Observations of modern music movements, relative to Bible Teachings
The common theme that pervaded most of the ‘spirit’ of the punk rock movement, and ran through its veins, since it began, was one of hostility and rejection of the great world powers. Although they themselves never knew solid, accurate truths to make a real foundation, punk rock was one of rejection and opposition to this system of things under Satan’s influence.
For example, most of the progressive punk rock bands wrote lyricism against and about the wild beast. In particular, Anglo-America, as that’s where most punk bands sprouted from. It is also the last day’s dominant world power. The punk groups beginning with the Sex Pistols in England are followed by the South Cal bands in America. Bands like Pennywise, the Offspring, the Descendents, and Bad Religion.
Most also wrote against Babylon the Great, most commonly the Christendom monument. Also about the interplay of these two inescapable spiritual realities. This was to varying degrees of fervency and focus. Yet I have not seen even one song by a band like these that expressed actual clear knowledge that they knew details of and were singing about Bible subjects. None of them used the Bible’s terms.
Trust and Faith
It seems quite ridiculous that most of these intellectual punk rockers know more about Babylon the Great, the wild beast, the false prophet, and related Bible themes and the reality of all this existing corruption, than most nominal Christian groups. The clergy and their laity, especially Catholicism and the other big churches, are senseless, in fact stupid. But that’s how it is, and I realized this along with my family and friends in a hazy way. So, we listened and let the music form us. The flesh, I note, also likes the aggressive sound. Perhaps the spirit likes the tainted beauty.
An Uncertain Truth
The punk movement also never had a real answer or solution for the evils they exposed. They were themselves part of the problem in their anger and grief. They are confined under a cloak of ignorance. Punk rockers usually rejected the Bible entirely: in fact, all religious faiths, quite often. Punk in general is loud, hostile and aggressive, defiant to order or authority.
What I loved most from this involvement is the serene tinge, eloquent and melodic beauty scattered within. In some bands and songs, this is spread through their vocals. As a general rule, punk rock had fast, hard drums, guitars, bass. They were was usually gentler only in the powerful choir and backup vocals. Such as by Jim Lindberg from Pennywise: (‘your spirit cuts through me/like a silent sword.”) Or as in the hidden track Slowdown on Unknown Road. Also Greg Graffin’s melodicism, also among a chorus, is majestic.
This melodicism is simply the nature of the human voice as long as people have been singing. It is reminiscent of a purported “angelic choir” found in church music of centuries past. This appears astonishing in the surroundings of the savage stereo sounds accompanying a punk song. Some punk and many bands of similar thematics discard melodic voices entirely. Some are riddled with fury, wrath, screaming, even rapping, which is of a different category. I will not divulge into death metal here.
My personal favorite figure in this 90s to 2000s scene was Brian Gianelli. Of Bueno/All Autonomy fame, he wrote for the advocacy of anarchy as a solution.
“When it comes to pain and harm”
Bad Religion wrote so many scathing, insightful and incredible songs against Babylon the Great and the wild beast, especially America, that I find it unbelievable they could continue into their 50s without knowing much of anything of a truthful spiritual matter as it now stands. They mocked and hated the clergy especially, but also did the same against the core Bible itself. And the general idea of God. Their lead vocalist Graffin and prominent lyricist, is an agnostic and denies being an all out atheist. He is quite honest, if arrogant, which seems an inescapable trait if you listen to let alone write punk rock.
Pennywise wrote largely of the same Bible themes, especially against the common governmental authority in the USA. Like Bad Religion, they off handedly supported the gov’t of the US and their ideology of democracy and relative freedom. Including their bona fide ‘savior’ status role of WW1 and 2. This which ties in with Zoli Teglias’ views who stood in for Jim on one album. Lindberg wrote in support of the USA as a personal ideal in his autobiography. This was in an account when with his wife at a restaurant. At the same time period, he was writing songs with the band such as on “Land of the Free.” I believe this was around the time period shortly after Sept 11 2001.
