Spring Is Coming With A Strawberry in the Mouth

Larry Norman's UFO, How to Play Guitar, Operating Theatre and Desert Cosmic Boogies

Larry Norman: UFO

Larry Norman may have been one of the founders of Christian rock, but like his fan and contemporary Bob Dylan, he was also a supreme trickster. As explained in Gregory Thornbury’s entertaining and insightful Why Should The Devil Have All The Good Music? biography, Norman never fit easily into the moral and artistic confines of Contemporary Christian Music, the genre he midwifed: “Larry Norman (1947-2008) was a holy fool, often grossly misunderstood, certainly harassed—mostly by fellow Christians—and uniquely constituted to attract controversy.”

“UFO,” one of my favorite of his songs, demonstrates this tension. Featured on In Another Land (1976), the quizzical song showcases Norman’s cosmic inclinations, hinting at a mystic bent that would make most fundamentalists squirm uncomfortably in their pews. Part Donovan-esque psychedelic folk ballad, part Swiss visionary Emanuel Swedenborg-styled galactic parable, it finds Larry pondering extraterrestrial salvation:

“If there’s life on other planets/Then I’m sure that He must know/And He’s been there once already/And has died to save their souls.”

Norman’s perhaps best known for his End Times anthem “I Wish We’d All Been Ready,” as prominently featured in the 1972 Christpolitation horror film A Thief in the Night. But where that song is rooted in violence and dread, the space brother allusions and romantic melody of “UFO” suggest a more open-ended scenario, one that perhaps New Agers and flying saucer acolytes alike might be able to jive with. But still, there is no mistaking its focus on the impending rapture. Jesus will be back soon. He will gather the faithful up, leaving behind a world in turmoil and chaos.

Here’s a performance of the song from a show in Arnhem, Holland, broadcast on Dutch radio in 1977, as featured on the Wounded Lion live album:

From the millennialist right wing fantasies of Left Behind to classic gospel hymns like “I’ll Fly Away,” the desire to transcend the material conditions of Earth and depart for a higher realm can animate and propel spiritual art. In “UFO,” I hear Norman’s fragile hope for this kind of transcendence, his voice slightly creaking not unlike the way Neil Young’s sometimes does. You can feel his longing to be extricated from a crumbling, hate scarred world. Maybe you relate? I know I do.

There is, of course, a darker side to the escapist proposition. The members of the Heaven’s Gate cult were Trekkies after all, waiting to beamed up and out of corporeal existence by a passing celestial body. When they weren’t, they tragically took matters into their own hands. But as the reality of climate change becomes ever more impossible to ignore, the goal of getting off this rock is hardly confined to the religiously faithful; nearly 50 years after Larry wrote “UFO,” many of the cultural elect still pin their hopes on getting off the planet.

Jung referred to the subject of UFOs, or UAPs, or “mystery lights”—call them whatever you want—as a manifestation of some “psychically overwhelming Other.” I’m drawn to the topic for many reasons—and I’m sure some them are rooted in my Christian upbringing, in weird, tangled ways—but most of all, I’m attracted to the way the subject of UFOs forces the question of mystery and the unknown into the room. Some of my favorite Larry Norman songs are fiery testimonials, declarations or protest anthems against hypocrisy and injustice. But with a song like “UFO,” he makes room for some of that overwhelming “Otherness,” a tilt toward phenomenal mystery.

I no longer call myself a Christian and haven’t for many years, but no time of the year, save for maybe Christmas, heightens my phantom Jesus-y impulses as much as Easter season does (sharing space with the observances of Passover, Ramandan, and any number of Earth-reverent traditions) As the days grow longer and everything blooms, it’s impossible not to think of resurrection, of how what is old—or even dead!—can be made new once again. This time of year brings into focus the cyclical, ever-rolling way rebirth functions in the cosmic order.

In Richard Rohr’s The Universal Christ, the Franciscan priest writes, “God loves things by becoming them.” In Christ, He loved humanity through incarnation; the Word made flesh. By extending the notion of Christ’s redemptive grace to even the “alien,” identifying as kin with the Other, Norman echoes, perhaps unintentionally this idea.

I recently finished reading Kim Haines-Eitzen’s marvelous book about contemplative listening in the desert, Sonorous Desert: What Deep Listening Taught Early Christian Monks—and What It Can Teach Us. I was particularly struck by a passage where she stresses, risking a little anthropomorphism, as a treat, “by regarding ourselves as embedded and complicit in the ephemerality of the natural world…we cultivate empathy for the world we live in. And, in so doing, we may rethink the destruction of mountains, sacred mountains, in our thirst for more.” 

Larry Norman may have been Only Visiting This Planet, but something about the fragile vision of “UFO” suggests to me that perhaps he would have agreed. We stare into the void to catch a glimpse of ourselves, we love the Other by becoming the Other, and we are always in a process of becoming.

Matt Baldwin: How to Play Guitar

Matt Baldwin opens his zine “How To Play Guitar” Vol 1. with a William Blake quote: “Opposition is true friendship.”

Baldwin was kind enough to send me seven volumes of his series, dedicated to exploring and contextualizing his “strange and rhizomatic” approach to guitar playing. (Plus one publication devoted to compiling “drug slang code words.” Have you imbibed any “smoochy woochy poochy” lately?)

These aren’t “how to” guides so much as “why to” prompts, stressing intuition over technique, dismissal of music industry norms, and the imperative to hone a singular, personal philosophy regarding the instrument—think Captain Beefheart’s “Ten Commandments of Playing Guitar.” Baldwin is just as likely to devote page space to warning about being on time to the gig, stressing moral and internal rectitude, and the exposing dangers of social media as he is to dispense tips like “stop using a flat pick” and “play banjo for a while”—both solid tactical suggestions he espouses.

A few Matt Baldwin maxims I especially like:

Your obsessive nature is the only credible teacher.

Delay is a mirror held up to sound objects as they move through time.

Most trash talk is self description.

Tone is ninety percent in the hands. Gear as the source of tone is exaggerated by weaker players or people who want to sell you things.

You don’t always have to be optimistic but you must be enthusiastic.

These zines, alongside his cryptic and haunting records, are available over at Bandcamp.

Operating Theatre: Spring Is Coming With a Strawberry in the Mouth

Over at Aquarium Drunkard, I wrote about pioneering Irish synth band Operating Theatre’s new archival collection, Spring Is Coming With A Strawberry In The Mouth / Rapid Eye Movements. Led by producer, composer, and musical maverick Roger Doyle, Operating Theatre doubled as an avant-garde theatre troupe. They wound up signed to U2’s Mother label in the mid-’80s, but it turns out U2 weren’t so amazing at running a record label; the record was barely promoted. Of particular note is a new remix included, Irish producer Morgan Buckley’s “MIDI-Suite Remix” of “Spring Is Coming With a Strawberry in the Mouth.” I cannot stop listening to it—each time I do, I become more and more convinced there’s some arcane info to be sourced in its interlocking minimalist melodies and cut-up robo-vocal samples. To be clear, I’m not sure what kind of message it is, but I can tell it’s there.

JPW: Halfway to Eloy (Live at the Dirty Drummer)

Recorded live at The Dirty Drummer in Phoenix, Arizona, September 10, 2022.

On this recording, JPW is:

Jason Woodbury: vocals, acoustic guitar
Zane Gillum: bass
Zach Toporek: drums, vocals
Michael Krassner: electric guitar
Richard Heins: pedal steel

Recorded and mixed by Dario Miranda. Fort Lowell Records, 2023.