It’s hard, and possibly impossible, to pinpoint the beginning of the anti-rock music movement. Many people have, in some form or other, preached against the perceived evils represented by it. That said, a good attempt to nail down a possible starting point would be two, rather impressive works of…

…David A. Noebel. He authored the two works noted above. Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles is a short work published in 1965, with Rhythm, Riots and Revolution following later. Much of the former is included in the latter. Bob Larson’s first book…Rock & Roll: The Devil’s Diversion, followed in 1967. Both men were vehemently opposed to rock music, though for two different, very interesting reasons. Noebel’s book is certainly very much a product of his time. It reads as a long polemic against rock music due to, as he claims, the connection of the music with a communist plot to take control of America. He sees in modern music an effective weapon wielded by Red America. I will say that I found some very interesting words and phrases in Noebel’s work: menticide; nerve-jamming; Red records; diseased records; psychopolitians; Aura drug; Beatlism; protoplasmic upheaval; unholy bedlam; Red-inspired goons; sex wiggle; little discs of mental illness; mind-tampering; twisting and orgiastic jerks; drug-pushing disks; carnage pots, among others.

He was crusader against communism and the music that hypnotized young Americans, believing it to be designed to render them mentally unbalanced, and therefore unable to fight against a communist takeover. However, Noebel rails against more than the Beatles, he also attacks children’s music produced by the Children’s Record and Young People’s Records companies. For Noebel, this music was created by the communists to hypnotize and create a state of mental imbalance in children…

…The Little Puppet was used to control children, and Tom’s Hiccups mentally destroys them. All of this is based on the politics of who owned, managed and performed the music on these diseased disks. I would assert that all of that is irrelevant. He also attacked folk musicians such as Joan Baez, Woodie Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, etc. Now here he is on firmer ground. But we’re talking about protest music and wacky left-wing beliefs that no doubt fit Noebel’s position on the issue. But it is also irrelevant. And he acceptingly sites an interesting source that betrays the fact he isn’t just an Evangelical. No, he’s more fanatical than that…

The great strength of rock’n’roll lies in the music of the music, in particular, in the beat and in the immensely creative harmonies, counterpoints, and answer-back patterns of the sound. Because it is a sound which is basically sexual, un-Puritan, free in expression…

Un-puritan? He’s really advocating for a return to the Puritanical Nightmare? I would hazard a guess that there aren’t many Evangelicals who want to go that far. It is, in short, fanaticism to the nth degree.

Noebel’s work was seriously flawed in many ways. But I believe that one flaw in particular undermines the whole thing. Wisconsin saw fit to give the US a gift…

…Joseph McCarthy…a prime mover in the paranoia-approach to the psychosis that concluded that in post-war America communists had infiltrated the country. Yes, the Red Scare, identifying people in various pursuits as communists, and typically lacking any real evidence. The scare also focused on homosexuality, with the idea being that, because homosexuality was still very much in the closet, the Soviets could find out about someone’s sexual orientation and, via blackmail, turn such people into spies for the USSR. In the 1946 election, McCarthy trounced the Democratic candidate Howard McMurray by a vote of 62% to 38%. In 1952, McCarthy lost this huge majority, beating Thomas E. Fairchild with 54.2% of the vote. McCarthy, met with the Joe-Must-Go coalition, eventually retiring an alcoholic and morphine addict. And here we meet with yet another example of hypocrisy. He was urged to seek help to kick his morphine habit. He refused. It worked out in the end that Joe was actually being supplied with dope by an organization that was tasked with fighting the use of drugs…the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Yes, the taxpayers were funding McCarthy’s drug habit. The bureau that was supposedly fighting opium and heroin smuggling and the use of marijuana, was supplying Joe with Morphine. So it is very much the case that drug abuse is fine, as long as the authorities approve the political views of the abuser. However, there was a disconnect between McCarthy’s claims about his war record, and what really happened…

Joseph McCarthy falsely claimed participation in 32 aerial missions in order to qualify for a Distinguished Flying Cross and multiple awards of the Air Medal, which the Marine Corps chain-of-command decided to approve in 1952 because of his political influence.

Eventually, McCarthyism became, or so Eisenhower said…McCarthywas-ism. That said, a political committee with a fascist, or Stalinist, sounding name…The House Committee on Un-American Activities…continued on without Joe, leaving a nine-man panel of cultural fanatics focused on outing communists and homosexuals. This committee was not finally officially buried until 1975. Noebel refers frequently to the HUAC in a positive light, which is consistent with the terror he felt about communism and the conclusion in his book that communists were using hypnotic music…for children and for young adults…to instill a commitment to implementing a communist America, or at least, the inability to resist it.

The whole basis is simply a paranoid screed that aligns with two of the most embarrassing, and downright frightening, mistakes in American history. Anything that is built on McCarthywas-ism and/or the unacceptable activities of the HUAC has no credibility. And, one should point out, it wasn’t, and isn’t, a crime to be a communist, anymore than it wasn’t, and isn’t, a crime to be a member of the KKK. Yet the HUAC put off investigating the Klan until much later, preferring to spend its time crying about what Hollywood screenwriters believed politically…as if that ever mattered, and who got into whose bed…which is boring to the say the least.

The other worrisome element in the book is one, be it specific to the endeavour, perhaps not to the personage…

…an American newspaper called…Counterattack. The paramilitary connotations of the name may remind one of other, similarly named publications…

…Combat…the newsletter of the murderous Ulster Volunteer Force of Northern Ireland; Der Sturmer, or…The Attacker, a Nazi newspaper, Der Angriff…The Attack…another Nazi newspaper; and… Der Gegen-Angriff…The Counterattack… an anti-Nazi paper published in Hungary. But it must be acknowledged that in his book, Noebel notes several disagreements he had with this un-American newspaper.

Perhaps the most discrediting element of the book is the sheer and out-right racism. In Chapter VI, which Noebel calls…Folk Music and the Negro Revolution, it is claimed that We Shall Overcome is a communist slogan, and that those agitating for equal rights in the south were all…you guessed it…communists. He goes on to accuse…

…Martin Luther King and Martin Luther King Jr of being communists...

Out of the loins of this little Red School house issued forth a student and close friend of the school by the name of Martin Luther King. It was King who ultimately made the Red’s Revolutionary Folk Song national in scope.

Loins? What is this, the KJV? Martin Luther King Jr is described as…the perfect wolf in sheep’s clothing, and that the struggle for civil rights had as its goal, turning the southern states into a Negro-Soviet America. I found this quote to be particularly apt..

In the Cold War climate of the 1950s and 1960s, the threat of communism galvanized public attention. In 1953 Martin Luther King called communism “one of the most important issues of our day.” As King rose to prominence he frequently had to defend himself against allegations of being a Communist, though his view that “Communism and Christianity are fundamentally incompatible” did not change. Although sympathetic to communism’s core concern with social justice, King complained that with its “cold atheism wrapped in the garments of materialism, communism provides no place for God or Christ.”

Social justice? Equality of opportunity? Hardly communism.

America's revolutionaries fought under the banner of equality. Deeply rooted in the language of the new republic was the notion that all citizens owed equal service, and were in turn owed equal respect and influence.

Too bad many of them were slaveowners. Perhaps there are those in the U.S. who preferred…

…Old Jim Crow, who was dealt a serious blow by President Johnson when he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

It was King who announced his coming visit with President Johnson and upon being received was assured a “voter-rights bill” would soon be ready. It was – straight out of the Communist “Lincoln Project” drawn up in 1957.

And what about rock music? It’s African music; African Beat music; the goal is to inundate the American people with African music; a rock band consists of…three guitar players plunking three chords on amplified guitars plus an African beat drummer. The beat of rock music…what is the full truth?

The full truth is that it goes still deeper- the heart of Africa, where it was used to incite warriors to such a frenzy that by nightfall neighbors were cooked in carnage pots! The music is a designed reversion to savagery!

I found this one even more disturbing…

“Rock ‘n’ roll is turning kids into gay, Communist, miscegenators.”

Now I thought I knew a whole bunch of strange words, but I must now acknowledge that Noebel knows more than I do. So, I had to look up the word…miscegenators. And I found the definition…

…sexual relationships or reproduction between people of different ethnic groups, especially when one of them is white.

 And so we have the man condemning himself. I was puzzled, and took my Bible in hand, and sought ardently to find racism in the teachings of Christ and Saint Paul. I couldn’t find any trace of the word… miscegenator. I did do a little head scratching when the author of Galatians said…

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Now that was controversial then…to say the least. And how ignored it is now! If there is no Jew or Gentile, no slave nor free, no male or female, then there is no black nor white, unless you own a really old TV.

