The Sound of Metal and Me

I watched Sound of Metal last night, guessing I might see parts of myself in it. It had a number of interesting angles for me. First, the main character, Riz Ahmed as Ruben Stone, is the drummer in a loud, intense and thrashing band, and then of course the fact that he goes almost deaf literally overnight and then completely deaf when he has cochlear implants surgically inserted. I have profound hearing loss but I’m not deaf and it didn’t happen overnight.

Balance of Power on Vinyl – A Story

We are just over a week away from the close of a Kickstarter campaign to reissue Balance of Power on vinyl and other formats, and LOTS of bonus material. Whether we make the goal or not, I wanted to make this brief history of the bonus material available. Thanks for reading and your support!

The songs and recordings that are being offered as bonus material on the re-issue of Undercover’s Balance of Power album (if we make the goal) have shown up in various ways, in different formats and arrangements and even by different bands. What follows is a brief history of those recordings and how and where they ended up where they did, as best I can remember. I’m pretty sure we have never written or publicly talked about parts of this history, so here goes.

Farewell, Dave Gibson

Tattooing and the human race lost a giant today in Dave Gibson who died unexpectedly only 7 months after losing the love of his life, Debbie, his wife of 28 years. He had just returned from Catalina island where he was spreading Debbie’s ashes. His loss will be felt much wider than those he inked.

“Ojo Taylor Returns”: Interview #2 in Down The Line

One of the most widely-read posts on my little site is the first interview I did for Down The Line magazine in 2010 where I publicly discussed not being able to accept the tenets of any version of Christianity any longer.  In 2017 I was approached by Doug Peterson to do a follow-up interview, published in July, 2017.  Here is that interview. 

My Last Interview Before Coming Out

MySpace was still a thing in July, 2009 when I received a request for an online interview.  I was in a very strange and transitional place.  My Christian house of cards had suddenly fallen and I had just realized that I could no longer consider myself a believer in any meaningful sense although I still had questions; lots of questions. I had told nobody about my current thinking. 

My Mailbag: Come Away With Me

In which I am alleged to have pissed all over someone’s life-sustaining memories. 

When A Christian Punk Rocker Leaves Christianity with Ojo Taylor

A few weeks ago I had an interesting conversation with Steve Hackman for his podcast series, Beyond the Pale.  Steve identifies as a Christian, although certainly not your garden variety Evangelical, with open, inclusive, thoughtful questions.

The Via Dolorosa and Way of the Rose

I embedded a riddle into the song Way of the Rose, on the Undercover album Balance of Power (1990). To those who care, this is old news (it went around on Usenet here and here). But I do still get questions about it and recently two people have asked and since have solved it on their own. There are other aspects of the lyric folks have asked about too.

Huffington Post Interview – Extended and Unedited

The interview I did with Bert Montgomery earlier in the year ended up appearing in The Huffington Post, the Burnside Writers Collective, Faithlab, and on Bert’s own blog. He’s resourceful!  The version that appeared in all these publications was about half the length of the whole interview.  The unedited full version, done initially in two parts, appears below and includes a whole bunch of other important stuff on religion and faith, CCM, Undercover and even a bit on The Fugs!  Now what interview would be complete without that?

Ric Alba – Homosexuality, The Church and Christian Music

It’s been a busy week at the intersection of religion and our bedrooms – a very busy week. The Culture Wars are back it seems.  Washington State lawmakers passed a bill allowing same sex marriage.  Earlier in the week the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that California’s Proposition 8 which bans same sex marriage was unconstitutional, upholding a lower court’s ruling, and almost guaranteeing a trip to the Supreme Court. Rick Santorum, has made a platform of social conservatism and believes that the health of our economy and the very future of our country is threatened by the decline of marriage but rabidly opposes gay marriage and contraception. He won all three of the Missouri, Colorado and Minnesota caucuses.