Error and those Loved
All of these bands most potently wrote lyricism of the beauty and sanctity of life in various ways as well, as we come to, and I must duly note. Pennywise in particular had their ‘bro hymn” theme song which characterizes their whole history as a band, with perhaps the most potent lyric in the whole song:
“you die, I die, that’s the way it is”
and which often plays at hockey games. It was about brotherly and family devotion and self sacrificing love. They wrote “Yesterdays” extolling the sacredness of life and truth in childhood and the bond of siblings and childhood friendship, and to the strange nature of eternity in the heart; and “Anyone Listening” about the tragedy of poverty, injustice and the systemic harms of western society quietly claiming lives in Satan’s world. They lost their bassist Thirsk to suicide back in 1996. He could not bear his lost faith in God and Christ, his own errors, and the atrocities piling up all over the earth any longer.
Nineveh and Punk Rock
Bad Religion is probably the most notable when it comes to comparing their lyrics to the truth. However, they express little to no knowledge that what they are writing about are topics the Bible speaks of as well, in other terms. They mock and demolish the clergy, great churches, false doctrines, and the hideous interaction of Babylon the Great with the political realms. (B.t.G. rides the wild beast; fornication with kings). They are without a real alternative except carelessness and callousness, and of crude raw humanity. Like most punk rock, they offer only a hardened defiance against most existing order. Their two lead writing men, Graffin and Gurewitz, deride the whole of the Scriptures in fairly every album. But they are so often contending against false doctrines anyways that it seems a hopeless measure to pick apart their message in the wreckage of the present world.
Who can blame their opposition, in a world this bad? They simply don’t know any better, perhaps like the Ninevites. They are also right in a strange, innocuous way, to oppose the beast and Babylon the Great. If they are not also led by their own pride or a rebellious attitude that inevitably goes too far. Gurewitz, I note, was a heroin addict for a long time. Gurewitz founded the Epitaph music label, which many fellow bands, including PW, signed to.
Strike Anywhere
Strike Anywhere was nearly militant in movement but ended up being a band who just rose a great outcry of injustice and hatred of harm by man against man, and wanted nothing more than an end to it and a true, enveloping peace:
“Resister, Go! As long as it takes, remove the hypocrisy, challenge the stakes!”
Despite having ranked appearances of fists in the air, the lead vocalist especially was one of the more gentle hearted punk rockers. He sings the lyric “As long as it takes” with grief, and fury, and with what sounds like the shedding of tears…in a statement that confesses to the fight against systemic atrocity and to stand resistant until it changes.
As long as it takes.
But he does not offer a real alternative: It is not for men to govern themselves. We need the Sovereign.
Gianelli and his Flame
There were subtler and more intricate, gentle minds amongst the chaotic mire of the 80s up to the early 2000s. B. Gianelli of Bueno wrote a punk song amidst his folk songs called “Ours is a Path.” It seems so evocative and interestingly written towards the value of the truth in Jehovah and his people that I thought for a long time he might have related to the Witnesses.
I certainly related the lyrics to my dead faith for many years. As it turns out, Brian’s mother Charlotte raised him in some sort of nominal Christian sect. Regardless, he speaks, like Pennywise, Bad Religion, Strike Anywhere, etc. of the corrupt system of things. But also of powerful, sacred truths and observations about life, meaning, love, family, brotherhood, and the furious lives we live. So many are blind or lost or in outcry and the savagery of human life, unintended and against God’s true design and purpose. This is the warfare of the spirit in this temporary system rife with corruption, evils and suffering. King Solomon knew this as much 3000 years ago, and he had male and female court singers, who must have sung songs written by his father David and his people, most significantly the Psalms.
Bueno and the Living
Of the lyricists, Brian Gianelli was the most beautiful mind I knew among the punk genre. Most of his songs he wrote as acoustic folk, and not punk. I learned this from contacting his mother who sent me a treasure trove of his unpublished songs and his Anarchist book of lyrics and prose. He wrote “West Reign” which was about European power to Anglo America, with their inescapable ties to the falseness in Christendom. “For Christ’s Sake” is inspired by his mothers upbringing of him in her church sect, and carries the idea of salvation and attaining heavenly life.(Notably, this is a predominantly inaccurate teaching of the churches, for where the majority of mankind will live on a restored earth as originally intended and which Jehovah, undoubtedly, never rescinded.)
