Strange Sounds 18- Disarray — Realm of Tektonikus

In The Up There God, I referred to the Great State of Alabama, and indicated that the real problem for the Beatles in 1966 kicked off there. And no, not the Somnambulant Mistake, which nonetheless helped set the very important precedent of outright hostility on the part of the Rock music world in America, from retail record outlets to radio stations. As I noted previously, John Lennon’s comments, appearing in an otherwise boring interview intended as fannish reading for fannish fans, soon reached a much later audience. These comments would provoke reactions ranging from supportive, to outright moral indignation. I suspect for most Rock music fans, Lennon’s comments weren’t really of any notable interest. However, as is often the case, otherwise unimpressed people become self-appointed combatants when something they care about is attacked. Lennon’s comments were not simply off-the-cuff statements that happened in isolation. I noted in The Up There God, that Lennon, who had a reputation for being the more contemplative Mop Top, or Mop Head, depending on your view of the Beatles, had been influenced by Passover Plot, and I endeavored to trace some of the ideas encountered in that seminal work back as far as None-Other-Than-The-Enfant-Terrible himself.

No matter what one may think of him, he is often, quite rightly, given credit for a statement that all but the most hardened fascists and Religious Extremists would agree is a self-evident truth:

But no doubt Bahrdt would have shared the fate of the Most Noble of the Mop Heads had he opened his mouth in America in 1966. Wait, that’s wrong…Lennon didn’t make his statements that he in America. His interview took place in England, home to the most fascinating modern theological thinkers…Bishop John Robinson, who made his Lennon-like comments in 1963. He is the man from whom the insightful reference to the Up There God ultimately derives…

What was it that John Lennon? Ah, yes! I remember…

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I'll be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first – rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was alright, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.

Fortunately, John Lennon was English. That doesn’t make him better than anyone else, but it does simplify things by removing the language barrier. In the Exorcist, what Regan MacNeil could, or couldn’t, say in some language or other is a fascinating subject. It also provided the strange background to hearing spoken, or sung, English messages backwards. Still, all manner of languages did appear in the Exorcist…French, Greek, Latin, German…and I noted the phrase…sukete! That is Japanese for…help me! Karras found his ultimate salvation in suicide. I do not recommend finding your ultimate salvation in that manner. But as an aside, and an annoying digression, I will point out that another language appears in the Exorcist. And it is a language that no one, I dare say, has noticed, and one that no one, I dare say, would expect. On the subject of Father Karras, I was poking around in his head...well, in his dream, and like most, found his mother, assuming that the old woman was in fact his mother:

And yes, she spent much of her time whining and crying, though for good reason. She appears for a split second in her son’s dream, before the imagery shifts unexpectedly to the clock that Merrin also saw in his dream...or better…vision. How could both men dream about the same clock? Either they were both in the same place where this clock was to be found, and both would have had to see it as important enough to see it their respective dreams, or visions…or, conversely, both dreams/visions were actually only seen by one man. In the case of Karras, he sees the clock before he ever meets Chris MacNeil, let alone Regan “The Devil” MacNeil. If true, then Karras can not have seen that clock in Chris MacNeil’s home. I suppose one could say that some demon enabled both men to see the same clock. That would be stupid, since a common clock hardly seems to have any kind of Infernal Significance. But in a split second before we move from Mrs. Karras to the clock…

The eye catches only a flash, but my eye caught more! Interesting. And what about this other language?

Jag talar inte mycket Svenska…I don’t speak much Swedish.

I can’t speak any Swedish, except…jag talar inte mycket Svenska! At least now. Still, the search for more foreign languages in The Exorcist has become my favorite pastime.

But back to Alabama! In particular, Birmingham. John Lennon’s theological comments have now reached America’s attention!

