I've wanted to do a gospel album for a long time, but I didn't know how. First of all, I've never really written a gospel song--and after I finished this album, I only wrote two. One of those was an instrumental, and the other was more an angry attack at Christians than anything else. I find gospel songs as hard to write as I'm sure most people find regular songs hard to write. I have no problems writing regular songs, of course, but I began to see -- while trying to do gospel songs -- why people have trouble writing regular songs. Because they're trying to make something meaningful, and that's what I was trying to do when trying to write a gospel song. And you almost always can't force that. Songs should be more natural than that, and so should gospel songs.
And I didn't realize it until I'd actually finished recording this album, but the reason I feel it's sucessful is because it's just me, in the end, recording these songs like I would any others. I'm not trying to save anyone. I'm not even trying to make something to move me, to make me cry, or to make you cry, or go down to the altar or anything like that. In fact, the only new thing I'm doing here (and yes I think I'm doing something very new as far as gospel music goes) is paying more attention to the essential "songness" of the songs. I will never, for example, ask you to "listen to the words," which is one of the worst things anyone can say about any song.
The first song I recorded was "Goodbye, World, Goodbye," and after I'd done it I realized I had made a non-ironic gospel song. Indie rock is known for its annoying irony (most of the time), and I suppose I'm working in the indie rock genre more than anything else, and so something like this coming out was surprising and refreshing. Even more cool, however, was that this didn't end up being the "rapture" song that it was written to be. It sounds more like a suicide note. A suicide note that, at the end, transforms itself into a delusional song about actually leaving the earth when you kill yourself. It's kind of sad. We play this song at church, and it's never been anything to me but a superhappyjoy song (always played fast), so it's odd that this suicide note came out, but I love it.
After this, the rest of the songs came easy. It was just thinking of songs to record that was hard. I dug around on old timey gospel sites at first, and then I looked at my CD collection for pop artists who wrote gospel songs. Some of them were truly gospel, like "Jesus" or "My Sweet Lord"; some of them were semi-gospel like "I Would Die 4 U" (which, like "Let My Love Open the Door" is a Voice of God song) and "Two Headed Boy Part Two" (which I insist is gospel, as well as the entire Neutral Milk Hotel album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, though don't ask me to explain any of it or why I feel this way); and some were just not really gospel at all until put in this context, like "To Know Him Is To Love Him" and "Randy Described Eternity."
I'm not sure how these latter artists would feel about that, and at first I wasn't sure how I felt, since I absolutely hate when someone takes an existing song and changes words around (like if I would have said "To know know know God is to love love love God"). I heard someone do "Let It Be" and change "mother Mary" to "my sweet Jesus." And then, of course, there's the whole deal of people stealing pop melodies (mostly country, or at least at my church) and saying "It's gospel now." It's the equivalent of those idiot Christian T-shirts that change products into some Jesus message, like "Heavely Devine Son" for "Harley Davidson." Stupid crap.
Of course, what I hate the most is mediocre Contemporary Christian music, and that's why I would never release this album on one of those stupid labels. The argument is always this: "Man, I sure like rap music, but rap ain't Christian, so good thing for this Christian rap." Retarded. If you like rap, listen to rap, not some pale imitation. Christianity itself -- that is, the teachings of Christ -- is one of the most original things around (even though it's 2,000 years old now) and so it makes me upset when Christians can't be original themselves. What would Jesus do, indeed? The people wearing those brain-dead bracelets should realize that he wouldn't listen to even more watered-down and vacant (which is saying a lot) versions of radio hits. I don't know what Jesus would really listen to if he were alive today (luckily, I didn't really make this album for him--but for people), but my guess is some sort of authentic blues. And classical. And, yeah, some of the less ironic indie. I think he would listen to Neutral Milk Hotel. I think he does. I think he helped make that record.
I did record one "traditional style" gospel song, "Put Your Hand in the Hand." Not as a joke, but because I really do like traditional gospel sometimes, so I thought I'd make one. This is one of the earliest songs I know anyway, so it was only fitting. There's a tape of my brother singing this at age three. Nothing special about it anyway, since this song actually sounds more like my usual junk than anything else. It sounds like a 'nikcuS song, right down to the harmonica. I was pleased at doing a bottle blow for the first time, though.
And the instrumental, "The Halo." First of all, it was sort of arbitrarily-named. When I realized I couldn't really write a gospel song, but wanted at least two (having already done "Jesus Was An Indie Rocker"), I just decided to do an instrumental. I know it sounds like I'm singing, but those aren't words. It's not tongues or anything, just me singing sounds for a melody. I found that that communicated what I wanted to say better anyway. God's certainly a language guy -- he used The Bible as his main tool -- but there's something even more spiritual for me sometimes when there's no words to bother with. God doesn't always talk in words, you know.
I called the album Loud Cymbals because of the last Psalm, which is basically about playing instruments, and loudly. I figured that was what I was doing. The title is also a pun, or has the potential to be one. Someone will have to explain the joke. If anything, it's soft symbols, since they're not exactly apparent. And, yeah, I put a glow around me on the packaging. I'm not suggesting I'm holy or anything, although often I am. Oh, and do you know where that angel in the sky came from? Hats off to anyone who knows.
Anyways, I hope you like. Again, this album wasn't made for Jesus. He's got better things to do than listen to Rubby Bulbs making yet another record. I actually had my church members in mind the entire time I made this, thinking how fun it will be when they declare me blasphemous. But they'd do it secretly, because they love me. And I love them.
Copyright (c) Dec 2002 - Jun 2005 by Rusty Spell and Love and Letters Music