Epiphanist’s Top Albums – Choice 9

Muddy Waters – They Call Me Muddy Waters.

The other question they ask everyone on Rockwiz is – what was the first concert you went to?

My recollection is Muddy Waters at Melbourne University’s Wilson Hall. I went with my little sister. I just had a look at Google, it was May 1973, so I had been to see plenty of bands before that. The live music scene was huge in Melbourne back then.

I remember Muddy playing a pastel pink guitar and Pinetop Perkins singing Kansas City.

I had bought They  Call Me Muddy Waters a year or two earlier at the music shop in Whitehorse Road Box Hill. I was excited and wasn’t let down, this record is a great compilation. The last track on each side with Little Walter and Jimmy Rogers are both standouts. They call me Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf.

I haven’t been able to find this record anywhere on CD. I have another really good compilation on CD called Rollin’ Stone which I play instead.

Thoughts of Tunguska

Barry Jones mentioned last week that the earth had a near miss last year by an asteroid about the size of the one which caused the damage at Tunguska. This asteroid missed the earth by only 38,000 kilometres, a very near thing.

The asteroid at Tunguska never became a meteorite, an extensive search could not find any physical trace of it. Eventually the investigators worked out that at the speed it was travelling, and the angle of approach, the atmosphere had been solid enough for it to bounce like a stone skipping off water. The enormous force of the slap on the atmosphere and the shock wave it generated caused all the damage.

Fans of the X Files may be familiar with this story.

A search of Google Earth reveals many impact craters including the now famous one at Wolf Creek. If the Tunguska meteor had hit a little more directly many of us would not be here.

How do concepts of a providential and beneficial deity stand up to the inherent tragic consequences of these sort of events?

Plainly, the limited view of a personal, benevolent God is unbalanced.

In the Bible, and in much of Christian thought, the balance is maintained by a belief in the opposing nature of sin and the devil. In the New Testament, the burden of imbalance is so great that a whole book, The Revelation, concludes the collection to enable some sort of unity in the philosophy and the thoughts of the reader.

The story of Job reinforces the moral dilemma “And the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power;” ” A message reinforced in the Revelation.

What, then of asteroids and imminent catastrophe?

Perhaps a benevolent deity has rescued us from calamity. There is certainly a satisfying, childish balance in this view, but why would the danger exist in the first place?

His ways are not our ways, is the usual response. A response which takes us back to the concept of the God of the Gaps. God defined in the things we don’t understand.

These ideas are another manifestation of dualism, a central necessity to so much of human thought, and a subject pursued in much of the writing on this website.

This post was written to help with understanding of the poem, Sin of the Gaps.

Sin of the Gaps

 

 

Around a flat earth the

edges of providence,

defining thoughts like dra-

gons on old maps.

 

Great scary monsters from

incomprehensible

depths, imitating the

sin of the gaps.

 

Good and benevolent concepts of God

leave a whole range of human experience

outside the places that we have allocated for God.

 

The God of the gaps is a God incarnate in

all the things we don’t understand.

 

The sin of the gaps, is sin made responsible for

all the things we can’t believe to be created by God.

 

A split universe of God’s good things,

and all the rest in a great void bereft of God, where sin holds sway.

 

Like the old flat earth idea,

where people knew their familiar flat earth,

and feared everything beyond

in the mysterious province of dragons and monsters.

 

Translated by the heart.

 

Conversion of Saul (Hermeneutics)

 

 

Saul among the prophets:

 

Mad Saul replaced by Da-

 

vid the greatest champ in

 

Jewish hist’ry.

 
 

Our Saul. Now Paul. His fate

 

hermeneutically

 

sealed by David’s heir; through

 

Spirit’s myst’ry.

 
 

 

Conversion of St Paul by Karl Matzek

 
 http://epiphanist.googlepages.com/conversionofSaul3.mp3

Epiphanist’s Top Albums – Choice 8

Taj Mahal – Giant Step / De Ole Folks at Home

On Rockwiz the guests and contestants are always asked about the first album they ever bought.

This is my first. I bought it via a kid at school who had joined the CBS record club and needed help to buy some records to take advantage of a special offer. I had never heard or seen the record, but the catalogue said it had Blues music, and I knew the names of some of the traditional songs, so I took a chance.

What a great record, easily Taj Mahal’s best. I have a number of his other records but nothing is close. There is a version of Corinna on the Taj’s Blues compilation from the Rising Suns days which gives a hint, but Giant Step is the one.