 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”  On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.  If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

Lunch-counter Christianity…that is where the Evangelicals of American culture would take us for dessert. You can pick the chocolate cake, or you can pick the white cake, though the apostle Paul would seem to suggest we order a piece of both... and Darla agrees. Personally, I find myself too busy trying to choose between the Angel Food Cake and the Devil’s Food Cake…in a spiritual sense. Now Darla loves cake…chocolate, white, Angel food, Devil’s food…it makes no difference to her. And in a vague, yet somewhat relevant way, Darla came to me and said she had heard a rock group that made some good songs. So it’s Darla vs. Noebel. Still, I was worried…like a good stepmother. Could this band be a negative influence? That troubled me, until I watched one of their videos…

Was I relieved! I thought she may have stumbled across some wholesome group…one that might have a positive influence on her and dent her appetite for Everything Cake.  Another video by this band includes shots that seem to be rather fitting to this whole discussion…

Who would have thought that a weird type of truth could be found on the back of a pair of custom jeans? And so much for being a prisoner to the pole, and stripping to the bone. And gimmicks aside, to be written off as stage-performance hard-rock that gets your concerts banned everywhere you go, and claiming to be …

…sexual vampires and sexual terrorists, who suck the energy of the audience, but give back and put bombs in people’s mind and make them think…

…probably didn’t help.

…nobody in the music industry takes women seriously. Really? You’re not helping.

But this only highlights that a certain group seems to have received an easier treatment…

The ground-zero modern view of Sappho’s sexuality highlights just how much white male dominance in American society lives in infamy. How many are desperately frightened that their daughters will follow the way of Sapho? Or move to the island of Lesbos? Not many, I think. Ah yes, I know…Sappho was married. But the issue is the same, although lesbians aren’t nearly as frightening since they are women. Really? Ah! But is that so? Actually, the misogyny of American culture is rooted in the preconscious terror men have of women. And that’s a big word! I wonder if Knoebel beat me to it. In his 1977 booklet titled…The Homosexual Revolution: End Time Abomination, the same old bible verses were trotted yet again to condemn homosexuality.  Not going into a complicated analysis, and I have discussed this before, I would take some of the rug out from under this subject by taking 1 Corinthians 6:9 away from the conversation. The passage refers to what is translated into the English word…effeminate. The Greek word is malakoi, not otherwise used of individuals. It means “soft” so here as…soft ones. The other word in the passage is arsenkotoi, which is not known prior to the appearance of 1 Corinthians. If the passage is speaking of homosexual relationships between an older man and a younger man, the word eromenos is the Greek word for the latter, whereas…erastes…was the word for the former. Why make up a word, or take an existing word used elsewhere, and use them here? The word translated…malakoi, could be taken as a reference to the Galli priests of Cybele. These priests, whom I have written about in other essays, practiced self-castration, but went further than this by wearing women’s clothes and make-up. This would have been described as effeminate. And it would have been an easy misunderstanding that the Galli were homosexuals…effeminate men making themselves into women, and thus the view of any sexual activity which they believed were practiced by the Galli is incorrect. Fear of the influence of the Galli came about during the second century…as part of Christianity’s first heresy. Montanus was an ex-galli priest who became a Christian. One day, he and two female prophets showed up in Phrygia, a territory in Asia minor. The theology they followed was condemned by the orthodoxy, though Montanism lasted for a long time. Montanus is believed to have been a key cause of the production of the New Testament canon. Corinth was very close to Athens, and the Athenians were noted for homosexual practices…such as the pairing of erastes and eromenoi.

The map also shows the proximity to Ephesus, and the cult of Artemis in this city involved the megabazoi…another group of eunuch priests. One may also reckon with the possibility that the original text of I Corinthians 6:9 had only the word…malakoi, which was later expanded with another cryptic word. In the NSRV version of the Bible, the phrase is translated…male prostitutes…and…men who engage in illicit sex. However, the two terms include footnotes stating…meaning of the Greek uncertain. Hey! Kudos to the NSRV for getting it right! How? I know, by honestly facing the fact that when it comes to this passage, no one really knows what it means. In the early church, there were priests who were castrating themselves. St. Basil of Ancyra in Asia Minor wrote in the 4th century about the enduring problem of castrated priests. He stated explicitly that these priests were imitating the galli. St. Augustine, writing in the 5th century wrote:

There are sacred rites of the mother of the gods, in which the beautiful youth Atys, loved by her, and castrated by her through a woman’s jealousy, is deplored by men who have suffered the like calamity, whom they call Galli. …

What good is to be thought of their sacred rites which are concealed in darkness, when those which are brought forth into the light are so detestable? And certainly they themselves have seen what they transact in secret through the agency of mutilated and effeminate men. Yet they have not been able to conceal those same men miserably and vile enervated and corrupted.

Let them persuade whom they can that they transact anything holy through such men, who, they cannot deny, are numbered, and live among their sacred things. We know not what they transact, but we know through whom they transact; for we know what things are transacted on the stage, where never, even in a chorus of harlots, hath one who is mutilated, or an effeminate, appeared.

And, nevertheless, even these things are acted by vile and infamous characters; for, indeed, they ought not to be acted by men of good character. What, then, are those sacred rites, for the performance of which holiness has chosen such men as not even the obscenity of the stage has admitted?

Wait! Did Augustine just use the word…effeminate…when referring to ex-Galli Christian priests? Shades of 1 Corinthians 6:9, where the NSRV was willing to challenge the idea that the writer was discussing homosexuality? It would seem that the influence of the galli was exerted for hundreds of years during the period of the early church. And one might posit that some of these troublesome, self-castrated priests were, like Montanus, ex-galli and therefore…ex-pagan priests. And in Greek mythology, the gynomorph was to be found…

…Dionysus, the god of drunken parties, was often portrayed as having substantial feminine charastics. But he doesn’t hold a candle to the Prettiest of All Pretty Boys…

…Ganymede who, at an age between 12 – 14, became Zeus’s boy-lover. There was no such thing as an age of consent in ancient Greece…as long as it was understood and consensual…with the twist being that, at least initially, Ganymede was raped.  But there was no drinking age either…

…Good Heavens! Surely he’s not 21! Public urination? You could do that too. It looks like the wine cast is urinating as well…be sure you get the right stream if you don’t want an unpleasant surprise. Of course, the imperial-age Romans brushed their teeth in urine, so I guess it doesn’t really matter.

Still, one thing that makes the Internet so cool is people who provide fan art, and Dionysus and Ganymede have generated plenty of that…

So much for Ganymede. How ‘bout Dionysus?

I include the image on the far right to show that the god did have a bad hair day once in a while, not to mention he somehow contracted one doozy of a skin condition.

Once upon a time, Hermes and Aphrodite were down to clown. And the result was a son, so beautiful that only Ganymede could give him a run for the money. His name was Hermaphroditus, bearing the names of his father and mother. A rather horny Naiad nymph named Salmacis attempted to sexually force herself on him, but was rebuffed…

…no means no! And keep your…

…hands to yourself! Yes, this is one of those rare instances when we meet a female sexual predator. She was so taken with him that she begged the gods to join herself and the young lad together permanently. And what did they do? They fused the two together and made a god out of the result that had both male and female sexual organs. Let that be a warning…never ask the Greek gods to do anything for you…you probably won’t like the outcome. And so…

…the result was an ancient she-male. And always proceed with caution. First you get…

…wow! But then you get…

…as the old saying goes…look both ways before you cross.

But one must also reckon with the fact that even if the words in 1 Corinthians 6:9 are rightly translated as homosexual, the passage reads…

Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.

The list of bad things does not give any one sin more significance than any other. The listing of these sins puts all on a par with each other. Oh, the inclusion of adulterers! How many men from right-wing Evangelical Protestantism have been caught in adultery! If they want to send homosexuals to hell, then they’ll be sitting right next to them.

It’s strange that people don’t play what I will call…The Biblical Numbers Game. Does homosexuality appear in the Ten Commandments? No, it doesn’t. Does the prohibition against adultery appear in the Ten Commandments? It most certainly does. So it is clear that adultery is a sin worse than homosexuality, should one consider it to be a sin. You know what interests someone because it’s what they talk most about. So if we have a few relevant Biblical passages potentially dealing with homosexuality, they are absolutely turned into nothing given the amount of pedantic, droning-on-and-on about how to build God’s temple, and all the accoutrements that went with it. It would appear that the correct way to make candlesnuffers was far more important to God than homosexuality, as were the lists of what animals you weren’t allowed to eat.

And what about the book…The Homosexual Revolution: End Time Abomination? Chapter 1 includes the quote from another pastor…

The ordination of an avowed lesbian as a Deacon in the church is a sign of a healthy change.

So we have a lesbian.

Noebel, as discussed earlier, is an expert in the use of vocabulary. And he gives us a strange lesson on this point…

Effeminate gay males are called Twinkies, sissies or queens, and fag and faggots are acceptable terms among homosexuals if no “straights” are present. Among lesbians, a butch, dyke or bull dyke is a mannish woman who seeks a femme- a passive, dependent partner.

