What If Celebration Rock Were Revived Today?

Early on in this e-journal about “Celebration Rock,” I wrote about the origin of the idea that led to the program over forty years ago. (Look back in February’s entries.) Basically, we had an already-established audience of youthful listeners, an available hour of free radio time, and a willingness, even desire, on the part of local churches to reach out with messages of hope, peace, and love. And I was invited to participate in the equation as producer/voice, or “disk jockey.”

Through the months that I’ve been writing about my radio ministry through “Celebration Rock,” an occasional correspondent has wondered about whether the program might be revived somehow. One person suggested that old CR shows could be re-edited and aired on radio stations that feature the music of the ’70s and ’80s. Another suggestion was that the format be re-invented, with a new voice interpreting current hit music, to be aired on radio stations that were looking for a Sunday block of creative programming that would appeal to a niche audience.

The vast majority of radio stations these days aren’t looking for “public service” programs, of course. Financial considerations dictate that radio time must be sold, not given away, no matter how attractive the package might be to an audience. Some locally-owned, small market stations might be open to airing a “Celebration Rock” type format, but for the most part, with deregulation, “that ship has sailed.” And it is way over the horizon.

The most likely scenario today would be an internet-based audio blog, a webcast, or some down-loadable audio effort that might find an audience in cyberspace. Frankly, I don’t have a clue about how music is licensed for such an effort, or how the thing would work technically. Nor how a “program” like that would find its audience, or vice versa. What I do know is that the way we communicate these days has been democratized to the point that

1. anyone with some computer literacy can pull it off;
2. those who search will indeed find;
3. those who find will be able to access such a “production” at their convenience;
4. and whoever produces such an effort will have to be wide open to response, critique, and, to use the most positive word, discussion.

Some exposition of the above points:

1) I went into radio with a minimum of formal training, learning more about the medium week by week. Someone with the same desire, savvy, and expertise in the Internet equivalent to radio could produce a “Celebration Rock” experience for an international audience on a laptop. I would hope there’d be some degree of theological sophistication involved in such an effort, but God knows I didn’t have all that much when I recorded the first shows for the old WBBL. The question of how solid my theology was when the long CR run ended…well, that’s open to debate.

2) An epiphany that came to me early on in this CR blog was the number of friends and strangers who found this e-journal by doing a web search for a particular rock musician or song, or for their own name! As I’ve pointed out previously, a surprising number of people have an apparent interest in so-called backward masking, and their searches have led them to my blog about the silly issue.  If a cyber DJ were to produce a webcast that interpreted the lyrics of contemporary music in a “devotional” or spiritually challenging way, I have no doubt a fan base would discover it and link up to the site regularly and spread the word about it.

3) While “Celebration Rock” started on a local Richmond, Va. station in a decent timeslot (8 p.m. Sunday nights), syndication often took the program to what we used to call “Sunday morning ghetto time,” early morning hours when stations knew hardly anyone was listening. Those were the time slots  so worthless to the broadcasters, that they were willing to give away the time as a “public service.”  Since I was a small operation, and every reel of tape cost me (or the sponsoring church organization) money, I was picky when it came to scheduling the show on out-of-town stations. If a station offered me a free time slot on Sunday night at ten, I was glad to oblige. But if a station wanted to run the show at 4 a.m. Sunday morning, I had better things to do with my time and the church’s money.

However, all that time slot consideration is irrelevant on the web. You want to download the program onto your Ipod to play in the car on your way to work? Come by anytime and choose the program you want. Listen at your convenience. Pause it when the phone “rings.” Not sure you caught that comment? Rewind it. That wasn’t possible when it was broadcast on your local FM station.

