Too Much Goodness is A Sin Today

The Trillbillies, remembering my grandfather, & the late Lalo Schifrin

Adios, Lalo Schifrin

It is the summer of 1996 and I’m at my mother’s apartment in suburban Chandler, Arizona, calling KZON FM over and over, asking to hear Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr.’s remix version of the Mission: Impossible theme. Written by the late Lalo Schifrin in 1967, the new take was tied to the recently released Tom Cruise reboot film, which seemed, to my adolescent sensibilities, perhaps the finest action movie ever made.

I’ll concede, the U2 members’ remix isn’t all that great upon revisit, but credit my youthful perseverance: after multiple calls, some DJ, who’s name I only wish I could remember, played it. It was a tremendous win for me. It’s a funny enough introduction to Schifrin’s music but a suitably pop-infused experience. Schifrin, who passed away this week at the age of 93, would soon become baked in the DNA of my teenage concept of cool via Portishead “Sour Times,” which samples Schifrin’s unbelievably slinky “Danube Incident.”

For a good overview and enjoyable deep dive, check out David Mittleman’s 2023 Observations of Deviance Lalo Schifrin radio special. From Latin jazz to noir scores for projects like the Dirty Harry films, Cool Hand Luke (1967), Bullitt (1968), Schifrin pioneered soundwork, soundtrack work, and jazz modalities, defining the sound of “cool.” Here’s a toast to his sounds, which echo out forever and ever, and certainly did on that summery Saturday afternoon via U2’s errant rhythm section.

Pat Quinn (1941-2025)

Given enough time and requisite enthusiasm, Pat Quinn could get nearly any vehicle running. The man lived under the hood, tinkering (and/or rigging) his way toward solutions. A dedicated mechanic for the Tempe School District, my grandfather’s vocation brought him a deep sense of satisfaction. He carried his knowledge with a quiet sense of confidence, and he was always ready to help.

Once in the summer of 2011, while working on the Chevy Cavalier I inherited from my mom outside of my Tempe apartment—mere blocks from my grandparents’ Tempe home—Pat lost his balance and went down. I tried to catch him as he fell toward the heated asphalt, but was too slow. Helping him up, he wasn’t seriously injured but not unscathed, he grimaced. I sensed a deep anger in him that I never saw when I was younger. “J, it’s a bitch getting old,” he confessed through gritted teeth. But my grandfather always seemed, even in that moment, indestructible. Strokes, scorpion stings, surgeries, whatever obstacle he encountered, he seemed capable of weathering it. Until, quietly, there was nothing at all left to weather.

Pat seemed especially quiet and distant the last time I saw him at the Gilbert home where he and my grandma were recently moved to meet their care needs. But when I picture him in my mind’s eye, it’s always at the wheel. During Arizona’s punishing summers, my brother Brad and I would join our cousin Megan with Pat and Shirley to galavant across the US southwest for a week or two, crossing over Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado, a tradition that the Quinns kept up for decades after we all stopped being young and free enough to go with them.

With Bob Seger, ZZ Top, and Texas Tornados tapes scattered across the dashboard, those highway bound days in my grandpa’s Astro van take on a mythic quality as I age. I think of the visions I spotted through those windows: Mormon temples glittering in the sun, cosmic desert vistas, Monument Valley, endless sprawling roads—a stash of comic books at my side for when I got bored with geographic splendor. When I think of him, I will think of him piloting the van, Grandma Shirley riding co-pilot. That’s how he appears in my earliest memories: at the wheel, steering us some place wondrous.

Too Much Goodness is a Sin Today: JPW on Trillbilly Worker’s Party

I recently had the chance to sit down with Tarence Ray and Tom Sexton on Trillbillys for a very loose ramble about Christianity, US Christian culture, gnosticism, UFOs, Jesus as a “starchild,” DC Talk, the Michael Tait controversy, Larry Norman, and this one time I was super weird to Aaron Weiss of mewithoutYou. I don’t always get a chance to go so deep, but it’s beyond fun to rap with these two. Listen wherever you podcast, via the SoundCloud link, and of course join me in supporting the ‘Billies on Patreon.