Growing up Baptist in the Deep South, in a Church that was one of the many satellites held in place by Bob Jones University’s gravity, it was drummed into me early and often that Rock Music is not okay. In fact, Rock Music is not just not okay, Rock Music is a deliberately rebellious and Satanically spawned genre of sound. It was sensuous (sex!) and angry and completely unacceptable.

In my world, the champion of this view was our music minister, a snow-maned anti-rock crusader named Frank Garlock. He wrote books, gave lectures and actively and ardently argued in “bible-believing” churches across America that Rock was destructive, promoted vice, undermined the gospel, failed to glorify God and acted as a corrosive moral force wherever it surfaced. In was inherently and irredeemably immoral.

My parents dutifully followed the church’s instructions. Rock and Roll was banned in our house. When I asked for and received a small boom box,* I was given Tchaikovsky’s Greatest Hits (Volumes 1 & 2), Haydn and Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, but no Michael Jackson, no Cyndi Lauper no Duran Duran.

All my friends talked about it. They had MTV and parents who were not rigorous about enforcing the church’s doctrine at home. I remember my cousin wearing his be-zippered Michael Jackson jacket over to our house one Christmas when I barely knew who Michael Jackson was. Meanwhile, Thriller, the greatest pop album of my generation was devouring the culture.

Even with a boom box, I was not free to listen to rock music. I had no earphones and my little brothers would have ratted me out at the first opportunity. The most raucous thing I could listen to were Beethoven’s Symphonies. My radio choice was limited to WMUU –Bob Jones flagship radio station. A station that not only played no upbeat music, but played the most boring classical music possible.

Finally, at last, I prevailed upon my mother to purchase me a pair of radio-headphones. They were a big, red bulky pair of GPX headphones with the radio built right in available for $10 at Eckerd Drug. Victory! Once in bed, I would pull my headphones out from under my bed and pop them on. Even in my room, I could not listen too loud for fear I would be caught. There in the darkness of my room I was free to listen to rock music, but I was not just listening I was studying. Mentally, I was trying to note, to recall and remember what I had listened to so that I would not feel ignorant among my friends at a school, so I could particpate in the subterranean conversations about this blacklisted form of music.

Knowing what was playing in the Top 40 was amazing. Being able to say to classmates that “Yeah, that Bon Jovi song was awesome.” or “You’re right. I hate Phil Collins, too.” relieved a tremendous amount of social pressure. I still could not comment on music videos, but at least I was not completely in the dark.

Between sixth and seventh grade, I made a vow before God at the behest of evangelist Tom Farrell to never listen to Rock Music again. I did not mean to. My friend had grabbed me and we went forward with everyone else before I quite knew what was going on. During this same era our youth group began showing a series of videos hosted by a “cool” ex-rocker guy meant to persuade us of the insidious, demonic horrors of Rock Music.

The videos introduced me to bands that my sheltered, naive self had not discovered: The Who, Queen and Led Zeppelin as well as darker, more “sinister” bands like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. It seemed a small price to pay to listen to sermonizing between the quick, informative clips of this music I had never heard before. Part of the video’s problem was its crippling earnestness, as well as its belief in backmasking. It played a clip from Queen over and over whose subliminal message purported to say, “Start to Smoke Marijuana.” It sounded more like cats fighting in the alley. It was not convincing.

What finally liberated me to listen to rock music, in my head as well as my soul, was PBS. A big fan of PBS, I happened to catch a lecture on music theory. The speaker was a scrawny man with unfortunate 70′s curls, tinted eye glasses and a light blue blazer standing stock still at a podium before a neutral background. Beginning with Gospel, Blues and Jazz he proceeded to trace the evolution of Rock and Roll from Chuck Berry to AC/DC. He was measured. He was reasoned. He calmly established his points illustrating how bands adopted and altered the styles of musicians preceding them.

When he finished, I was amazed. This nerdy music theorist had presented a revolutionary picture of Rock Music to me. His picture of Rock and Roll trumped the fearful rants of pleading and impassioned pastors and the moralizing vitriol of music ministers. It was not a spell originating from a Satanic mind, it was notes, rhythm, instrumentation, patterns, structures always being tweaked and adapted by new musicians. It was not hellish seduction; it was art.

Not only did this dull, spectacled scholar give me a deeper appreciation of music, It exposed a chink in the worldview and authority of my religious teachers. They were not merely wrong, but were hysterical and raving by comparison to PBS’s bland music professor whose intellectual rigor dismantled Rock and put it back together again.

In some respect, my pastors were right. Rock did lead me to rebel and to question authority: their authority. Authority that was wrongheaded, ill-informed and misguided because as the song says:

God gave rock and roll to you, gave rock and roll to you
Gave rock and roll to everyone
God gave rock and roll to you, gave rock and roll to you
Put it in the soul of everyone

*An archaic device, often carried on the shoulder as a wardrobe accoutrement and powered by an environmentally destructive number of ‘D’ batteries.

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