Wired Mesh

God Has the Good Things, Man

I was shuffling through my computer's music files this morning, and wandered across this file, a track from a John Rydgren album called Silhouette Segments. The more I listen to it, the more I like it. It's the original mash-up: a spattering of noises, street interviews and sampled guitar riffs, with Rydgren's voice riding above it all, gutteral and smooth, like Isaac Hayes on a particularly mellow (and illogical) day. "Watch out for the train... watch out for the elephants... watch out for the drip."

So, who was this cat? Well, dig: John Rydgren was a 1960s Lutheran pastor who wanted to reach out to the flower children starting to drop out across the country. So in 1967, he started a radio show on WABC in New York City called Silhouettes, featuring Rydgren reciting a sort of beat poetry over psychedelic tunes. He always got around to talking about Jesus at some point, although usually in roundabout, bemused ways, such as noting that the fox in the fine miniskirt was created by God, too.

There's an obvious kitsch value to this music (the way Rydgren growls, "Looks like she's ready for... a happening" is brutally funny), but the longer I listen to it, the further I'm convinced that this stuff is really good. Insane, but good. I've always been fascinated by the Christian evangelists who saw the hippie movement not as a threat, but a great opportunity to transform a materialist culture. And the Silhouette tracks are evidence of a fascinating sort of humility, an honest language of searching, that such evangelists developed in reciting old truths in new forms.

And it doesn't hurt Rydgren's cause that he uses some fine, fine grooves. (Here are four more tracks, if you've got the time.) Makes me want to start cruising around downtown with my arm hanging out a window of the Big Purple Van o' Love. Can you dig it?