Ok…so this is great. Why did he capitalize the word…Twinkies? Because he thought of this…

…and since Twinkies is a proper noun, you capitalize it. The problem here is that is far from certain that use of the word twink is in any way related to Hostess snack cakes. Darla told me that Twinkies are one of the Four Food Groups, so they must be nutritious. It seems far more likely that the word twink comes from a British word…twank. However, it is true that Twinkie is a name that begs…

…for not-so-subtle innuendos. And one could even note that…

…you could also have a Twinkle Twinkie. Good heavens! What would he say about…

…Ding Dongs…Darla’s favorite breakfast. Do Ding Dongs lead to trouble?

Ah, yes…true movie classics.

Leaving Twinkies and Ding Dongs aside, Noebel quotes Romans 1: 26-27, and oddly, having given us the classifications of lesbians, he thinks he needs to help us…

 Romans 1 has to be the New Testament paradigm on homosexuality. Paul, of course, condemns both male and female (lesbianism) homosexuality…

Yes, we know that homosexual women practice lesbianism, and to his chagrin, are promoted to the office of deacon in churches now. His expression…gays pack wallop…well, what can one say? I’m sure some of them do. So yet again, homosexual women are given a free pass, compared to their male snack food counterparts. Which is odd. I can’t speak for the statistics in 1977, but I can site statistics from 2013…1.8 percent of men self-identify as gay, whereas 1.5 percent of women identify as lesbian. So, there are essentially an equal number of gay women as there are gay men. But lesbians were the target of the non-Knoebel book…

Wee Hours Classic? Perhaps… Wee-wee classic. A urine fetish? One could play the Sexual Preference Number game. I hate math too, but this math is easy. If 1.8% of men identify as homosexual, then 98.2 percent do not identify as homosexual. If 1.5% of women identify as lesbian, then 98.5% of women do not identify as lesbian. So what’s all the fuss?

Of course, I would double-back a moment to miscegenatism. Although I found no such word in the New Testament, I did find a word in a more modern language. Meet…

…a guy you wouldn’t want to meet, much less to stand in front of. Yes, Judge Roland Freisler, perhaps Hitler’s most servile judge. He was a key figure in the almost complete take-over of the German legal system by the Nazis. He didn’t survive the war, but died a hero for the Nazi cause? No, he went looking for some files, only to have a column collapse on him, making him into a Nazi Pancake. Divine judgement, perhaps? He was big on executing juvenile delinquents, making Darla lucky to be born a couple generations later. He was also infamous for running the Volksgerichtshof, a court used by Hitler in an attempt to give his judicial murders some credibility. If you were summoned to the People’s Court, you might as well have been summoned to appear before Satan, the ultimate authority in the Nazi legal system. Guilty! Before sentencing you to death, you had to stand there and be insulted and berated. Now Roland had another passion, he wanted Hitler to strengthen the laws dealing with…Rassenschande. The term refers to the racial damage done to the Aryan race by sexual relations with Non-Aryans. There are no Aryans, and no non-Aryans…all are one in Christ. But it is strange to associate homosexuality with communism. One of the most powerful men who oversaw the carnage wrought upon the streets of Germany was…

…Ernest Roehm, one of Hitler’s closest friends until Hitler had him shot, was a self-disclosed homosexual, as was…

…Edmund Heines. An early Nazi, deputy to Roehm, and one of the most violent members of the SA, he was also known as openly homosexual. At least Heines looked Teutonic, the super race, whereas most of the Nazi leadership looked nothing like it. The Gauleiter of Danzig-West Prussia…

…Albert Forster (left) once commented about Heinrich Himmler (right) in a rather insulting way…

If I looked like Himmler, I would not talk about race!

If one were so inclined, one could point to…

…Hermann Goering, who doesn’t look like the Teutunic Warriors in Hitler Youth propaganda. He was a grossly overweight drug-addict and molester of women, who was too lazy to do any work, instead spent his time stealing artwork for his hunting lodge. To quote Johannes Steel in his book…Hitler as Frankenstein…

So the leaders of a Movement which claims to have a monopoly of all that is desirable in ethics, morals and high-thinking, are in the overwhelming majority nothing but a collection of madmen, drug fiends, crooks and murderers.

Both Roehm and Heines were executed during the Night of the Long Knives. Hitler had been ambivalent on the role of homosexuals in the Sturmabteilung, he was far more concerned with political purity. He was finally goaded into eliminating such men, and then shutting down the SA in favour of the SS. There were persistent rumours that Hitler had also been gay. In a somewhat humerous side-note, an elderly German woman brazenly called Hitler an…arschficker. So a connection between Nazism and homosexuals is more apt than connecting them with communism. And based on the context, I would certainly avoid the word… miscegenatism. We could add the fact that the Soviets did not approve of rock n’ roll…it was a capitalist, degenerate form of music that threatened the communist purity of Soviet youth. So the Americans say that rock music encourages communism, whereas the communists said that it undermines communism. Talk about having it both ways.

Noebel also makes a mistake that all his successors would make…using the term…our youth...our teenagers. Whose youth? Whose teenagers? The previous generation owns the youth? Perhaps it would be better to say…their youth...their teenagers…themselves. The inability to view the next generation as something other than property their parents own will ultimately see the anti-rock movement go down in flames. If the youth are to forsake the things that so frighten the previous generation, what would they have in place of these things? Presumably, a life identical to the lives previous generations led…a life dictated and assigned to them…a mindless reincarnation of the past…running of the same outdated software on the latest computers. This ownership-of-the-youth delusion would extend to the absurd position that for many they shouldn’t have to compete for the youth; they shouldn’t have to present something different, or modern, to young people. Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar sought to bridge the gap between the new and the old, and promptly came under attack for attempting to do just that. And to make this even more mind-boggling, Noebel and other critics attacked Christian rock. The man himself wrote a work called…Christian Rock: A Stratagem of Mephistopheles.

 “The church is beset with a relentless beat which weighs on the nerves and pounds in the head. And the syncopation evokes a most basic sensuous response from the body, since it is purposely aimed at the physical and sensual.”

“Squeezing in a few ‘thank you, Jesus’ or ‘Hallelujah, it’s done’ in rock music does not cleanse rock of its evils. Indeed, the lyrics were not its main sin for some time. The beat of the music was its evil.”

This reference to a syncopated beat as representing the objectionable sexual activity of young people is also a strong element in the views of Bob Larson.

Mephistopheles is a name that many have heard, but very few know anything about. He was part of the legends around…

…Johann Georg Faust, a semi-legendary German wandering alchemist and magician. In the legend, Faust makes a deal with the devil, and a fuzzy demonic character was created to act as the devil’s agent. Not only was Mephistopheles not Satan, his primary function was to collect the souls of those who had condemned themselves. Mephistopheles was a totally fictional character for the Faust legend, and it is puzzling that he could be summoned to star in a condemnation of Christian rock music.

You can’t win a game unless you compete. Self-entitled religious narcissism seems to believe that you don’t have to win the hearts and minds of the young; that only attacking youth culture was sufficient to bring young people back into the dismissal past. Modern youth culture won out, at least in part, because it had no competition. There are those who like to throw Bible verses around that, although they mean something to themselves, mean nothing to their children. Two Bible thumpers face off against each other, using Bible verses to win out over the other. That’s fine, but only because the agreed upon context holds that those Bible verses are valid. For a young person who really couldn’t care less about Bible verses, nothing with any validity is present. So an appeal along these lines isn’t worth the time. What should the youth want? That which is to be found in the sermons of men who think like Noebel, of course…a one-way journey back to a past that has nothing realistically competitive to offer. What is not understood is that their arguments are compelling only if one accepts the worldview from which they come…the Great Dualism which, wrongly, creates a universe where a Good God and his forces fight a Bad Satan and his forces, although, apparently, neither seem to be able to defeat the other. Suppose someone, young or otherwise, does not accept the existence of this Dualism…suppose someone states that there is no Satan… where there is no Satan, there is no Great Dualism. This must result in two radically different views of life between the Dualist, and the non-Dualist. Religiously, the gulf between the two is vast. So if a young person doesn’t believe in a literary character who seems to be most active in lousy horror movies, all the preaching and machinegun-like firing of Bible verses means nothing. This is reflected in Noebel’s book…things are Christian, or Unchristian. Note how a Catholic calls upon the intercession of St. Barbara, and the Protestant calls this idolatry. Yet, in the view of many Catholics, or, I should note, if Catholics even care about it, Protestants have rebelled against the Mother Church that goes back to the time of Christ’s apostles, considerably older than counting back in time and stopping at Martin Luther. Is the Catholic faith Christian? If it is, and Protestantism is Christian as well, one will find an unbridgeable chasm between the two.

 Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others because you pay no attention to who they are.  Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?”

But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius,  and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is God’s.”

 When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

So what does this mean?…is the reference here to the fact that Caesar, a name being used here as a general term for the Roman Imperial Government, is something used merely as an historical context for the world in which Christ lived? No, Caesar represents all governments...throughout time. What it means is something that Evangelical Protestants are unable, despite decades of trying and failing to do so, to differentiate one from the other…a distinctly fleshly, worldly sinful civilian politics, and the higher things of God. You can’t give God and Caesar the same thing…you have to choose. And since Caesar’s face is on the coin, then it’s his…so go give it to him. Communism is a political thing, and not all communists are atheists…not by a long shot. Did Christianity die in the Soviet Union? No, it didn’t. It’s easy to read through a list of communists, select the ones who are atheists and say…See! Communists are atheists. Modern Evangelicalism has unfortunately decided that Caesar is far more important than God. Prior to the advent of Clinical Fundamentalism that reared its superstitious head during the years 1910-1915, the earlier incarnation of Protestants who could be described as fundamentalists, kept Caesar a good arm’s length a way…politics and what went with it was distrusted. Bringing communism into the equation creates an equally vast chasm between proponents of either side.

And here we have the side-effect of the Great Dualism…something is either Christian or Unchristian…right? Wrong. There is a large space between the two which can be described as…non-Christian…denoting something that doesn’t fit in either of the two main categories. Much of daily life is essentially Non-Christian, i.e. having no real religious significance. Rock music can be Christian, and it can be Unchristian, but most of it is Non-Christian. Much of rock music doesn’t really say anything meaningful…

Ask no questions, hear no lies
There's no smoke, without a fire
Fortune always favors the bold
First deserve, then desire
All the glitters is not gold

Desperate diseases, desperate cures
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth
All things will pass,
After us the deluge
We shall not last
The die is cast

Christian? Unchristian? Neither…non-Christian, and it is really a somewhat boring stringing-together of a bunch of annoying cliches. But it’s a cool song. What most of rock music’s critics simply can’t comprehend is that rock bands are hedonistic, they are far more interested in women, drugs, drinking, parties etc. I would suggest that most rock bands don’t care about religion or politics, certainly by the time that Counterculture rock music gave way to a far more worldly genre of the music…

Nobody gonna take my car
I'm gonna race it to the ground
Nobody gonna beat my car
It's gonna break the speed of sound
Ooh, it's a killing machine
It's got everything
Like a driving power
Big fat tires and everything.

So cars are far more important than politics. Given the fact that it’s 1972, I’m betting that he’s singing about a 1970 Pontiac GTO Judge with a 400 horsepower V8 engine. But I could be wrong.

Lyrics were idealistic in the 60s, but that gave way to a more sensual pursuit of having a good time. The evangelical right sees only two possibilities, and one must be one or the other…you serve God, or you serve the Devil. They can’t understand that you can serve neither, nor do they seem to understand that you can’t serve Caesar and God at the same time.

There is also a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the human mind works. As far as right-wing Evangelicals are concerned, a young person’s mind is a tape recorder…whatever the person hears gets recorded, and playing the tape back, you will hear what the tape recorded. And that is nonsense. Many young people don’t really care about the things so dear to Noebel…they don’t care about the politics or religious views of the makers of the rock music they like. Why do I care whether Bob Dylan was a socialist, communist, or something else? I don’t. He made good music…and that’s cool; politics is boring…communism in particular.  Perhaps Caesar would beg to differ. If Bob Dylan was a…whatever, and because I listen to his music, I will become a whatever…that’s nothing more than the mind-is-a-tape-recorder nonsense referenced earlier. Perhaps this is the reason that hypnotism, essentially a parlor trick, is discussed throughout the book.

  Hell's Bells, Satan's comin' to you,
Hell's Bells, He's ringing them now,
Hell's Bells, the temperature's high,
Hell's Bells, across the sky,
Hell's Bells, they're takin' you down,
Hell's Bells, they're draggin' you around,
Hell's Bells, gonna split the night,
Hell's Bells, there's no way to fight

I’ve listened to this song a couple hundred times. Am I a Satanist? No…Satan doesn’t exist…and when I was young, no one I knew ever thought twice about Satan, but it is one of AC/DC’s best songs. The mind is not a tape recorder, and you can’t hypnotize someone and then stick a bunch of “whatever” in their brain. In the same way, you could torture me by forcing me to listen to choir music over-and-over again, but that will not cause me to believe what the lyrics in the songs say. This is as true for politics as it is for religion. To Noebel’s chagrin, I like the music of the Counterculture Revolution, and I’m inclined to agree that any number of the artists were probably communistic in their views. And yet, I abhor communism. But I also abhor fascism, puritanism, neo-Nazism…and other -isms that don’t come to mind at the moment. What I abhor most is…hypocrisy.

And, oh, how these things repeat themselves. I was somewhat thrilled to see Noebel attack Jazz, or, a term I’ve never heard before…Hot Jazz. Jazz is fascinating because it was a key element in the rise of the flappers…young women of the 1920s who rebelled against the boring pantaloons of their mothers. Short skirts, new hairstyles, Jazz, make-up, drinking, smoking in public, actually driving automobiles all by themselves, and flouting sexual norms. Were flappers communists? Did they tear down America and create a Bolshevik Flapper Regime? No, but they did change things, and had a lot of fun doing it. Would we condemn their grandmothers for such revolutionary rebellion? Such writers’ mothers had considerably more freedom than their grandmothers because the flappers dared to challenge societal norms. Without the flappers, June Cleaver wouldn’t have been allowed to drive Ward’s Plymouth Fury…figuratively speaking.

Noebel fathered a tendency that all his successors would embrace with open arms…a refusal to find out what is really intended by a writer or songwriter…nay…an almost self-congratulatory refusal, to learn the truth. He creates demons, he looks for them, he needs them so much that he creates them. This type of American Protestantism needs fear, something to fear, and if you can’t find a reason to fear, you go and make one up…a do-it-yourself demon…

Cool. And of course, if you believe that humans began walking upright in order to see jaguars in the trees waiting to bushwack them, you could need the fear so much that you trap a bunch of jaguars and stick them in the trees…see! Jaguars!

Commenting on the opening of chapter 4 of John Lennon’s book…A Spaniard in the Works, Noebel states…

John Lennon, the religious spokesman for the Beatles, in his latest published work, A Spaniard in the Works, seemingly settles once and for all the question of the Beatles’ attitude toward the Savior of the World. In a sleazy account of not-so-subtle secondary meanings, Jesus El Pifco as a garlic eating, stinking, little yellow greasy fascist bastard catholic Spaniard.

 He then proceeds to make hair-brained statements that elements of the story don’t mean what Lennon said they mean. Noebel finds a complex code of blasphemous things that, having created them in his own mind, then attacks Lennon for what are simply figments of his own imagination…

Writing in double and triple meanings, Lennon plays on such words as “thirsty year ago” means “thirty years ago”; “Laird” meaning “Lord”; can ye Heffer forgive me Jesus” meaning “can you forgive me Jesus”; “her eldest sod” meaning “her eldest son”; “some bad Jews” meaning “some bad news” and other expressions like “stable” “mother” “Catholic” “bastard” “Spanish” and “foreigner” which would forcefully indicate that Lennon’s Jesus El Pifico is none other than our Lord Jesus Christ.

Yes, read that over several times as you scratch your head. This was simply all made up; he needed a demon, he made a demon, and then he found the demon that he made…look how unchristian John Lennon was!

Look at all the communists! Look at all the atheists! Look at all the blasphemers! The book is very John Lennon, and creative in a way that only John Lennon could be. His world looks very different than the real world…which is something many of us need in order to face the world that some people have created. An escape? Absolutely! The driving forces that appear in us when we are young need an outlet…it can be negative, it can be disastrous, or it can be positive. Repression is the worst option…and trying to turn back time is guaranteed to result in disaster. Those driving forces enable us to see things differently, to enjoy a different place if only for a little while…but maybe that’s all we need. One might say that catharsis is what keeps us sane. Life is so much more fascinating when you can look into someone else’s world.

