Dryvetyme Onlyne

Here’s a selection from Puritan Blister #23, written by William Bowers. Click here to read the entire article. Someday, I’ll be able to write this well and/or have a similar literary medium for my musings on music, life, & culture. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the thoughts, ideas, & impulse behind the entire article.

“The film soon covers Smith’s backslide into Christianity after a dalliance with embittered bohemianism, a reconversion that went down at Chicago’s Jesus People USA commune/church/dormitory/outreach program, an organization that, according to Stephen Prothero’s American Jesus, fittingly began as a bus full of 70s hippie-Christians self-identified as Jesus Freaks. Danielson played regular stints at the JPUSA (pronounced ja-pu-za, like some kind of manga or anime) Palooza known as Cornerstone Festival. My anemic social circle has recently half-absorbed some Cornerstoners, and they’re largely just like other restless, creative indie-cult kids (as opposed to listless, uncreative indie-cult kids) with the exception that they maintain a higher degree of self-loathing about their consumption habits. Their cutdowns are more likely to begin “your mama’s so Creationist” than “your mama’s so fat,” and they tell me that despite its diversity and good intentions, Cornerstone has gotten less musically/artistically interesting as CCM (contemporary Christian music) has predominantly celebrated Bible-y clones of secular acts, as opposed to more diaspora-representing eccentric performers such as Danielson. (In the film, Danielson are shown playing an old Festival in front of a banner for the Christian-plus-mostly-posi “hardcore” site Hxc.com, while the current Cornerstone website boasts banner ads for the poppier, P.O.D.-pimping Hmmagazine.com.) These indie-Christian folks get as fascinated/flummoxed by the success of their fave bands as any secular scenester does about their once-unsigned fetish acts. Three times in a few weeks I have heard the sentence, ‘I remember back when (Cornerstone mainstagers) mewithoutYou played, with a generator, for 35 people.’”