeak... and let's face it, they weren't much different from the Warrants and Bon Jovis of the world, who also wrote lyrics which required no thought and had little to say.
As you can see from the above lyrics, while Barnabas was of course writing songs about their Christian faith, they weren't simply writing John 3:16 lyrics or "believe in God or go to hell". I listened to a lot of other bands that essentially wrote like that, and those bands are mostly forgettable. But not Barnabas. Their last three cds were especially good, but even on their 2nd cd the songwriting was very strong.
That 2nd cd, "Find Your Heart A Home" was recorded by a Canadian Christian rock label called Tunesmith that specialized in really really crappy recordings and production. I'm not exaggertaiting... I bought maybe ten or twelve of their tapes or records, and while in some cases (as with Barnabas) you could tell that the band was talented, the recording quality itself always sucked beyond suckiness. Add in the fact that at the time they really didn't have a great guitarist (Brian Below who would join within the year was an awesome one), and you have a cd which was much less than it could have been.
So I always liked "Find Your Heart A Home" because it contained good songs... but I always wished that there was some way I could own a better-recorded version.
So anyway I'm not the only one who gets nostalgic about obscure Christian bands from the eighties. There are companies that have been going back and reissuing these out-of-print recordings on cd, and there's an outfit named Radrockers that specializes in this kind of stuff. Every once in a while I order some cds from them. Usually it's stuff that I like more for nostalgia than because it's great music, but some of it is still pretty good. Like Barnabas.
And so I ordered a few cds last week, and they arrived this week. Among them, two cds by a Queensryche-like band from Sweden called Veni Domini, the only two cds ever produced by a band named Trytan led by someone who wanted to be Geddy Lee (sounds a LOT like Rush overall), the second and last cd by an all-female thrash band named Ordained Fate which was surprisingly good, and a cd called "Artifacts and Relics" by Barnabas.
This last cd is where I got the title of my post, because only a supreme geek would own such a thing. Why? Well, it's a limited pressing (1000 copies only) of a bunch of rare and obscure tracks related to Barnabas. You have two tracks by "The Bethelehem White Sox" which was a band that predated Barnabas. You have three tracks from Barnabas lead singer Nancy Jo Mann's attempt at a solo albumn. Finally you have three tracks that, as they put it, were "Captured on a battered AM/FM cassette recorder behind the drum kit during rehearsals for an upcoming New Year's Eve concert in Minneapolis, 1982".
The first five tracks are nothing to write home about. In fact they're very forgettable. Then we have the last three tracks... actually four songs on one track, because the label that put this out didn't bother to chop it up into seperate tracks. So you not only get seriously badly-recorded lives songs from a practice session, you get to hear the band members in between discussing who should do what when, and is the coffee ready yet? And when it is, there's also pumpkin pie.
This was also one of the first sessons with their new guitarist Brian Below. So it's cool because you get to hear him playing some of their earlier material.
Sort of. I mean, the tracks are almost pure noise.
Really, why would anyone own a cd like this? You'd have to be a complete geek.
And I am. I've always loved this band. I was happy listening to almost pure noise and thinking, "Wow! Brian Below playing Directory Assistance and Conflict of Desire. That's sooo cool!" ^_^ And if I ever meet other fans of Barnabas I can say, "Guess what I've got?" It doesn't really matter that it's mostly unlistenable. It's cool!
I once saw Barnabas in concert. It was their only visit to the Northwest... in point of fact, they played live a total of maybe fifty times. And I was present for one of those fifty times. As a fan and a geek, that fact ranks pretty high on my list of personal achievements.
And it occured to me that I had wished for many years for a better-recorded and better-played version of some of the songs from "Find Your Heart A Home". Now, twenty-five years later, I finally have something... recorded versions of two of those songs that are in terms of recording quality, infinitely worse.
How cool is that?