The vinyl is top quality, thick and hard, and still in good condition nearly 40 years later – it was released in 1969! I remember playing the record at home for my first girlfriend, who was into daggy crooners. She didn’t get it, and the relationship went pear shaped.

I haven’t replaced this one with a CD yet. There doesn’t seem much point, I know every note, every beat, every word by heart. A seminal record for me.

Epiphanist’s Top Albums Choice 7

ZZ Top – Tres Hombres

La Grange was a big hit, but I didn’t know much about ZZ Top otherwise.

I was browsing through K Mart at Corio one day, and picked up Tres Hombres for about $7 in a vivid green cover, because La Grange was on it.

It was an instant hit with the boys and myself, but I don’t think it is a girl’s record. It is just plain loud, driven music.

It must have been the 80’s, I was surprised to find that the record was issued in 1973. I haven’t really liked anything else they have done since, but I certainly like this one.

The current version has been remastered and has three bonus live tracks. It also has a nice little booklet about the songs. Dusty Gibbons comments about Jesus just left Chicago, ‘The blues is everywhere, and we used His name to get the point across’. Might just play it next time I’m home alone!

Lost at Pentecost

 

 
 

I dreamed that you were afraid of your angel,
shadowing your sweet curls,
a burly man
with unruly hair and untidy beard,
dressed in a red t shirt and jeans.

I held out my arm to stop him
but he passed almost straight through,
and wakened me in a ghostly moment
from another space where,
maybe, that ghost is me.

Context (so what?)

This verse was written about someone I met who was starting to come to terms with life in the spirit. I remember when I first became aware of the spirit in my life, how frightening it was to come into contact with something so alien and powerful. I really felt for this person as she came into my prayer.

The dream happened in the week leading up to Pentecost. This is proper and appropriate, as Peter reminds us in his quote from the prophet Joel, ‘your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams’. Part of this dream is about my concern that my own perception of prayer and spirit could be creepy to anyone who doesn’t share my experience, part of it is about someone coming to terms with the spirit, beyond all preconceptions.

In the inevitable way of dreams, it all turned out to be too much for the young person, and she dropped out of my life.

The picture is of my prayer, drawn in the symbolism of Pentecost, on two levels. The spirit, my friend, and myself represented as tongues of fire joined together in our prayer of the spirit, as well as the more traditional understanding of the external tongues of fire linking ourselves and each other to God through the spirit.

Epiphanist’s Top Albums – Choice 6

Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Blood Sugar Sex Magik

A long, long, long, long time ago, before the rain, before the snow.

Before the MP3 when you couldn’t listen to samples on Amazon, we had to rely on reviews in the Green Guide to find out what was new. Mike Daly and Sean Carney used to write every week, and sometimes I would pluck up the courage to try one of their recommendations. It was always a risk, and CD’s were $25 – $30 each, quite an investment if they turned out to be duds.

One day after reading a glowing review of a new record by a band I had never heard of, I took a chance on Blood Sugar Sex Magik.

The rest is history. They had everything. The record is one of the all time best, and one by one the songs launched themselves into the hit parades until the Chilli Peppers were a household name.

And, Flea used to be someone’s boy next door in Mt Waverley.

Epiphanist’s Top Albums – Choice 5

Stray Cats – Best of the Stray Cats

We went up to Melbourne to see the Stray Cats for my birthday this year.

The doors were meant to be open but there was a queue. We walked up the lane without finding the end of the queue, then round the corner and down the street.

The queue moved along quite quickly once it got going, and we were soon inside the camp old Forum theatre waiting for the Stray Cats to come on.

The show was a revelation. Setzer was stunning. Slim Jim and Lee Rocker were amazing.

I had queued up around the block to see the Stray Cats, I felt like I was 19 again.

Was this the best concert ever? – Probably.

Epiphanist’s Top Albums – Choice 4

Sonny Boy Williamson – Nine Below Zero

Some of the urban Blues recordings have lost their sparkle over the years, but this collection stands out because it continues to thrill.

I first knew the songs from the double album which my brother had. My CD is the Charley Blues Masterworks Vol 22 which I purchased in Colac over 15 years ago.

The songs have just continued to get stronger over the years. Sonny Boy shows off his versatility and ability in recordings made over a long period of time with a number of different bands. The album is arranged chronologically, the later recordings are especially powerful. A number were recorded with members of Muddy Waters Band led by the incomparable Otis Spann.

Great voice, great harmonica, great songs, great bands.

Baby!