The anti-rock movement would consistently make no effort to find out what songwriters mean in their lyrics, and substitute lyrical demons for the truth. And while middle-aged Evangelical parents have had a tendency to eat that up, people who actually listen to the music find these machinations rather cringeworthy. Ultimately, this stems from an ignorance that so many of them joyfully wallow in. The description of Lennon’s Jesus El Pifco is perfectly consistent with the view of the Spanish held by many western Europeans at the time. Just watch the show Fawlty Towers, and notice the character of Manuel. There are too many butters on those trays…oh, no, Senor…it isn’t…on those trays, it’s…uno dos tres. I’ve never heard any one call Jesus a fascist. However, I have heard countless people call Francisco Franco, an almost comical name, a fascist. And since he ruled Spain until 1975, Franco was a greasy fascist Spanish bastard in 1966 when Noebel was writing, and one can combine that with the fact that Nazi Germany and Mussolini intervened in the Spanish Civil War to back Franco. The idea that there was a “secret code” underlying song lyrics is simply wrong. John Lennon wrote I am the Walrus with absolutely non-sensical lyrics to mock those who seek a secret code that isn’t there. But, to this day, people are still looking for the code in I am the Walrus. So no meaning? Ok, but it’s still one of the Beatles’ best songs. Was Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds about LSD? I’m not sure about that, but I am sure that I don’t care.

Nobel provides a fascinating list of things that modern youth music has caused:

Delinquency
Young, unwed mothers
School dropouts
Teenage death by automobile accidents
Burglaries
Store break-ins
Vandalism
Venereal disease
Prescriptions of tranquilizers
Possible banning of all musical instruction in schools
Paganism
Topless bathing suits
Riots at summer resorts
Illegitimate births
Suicide
Animal emotions
Degeneration
Havoc
Reverting to savagery
Teenage mental breakdown
Destroying society from within
Folkniks
Beatleniks
Destruction of ruggedness

Topless bathing suits? I hear the American way of life crumbling into pieces. Noebel also has difficulty with direction, a tendency followed by his successors. Rock music caused young people to behave wildly…males and females, and we’ve all seen clips of the over-the-top behavior of young women at Beatle concerts. But, the history of young women’s overly enthusiastic response to singers didn’t appear with the Beatles. Of course, it happened with Elvis. Beatlism concerts…

Oh, wait. This isn’t the Beatles…these are fans reacting to Old Blues Eyes, the Chairman of the Board…Frank Sinatra, who has been described as America’s first teen idol. The Bobby-soxers screamed, cried, and swooned at the presence of the guy Who Did It His Way.  The media at the time described a mass sexual delirium, a squealing ecstasy, that saw young women behaving in ways that they hadn’t before. Put simply, the crowd reactions to Elvis and the Beatles were simply an extension of the crowd reactions to Sinatra. And Beatle’s fan’s behavior lead to problems with the police? Indeed. But in October 1944, 30,000-35,000 young women, caught up in a pre-Beatles mass sexual delirium, squealing with ecstasy, descended on Paramount Theater because Sinatra was there. The situation got so out-of-control, it required the police to intervene in what is called the Columbus Day Riot. I read an interesting description of female Sinatra fans…

 In theaters with a capacity for 3,000 to 3,500 fans, sometimes as few as 250 would leave at the show’s end. Some were known to sit through dozens of performances to the point of becoming faint, remaining in their seats for six or eight hours without food and refusing to leave until forcibly removed by attendants.

Police intervention would be required to restore order at many of Sinatra’s performances during the period 1942-1943. So to follow the incorrect directionality, Sinatra made young women behave the way they did. I’ll bet a lot of parents thought so…and they were wrong. What was really happening, the thought of which horrified Christian America, is that young women felt, perhaps for the first time, free enough to throw off the strict constraints of their impulses so well-known to their mothers and grandmothers. It was a form of liberation when women expressed the intensity of what they were feeling. And yes, it was sexual. But how do you get around the clear parallel between the Beatles and Frank Sinatra? To refer to it in passing, of course…

That’s just great. Squealing over Sinatra is harmless, squealing over the Beatles is not. Convenient…hypocrisy always is. But this all leaves out something much more to the point. True, he hasn’t been associated with Communism or Fascism, but many believe that he was associated with the Mafia. So which is worse? The FBI tracked Communists? Yes, but they also tracked Sinatra…

Sinatra’s FBI file reads like a guide to the era’s organized crime figures. Though Sinatra always denied he was connected to the mob, he did interact with famous Mafia figures like Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, with whom he was close friends. 

The mixing of religion and sex goes further back. The great…

…religious revivals of the 19th century resulted in a burned-over district in Western New York. The revival events were so emotionally intense that unforeseen things could arise…

The founder of the Oneida Community, John Humphrey Noyes, believed that this interest in the so-called free-love question had been spawned in the religious revivalism of his own “burned-over district” of New York State. “Religious love is a very near neighbor to sexual love,” he wrote, “and they always get mixed in the intimacies and social excitements of Revivals.

These revivals were the rock concerts of their day, and it would seem that some people experienced a rush of energy that would lead to sexual behavior that seemed to contradict what the moral teachings…the metaphorical song lyrics…seemed to be saying.

…our presses are forever teeming with books and our women with illegitimate children…

So said Timothy Culter about the Great Awakening. The Rev. Francis Ward…

…redeemed sinners enfolded in the arms of redeeming love, would sink down and swoon away into an ecstasy of bliss. … Now shrieks and groans of terror and distress issue from hearts pierced with the arrows of the Lord. 

Revivalist Groupies? Christianity and sex can meet in a fascinating way…

…the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. I’ll see your Saint Teresa, and raise you a…

…Saint Catherine of Siena. She married Jesus, and he loved his wife so much, that he gave her a wedding ring made from his own foreskin…

A common representation of this may give one reason to pause…

…Catherine married a baby. And weirdness followed Catherine to the grave, and then back out of it…

So Catherine married Christ, and thereby the Virgin Mary became her mother-in-law. The authors of the Gospel of John did something similar…

They concocted a story that made John the son of the Virgin Mary and brother of Jesus. And why can Jesus marry Catherine, but he can’t marry Mary Magdalene?

A fragment of a papyrus text has Jesus, addressing his disciples, say…

Jesus said to them, 'my wife...

His wife isn’t named. But it’s a forgery…right? All things that get in the way always are. It seems odd that you would create a forgery like this without dropping a name into the text…Mary Magdalene. However, the wider context would seem to do this…

 [...] not [to] me. My mother gave me life [...] The disciples said to Jesus, [...] deny. Mary is (not?) worthy of it. [...] Jesus said to them, "My wife [...] she is able to be my disciple [...] Let wicked people swell up [...] As for me, I am with her in order to [...] an image [...]

All the brackets indicate lacunae…gaps in the text. A forger should have done a better job. And Mary Magdalene was a problem as early as the writing of the gospels, which denounce her and generally try to get her out of the way, such as Luke who describes her as someone who had seven demons cast from her. When the…

…Talpiot tomb was discovered in 1980 in the Old City in East Jerusalem, it was found to contain ten ossuaries, including…

Jesus, son of Joseph (left) and Judah son of Jesus (right). There were others…

…Mary. And one of particular interest is…

…James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus. And, of course…

…Mary Mariamne, who many believe to be Mary Magdalene. So, many commentators have come to regard this as the Jesus Family Crypt. And how easy and simple it is, complete with a pretty bow tied on the top of it…

All in one place! It’s rather interesting, at any rate. The Christians known as the Cathars also believed that Jesus and Mary Magdalen were married, and that the Cathar’s ancestor had met Jesus and Mary as a married couple. Some believe that Catharism was not imported into Roman Catholic France as a heresy, but rather the views of the Cathars preceded the importation of Roman Catholicism. The date of the arrival of Catharism is dated to 414 and 507 AD, and has its origins in the Arian beliefs of the Visigoths. After the arrival of Roman Catholicism, the Cathars were brutally attacked, victims being burned alive on huge pyres.

This stone marks the…Field of the Burned” were 225 Cathars were burned alive in 1244. Christianity has a terrible record when it comes to unmitigated violence. The Cathars were also accused of the Osculum Infame…the act of kissing the anus of a cat, a charge so good, it would be levelled at the Templars, and then medieval witches.

And what of the convenient family crypt? It seems clear that is an invention constructed from various ossuaries found…wherever. I suppose early Christians could have created this in a sort of bizarre reliquary shrine. Probably not. When is Mary Magdalene called Mariamne? I know of no such equation. And the inscription on the ossuary of James may be suspect, although there is a different explanation. Perhaps the ossuary for James is genuinely that of Saint James, brother of Jesus. Then someone created the family tomb around it. But there is an even more interesting possibility. James’s ossuary is genuine, and an empty ossuary was created for Jesus as brother of James, i.e. there were no remains of Jesus to put in it. This would be a totally different answer to the overwhelming question…not…was Jesus married to Mariamne and had a son name Judah? But rather…how could Jesus be resurrected from the dead and his tomb be empty if there were remains? Could it be that this was concocted to undermine the key tenant of Christianity…the Resurrection from the Dead? I suppose this could be, but as I noted, other less innocuous possibilities are present. I can see no reason why the gospels would suppress the existence of Jesus being married. It would have no bearing whatsoever on Jesus being the Son of God. It doesn’t undermine anything…a married Son of God is no different than Jesus the Bachelor. I suppose it’s possible that Jesus had been married while living in Nazareth, but his wife died before he began his ministry. It’s not in the gospels because Peter either did not know about it, or knew about it and didn’t consider it important. It is certain that James the Greater was actual brother of Jesus. Was James ever married? How many young women died young at a time of human history when so many women died in childbirth? The Cathars aside, the question of Jesus being married or not is not relevant to anything. But marriage suggests sexual behavior. For Catholics, this was a real problem, one that had to be resolved…

Joseph and the infant Christ. Of course, Joseph is an old man. And that is in keeping with the chronology offered in the History of Joseph the Carpenter, according to which Joseph was approximately 90 years old when Jesus was born. This is all very convenient, and since 90 year old men don’t father children, it follows that Mary and Joseph never had sexual relations. Problem solved.