4) When CR was on radio, it was one-way communication, if there is such a thing. I tried to communicate, and the audience (bless their hearts) tried to listen. End of story. Except for the mail  that some programs prompted. If I wrote back to the listener, then the communication was two-way, but it usually stopped there. (I did have a few folk who wrote several times over a period of months, and I also enjoyed face-to-face friendship with some Richmond area listeners…some are friendships that continue all these years later.) And being pre-recorded, “Celebration Rock” didn’t allow for phone  response, or personal conversation the way a live show might have. However, a similar program on the web would certainly prompt feedback via “comments” or bloggers or any number of ways listeners might respond. On radio, I got mail, written messages from listeners asking advice, and folks taking issue with things I’d said. The letters were for my eyes only. But these days, web consumers are used to offering solicited or unsolicited reviews, critiques, complaints, debates, and diatribes. The floodgates are wide open, and everyone speaks with an equal voice. Democracy at its best, right? Until someone anonymously undermines our own best intentions.

An example: I used to do a live Sunday night call-in show. I’d interview a guest who spoke out of deep experience and with some authority about an issue or concern. Let’s say the guest was a counselor at an alcohol treatment center. Then comes a call from someone whose intentions are questionable, and whose remarks are far more damaging than helpful. To use the cliche, does that contribute more heat than light? Might a bigoted caller cast a shadow over an enlightening discussion? That’s the risk of opening up the phone lines. That’s why call-in programs have telephone producers who try hard to filter the calls that get to the air, and why even our modest little church studio had a ten second delay that enabled us to “censor” (or as I preferred, to “edit”) what we aired. That’s also why we bloggers get to approve or disapprove comments our readers offer to these radio ramblings.

 Nonetheless, whether through the still viable outreach of radio, or through the newest web-based audio technologies, I would hope someone is listening to contemporary popular music, interpreting its most inspired poetry, and doing it all through the Christian lens of compassion and hope. It would be just another small step toward peace on earth…or at least in one listener’s heart.

The Animals’ Christmas

When I was growing up in the 1950s, there was a television program my family watched together each week. It was about an immigrant Norwegian family, the Hansons, and each year the program featured a modern (for then) version of the old folk tale about “The Night the Animals Talked.” That would be Christmas Eve, of course. Because, legend has it, the animals in the barn witnessing the birth of the Christ Child were graced with the gift of speech, so that they could add their voices to the praise of Jesus. And on subsequent Christmas Eves, the animals of the world again received the gift.

So, with the Kellam family gathered around the old GE black and white TV watching,  Dagmar, the Hansons’ youngest child, would creep out to the  Hanson’ barn on Christmas Eve to hear the animals talk. Just like waiting for the Great Pumpkin to appear. We all knew it was legend. We all knew that the Hansons knew it was legend. And we all thought it was wonderful that Dagmar “believed.” And that the animals did talk that night.

Jump ahead some 35 years, and Columbia Records releases “The Animals’ Christmas.” Same basic legend. Composer Jimmy Webb, who may very well have seen the same early TV shows I did, wrote a spendid cantata, based on several old poems. (One, in fact, was centuries old, if I recall the liner notes accurately.) Jimmy Webb added his original poetry, set the whole thing to magnificent music, and played piano with the London Symphony Orchestra, while Amy Grant and Art Garfunkel sang the story line, along with the King’s College School Choir.

(And here’s an odd personal connection: in my previous post I mentioned again the Virginia-based singer-songwriter Steve Bassett. On more than one occasion guitarist Elliott Randall played with Steve in Richmond. We met once at Richmond’s Alpha Audio studios. Well, there’s Randall playing lead electric guitar on “The Animals’ Christmas.”  Small world, huh?)

Once I heard the album, it became a “Celebration Rock” fixture at Christmas time. I aired it in its entirety, and added commentary only when I thought it was absolutely necessary. I had the lyrics from the liner notes, but the listeners didn’t, so I would add some interpretative content now and then, especially if the words were difficult to hear through the music. I also prefaced the whole thing with these confessional words:

I have to admit that at first I was a little uncomfortable with the concept of an “animals’  Christmas.”  Seeing the Christmas story through the eyes of animals didn’t appeal to me very much, although I liked [Webb’s] music a lot. Then I began thinking about the way the Scriptures had used various animals to teach lessons about God. The 50th Psalm reminds us that all creatures great and small are God’s. Part of it reads: All the animals of the forest are mine, and all the cattle on thousands of hills; all the wild birds are mine and all living things in the fields.

