Lately we have been listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin at work. Whenever the song "Houses of The Holy" comes on I am mentally transported back to a summer during my teenage years...
Somehow my friends Bryan and Jim convinced me that we should go to a Baptist church and hear a mid-week sermon on the evils of Rock-n-Roll. Although he claimed that our attendance would be for ironic purposes only, Bryan also had a lot of residual guilt from being brought up in the Assemblies of God church which lead him to suggest the idea.
Due to Bryan being older than Jim and me, having a driver's license and an old Chevy Vega at his disposal meant that his wishes were usually given priority.
We entered the un-airconditioned church and were met maybe fourteen other teenagers that had been cajoled into attending the event. I secretly questioned whether the A.C. had purposefully been turned off to mirror the Hellish fate that awaited us if we continued down the path of being Rock fans.
Many examples of the devils influence in pop music were presented in the lecture. A recording of Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust", was played backwards. If one really stretched their imagination, perhaps with the aid of a natural low-grade hallucinogen, they could hear the phrase "Smoke Marijuana" repeated over and over again.
Another example was the aforementioned "Houses of The Holy" which has the lyric...
Let the music be your master.
Will you heed the master's call
Oh... Satan and man.
Thankfully the songwriters did not force the minister to play the song backwards to get the "hidden" meaning. It is quite up front in it's Satan-icity.
It was never fully explained how hearing these words would make a teenager sell their soul to the Devil, but if you continued to listen to this music (outside of a Baptist church) then you would be on a path to damnation.
Twenty-some-odd years later I get the hugest kick over the fact that such an evil song is now acceptable in the modern workplace. Funny... unless it is part of Satan's master plan.
Somehow my friends Bryan and Jim convinced me that we should go to a Baptist church and hear a mid-week sermon on the evils of Rock-n-Roll. Although he claimed that our attendance would be for ironic purposes only, Bryan also had a lot of residual guilt from being brought up in the Assemblies of God church which lead him to suggest the idea.
Due to Bryan being older than Jim and me, having a driver's license and an old Chevy Vega at his disposal meant that his wishes were usually given priority.
We entered the un-airconditioned church and were met maybe fourteen other teenagers that had been cajoled into attending the event. I secretly questioned whether the A.C. had purposefully been turned off to mirror the Hellish fate that awaited us if we continued down the path of being Rock fans.
Many examples of the devils influence in pop music were presented in the lecture. A recording of Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust", was played backwards. If one really stretched their imagination, perhaps with the aid of a natural low-grade hallucinogen, they could hear the phrase "Smoke Marijuana" repeated over and over again.
Another example was the aforementioned "Houses of The Holy" which has the lyric...
Let the music be your master.
Will you heed the master's call
Oh... Satan and man.
Thankfully the songwriters did not force the minister to play the song backwards to get the "hidden" meaning. It is quite up front in it's Satan-icity.
It was never fully explained how hearing these words would make a teenager sell their soul to the Devil, but if you continued to listen to this music (outside of a Baptist church) then you would be on a path to damnation.
Twenty-some-odd years later I get the hugest kick over the fact that such an evil song is now acceptable in the modern workplace. Funny... unless it is part of Satan's master plan.
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