The Confessionals needed a theme for the recent Harrison article, so here is “Rock This Town” by the Stray Cats.

A sidenote: Bishop Obare preached at Shepherd of the City during the time when the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Kenya is entering fellowship with the Missouri Synod. The Prediger picked him up from the Sem where he was staying. From what I heard, we are the first church in Synod to have him preach and administer the Sacrament. He was impressive at the pulpit, and it was an honor to receive the Sacrament from this man. Later that day, I realized that I committed a theological faux pas: his church body has NOT yet entered full altar fellowship! (Facepalms for me.) Yet I realized that I rather be fed by this confessional giant than by the theology of glory jockeys who oversee some of our Synod’s parishes. Sometime later, one of our fieldworkers [Dennis Meeker] was ordained by Obare and now serving with his wife Lorna in Kenya.

Here is one of my favorite songs from the 80s, by Slow Children. I first heard of it years ago when KROQ played a selection of songs for the first day of Spring. And since today is the first day of Spring (actually it will start at 1:32 pm EST, 17:32 Zulu Time), I’m playing this to start off Spring.

Here is a countercultural Thanksgiving song, for those of us who are more likely to sit at the “Group W Bench” than the adult’s table on Thanksgiving.

Alices Restaurant – Arlo Guthrie

Got paper to finish, and am prepping an upcoming post regarding the Ohio Linuxfest.

Am making final edits and this is a persuasive paper. Basically– CCM is light on theology, short on Scripture, long behind on trends– and how can the world can take that seriously?

“You aren’t making Christianity any better, you’re just making rock and roll worse!”– Hank Hill

And now, my first experience with CCM, in 1984: Steve Taylor’s Meltdown (at Madame Tussaud’s). Flipping through the UHF channel, past the scrambled SelecTV, past the foreign language channels…it’s TBN, channel 40! It was one of my earliest brushes with Protestantism.

Here is an interesting gem from the 80s…just heard it from Radio Nigel. It was an synth parody of 80s motivational self-improvement produced by Lynn Goldsmith.

In this track entitled Adventures in Success, Sting played the bass and Goldsmith provided the vocoder’d voice. Carly Simon, Robert Palmer, and Todd Rundgren also contributed to the Will Powers project.

I wonder whether this was produced without irony or snark. It’s a danceable song that’s peppy and positive.

This reminds me of those video clips in which sparking stars fly through. (The end credits sequence of Doctor Who during the Davison & Colin Baker years is a good illustration.)