Advance press
An almost embarrassingly nice post from J. Edward Keyes' blog today about my book, which I guess must be available somehow already, which in turn makes me pretty nervous that I haven't gotten the Body Piercing Saved My Life website together yet. This, and the City Paper softball game, is looking like my weekend plans. You ready, Paul?
posted by Andrew Beaujon at 15:55
4 Comments:
Almost... almost...
Good work Andrew. I read the book yesterday, basically in one sitting. (Your publisher is sending advances out to us press types, btw.) More of us in the mainstream music game (and the mainstream music press) have a dark past in God rock than you may imagine these days. (Then again, thanks to your spot-on research, you're one of the few mainstream scribes—besides me and J. Edward—who know who Daniel Amos are, so maybe this doesn't surprise you.)
Funny thing is that even though I "escaped" CCM a number of years ago (mostly I edit at a mainstream publication you've heard of; my last big feature was on My Morning Jacket) I still run into old scenester folks at the oddest places. In 2005, for example, at the "Hacks & Flacks" dinner at SXSW, there was Van Pelt, beer in hand, holding court. And I'm thinking, "Hey! You belong to the alternate universe I left behind..." ;-)
I bought the book (based on Keyes' recommendation) at Barnes and Noble, off the shelf, so it appears your book's hit the consumer world.
Great work, having met several of the people featured, you really captured the balance between the theater of the absurd that the business can often be, and the (general, Ebel possibly excluded) desire to do what we, as Christians, think God wants us to do. Nearly any writing with the word "Christian" involved is bound to make me cringe, but, I really enjoyed the book from beginning to end.
Best of luck with it.
I picked up this book at my local library, also due to Keyes' recommendation, and just finished reading it. It's the most brilliant analysis I've ever read of Christian music and Christianity in general. Viewing what is so familiar to me through an agnostic's perspective really opened up my eyes to elements of the culture I would have never seen through my evangelical-based blinders. (For instance, your comparing a worship gathering to "a psychedelic classroom in which a lot of students had questions" is funny, yet also carries deeper implications that occurred to me the more I thought about it.)
Great work! I will be purchasing your book immediately so I can loan it to my friends and share with them what is, in many ways, a little piece of my past. Thank you so much for your dedication, integrity, and all-around guts in writing it.
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