Chapter Three: The Day the Music Died

Jeans, out. Pants, out. Cool zebra leggings (remember this was 1989) out, out, OUT!! Tank tops, out because shoulders are too provocative, the most revealing thing I can wear up top is T shirt sleeve length, and skirts (mandatory) calf length my GOD no knees, please!! I remember owning a calf length skirt with a slit in the back, well slits are for sluts, sooo I took a bandana and stitched it in there. No one would stumble to sin because they saw the back of MY calf! We, as women, had the responsibility to not cause men to “stumble”, as in to think lustful thoughts (like they weren’t gonna do it anyway).

We found a local UPC church with a pastor whom I will call Pastor Kind. He was a good man, and, like the rest of us, just wanted to do the right thing. A few friends and I had all gotten into this at the same time, and we were all in intensive Bible studies. To this day, I know the Bible better than most churchgoers. This is something the Apostolics/Pentecostals are REALLY good at, they know their scriptures really, really well. SO, I was learning to keep myself from what they would call worldly and/or fleshly pursuits, and here is where it really starts to affect my life direction.

Familiar with the term “secular music”?

I wasn’t either, but I was about to be schooled.

I, pursuing jazz studies, and Fiancee, studying theory and composition, listened to a regular diet of Brecker Brothers, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald and everything from bebop to twelve-tone, from Schubert to Schoenberg. We were about to lose our lives, they would say for the sake of saving our souls. We both lived for music and most of it was about to go away for a very, very long time. I’m writing this for entertainment, and I want it to be funny, but as I type this out, I’m still emotional over what we lost.

Secular music was wrong. Worldly. Of the Devil. So, one evening I remember, Pastor Kind’s daughter came over and we destroyed our secular cassette collection. We had races where we would break the tape, then one person would grab each loose end and pull it out of the cassette as fast as possible, first person to run out of tape is the winner!!

Brecker Brothers, gone. Stevie Wonder, gone. All of my beloved Steely Dan and Fiancee’s rare early Pink Floyd bootlegs, gone, gone, GONE. Balinese gamelan music, Ravi Shankar’s experiments in sitar, all were disallowed. I think I STILL owe Columbia House money for the mountain of cassettes that were destroyed that day. Music was to be for God, and this is where we enter the wonderful world of contemporary Christian music.

Groan.

I know now, that if you are a professional musician, and you visit a church, you are exactly three seconds away from being asked to join the worship team. As, of course, we were. This is how my experience in church leadership started, and I still remember the Pastor sitting down with me and explaining that my voice was to be used for God’s glory, and just for worship. This…. is how I became a worship leader.

(Aaaand, we have a title, folks. Well, at least half a title. The rest will show up in Part II.)

All was not totally lost, though. Being in the Pentecostal church, at least some of the music was really, REALLY good. Many Gospel greats like Mahalia Jackson, Shirley Caesar and any number of incredible choirs have their roots in the Pentecostal or Baptist tradition, and the music is truly transcendental. And Pastor Kind’s older daughter was a kick-ass, goddess-voiced, creative monster of a Hammond organ player. MAN could she kill it on the Hammond, that Leslie speaker vibrato breathing life into every verse and chorus. She was so amazing, and the music was so urban-spiritual at this little church, I wonder to this day if we ever would have gotten involved if the music weren’t so good. There’s always a silver lining, mine was the discovery of great Gospel music.

Musician pals to this day wonder why the hell I don’t know any music from the 90’s.

Well, now you know.

To my benefit, at least I didn’t have to live through the Macarena.