The Scriptures use animals to tell the story of God’s people, from Noah’s ark to Balaam’s ass, to the prophecy of lion and lamb lying down together in peace…to a rooster signaling Peter’s betrayal of the arrested Jesus, the Jesus who said, “Look at the birds flying around you; your Father in heaven takes care of them; you’re worth much more!”  It was Jesus who taught God’s profound love for humans by telling the story of a lost sheep, whose recovery brings great celebration in heaven. Jesus even likened himself to a shepherd, and to a gate through which sheep pass to find protection. Jesus also once asked Peter, “Do you love me?” “Yes, Lord, you know I love you.” “Then, feed my sheep.”

When that “Celebration Rock” program came to a close with the last cut from the Webb cantata, I concluded:

Parables and lessons about animals are not new to the search for understanding. So Jimmy Webb’s production, “The Animals’ Christmas,” simply adds new images. But at some point we put away childish ways, and see face to face the human meaning of faith, and hope, and love, lived out in the life of Jesus, the Christ. How shall we best see Christmas? Through the eyes of imagined animals, or through the eyes of children who share with God the Baby’s humility and innocence? Or, through the eyes of the displaced, the disenfranchised, the dis-eased? Shall we see Christmas through the eyes of the hungry? Or the lonely? Shall we see Christmas through the eyes of the servant, the volunteer, the helper, the peacemaker? However we see (understand) Christmas, let us accept this gift of God’s presence as we journey along faith’s way, seeing the Christ child in every child, finding God’s love in every unexpected, unworthy place. If we are wise, we will seek him, and worship him, and follow him, and give ourselves to this Child who gave himself for us, so that we would love God and neighbor, as we love ourselves.”

[A footnote: quite apart from the Christmas theme, the Webb album reminded me of a project I was involved with while teaching at the Presbyterian School of Christian Education. John Turner, a graduate student at Union Seminary, asked me to help him with a series of audio cassette “trigger tapes,” that is, cassettes that would help “trigger” discussion. His theme was the animals (and birds) of the Bible. He researched the Bible’s use of “all creatures great and small” and wrote and voiced brief commentaries that I helped him record. I smile as I write this, remembering that I didn’t have much interest in the project…until I heard John’s takes on the Scriptures’ use of those animal stories. Just as I was hesitant about the Webb cantata until I listened to it and was won over, even converted by, imagination!]

Merry Christmas, animal lovers. Merry Christmas, people lovers. Merry Christmas, God lovers. Merry Christmas …to all.

Berry Chrithmads!

I hab a code. My wife reminds me that I used to catch some sort of bug around Christmas time almost every year. She’s right; I remember many years that Christmas Eve worship services would find me unable to sing the carols that pretty much made the night holy for me. Even worse, during my radio days, having a cold in December made for some unpleasant listening for those who tuned into “Celebration Rock.”

The fact that I worked alone, coupled with the unfortunate truth that I didn’t plan very far ahead, meant that if I had a cold, I had to voice the December programs no matter how “sick” I may have sounded. A few sprays of Chloroseptic, several lozenges, and some nasal spray got me through many December radio shows, but it wasn’t pretty.

I still have a recording of a vintage (there’s an interesting word) “Showcase” Christmas program that I had taped while suffering laryngitis. It was a stupid thing to have done. What made me think the audience needed to hear that raspy narrative. If you remember the well-worn voice of poet Rod McKuen…well, his voice was velvet, it was maple syrup, it was Baez compared to mine. Whatever wisdom I thought I had to share about Christmas, whatever holiday hope I had meant to impart…it was all lost in the too-painful-to-hear grating voice that read the script. I might better have tracked some album through from beginning to end, added some denominational Christmas spots, and called it a night. Or, a week.