In the end, the connection between religious revivals and sexual fervor included…

…screaming, crying, shouting, shaking, dancing, fainting, and wallowing on the ground…

Does that sound familiar? The female fans of Sinatra, Elvis, and the Beatles simply reflected what was already seen in the religious rivals hundreds of years prior.

Directionality? It’s not from Sinatra to the fans, or from Elvis to the fans, or the Beatles to the fans…and not even the fanatical followers of Jesus El Pifco to his adoring fans. The fans are ready to release their inhibitions and allow their excitement to take hold…Sinatra, Elvis, the Beatles provide the context in which this can happen. It is driven by the crowd and fans themselves, not whoever the performers may be at the time. Noebel made a similar statement that lumped the Beatles in with some baddies…

 Dr. William Sargant had the following to say concerning the Beatles, Adolf Hitler, ancient Greek orators, the Beatles and African witch doctors all practiced a similar type of brainwashing.

Sargant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band? The list is strange, to be sure. The reference to ancient Greek orators is puzzling. I’ve never heard anyone make this claim. I always thought that they were great speakers. But, apparently, they were just Hellenic, Nazi witchdoctors.

It is well-known that Adolf Hitler was a rock star who could put on one hell of a show with masses of excited fans, particularly women…

We must forget the American fan who rushed the stage to kiss her favorite rock star…

But, as the Great Rivals taught us, women show more enthusiasm than…

…the men. And Indiana Jones even got…

…the Fuehrer’s autograph.

And music factored here as well. Hitler, a fanatical fan of Wagner and his operas, saw in this music a way to excite others. Sex appeal? Did the Fuhrer have wanna-be groupies?

"Sweetest love, favorite of my heart, my one and only, my dearest, my truest and hottest beloved," one of the letters begins. "I could kiss you a thousand times and still not be satisfied. My love for you is endless, so tender, so hot and so complete."

Thousands of love letters like this were found in the Reich chancelry at the end of the war..

"I am making you keys to my front door and my room," wrote one woman. "We have to be very careful. So come early, ring my landlady's bell and ask if I'm at home. If everything works out, my parents (they could be your in-laws) say you can come any time, so we can spend the night together at my parents' house!"

And one source states…

Hitler received more fan letters than Mick Jagger, Madonna and the Beatles combined.

What about Sinatra, the one who sent women’s sexual urges squealing and paved the way for the way women would react to Elvis and the Beatles?

So did Hitler cause Germany to embrace National Socialism? Did Hitler turn the hearts of the everyday Germans to a totalitarian regime?

It would turn out to be the last somewhat “free,” multi-party German election held across all of Germany until December 2nd, 1990, after German reunification.

However, it’s also important to note that while the Nazis won the most seats in 1933, they did not win a majority of them or the popular vote.

As much as Hitler wanted to be seen as a democratically elected leader, and he did well in Reichstag elections, he never obtained a majority. One might say that Hitler was a product of Germany; Nazi Germany was not a product of Hitler. Yes, this is a controversial position to take, seeing how the German people attempt to write Hitler off as the one responsible for the whole thing. Hitler’s government was preceded by the post-WW1…Weimar Republic. The latter was known for many things, but one can say that it represented chaos and anarchy…form a moral standpoint, and particularly from a political standpoint. Prior to Hitler’s take over, the political situation had so deteriorated that there were constant Reichstag elections since none of the political parties could achieve a workable majority. Germans were fed up with this anarchy, and many would support a politician who would end the electoral stalemate, stand up to France and Britain, and restore Germany as a superpower. Hitler was the only real answer to this problem. The German people had created the context for a dictatorship, and Hitler simply stepped in. Hitler did not make Nazi Germany…proto-Nazi Germany made Hitler. As concerns witch doctors, I don’t think a comment is necessary. Greek orators…talk about reactionary idealization! In Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles, Noebel accepts the position that Plato, in The Republic, saw certain types of music as destructive. The Republic? In this book Plato describes the ideal society as fascist and communistic. It features eugenic breeding of the Guardian class. People are not allowed to raise their own children, nor have any familial contact with them. It is the state who raises the children of the Guardian class.

Some of the breastfeeding is taken over by wet-nurses and all other labor of child rearing is carried out by governesses and nurses. All of these measures are taken to ensure that the children have a sense of collective community and equality. Although the nurses and governesses serve the role of caregivers to the children, the children are to hold the belief that all the Guardians are to be considered their mothers and fathers, whom they are aspiring to emulate.

In The Republic, parents are prohibited from raising their own children and even residing in the same vicinity as their children in order to preserve equality and avoid personal possession.

Many people, who haven’t read the book, speak highly about it without realizing that it is a pre-Mussolini and pre-National Socialist nightmare. And I found it interesting that Noebel quoted…

 Khruschev, former leader of the Soviet Union…

You can see why when Khrushchev says, ‘We’re going to bury you, we won’t need to go to war…we’re going to have you in seven or eight years.

 In 1965, Khrushchev was a deposed and disgraced politician whose dangerous and reckless actions and pronouncements almost caused WW3, and Khruschev’s only real claim to lead the Soviet Union was the fact that he managed to survive Stalin’s perennial purges. In 1966, Khruschev had been ousted by Leonid Brezhnev and his cronies…

Brezhnev led a palace coup against Khrushchev because of his erratic behavior in US-Soviet relations (Khrushchev's shoe incident), his embarrassing handling of international communist relations with Cuba and China, and his failed domestic policies.

Sock it to ‘im! As we all know, Brezhnev implemented a policy of détente with the United States, and he knew well that there would be no communist take-over of the U.S. Khruschev was sent into political exile to spend the rest of his life living with his semi-babushka, and suffering from depression.  Khruschev was unable to control his temper, giving the world an endlessly entertaining scenario of him banging his shoe on the table during a meeting of the U.N. Apocryphal? Perhaps, but it was certainly the kind of thing he would do. The fact that Khruschev was repudiated, he becomes more and more irrelevant. Given the reality of Circus Clown Khrushchev, a quote from Brezhnev may have been more fitting. Was there a communist political party in the U.S.? Of course. There have always been kooky parties on the fringe of American politics. If American communists are brought into the McCarthyistic light, it is worth noting that prior to America’s entry into WW2, there was strong support for Adolf Hitler. Significant? No. And the U.S. American communists? Irrelevant. American Nazis? Irrelevant. Neither ever had enough support to be other than fringe movements in American politics. Knoebel lost the battle against rock music from the perspective of his paranoid fear of Communism and the Soviet Union. In The Legacy of John Lennon: Charming or Harming a Generation? (1982), Noebel makes only a relatively few references to communism, and several of these are in the context of the Vietnam war, a war that many believe America should never have been involved in from the beginning. U.S. involvement in Vietnam followed the disaster of French military involvement in Vietnam, which ended with France’s complete loss at Dien Bien Phu. The U.S. funded the French in this war, and a very important point was strangely forgotten…lots of money and military intervention by a western nation could not stop the insurgents in Vietnam. Looking at that situation, and then the sheer corruption of the South Vietnamese government, it often gives one pause to think. Where is Jane Fonda! Has George McGovern arrived yet? Fleeting references to Marx, Lenin, and Engels, and too many creative people flounder. How many people know who Engels was?

And so he continued his baffling and petty one-sided feud with John Lennon.  I don’t believe that John Lennon gave this a second thought. But you can’t keep a good Evangelical Crusader down! And he is not above acting somewhat like a child. He narrowed down his attack against John Lennon…

Time magazine report that the Sgt. Pepper’s album was “drenched in drugs” and Hunter Davies acknowledged in the The Beatles that the one album which “showed many traces of their interest in drugs was the Sgt. Pepper’s album. Time further stated that the Beat-les flirtation with drugs and their drop-out attitude expressed in songs like “A Day in the Life”, removed from the BBC because of its drug implications, disturbs and worries fans.

