ACT I: Gratefulness never dies...
LET US IMAGINE...Jesus' first words...as recorded in my TPT version...
...Over 2,000 years ago, Jesus on that first Easter...standing OUTSIDE that tomb (or the blackboards outside the Witches Brew Coffee House in West Hempstead) and wearing this T as an expression of his GRATEfulness at being alive...
JAY, nice shot! You can add "Paparazzi" to your existing credentials that include "Barista" and "T-shirt Teacher"...FYI - Jay at the Witches Brew continues to introduce me to new bands via his cool shirts.
Now IMAGINE 1995...as Jerry goes from "Knocking on Heaven's Door...to being gratefully welcomed...
Here's how he's feelin...
***BRIEF INTERMISSION/PERSONAL NOTE
In my 20's, at house, apartment and hall parties, the different musical factions would battle for control of the record player [Youngsters: Google this term: ))) ] A major rivalry was between us Deadheads and the Stoners.
OKAY, for the record, I'm "restraining" myself...just one...
OKAY, back to the show...
ACT II: Why Easter is the most rock and roll religious holiday - The Spectator
Easter is by far the most rock and roll religious holiday. Christmas might be the time when the pop vultures circle, plucking from the bones of garish sentiment, but the wham-bam narrative mic-drops of Holy Week are of a different order. Easter has provided a dramatic template for every rock opera, concept album, heroic comeback and combustible band dynamic this side of the Chatterley trial and the first Beatles LP.
‘Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine,’ runs the opening line on Patti Smith’s debut album, Horses. Maybe so, but she understood the innate power of this stuff. Smith’s second LP is called Easter, and it is replete with overtly Christian imagery. The liner notes quote from Timothy 4:7 – ‘I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course’ – and the title track is doused in the blood of Christ and the language of resurrection: ‘I rend, I end, I return…’
It all begins with Palm Sunday, which finds our smalltown hero prepping for a big symbolic city gig; think of the exiled Bob Marley returning to Kingston in 1978 to perform at the triumphant One Love concert. Then comes the Last Supper, the tense summit at which the lead singer tells the band it’s all over – he already knows that one of the gang has opted for a lucrative but highly controversial and ultimately doomed solo deal. Following in short order, crucifixion and resurrection lay the ground for the perennial rhythms of rock and roll redemption. Namely, the final farewell show and the comeback tour, rites dutifully followed by everyone from Frank Sinatra to Elton John.
Betrayal, of course, is essential to any compelling rock narrative. ‘Until the End of the World’ by U2 moves through the stages of Judas’s treachery towards Jesus, from the Last Supper to the kiss in the garden of Gethsemane and his eventual suicide, framing their interactions in the language of sexual betrayal. ‘In the garden I was playing the tart,’ sings Judas. ‘I kissed your lips and broke your heart.’ Mick Jagger, performing as the personification of Satan, pays a visit close to this scene in the opening verse of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’: ‘I was around when Jesus Christ had his moment of doubt and pain/ Made damn sure that Pilate washed his hands and sealed his fate.’
It has been said more than once that both Jagger and Bono have a Messiah complex wider than the Jordan. Then again, any lead singer worth their salt tends to get intoxicated by their own power. Just ask the Stone Roses’ Ian Brown, who sang ‘I am the Resurrection’ as though he actually believed it.
The protagonist in the Who’s rock opera, Tommy, is pointedly Christ-like, while the plotline of David Bowie’s semi-conceptual The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars is essentially Biblical.
A ‘leper Messiah’ arrives from some cosmic realm, stirs up quasi-religious fervour among his followers, then sacrifices himself for the kids. A rock and roll suicide (Bowie mimicked this story arc in real life by retiring Ziggy out of the blue at a concert at Hammersmith Odeon in 1973, causing much hysteria). The ‘rise and fall’ of the album title, however, omits to mention a second, more profound rising. In death, or prolonged absence, the artist-saviour commands devotion even more powerfully than in life. In this sense, Jesus will always be the ultimate rock star.
Once you start looking, I’m afraid you start to see this stuff everywhere. The (contested) theological theory that Jesus endured a brief descent into hell following his crucifixion before ascending to heaven – a passage known as the Harrowing of Hell – cannot help but remind me of the rocky start to Paul Weller’s solo career, a beloved son cast out into the fiery furnaces of critical disdain before returning to favour as the newly anointed ‘Modfather’.
Such parallels are both ridiculous and sublime. In 1972, Mott the Hoople wrote ‘Roll Away the Stone’, a cheery glam-rock stomp which equates the miraculous removal of the stone sealing the tomb in Golgotha from which Jesus had risen with a thwarted love affair. Inches from blasphemy, perhaps, but great fun, nonetheless. ‘Easter Parade’ by the Blue Nile, on the other hand, truly feels like holy music. If there is a single pop song that captures the stillness of a moment of wonder, the eternal Easter Sunday of the soul, then this might well be it.
ACT III: A Sympathy Act...at the 1968 Rock & Roll Circus
On March 18, I enjoyed this musical devilry courtesy of yet another great presentation by film maker and film historian KEITH CROCKER at the East Meadow Public Library. See more KEITH in ACT IV. At the March presentation, he related how Jagger blocked the release of this footage for many years...and eventually allowed it to be used. It seems this King of Swagger also had an insecure side and felt he had been upstaged by THE WHO and their performance...
Music and horror are two of his frequent topics. I have several posts about him.
The fiery guy showing his "TRUE COLORS"???
Also in attendance at the circus as well as on the bill...
ACT IV: Another Keith who's a ringleader & ringmaster of film
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