“If Words were Footsteps” was some kind of romantic, love or family song that was terrible in grief. I cannot find Cogs Turn and I believe I never heard it, one which my brother seemed to like most. The former song is likely a lyricism devoted to romance. This is evident by references to an unknown woman and the despondency therein.
If words were footsteps…
But there’s something more than the love for a woman here, even if that is the case. I relate here some fragments of the verses:
…
The vision lost
And I have dreamt upon this cross
Of solace under sunshine
And in the stretch
Of silence that sleeps soft between the breath
Was every word I meant to say that never reached my busy lips
…
I’d stand strong if I even stood a chance,
And I’d hold on if I had a hold of anything –
But these days I can’t catch my breath and these days –
She’s holding every breath I catch
And just when I think things are getting brighter
I have just enough time to watch the setting sun leave me behind…
And then I get to thinking…
A Terrible Truth
As for the poetics of “If Words Were Footsteps,” the place where he speaks of recalling a
“..swollen heart
the vision lost”
seems to indicate an injured love, or one with great emotion unmatched by her, the recipient of the song, whoever it may be, but those two lines are also the only part where the words are backed by a sort of shouting voice along with Brian’s singing. The poeticism goes beyond romantic love, or love for a familiar woman, and reaches into the vein and vantages of spiritual truth, power, and wisdom, and can be applied to love for any family member or spiritual brother.
By this is found the most potent verse in the song and in most of Brian’s entire artistic force, where he sings: “the vision lost”…
This being some kind of horrible, desperate loss of sacred matters or perhaps of bright love or understanding that can befall a man, one so terrible that it should be relegated in a hushed whisper, but for its severity is shouted instead; the insight of an entire lifetime crumbling, and one of vital, brilliant and sacred truths belonging to love and these being bound up with the belief in God, or at least of sacred matters.
The tragedy inherent in those 3 simple words, shouted and sung, is fired like a potter’s kiln, and forms the power of grief that exonerates it and shaped Brian’s life and mentality, as well as whoever may experience these sorts of things. He speaks of paradise or of a paradisaical longing in the phrase: “I have dreamt, upon this cross/of solace under sunshine…”
Wasteland in a Dying
Personally I equate a parallel to this in my own life when lying on the grass, in the sun, with my sister during a hospital stay, after a psychosis…and the entirety of the need and desire to attain her and myself in the paradise to come. The characteristic emotion of “If Words Were Footsteps” is decidedly that of tragedy.
Gianelli at his life’s end was predominantly anarchist in view and turned away from most of the Bible’s teachings, it seems, as enumerated in various fragments of his lyrics, especially the folk song “I Know Nothing.” He was, in some ways, a spiritual leader, or more nobly regarding his stance, a very talented and incredible lyricist and musician.
Only two paths in the end…
The open phrase “led by the flame” in the verses of “Ours is a Path” almost sounds like he is speaking about the holy spirit, which appeared as tongues of fire above the heads of the first Christians who were anointed in the upper rooms at Pentecost 33 C.E. I say this only after contacting Brian’s mother long after his death and I had first heard him, and she sent me his book of poems, lyrics and other writings as well as a collection of his music on CDs.
I got a custom baseball cap made with the logo for his most predominant band out of all his musical groups, “All Autonomy” otherwise known as “Bueno.” The cap is simply a black cap with a flame ringed by a circle. The idea that wearing this on my head, being “led by the flame” sounds like an affront as well as a honoring recognition of the holy spirit on the heads of those chosen Christians at Pentecost struck me long after. I did not realize this connection at first and simply have to laugh. Brian certainly had a strong and influential heart and hand, and I consider him one of the greatest lyricists I have ever encountered.
“Go in through the narrow gate, because broad is the gate and spacious is the road leading off into destruction, and many are going in through it; whereas narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are finding it.”
Matthew 7:13,14
~~~
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.“
-Robert Frost
