Reflections On Stories From The Incandescent Years

I miss this place and I want to write something here, but I'm not sure what.

I've been scrolling Facebook for two hours and am mostly writing this in an attempt to get myself to just stop and do something productive. Supper is in the oven already, but the dishes haven't been done in three days. I had dental surgery yesterday and they told me not to exercise, but what else is there to do?

I want to listen to music, but I want to buy more, as I'm getting bored with the variety I have (which sounds ridiculous even as I type that; I have over five thousand songs in my iTunes, which apparently equals over fifteen days).

Recently I've gotten into vapourwave, specifically climatewave (which is to say I've gotten into early '90s smooth jazz). It's the only thing besides dance that calms (or at least drowns out) the scream of static coursing through my brain every second of every day. That music transports me to when I was a child and everything was predictable and safe -- Mom was always in the kitchen making supper around 5pm, Dad would spin records well into the evening and then put on an instrumental CD for us after we were tucked in for the night, Grandma always had cartoons and 'coffee and cookies' for us whenever we went to visit, and we'd watch Grandpa slice apples in his chair with his little paring knife against his thumb while he watched the news. Church was on Sundays, and we'd go to Kosmos or Zambelli's afterwards. Incandescent light still cast a warm glow over everything (maybe the phasing out of incandescent has contributed to the phasing out of human warmth and connection). We were poor, but we were comfortable. We lived out on the exposed fields of the vast prairie, but we were safe.

When they say 'music is my drug,' maybe this is what they mean. I have always felt more comfortable thinking about the past than the future, but now I'm using the music of the past to actively block out the present. The present is filled with angry people and the AI takeover and 'we're moving forward with another candidate' emails and fluorescent lights and grey fast food restaurants and my brain screaming but not in words and the persistent feeling of time moving too fast. If black holes really do slow down time, somebody should install one by the moon so we can all catch our breath once in a while.

Maybe then I could see the stories again.

I used to write mundane little stories here, whole blog posts about computers crashing and construction delays and moments with friends. Stories that took maybe five minutes to live through, and would have been forgotten in a few weeks if I hadn't put them here.

That's what life is, isn't it? A thousand tiny stories that make up who we are.

My parents, though not artists, are both born storytellers. My dad is the unofficial keeper of the generational stories, the ones that he heard at his grandfather's knee and has passed on to us (and all the neighbours). I got my comedic timing from my mom, who has a one-liner for every occasion. Buying gas while running errands can become a hilarious encounter by the time she gets back home to tell us about it. To not be able to see the stories in my life the way I used to feels like losing myself as a person. Have I lost the stories because my memory doesn't work? or does my memory not work anymore because I lost the stories?

Maybe all I have to do is re-cultivate my eye for story. The only thing is I'm not sure how to do that.

In Memoriam: Armond Morales (1932-2022)

 I only found out yesterday that Armond Morales of the Imperials passed away on the 5th at age ninety.

Armond Morales' deep bass is a thread that has run through my entire life. I am by no means an Imperials aficionado, but my dad is. One of my earliest childhood memories is of my dad playing the Imperials' Big God (the only song I'm aware of in which Morales actually sang more than one solo line) so loudly that the dust literally fell from the ceiling.

My dad loved that song and he loved the band that made it. Albums like Let The Wind Blow (1985), Sail On (1980), Stir It Up (1992), One More Song For You (1979), ...This Year's Model (1987), and of course Big God (1991), were all in heavy rotation on my dad's hi-fi system when I was a child. ...This Year's Model comes up often on this blog as it has become one of my favourite albums too (the opening track is absolutely killer). My mother once told me a story from their dating years when Dad took her to an Imperials concert and during a medley proceeded to predict every song before it started. My mom thought he was psychic. She later learned that the exact same medley had been released on their 1990 album Love's Still Changing Hearts and my dad had it memorised word-for-word.

The Imperials have been a large part of the soundtrack of our family's life. For Armond Morales to be gone is truly the end of an era, both for the Christian music industry and for our family. The great tragedy is that nobody who listens to Christian music today realises what they have lost.

