School Of Rock Part 4: The Middle Of The Road

If I showed someone a photo of myself at age 11 and then followed it up with one at age 12, they would not know I was the same fucking person. In one year I went from a little hairless, nondescript kid who thought girls were yucky into a 5'10" mustachioed raging onanist. At this point in my life I needed more than the Sears catalog and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue to quell my out of control hormones--I needed to flat out fucking ROCK. But it was now slim goddamned pickings in the family record collection:







Songs like "We've Only Just Begun", "Make It With You" and "Sunshine On My Shoulders" were in heavy rotation (often with off-key accompaniment by my mother)--but that, my friends, was the hard shit.

Eventually, with my parents' increasing obedience to the church causing them to shy away from (but not totally reject) "secular music", a new form of light rock began seeping into the house known as "Christian Contemporary". Records by born-again "stars" such as Dave Boyer, Christine Wyrtzen and Sandi Patti became ever present, with sweetly-sung songs about how one could have a "new life" with Jesus, and how one should give up their old life of dope, cock, booze, R-rated films and all the other things with which Satan wants to make one "stumble" and thus "backslide".

Things were definitely looking down--even the radio became less of an option (which REALLY sucked, seeing that local station The Loop was at its hard rock peak) as the folks were now convinced that anything harder than Peter Frampton was Satanic, and the radio was permanently tuned to jesusy station WMBI. Queen, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull and Rush were now merely part of a sinful and unspoken of past. The best it got for a while was when I got to hang out with my unsaved grandfather who only played the "new" country station of the time, allowing me to listen to "sinners" like Ronnie Milsap, Glen Campbell, Tanya Tucker, Crystal Gayle, Conway Twitty and Charley Pride.

But the one Christian artist that really won out at home more than any other was Evie Tornquist. Everybody loved Evie, especially my mother and grandmother who got an everlasting kick out of seeing a fellow Swede make it in show business. Plus, they thought she was just cute as a button--a blonde, dimple-faced 1970s version of Rachael Ray, perky and constantly grinning from ear to ear. You know why? Because she loves Jesus, you dumbfucks.



Meanwhile, my tortured adolescent brain conjured up other reasons for her to be smiling--I got a LOT of guilt-filled mileage out of old Evie.

In the end though, she was a fucking task to listen to (just like Rachael Ray), and my mother owned and constantly played ALL of her records. All the releases--the "best of" compilations, the Xmas albums, even one sung only in Swedish. And they were played EVERY DAY, in addition to the other christing vocalists.

Did I mention things were looking down?




Episode next: Evie who? My guilt-ridden teenage self abuse increases tenfold thanks to Amy Grant. Plus, Keith Green and the newly-saved B.J. Thomas enter the scene as the needle still spins Christian Contemp(t)orary.