Of course, many of us are familiar with the album cover…

It has always been great fun to name the various people on the album cover. If you were just a little bit childish…

David A Noebel harkening back to the old days, when the non-existent possibility of deranged young Beatles fans would turn the U.S. in the U.S.S.R, indeed, was apparently a threat. He went on to say that it was this album in particular that increased drug use among the youth.

It is worth noting that the Soviet Union no longer exists, and hasn’t for quite some time. Currently there are believed to be around 5,000 members of the Communist Party of the U.S. The last time a communist ran in a presidential election was 1984. Compare this to another fringe party, one which many people would be surprised to know still exits…the Prohibition Party, yes…the one from 1919 when alcoholic drinks were criminalized under the 18th amendment. That ended with the 21st Amendment to the Constitution in 1933. So Prohibition is only something for the history books. They have, however, run a political candidate for every presidential election; Michael Wood of California will be running in 2024. The Communists gave up…the Temperance People did not. So why the Communist party, which has nothing to do with rock music in general, and John Lennon in particular, is still a threat today is beyond me.

It is true that the BBC banned the song, “A Day in the Life”, and the Beatles have gone on record, no pun intended, stating the song is about drugs. But the BBC? Who cares? The BBC charges you to watch TV, and all in all, has a bad record, so to speak. How many American youths, or adults for that matter, even knew what the BBC did? How many youths even knew what the BBC was? How many know now? The BBC couldn’t be more irrelevant to youth culture in America. How many American youths would able to answer…do you know the name of the monarch of Great Britain? Even the few who might be able to answer question, would undoubtedly say…who cares?

He shifts his denigration from his defeated angle of Communism, and jumps onboard the juggernaut created by Bob Larson and a myriad of echo-machines. He seems to pat himself on the back for discovering what is already a light no longer hidden under a bushel. When it comes to lyrics and album art…it’s all right there in the open. To this end he lists a bewildering number of rock performers, many of whom I had to look up, and a bewildering number of songs I’ve never heard. I wonder what book he got his list from. And he goes on to mention Bob Larson of all people, make silly claims about backward masking, and the perfunctory reference to Stairway to Heaven, which he proceeds to interpret for us, as if he ever had a chance at getting that right, which he clearly didn’t. To understand the meaning of Stairway to Heaven, one might prefer to obtain the meaning intended by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. People like Noebel and Larson have no frame of reference to accurately interpret the song. They do, however, have a full-proof frame of reference for throwing mud at it. There are long diatribes about sexual practices and beliefs he can’t, in a prudish way, leave to the choice of people other than himself.

 If you think this analysis too prudish, consider Ann Lander’s opinion.

 Ann Landers? Ah, yes…we know American youths were avid readers of her column.

Noebel is right about a very important thing. What’s that? He sees two different world views…that of the youth, and that of a right-wing, sex adverse, overly paranoid view from the Protestant right. They have always claimed that they are the victims of the modern American culture, when in reality, they are the main protagonists. They fundamentally misunderstand young people who are not locked into their Puritan World. And, how many people are out there writing books against the likes of Noebel and Larson? Intellectuals? Who cares? Rock musicians live in a hedonistic sub-culture…who cares? The youth don’t care about the people on the right, those advocating a return to the world of puritanism; they don’t feel threatened by them. So bang away…and none of them care. Their worldview is also based on a patently false premise. They frequently speak of…our youth. An idea generated in their minds is that the youth belong to the right, and without an enemy out there enticing them away, they would all be good girls and boys. It is for this reason that the Protestant Evangelicals rail at the world of the modern youth, but offer nothing in its place. Why should they? Without Rock music, they would all be ensconced in the same world as that of the Preachers of Doom, and will do as they are told. The detractors don’t compete. And I’m unclear on what books like this are supposed to accomplish. Who goes to the seminars, the presentations in church settings, and who reads these books? The youth? None, perhaps, except for the kumbaya-ers who are already locked behind the door of Evangelical Protestantism. One must conclude that they are aimed at the tongue-clucking and head nodding of those sitting in the choir. Now I would say that what I think they are doing is trying to pull the adults, the parents, into a war they know they can’t win. If you’re already clashing with your rebellious sons and daughters about other things, just walk into their rooms and take away their records…then see what happens. Evangelical Protestants are hoping that you will do their dirty for them...get the confused parents to take back “their youth” instead of competing for them. That is, in the end, what is happening. But what if you did get involved? The situation finally became even more silly than it already was. Marijuana is of course a plant, and one that has been connected with the so-called destruction of our youth via rock music. Ok. But let’s get really weird…

One unusual standard of musical competence and taste might well turn out to be the family plant. Acid rock was played to petunias, and the results were predictable…what the acid rock did to the petunias shouldn’t happen to our teenagers.

 Noebel is referring to a study of plant response to music written by…

…Dorothy Retallack who, in 1973, wrote…The Sound of Music and Plants. And we can tell, just by looking at her, that she knew all about rock music…a real groovy lady. Let Noebel explain…

For nearly two years now, Mrs. Dorothy Retallack of Denver has been killing off assorted potted plants by making them listen to rock music. In her series of experiments, Mrs. Retallack discovered that just three hours of acid rock a day shrivels young squash plants and flattens philodendron and crumbles corn in less than a month.

That’s a bummer, though I might say that I like my corn boiled, not crumbled. Rock music is destroying the plant kingdom!

Mrs. Retallack wonders: if the sound of rock does that to plants, what is it doing to our human teenagers? Could the discordant sounds we hear these days, questions Mrs. Retallack, be the reason humanity is growing neurotic?

I wasn’t aware there were unhuman teenagers…maybe, Philodendron Teenagers. However, we are not plants, we are mammals, but apparently, rock music is wreaking havoc in both kingdoms.

Her study showed that two Cherokee bean plants, one dying from acid rock sound, the other tilting from atonal music. It might as well have read…Two teenage beanies, one dying from acid rock sound, the other tilting away from atonal music.

There are our teenage plants again…Cherokee teenage beanies to be precise. And it would seem that the first stage is an attempt to escape by tilting away, but, finding themselves unable to make an escape, these poor plants died.

Under another cut line under a healthy group of plants reads…Bach Organ music was soothing to these plants.

What…she didn’t play church music? A biology teacher named Francis F. Broman …

…makes it clear that the undertaking was scientific. Says Broman…I should point out that Dorothy worked under strict scientific controls from the first, and we did everything possible to insure accurate, unbiased results.

Does anyone else hear an attempt to head off criticism before others will accuse the Dynamic Due of pseudo-science and nonsense? And Mrs. Retallack made some of her plants listen to a rock music radio station, whereas lucky plants listened to a classical music station. Within in a month…you know where this is going…the plants rooted in their pots, found themselves unable to escape a rock music radio station, and were all dead. Hey! I know…maybe it was the commercials that killed them. If true, it is American Capitalism that is to blame…I’m sure Khrushchev and Brezhnev would agree. And do we have a Plant Serial Killer on our hands?

Mrs. Retallack summarized…if rock music has an adverse effect on plants, is the rock music listened to so long and so often by the younger generation partly responsible for their erratic, chaotic behavior?

Again, not only are we a different species, teenagers, apart from Cherokee Beanies, are in a totally different kingdom. Noebel also makes much of Pavlov’s conditioning of dogs, though I was unaware that we are canines. But Retallack found a way to murder more plants…

In a three-week experiment Mrs. Retallack played the recordings of Led Zeppelin and the Vanilla Fudge to a group of beans, squash, corn, morning glory, and coleus. To another group with the same plants she played contemporary avant-garde music and to a third group she played nothing (as a control).

Vanilla Fudge? Darla prefers Chocolate Fudge. And yes, Led Zeppelin. By this time, Stairway to Heaven had been turned into Satan’s Greatest Weapon against humanity, though Rettalack’s ideas would seem to indicate that it was Satan’s Greatest Weapon wielded against plants. And for Rettalack to cite Led Zeppelin is really rather ironic, seeing how the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven were written by singer Robert Plant. What was the result? Noebel made the odd comment that the youth…sorry, I meant…his youth, should turn themselves to…

…the real Lord and Savior of the Universe- Jesus Christ.

So did Noebel believe that there are people and rock music on other planets? Or was the Milky Way in need of spiritual redemption? Still, the idea that rock music had a broad reach across different species is one that has endured. Darla told me about a really cool experiment that concluded…

 It shouldn't come as a surprise that great white sharks like heavy metal. But when Matt Waller, a charter boat operator in South Australia's Port Lincoln, played "Back in Black" and "You Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC underwater, he says the sharks become less aggressive. Some even rub their snouts against the caged speakers, which is adorable in a terrifying way.

AC/DC? They probably kill plants, but turn great white sharks into cooing, adorable little babies. But not all mammals respond to AC/DC like great white sharks do. Speaking about the looming presence of AC/DC…

Their songs have been used to sell cars, rally Olympic Teams and even soundtrack superheros. Now, AC/DC’s music is being used for something new: animal control.

