Two classics, two decades apart — one story.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
8.17.13
Where to begin? Please indulge me as I take the discursive route — it seems the appropriate one. I'll begin, like Odysseus, in medias res ...
I woke up Saturday disoriented. My wife was visiting family hundreds of miles away. I'd worked till midnight, stayed up later, and stumbled out of bed to the strident strains of our cat: Feed me! From a stack of clothes in the closet, I plucked an old friend, a T-shirt memorial to the sterling tunesmith, Mark Heard, who'd been on my mind this week on the 21st anniversary of his death at age 40. To say that Heard's death left a void in my life and the lives of others would hardly do justice to that abyss. Amid the mundane little dance steps of life — what Heard dubbed the "busywork of subsistence" — he managed to frame observations that shone like an irridescent rainbow: "What kind of friend would tell you lies, to spare you from the bitter truth?" and "I'm too sacred for the sinners, and the saints wish I would leave" and "Oh, the sun shines like a torch at sea; author of all for the eyes that see; blind eyes know it only as ... a mystery."
And that's to say nothing of his mercurial melodies, his passionate vocals and his sometimes offending faith. For four decades, Heard pecked away at this mysterious life, then laid down in an unforgotten field in Macon, Ga. I've been there, lingered in the sun, then walked away in gloom, never expecting to see his likes again.
###
That graveside experience occurred a few short days after 9/11, nine years after Heard's death. I'd advanced in my career, married happily, been inspired by friends, family and the same God who moved Mark Heard to make such memorable music. I returned frequently to Heard's music for consolation and enrichment, and I found new artists to fill the gap: Terry Taylor (and his collection of bands: Daniel Amos, The Swirling Eddies, The Lost Dogs), The Choir, Charlie Peacock, Ashley Cleveland, Margaret Becker, Randy Stonehill, Bob Bennett and others.
One common denominator existed here: Christ. Whether you're at Gethsemane or Golgotha, the Wailing Wall or Ground Zero — and, especially, if you're on top of the world — you need fellow travelers to keep you grounded in Christ. Some of these fellow travelers come like angels out of the ether, and now — at long last — I've arrived at the heart of this story.
###
In 1992, a striking piece of art caught my eye in a record store (remember those?). Purple passion colored the face, a tear streaked a cheek, sketchy thorns crowned the head, and a pair of hands — flaming between abstraction and realism — pointed to the red-lettered word, "strength." A plume of green underscored that crimson strength, floating in space. There, at the bottom lay the words, "the violet burning." From low-frequency violet light to high-frequency crimson light, cover artist Susan Wedemeyer had captured the entire color spectrum in the body of Christ. The band's name embraced that same full spectrum, and the music (did I mention I quickly snapped this off the shelf and bought it?) — oh, the music. A searing tapestry of atmospheric rock songs alternating between sunlight and rain, beauty and poverty — all filtered through the prism of Christ — and culminating in an eighth song sung by the band's helmsman, Michael Pritzl, as though his life might end before the final note. The subject? Mary of Magdala. Pritzl roars "If I could be, anything at all!" as the brothers Tubb pound away (Lonnie on drums, Scott on bass and Shawn on guitar) and vocalist Jaime Eichler sings a touching counterpoint, "I love you, Lord, I love you, Lord." Pritzl roars again: "If I could be, anything at all! ... Let me be ... the whore at your feet." Few people, even among converts, picture themselves as a prostitute at the feet of Jesus. Pritzl does, and the results burn beautifully in the heart. The band would conclude this record with the whispered words: "One thing remains: You, always You." About this record, the band's second outing, Scott Tubbs would say, "It's called 'Strength' and the whole album's about weakness." Weakness at the feet of God's strength never resonated so wonderfully. The record reminded me of what rock critic Dave Marsh once wrote about Bruce Springsteen's sophomore album, "The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle," that though the artist would go on to create artistry of greater technical merit, we would never again be so amazed by the man's talent. Except that in the case of The Violet Burning ...
###
The Violet Burning would not record again on Bluestone Records. The band eventually would go indie, and I would go about my life, having lost track of The Violets, as they came to be affectionately called by a cadre of loyal followers. I'd pull my "Strength" out from time to time and relive the experience anew, amazed anew, but I somehow remained oblivious to the frequent recordings Pritzl was crafting with a changing series of bandmates. One thing, of course, remained. One thing I shared with the band in a parallel universe: Faith in the crucified Christ. And somewhere on a Twitter thread more than a year ago, I stumbled upon a mention of The Violet Burning. The band lived. Better yet, The Violets recently had recorded their magnum opus, a three-CD, thematically fused work called, "The Story of Our Lives."
For months, The Story of our Lives became the soundtrack of mine. The opening tune — a soaring, lush Aurora— prefigures life's first principles. It's a musical state of innocence, a state of being we intuitively long to reclaim. But no more than a minute in, the tune turns tinny. It becomes a caricature. Life, in all its avarice, comes in and crushes the Edenic start. By the time Pritzl's primal scream takes over My Name Is Night, a song of Satan he admits was a struggle to record, we've already tromped through more cloaked incarnations of evil, including The Violets' own struggle with a recording industry that would have quashed the band's creativity and formed them into a Gospel music cookie-cutter.
The Story of Our Lives is replete with struggles — struggles with Orwellian forces, including samplings of Big Brother propaganda Pritzl ripped from real-life marketing messages. There are struggles with faith down vacant roads "a thousand miles from home." There are breakdowns and struggles to find a sense of belonging. Near the midpoint of CD 2, Rock Is Deadglances back at The Who, Lester Bangs and Marilyn Manson, glances back farther at an entombed body in a cave, and rolls the rock away with a delicious take on The Violets' beloved art form and their Beloved savior. In real life, the band's studio goes by the name: Nowhere, CA. In this recording, Nowhere, CA is the crucial pivot point, recalling Gerard Manley Hopkins' closing lines in The Windhover: "I'm a burning stick pulled from the fire, and your violet covered me ... Your love came raining down, on a road to nowhere ... This is the way home." For a band that loves to employ drones and delays, the studio techniques are stunning in the song, In Ruin. I've never heard a more splendid mimickry of rain in music. And yet, the next song — Lacuna— likely is the most fully realized composition in The Story of Our Lives. A Latinate term signifying a gap or depression, Lacuna gathers earlier themes in the trilogy, "My heart began to cave," with themes to come: "Heaven knows I'm made for You." It's an artful, anthemic treatment of themes plumbed by Augustine and Pascal.
Each of the CDs has its own title: The Fantastic Machine, Black as Death, and Liebe über Alles — the third CD that I've not even discussed yet. That final installment features the collection's two finest ballads, Mon Désir and I Caught Fire. In them, spiritual intimacy — one of the grand themes in The Story of Our Lives– ignites and later crescendoes in a nine-minute finale, Made For You. Today's Violets include bassist Darryl Dawson and percussion/strings player Lenny Beh, with three guest lead guitar solos on The Story of our Lives by Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Jeff Schroeder (a former Violet Burning member) and graceful cello accompaniment by El Beh, who evokes the groaning of the Spirit beautifully.
In the bridge of I Caught Fire, Pritzl sings, "In all the songs of men and angels, if I have no love I am blank." No danger of that in Liebe über Alles, or in any corner of this resplendent triology. Pritzl would hesitate to have praise heaped on his person, preferring to see himself as a vessel of praise instead. And so be it. Let's just say he's taken the baton from Mark Heard into the 21st century as the finest practitioner of popular hymnody on the planet. Period.