Here is episode 3 guest Mike and I singing “If I stand” by Rich Mullins. This performance was filmed in 2019. Mike started playing drums with me and Daniel for M.Cotu in 1997. But this performance was the first time we sang together.

Like so many of our peers who grew up in the 80s and 90s, who followed any amount of Christian music, the artistry of Rich Mullins was a hugh influence. Mike had the privilge of seeing Rich live a number of times. Rich grew up in the same part of East Central Indiana where Mike did, as a Quaker Christian, same as Mike and his Dad, Pastor Bill, that we gave a shout out to in the episode.

In the episode, Mike and I reminisce about the campus radio show he co-hosted with Daniel in the fall of 1996. It was on low power WIWU 98.5 FM. “The Cheeto and Neutrino Boy Show” aired after dinner Friday nights. It was pretty mad cap. In Nov. of 96, my girlfriend’s summer camp friend, Shawn Stonesifer (see episode from Mar. 3 ‘23), and I, made an unannounced appearance to the studios – the guys put us on air. Little did we know then that the four of us would record two M.Cotu albums together.

Age 18, I had never been in a radio station before. I marveled at the racks of CDs at the hosts’s disposal. At that point in my life I owned only 4 CDs and a case of 24 cassettes. There were CDs in the studio that I had dubs or cassettes of but had never handled the CD. Mike saw me pouring over Daniel Amos’s “Bible Land.” So, toward the end of our visit he played “Constance of the Universe” from that rough and brooding record.

A lot of my rock n roll pedagogy owes quite a bit to two Taylors: Steve Taylor, I copied his spontaneous, high energy avant- grade stage presence. And Terry Scott Taylor (Daniel Amos/The Lost Dogs) for his ability to write poetic, Anglo-Catholic influenced songs with heart-land simplicity.

In the episode I mention my 17 year old self doing Steve Taylor like crazy dancing during the marching band playing our fight song after a touchdown. “Fight, Fight For Old Chicago” was the tune for South Bend Riley’s anthem. We heard it so many times throughout our years on Ewing street. “Wave the flag for dear old Riley, hold her colors high!” I tripped off the bleacher and turned the marching band into dominoes in August of 1995. (Below is my alma mater in recent years) “Let the blue and golden banners flaunt against the sky!”

From the lyrics to “God Only Knows” – written in 2014 & 15:

Harry wasn’t scary but he had a beard/ he was a Jesus Freak in the 70s

He had a title and a presence too/ played a Sheryl Crow song in his chapel talk

Everyone knows this happened/ nobody knows where he is

The whole lyric is a mixture of fact and fiction. The above instance was fact. I was there at a weekday morning student chapel service. The renamed character did play the Sheryl Crow song “If It Makes You Happy” through the PA while showing a montage of war, voilence, and combat on the video screen. The juxtaposition was a comment on the human condition, I think, saying through Ms. Crow’s ironic lyric “if (war) makes (us) happy, can it be bad?” (We can’t seem to stop ever.) Implying that war is bad and it doesn’t make us happy. But like the character being addressed in the song, we can’t help falling from heart break to heart break.

We need to be saved from this condition by God’s Grace. I don’t rememer the accopanying sermon, just the song and the footage together. It felt bold and inspired.

“The problem with the modern world is the modern world, and our salvation will come from another world.” – G.K. Chesterton