the development of doctrine seen through 80s hair metal

No, seriously.

source;  Facebook--with slight edits by yours truly.

Three years ago, in this blog's infancy, I threatened an extensive post on "hair metal" bands of the 1980s.  Folks, that day has arrived.

Advice:  Turn up the volume--then continue reading.

Prologomena:  "Metal" is both an adjective and noun, and no, I don't mean the chemical form.  Metal means heavy metal music: loud, abrasively rhythmic, searing guitar riffs and solos, usually piercingly high (male) vocals, and often dark, gothic lyrics.  Metal sings both of human depravity and resistance.  Metal songs can celebrate the crass debasement of sexuality...or it can illuminate the downtrodden nobody else knows about. It does so retaining some sort of melody, too.  Metal is not punk, at least not in its origins.  Crafted and spawned in American, British, and Canadian working classes, metal has defended "the rock and roll lifestyle" long after other genres sold out for better sales, better haircuts, and more exposure.  Hence the adjective:  "metal."  Something metal means it's tougher, harder, unfiltered...and transcendent. 

Metal  resurrects because in its frequent celebrations of death it also looks to life beyond death. If it's metal, it might be dangerous, occasionally unholy, and a stark threat to your entire personal being...and afterward you'll want another shot.  Metal is not a drug;  in fact, most illicit drugs offer only ersatz metal experiences.  Metal overwhelms, pulverizes, and remakes your previous self.  Metal is simultaneously cathartic and converting.  Overkill's 1989 classic "Elimination" includes the defiant line "Fatal?  You're sh*****g me!  A second opinion's what I need!"  Metal resists, even when it might seem all resistance is futile.  Metal certainly disdains--and, let's face it, often seeks to destroy--Victorian tact and prim morals.  Nevertheless, metal certainly understands Christian martrydom and the question of (apparently) unredeemed suffering.


Prologomena, part II:  Thus, despite stereotypes rooted mostly in the shallowness of white, evangelical Protestantism, metal and Christianity are not mutually exclusive.  Roman Catholics especially enjoy theological, spiritual, and even historical connections to metal.  Born-again Christians are stuck eschewing Led Zeppelin's classic Stairway to Heaven, concerned that nobody goes to the Father except through Christ (John 14:6).  They are, of course, correct on one level, but, really, who can listen to that song and not see Tolkien's Lady Galadriel pondering Frodo's free offer of the One Ring?  (H/T to Hillsdale's Dr. Bradley Birzer for that hermeneutic.)  The song itself balances acoustic grace with, well, leaden guitar chords, just like a Gothic cathedral's own chiaroscurro.  Led Zep recalls Tolkien--whose Catholic credentials need no defense here--in several other songs:  "Misty Mountain Hop," "Ramble On," etc.  Sometimes metal recognizes with frank clarity how the Christian faith's struggles amid the world's turmoils, needing God's grace and intervention to make it through.   Skid Row's 1991 Quicksand Jesus (written by guitarist David Sabo, whose lyrics exude Catholic sensibility) offers an eloquent example.

warm bland fuzzies for all

Starbucks and Kohl's Department Stores have used the same song celebrating "the holidays."  From the Times-Union story:

The song, which starts with "This holiday, I'm coming home to you," is not specific to Christmas or Hanukkah and it has plenty of oohs and aahs so the commercial's narrator has space to speak – all calculated to make the song more marketable to advertisers.

This as opposed to specific holidays like, y'know, Christmas or Hanukkah.  But hey, it sells coffee--and obviously the young singer featured hopes it brings new musical opportunities.

Local angle:  the musician creating and recording this song graduated from my institution, The College of Saint Rose.  The College itself seems to follow the same sort of bland secularized holiday feel the song celebrates.  On the other hand, the same college also produced Father Matthew Venuti, one of the Anglican Ordinariate's first priests.

Thus an on-going, and beautiful, even as that beauty often emerges amid anguish and suffering (spiritual and physical), paradox of Christianity:  that particular commitments--heck, let's call them what they are, conversions--appear amid life's predominant, bland, undifferentiated reality.  Thus the Catholic tradition extols some of the greatest spiritual autobiographies:  Augustine's Confessions, Newman's Apologia pro vita sua, Merton's Seven Storey Mountain, and Day's The Long Loneliness.  More recently converts such as Scott Hahn, Jennifer Fulwiler, and Patrick Madrid's Surprised by Truth series detail new versions of this same story.

Something similar works in the time-tested Christmas favorites.  When played endlessly before Thanksgiving, the songs--particularly the secular ones like "Walking in a Winter Wonderland"--can, for all their imagery, lose some of their appeal.  What makes Christmas music Christmas is, of course, the Christian particularity. Warm fuzzies can take us only so far. We can come home any time during the year, but only once during the year does the joyful news that Christ is born ring true.

surrender cobra

from an ESPN report on a familiar scene in sports television:  a player or team makes an amazing play to win the game at last possible second and the opponents' fans stand, dumbfounded, with their hands on their heads.  It often looks like this:

Image courtesy Reddit.

