I grew up listening to the radio. My father always had the car radio tuned to the standard New York metro top-20 stations such as WABC and WMCA. Eventually I got my own radio and my own car, and WNBC and WWDJ entered the mix (while WABC kept on playing the hits; it then seemed like it would do so forever). The late 60’s and 70’s dawned, and the FM stations were the place to be for the new “psychodelic” sounds (remember In A Gadda Da Vida?). WABC-FM became WPLJ, while WNEW-FM became the standard rock station of the world. They got me through high school and college, along with 8-track tapes and cassettes.<\/p>\n
Given that I started searching for a “spiritual life” at a relatively young age, I always hoped that some positive messages about life, the universe and everything would find their way to the pop airwaves. But mostly it was about intoxication, sexuality, and the expectations and disappointments of young love. <\/p>\n
Once in a while, some semi-religious, semi-inspiring notes and lyrics would find their way to the play list, stoking my hopes for a popular wave of spiritual awakening, along with awareness and hope. But even if such a tune was played for more than a week (many, such as “Heaven” by the Young Rascals, faded quickly), they didn’t spark any public discussion, not even any commentary by the DJ’s who would quickly segue to the next tune. That tune might tell a story about dancing, partying, romancing, getting high, evading the police . . . or sometimes about absolutely nothing at all (think about Paul McCartney’s solo tunes — e.g. “Uncle Albert”). There were lots of anti-war protest songs throughout the early 70’s, but they hardly changed anything (plenty of new American wars would follow). And then there were hit songs that sounded “significant” but turned out to be mostly jokes or ego trips . . . like Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” or Peter Gabriel’s “Salsbury Hill”. <\/p>\n
You’d think I’d have given up on salvation and enlightenment by radio. But I’m still a sucker for a tune with a positive message, especially if it isn’t overly saccharine and sentimental. I.e., if it starts from the premise that this world is a very nasty place, but we shouldn’t give up cause there’s still a flame burning somewhere . . . yes, I know that I shouldn’t. As back in the 60’s and 70’s, a positive song today ain’t gonna change anything about that very nasty world around us. It will get a few weeks or months of airplay, if lucky, and then you will have to buy the album to hear it (well, thank goodness for You Tube, in terms of making old music available on demand). Three Doors Down have had a couple of songs like that (e.g. “Not My Time”). Probably lots of other bands too. <\/p>\n
Nonetheless, I still felt a little spiritual jolt over breakfast this morning when WDHA played Shinedown’s “Unity”. I got to work and immediately googled the lyrics. Hey, not bad . . . then I found the official video, and . . . well, I recommend that you watch it yourself.<\/a> <\/p>\n At my advanced age, it’s very hard to get emotionally involved; but this video forced an astonished “huh . . . ” from me. Just for a second, I saw life as if I was seeing it for the first time; everything seemed new, everything seemed . . . meaningful. Once again. <\/p>\n Well, that feeling lasted all of 2 minutes, as I started checking my e-mails and my worklist for the day. But it was a nice little “huh”, so give it a try yourself. If you’re a little hard of hearing or just don’t make out song lyrics very well (both apply to me), check out the printed lyrics<\/a> first. You will appreciate the whole experience all the more. It’s well worth 5 or 6 minutes of your time. And if it does get through to your soul, however briefly . . . then “it’s never too late to stop being afraid . . . put your hands in the air”. Indeed!<\/p>\n P.S. — I can’t help but think that if Jesus were alive today, this is the kind of message that he’d try to send out. But I’d like to think that Jesus would follow it up with other challenging messages, and not mix it up with general teen-age angst and despondency like Shinedown’s “Save Me” and “Cyanide Sweet Tooth Suicide” and “45”. Although . . . who knows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I grew up listening to the radio. My father always had the car radio tuned to the standard New York metro top-20 stations such as WABC and WMCA. Eventually I got my own radio and my own car, and WNBC and WWDJ entered the mix (while WABC kept on playing the hits; it then seemed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2768"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2768"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2770,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2768\/revisions\/2770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}