Later in the long run of “Celebration Rock,” I had the wonderful Christmas gift of reruns to count on when illness struck. Stuffy nose, rough voice…who cares? I turned to last year’s program, or the one from five years ago. We’re talking Christmas programming here, folks, and if TV can rerun Charlie Brown and Rudolph cartoons for decades, I can run the same Christmas shows year after year. Anyone remember the story of “Barrington Bunny” as read by the author Martin Bell? I played that recording annually for years. Listeners either loved it or… I’ll bet I sold scores of copies of Bell’s book called “The Way of the Wolf.” (No, I didn’t actually sell the books; I just responded to countless written requests for where the story could be found. The local Cokesbury store made sure they were in stock.)

From 1970 or so, and into the mid-1970s, I also used cuts from “Some Beautiful Day,” an audio collage of music and meditations put together by musician Bill Comeau. The sub-title was “A Rock Celebration of the Life of a Dreamer Named Jesus.” Comeau’s re-telling of the story of The Nativity was avant garde, and that was indeed the record label as I remember. Eventually I had to drop the feature, not because I grew tired of it, but because of an unfortunate scratch on the vinyl. At some point in the narrative of Jesus’ birth there came an audible pop-pop-pop-pop, as annoying as my December rasp.

Producing the “Celebration Rock” Christmas programs became easier in the later years, not because of the rerun file, or because I managed to stay well, but because of the growth of Contemporary Christan Music. In the first years of my radio ministry, I relied on “pop” music, but not much “rock.” No one complained, of course. Even now, some forty years later, the local rock stations (the KOOL’s, the MIX’s, the MAGIC’s…) all play Perry Como, Burl Ives, and Bing Crosby! I played Barbra Streisand’s “Silent Night,” Andy Williams’ “O Holy Night,” and the cynical “One Tin Soldier” by The Original Caste (sic).

But with the advent (!) of CCM, I had album after album of contemporary, even “rock”  Christmas songs to choose from to build my shows. I tried to avoid the sentimentality of the season, as well as the secular usurpation of the Christmas gospel for worldly purposes. I had an hour to proclaim the cosmic arrival of God’s grace in the humility of the manger, and I wanted “Celebration Rock” to be more thoughtful, even more theological, than other media interpretations of the season. But it was, after all, a musical expression, and having several CCM artists to choose from aided the process considerably.

One of the things I accomplished each year with “Celebration Rock” was the liturgical movement toward Christmas that began with Advent. In early December, I’d use one or two CR programs to “prepare the way,” using music and conversation to ease into the season that the merchants had already been celebrating for several weeks. Then the Sunday before Christmas, if syndication reels had arrived at stations in time, I’d offer the year’s “Celebration Rock” Christmas special. And without apology, the next week’s program might well carry a Christmas theme too, even knowing  that for the radio stations that aired the show, the theme might be “out of date.” For the media, the season of marketing, selling, buying, and packaging Christmas ends with the last shopping day. For the Church, December 25 marks the beginning of the season, not the end. Twelve days, remember? And then Epiphany. As a Church-produced program, mine often (but not always) held on to the glad tidings of Christmas well after all the decorations were re-stored to the attic.

With or without my seasonal cold and flu voice, I often read the closing verses of W. H. Auden’s “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio,”  a lengthy poem just slightly older than I. A masterpiece of creative story-telling, piety and irony, the poem worked well with whatever Christmas music I provided for a bed. A touch of class.