Officials at Yellowstone National Park in Montana have utilized the group’s classic track “Hells Bells” to scare bison off the area’s highway.

“When deputies respond to a bison on the road, they turn on lights and sirens and encourage the animal to leave the road with an air horn,” reads a message posted to Facebook by the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office. “With a reluctant bison, they’ve been known to play AC/DC’s 'Hell’s Bells' over the speakers – that usually seems to work.”

So what would happen to the sharks if you played Hells Bells? What would happen to the bison if you played You Shook Me All Night? What would happen if you played Stairway to Heaven? I don’t think we could handle Satanic Bison. Still, I suppose unfortunate plants tortured by Mrs. Retallack would meet their fate regardless of what song you played. But AC/DC is guilty of a terrible crime against…

…Ladybugs. Annabelle is a budding entomologist and she once told me, if there are Ladybugs, there must be Boy Bugs, or there’d be no Baby Bugs. But a study was done whereby rock music was played to plants infested with aphids, and it turned out that rock music affected the aphid’s greatest enemy…

The results don't show why rock music had such a marked effect, but Barton suspects it’s the genre's heavy bass. The vibrations from the bass could elicit an anti-predator response, Barton said, or disrupt a predator's ability to detect aphids. The ladybugs may be too unstable to move around the plant to feast on the pest.

"Insects don't have ears, so they can't be hearing it like you and I. All sound is just vibration," he said. "But if you've been to a concert, you can feel that bass."

Rock music with heavy bass rhythm? Who knew. And I suppose that unfortunate situation for Ladybugs, but the very fortunate situation for aphids, should be blamed on…

…Cliff Williams, bass player for AC/DC. The point? Don’t take your plants or pet Ladybugs to the next AC/DC concert. But it seems very strange that of all the hard rock bands out there, it was AC/DC who is responsible for ravaging the planet. And I’ve never understood the fear this band has generated. They make great music, and yes…it can be puerile. However, the band does not seem adverse to making fun of themselves…

…Guitarist Angus Young, a gift that keeps on giving, has spent his career playing live wearing a British boarding schoolboy’s outfit. So don’t take them so seriously, unless you’re a plant or a shark or a Ladybug. Angus the pacifier-of-sharks brings another guitar player to mind…

…Yes, Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick. What a dork! The silly hat, little bow tie and tacky sweaters. In their heyday, Cheap Trick was a main player in the rock music industry. Still, I’ve never seen a kid dressed like Angus or Rick. How about even geekier…

Oh, wait that’s not geeky. The vocalist and bass player pose on cool motorcycles. Flip it over…

…some kid bikes. The drummer went by the name Bun E. Carlos...yes…Bunny Carlos, wearing his signature business shirt with an undone tie.

How about that old reprobate…Alice Cooper? Did he have a sense of humor?

I'm six foot three with a fist like a hammer,
And I work with the Vice Squad when I can.
And when I pull out my badge they forget all my glamor;
Little guys all surprised, take a seat,
Peek at me, it's a bust, I'm a man.

I'm the prettiest cop on the block,
I set your souls on fire.
Yes, I'm the prettiest cop on the block,
I'm cool and I'm so mean.

I must look pretty shocking,
In my bullet proof vest,
With my black lace stockings,
All this hair on my chest.

And it is hard to believe that the Hairiest Cop on the Block, black-lace stockings and all, could be too evil when he performed with his favorite friends…

…the Muppets.

Some of my fellow feminists took issue with a prop that AC/DC was using at their concerts…

…a balloon named…Whole Lotta Rosie. Yes, rock music is dominated by males, and is testosterone driven. So there will be a whole lotta Whole Lotta Rosies out there. A whole lotta Rosy Palms? But this is clearly meant as humor. Perhaps feminists should take offense at a group of gals I mentioned earlier…

…those sexual vampires, sexual terrorists…the overtly lesbian-pagan-polyamorous-witchcraft-coven-dwelling Rockbitch, who took the sexualization, exploitation, denigration, and degradation of women to unparalleled heights, going where the guys wouldn’t go. Oh, they were also feminists, and they had a good drummer. But Whole Lotta Rosie, as is clear from the pictures shown above, sometimes sits astride a train with the band’s logo on it. Train? There are different types of trains…such as Crazy Trains. And here we meet Ozzy Osbourne, another source of universal devastation. However, he spent his career…

 …poking fun at himself. And he made it clear to his fans that he is a singer and a showman, and shouldn’t be seen as anything else…

Everyone goes through changes,
Looking to find the truth,
Don't look at me for answers;
Don't ask me, I don't know.

You gotta believe in someone,
Asking me who is right.
Asking me who to follow,
Don't ask me, I don't know.

Nobody ever told me, I found out for myself,
You gotta believe in foolish miracles.
It's not how you play the game, it's if you win or lose;
You can choose,
Don't confuse,
Win or lose,
It's up to you.

I don’t think it could be made any clearer than that. And yes, if the game is life, you should find a way to win…it’s just that Ozzy doesn’t have the answers for you. And it doesn’t hurt to not take yourself too seriously.  And for all the controversies, rightly or wrongly, swirling around Ozzy’s lyrics, he could be positive too…

And the weather's looking fine,
And I think the sun will shine again.
And I feel I've cleared my mind,
All the past is left behind again.

I say goodbye to romance,
Goodbye to friends,
Goodbye to all the past,
I guess that we'll meet, we'll meet in the end.

That is from his best song which, to everyone’s chagrin, isn’t Crazy Train. There are a few people I look forward to meeting again one day…and Ozzy says I will.

As I touched on earlier, Knoebel wrote another book, which, along with the title, was very odd indeed… Christian Rock - A Stratagem of Mephistopheles. It certainly is a cool title, and does cause one to ask the question…who was Mephistopheles. A common answer might be…a name for the Devil, to be added to the generally dopey list of other names for the Literary Character Satan. Without an annoying digression, though it would be interesting, I would, for the moment, refer loosely to comments made in previous essays. Satan appears in the Old Testament in only two contexts…the introduction to the Book of Job, and the courtroom scene involving the High Priest Joshua in the book of Zechariah. In both contexts, Satan is not a name, the correct term is…The Satan, which can be translated many ways, but clearly in Zechariah, it is used as the prosecutor, whereas the Angel of the Lord is the defense attorney. In Job, it is noted that Job loves God because He protects Job from the tragic elements of human existence and basically gives him what he wants. A bet ensues. God gives Job over to Satan. But what really happens? Job suddenly finds himself face the negative things everybody has to face and be the moving force behind, does not make The Satan an evil character. If Satan is truly what Christianity says he is, it seems strange than in 10,000 years of biblical revelation, he would only come up twice. Christianity created Satan from The Satan, because the new religion was to be dominate by belief in a Universal Dualism, meaning that there had to be an evil offset to a righteous God. Christianity has, from its beginning, torn itself apart from the inside and devolved into a war between…true believers and…apostates. Which is which depends on to what group you claim to belong. So there is internal dualism to Christianity that mirrors the idea of a God vs. Satan…a Cosmic War that we never heard anything about until the gospel of Mark appeared. We also know the names of boring demonic characters and weird beings that were notably found in the Books of Enoch. But who is Mephistopheles? Is he Satan? Those who watched the film Angel Heart, in which Robert De Niro played Louis Cyphre, later revealed to be Lucifer, who tells Johnny Favorite that he uses the name Lucifer because…Mephistopheles is such a mouthful in Manhattan. But it is not uncommon to encounter the opinion that Mephistopheles is another name for Satan. A similar situation appears with the Christmas demon Krampus, who is typically depicted with the elements usually used of Satan. Is he even a demon? He’s neither. Like Satan, he is a literary figure that appears in the legends surrounding the fictional character of Johann Georg Faust, an itinerant magician, alchemist astrologer…etc. He practiced the Old Ways antithetical to Christianity.

Faust makes a pact with Satan. When summoning him…

…Faust gets Mephistopheles instead…

Bottom panel, second from the right…alchemy is at the forefront, with Faust successfully making a homunculus in a homunculus-jar. Far right…not only does Mephistopheles look like a goof, the artist threw a picture of Baphomet in for good measure. Ha-ha. In art and film, Mephistopheles became a much loved figure…

The war against rock music lasted for decades, and where others got off, others got on. The most memorable crusaders were Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). But that is a topic for Part 2. And what of Terminal Lucidity? Benjamin Rush, Karl Friedrich Burdach, and Johannes Friedreich attempted to explain the inexplicable. But waking from the fog long enough to tell the ones we love that all they’ll have to do is catch up, makes it easier to move on. The death that follows becomes simply an act of starting life all over again.