Well, I’m a believer. But it always surprises me how many of the musicians and artists in my collection have spoken of, or recorded music about their belief in Jesus’ teaching and his death and resurrection and the way it changed everything. I decided to brainstorm and then sort the list into alphabetical order:
Continue readingIn 1991, Steve Harley played the Greenbelt Arts Festival at Castle Ashby in Northamptonshire. Greenbelt had it roots in the Christian music scene, and for some Steve was a surprisingly inclusion. For others – who wanted to check your faith credentials at the door, he perhaps shouldn’t have been there.
He chided the audience jokingly about why they had not been in church this morning instead of hanging around in a field in Northampton. What they hadn’t realised was that at the time Mr Harley was warden at the church he was part of in his home neighbourhood.
Steve suffered with polio as an infant and as a child spent at least 4 long periods in hospital. This hobbled him physically, but it gave him room to develop his love of words and to develop his art.
Continue readingWe’re into advent… Over the years, I have written a few articles about Christmas music. Here’s some links:
Continue readingWhat: The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
When: July 21 and 22, 2021
Where: The Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Garden Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon
Who: The Royal Shakespeare Company
William Shakespeare’s play “The Comedy of Errors” is a better play than many believe and the Royal Shakespeare Company current production of it is better than I expected…
(This article is an expanded version of a review that I wrote when this album first came out. I was really unhappy about the way that the magazine, who commissioned me to do it, published it. They changed the title. They printed it in a way that removed paragraph breaks and they made editing changes to it without consultation. Needless to say, I stopped freelancing for them shortly afterwards. I revisited the article, originally just with the intention of restoring it to the way it was meant to be but then as I read it and listened to the music, I figured perhaps there was more to say. It concentrates on the spiritual and faith-based references in Mr Dylan’s lyrics but touches on other matters too.)
“Those old songs are my lexicon and prayer book. All my beliefs come out of those old songs, literally, anything from `Let Me Rest on that Peaceful Mountain’ to `Keep on the Sunny Side.’ You can find all my philosophy in those old songs. I believe in a God of time and space, but if people ask me about that, my impulse is to point them back toward those songs. I believe in Hank Williams singing `I Saw the Light.’ I’ve seen the light, too.”
This was Bob Dylan speaking in 1997 – a period which provides 11 songs on his 3-disc set “Tell Tale Signs” (10 out-takes from his “Time Out of Mind” set and 1 live recording).
What: Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare
Where: Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, UK
Who: The Royal Shakespeare Company
When: July 2019
“The poetic atmosphere is one of religion and critical morality. The religious colouring is orthodox, as in Hamlet.”[1]
“There have, however, been others, notably in the last century, such unlikely yoke-fellows as Gervinus in Germany and Walter Pater in England who have seen the play neither as expressive of cynicism and disgust nor as filled with the spirit of the Gospels and yet believe it to be no ‘meaningless’ entertainment but serious and coherent exploration of certain moral issues. It is in support of this view that the following pages are written”.[2]
I have two touchstones, benchmarks if you will, when it comes to Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” and the above quotations are examples of their understanding of the play and the differences between those understandings. Gregory Doran’s production of the play in Stratford-Upon-Avon may have become a third.
Continue readingLiterary criticism, musical criticism and theological criticism are notoriously difficult. The reason that they are so hard is the question of subjectivity. In the early years of the 20th century, a noted conservative theologian said the following of a liberal scholar:
“The Christ that he sees, looking back through nineteen centuries of Catholic darkness, is only the reflection of a Liberal Protestant face, seen at the bottom of a deep well.”
It is a very clever idea but could the equal statement also be said of the more conservative thinker. We want our God to be like our theology says he should be. Otherwise we are wrong and that is hard to bear. We want our heroes to be like us. Otherwise that is burdensome.
What: Why Should The Devil Have All the Good Music: Larry Norman and the Perils of Christian Rock
Author: Gregory Alan Thornbury
Publisher: Convergent, NY
Publication date: 2018
“Larry Norman…”
(Bob) Dylan replied.
“Tell your brother I’m a fan.”
Gregory Alan Thornbury “Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music: Larry Norman and the Perils of Christian Rock” p.253
I am a fan of Larry Norman’s music also. Seems I might not be in bad company.
I was never quite sure what to make of the man himself.
A little over a year ago I wrote an article about Bob Dylan’s “Saved” album which received a wide readership and was generally positively received:
https://twilightdawning.com/2016/02/15/bob-dylan-saved-reassessed/
My intention had been to write a similar article about the 1981 album “Shot of Love” and then to go on and write a series of articles or a book about the albums and tours since then looking particularly at Mr Dylan’s use of Old Testament and New Testament imagery but also other imagery he used commonly across many years which helps us to understand and appreciate his work.
Unfortunately, I got bogged down in the article on “Shot of Love” which is still not finished although I keep returning to it and tinkering with it. I hope it will be completed as I think I might have some important things to say but who knows when.
This week, as has become his habit when a new album is due. Dylan’s staff published on his website a new interview he has given to Bill Flanagan:
http://www.bobdylan.com/news/qa-with-bill-flanagan/
Mr Flanagan seems to be a writer that Bob particularly trusts and he has given him several important interviews over the past decade. This new one is intended to herald his latest album of standards, the 3-disc set “Triplicate”.
I was in my mid-teens when “Saved” was released. I’d just begun to discover Bob Dylan’s music around then but, to be honest, I was far more interested in albums like “The Times They Are A-Changin'” than “Saved” or “Slow Train Coming”. I’d caught on to the singles from “Street Legal” via Annie Nightingale’s radio show but really nothing else of his contemporary work was even on my radar. From “…Changin'”, I made the predictable moves to “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Blonde on Blonde” and for me Dylan was an interesting master songwriter from the 1960s.
I could be seen around college with a copy of “Writings and Drawings” under my arm but even in that my interest faded after the “John Wesley Harding” album.
twilightdawning 