I must add to this recollection two musical collaborations that became annual presentations of “Celebration Rock” December shows. One was the Steve Bassett and Larry Bland album produced locally in Richmond, Va., “Seasons Greetings.” With Bland’s “Volunteer Choir” of African American voices and the two musicians’ original songs added to some more traditional carols, the album fit perfectly into my Advent-Christmas radio schedule. For Advent: “I Just Can’t Til It’s Christmas.” And for the holiday, the title track. Plus a superb setting of the spiritual “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” I still play that album (now safely dubbed to CD…no pop-pop-pops–) every year at home.

The other album is “The Animals’ Christmas,” composed by Jimmy Webb, and performed by Art Garfunkel and Amy Grant. It sure didn’t fit the “Celebration Rock” music format. But it was faithful to the contemporary spirit of the show itself. I’ve never been a big fan of using animals to make theology or spirituality “cuter.” But there is a very long tradition of animals showing up in the holiest of places.

And that’s the tease for my next entry!

For dow, I have to go blow by node.

 [If you refer to the August 15 entry for this blog, you’ll see some other references to the Christmas message, especially as it was ripped from the context of December 25 and planted in the odd context of summer’s waning days.]

Light of the World, Shine on Me

I’m in a weekly study group that helps pastors prepare for their sermons by spending 90 minutes with the Lectionary readings, coffee, and muffins on Tuesday mornings. When I was writing and producing “Celebration Rock” each week, it was mostly a “lone ranger” thing: just me in the studio playing the hits and writing reflections on lyrics. Later, when I was serving churches, preparing and writing sermons each week, it was less “lonely,” since I was usually able to connect with others involved in the same labor of love.

While serving my Vermont church, I enjoyed weekly conversations with my friend and colleague Bill Lingelbach. We’d meet at his home, and over coffee we’d think together about how we were going to build our sermons around the texts for the week. After Bill’s death, I was left with only computer connections to an unseen community of preachers who shared questions and insights in cyberspace meetings. Moving to a church in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York, I did enjoy a weekly breakfast gathering with neighboring pastors, but the agenda included only friendly conversation and coffee, eggs, and toast. The point was the fellowship together, not the “business” of sermon-building.

Thus it strikes me as ironic that now that I have retired from weekly sermon construction, here I am every Tuesday morning with an ecumenical group of clergy and laity praying together, reading and then reflecting on the four “lessons” that will inspire (one hopes for the best) Sunday morning sermons. I don’t have to be there in order to produce anything. I just need some continuing outlet for theological reflection and conversation.

Yesterday, a Lutheran pastor in the group, Michelle, connected a pop hit song with the reading from John 1 about John the Baptizer coming “to bear witness to the light.” Michelle sang a couple of lines:

Light of the world, shine on me
Love is the answer
Shine on us all, set us free
Love is the answer…

She confessed that she couldn’t remember the singer(s) but soon the song resonated in me, too, and I could hear the refrain and the instrumentation, the voices, and the good feeling that it was such an uplifting lyric, a kind of light that shone amid the darker, even meaner poetry of other songs of the era. “Love is the answer.” How quaint the cliche. But how true nonetheless, or all the more. “Light of the world.” Christians believe that light to be Jesus.  And like the people of Isaiah’s age, and John’s, here were we (but with coffee and commentaries) praying the same prayer: “Light of the World, shine on me.”

Shine on the newly unemployed. Shine on the victims of cholera. Shine on the recently homeless. Shine on the war-ravaged nations of our world. Shine on the terrorized ones.  For much of yesterday morning, I prayed the few lines of the song that I could recall as the music played persistently in my consciousness. It was only as Joan and I drove away from the church that I remembered the singers England Dan (Seals) and John Ford Coley. Aha! This morning I called Michelle and she did a quick computer search to confirm my slow but sure recall. And then she added that Todd Rundgren had written the song. That I didn’t know.

At yesterday’s gathering, Michelle (who knows nothing of my radio past) exclaimed, “Isn’t it interesting that a secular song can have such Christian meaning?” I smiled inside. And for a moment, “Celebration Rock” was cued up and ready to air.