Morales managed the Imperials from the 1950s until 2017. Most bands don't even last a quarter of that time, let alone with the same manager. Even Bob Hartman's rock giant Petra is several decades behind such a milestone. The Imperials put out one solid, catchy album after another, year after year after year, from the Elvis era till the years of Hillsong's radio dominance. They shifted with the musical styles enough to sound current, but not enough to sound dated today. They navigated lead vocal changes with ease and grace and always managed to bring four-part harmonies about simple faith into whatever era they found themselves in. They were always, unfailingly, the Imperials, but they never sounded 'old,' like many gospel quartets do today. They gently guided old fundamental Christians into the current sound by staying unflinchingly true to their faith roots and as a result are a big part of why there even is such a thing as 'Christian radio' today.

Armond Morales was a quiet giant in the history of Christian music. We would do well to reflect on what he achieved and what mantle he has left behind for us, the faith-based artists of today.

An Ode To OG Girlpop

Yesterday my husband and I got talking about the first-ever cassettes we bought, and it unlocked a memory that I hadn't even thought to recall in probably ten years.

I was seven years old and it was ZOEgirl's self-titled album. I was such a music nerd even then that I remember my sister purchasing Raze's Power on the same day (she always had cooler taste than me at that age -- I definitely listen to Raze far more than ZOEgirl today). Young as I was, I already owned several cassettes -- mixtapes that my dad and I had collaborated on in front of his big stereo system that occupied a more central place in our living room than the television. To own my own real, honest-to-goodness cassette album was a special thing indeed. I remember sitting in the parking lot of the hardware store (my parents had wisely taken us to buy music first and then gone to spend 45 minutes at the hardware store after we had a distraction in our hands -- and yes, music was a sufficient distraction for both my sister and me), and reading the liner notes -- all the lyrics, the credits, everything. I read the copyright year on the spine, the way my dad had showed me on his own albums at home. I was only just beginning to understand the concept of years (as in, we are currently living in the year 2021), but I knew the year 2000 meant it was a new album (I did not yet know that this would be one of maybe a dozen albums that I would actually buy new over the course of my life -- the overwhelming majority of the music I've bought since then has had copyright years beginning with the number '19').

Naturally, I played that ZOEgirl album a lot. When I ventured into that dusty section of my iTunes this morning following my husband's question, I found that not one word escaped my memory despite the 'last played' date being May 2017 (exactly four years and one day earlier, in fact).

Was ZOEgirl great? No. If you don't have memories attached to them, they're probably pretty forgettable. But to us Christian girls of the early 2000s, they expressed the faith we were being raised in in a way we could relate to (and, most importantly for some of us, dance to). Even listening to them today was a breath of fresh air in the current collective spritual climate of doubt, anger, and cynicism. The songs, especially on this debut album, describe life as a Christian with a simplicity and joy that I have not seen or felt in Christiandom in a very long time. Every song points to Christ alone -- not works, not 'goodness,' not pedigree, not strength. Every. Song. And every song speaks of God with joy, adoration, and complete trust. There were mainstream CCM bands at the time with far worse theology than this flash-in-the-pan girl-pop band aimed at teenyboppers (back when 'teenybopper' was a serious designation for a specific subculture). Perhaps I should have been less surprised to see singer/songwriter Alisa Childers on the front lines of contemporary Biblically-sound theology twenty years after the release of this album.

Is the music dated? Definitely. In terms of production and instrumentation, this fits in squarely with acts like Aqua or Jump5. Is this a bad thing? Not to me. It takes me right back to the simplicity and joy of my childhood before my mom's depression got bad -- back in the very early days when she was able to be properly present with us. The light, sparkling music also accentuates the purity of the message ZOEgirl was presenting. It's also still very definitely danceable (which, along with 'do the lyrics assume I actually own a brain?' is my personal litmus test).

ZOEgirl is a product of their time, for certain, but it's hard to find an act so pure, even in that era. For that, they deserve a second look. They're still not even in my top 100 favourite artists of all time (although they might have a chance at number 100 if Terry Scott Taylor didn't have so many bands loading up the top of the list). But they will remain firmly entrenched in my memory and in my iPod for what they were able to give a mature-for-her-age girly-girl music-nerd seven-year-old.