A fitting image, especially when Catholic colleges make decisions and announcements like The College of Saint Rose did Friday, December 11, 2015:  twenty-three faculty positions cut and several programs and majors cut from across the curriculum.  Some of these were professional and graduate programs (e.g., Bachelor's program in Art Education and the graduate program in Communications), while others covered liberal arts subjects like Economics, American Studies, and....Philosophy and Religious Studies.  These last three are/were the majors my department offered.

The Sisters of St. Joseph, the women's order that founded Saint Rose in 1920, issued the following statement about the cuts:

Nearly 100 years ago, Sister Blanche Rooney, CSJ, and other brave Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondelet saw a need and acted.

Inspired by the legacy of the original Sisters of Saint Joseph, who as women in 1650 took the radical step of going into the world to minister to the poor, the sick and the desperate of Le Puy, France, Sister Blanche envisioned a college that would teach and empower young women to be citizen leaders grounded in faith and dedicated to excellence and service.

In founding The College of Saint Rose, the local Province of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondelet recognized that, just as they were responding to a need, fulfilling its mission would forever require the college to be alert and amenable to a changing reality in the larger society, and especially among its current and prospective students.

This is a TU+ story. Click for more information.

In other words, to meet and serve people where they are.

This founding principle is why we support President Carolyn Stefanco, the Board of Trustees and all those on campus working diligently to lead our beloved Saint Rose in updating academic programs and priorities to meet the changing needs of students who count on the college to prepare them to succeed in a world they will inherit.

and then a bit later:

Change is upsetting for many in all walks of life, including our own. It creates anxiety and uncertainty, and can leave some feeling overlooked, forgotten, left behind. That is why it is so important in times of change to extend grace, love and affirmation to all in our community. Change also is an opportunity for renewal, and renewal is empowering. Responsible leaders are obligated to recognize the need for change and act carefully but resolutely.

Read the statement and you'll soon note what is absent:  any reference or indication of the College's founding as a religious endeavor.  It's utilitarian endeavor now;  what serves the greatest good for the greatest number of people.  A principle that many, including the Sisters themselves, would argue is not part of the Catholic social justice tradition.  And that is correct.

the Dickey lick in Catholic theology

Not a dirty-minded title! This post does not involve clergy sexual abuse....but you sure thought about it, didn't you?

"lick" -- a particular musical phrase, rhythm, or melodic pattern; not quite a hook

"the Dickey lick"  -- a particular chord or passage in an Allman Brothers Band song written by, played by, or performed in the style of, founding member and guitarist Dickey Betts.  The phrase comes from Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes, the band's guitarists and musical directors for the group's final decade.  Haynes, who joined the group in 1989, and Trucks, who joined in 1999 and the nephew of founding drummer Butch Trucks, faced a conundrum perhaps common to many who perform classic songs written by another hand. Do you remain faithful to the song's original format and style, and to what extent are you, the current performer, allowed to improvise?  Haynes and Trucks, both exceptionally accomplished musicians, recognized the necessity--for the band's fans as well as the band's own legacy--to perform "the Dickey lick" as Betts crafted wherever it might appear in a song, even though they themselves might want to, and could quite easily, play it differently.  "The Dickey lick" is part of what makes particular Allman Brothers songs what they are.

  Thus an old-school entry:

 and a more recent example:

 Betts wrote and sang both songs (and that's him in the second video tab)

All this comes courtesy of the 2014 book One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band.  In oral history format--the band's members and agents speak for themselves--the book covers the band's entire history except its final concerts in October 2014 in New York City. An interesting read if you're a fan of the band or that type of jamming-Southern rock.  It is interesting to recall that "Rambling Man," containing perhaps some of the most recognizable "Dickey licks," was recorded after the death of founder, spiritual guide,and lead guitarist Duane Allman.  In fact, the band played for several decades after Duane Allman died, expanding and changing all the while yet maintaining spiritual and stylistic ties. From pages 371-3:

HAYNES:  It was really different to record an Allman Brothers album without Dickey, and playing in this band without him has led me to alter my style quite a bit. His playing is marked by a very clean tone and a beautiful melodic sense, so I tended towards a nastier approach playing with him. The melodic thing and the clean-versus-dirty tone contrasts both have to be there to sound like the Allman Brothers, so I've taken some of things on myself. To go too far against the grain just wouldn't be right...which is why you hear those ascending lines on songs like "Firing Line" and "The High Cost of Low Living."

TRUCKS:  "The Dickey lick."

HAYNES:  If Gov't Mule [blogger's note:  this is Haynes' side-project formed in 1994] was recording the song we probably wouldn't put that lick in there.  It's there because it's an Allman Brothers riff, and you need things like that to keep the thread going from 1969 til now--though I must say that Gregg [Allman] wanted it out.  He said, "We've been doing that shit for thirty years.  Can we take that lick out?"

TRUCKS:  A lick like that is the band's sound.  The rhythm section and Gregg's organ sound lend themselves to certain guitar lines and you play them almost without realizing it. When you're playing a tune, you think "This is what the Allman Brothers would do."  You just happen to be in them.

And that, folks, summarizes basically the story--tensions, crises, and triumphs--of American Catholic theology since the Second Vatican Council.  To what extent do we, who did not write the songs we play, remain truthful to "the Dickey lick"--a particular melodic strain--to keep the thread going?  To what extent do we create and continue a tradition even as we criticize it?  Because we are in the song we're playing.