Tommy Charles and Doug Layton of WAQY, broadcasting in the great state of Evangelical Purity. Perhaps the dorkiest looking Rock music DJs ever. They declared that they would no longer play the Beatles because of Lennon’s comments. That’s one thing…don’t play the Beatles if you don’t want to. No radio station is obligated to play anything they don’t want to play. If your listeners want to hear the Fab Four, they can just turn the radio dial, or put on a record. And like the Evangelicals met in other essays on this website, a simple boycott was not enough, as the above photograph clearly shows. The ban was followed all over the country, and here is a sampling of the stations who participated:

WSLB, Ogedenburg, New York
WAKY, Louisville, KY- 10 seconds of silent every hour replaces the Beatles
WCMI, Ashland
WKOA, Hopkinsville, KY
WONE- Dayton, Ohio
BWNO- Bryan, Ohio
KSWO- Lawton, Okalahoma
WSLB- Ogdesnburg, NY
WTRU- Muskegon, Michgan
WHWB- Rutland, Vermont
WSYB- Rutland Vermont
KMHT- Marshall
KMIL- Cameron
KBBB- Borger
KVLV- Cleveland
KNRO- Conroe
KETX- Livingston
KGNB- New Braunfels
KWFR and KTEO- San Angelo
WBBB- Burlington, NC
WIST- Charlotte
WYNA- Raleigh
KTEE- Idaho Falls
WAYS- Charlotte
KPCX- Salt Lake City

This headline ran in the El Paso Herald-Post on August 5, 1966:

If I were the Devil, and I was hanging out in Earling, Iowa I might just say, Hahahaha-Hahahaha!

Hey Pa! Do we have room for more self-righteous radio station guys?

No, that’s not right! It’s a Ban Wagon. How about this?

Get it…buggy for the Beatles? The fun never ends. And the El Paso Herald-Post also declared that there was an Anti-Beatles Movement. Jerry Ernest of KISS said:

Wait! That’s a typo…I meant station KIZZ:

Hey Jerry! If you don’t play that type of music, why are you even commenting in the first place? And how disappointed KIZZ must have been! If only they had played the Beatles…they would have been able to jump on the Ban Wagon! And Jack Chapman all but rues his station’s inability to go along:

Hey Jack! Don’t forget…all work and no Beatles makes Jack a dull boy! How about Dick Swift, manager at…and I love the call-letters…KROD, said this:

Hey, CRUD! Never, ever? Then stay out of it! And what about…

And then…

And:

More:

Indiana Jones provides the most dramatic version…and in color!

Let’s do it American style!

And:

Of course, the KKK claim to be Christian. So, it’s really quite astounding that they burn crosses. In Catholicism, the main symbol is the crucifix…a cross with the dying Christ nailed to it. For Protestants, the symbol is the empty cross…symbolic of the fact that Christ was resurrected, so he was no longer attached to an ancient Roman method of execution designed to maximize the amount of pain that the dying person experienced. I’m sure many of the Great and Good would find this disturbing…

Ok, Black Sabbath’s first album. This shot shows the cover and back cover, opened up to view the complete picture. Not so disturbing really. But inside:

Yes, an inverted cross. This is commonly represented as a Satanic symbol. However, if you take a regular cross, and invert it, you end up with…

The crucifixion of St. Peter. He felt too unworthy to be crucified in the way Christ was, so he requested that he be crucified upside down…on an upside cross. So if you start with a regular cross, a Christian symbol, and invert it, technically speaking, you have another Christian symbol. Still, all those weird heavy metal bands with their inverted crosses…now they look as ridiculous as they really are! So keep stomping around on stage wearing Christian symbols! You guys feel a little stupid, don’t you? As for the Black Sabbath artwork, drummer Bill Ward was asked about the use of the inverted cross. He stated that while the band approved the cover and back cover imagery, they did not know about the art work on the inside:

"The cover was something that was presented to us, and being our usual morbid selves, we were all instantaneously attracted to that. But the inside cover, none of us liked. We didn't like it at all because it had an inverted cross in it." He adds: "I think there were some wise guys who deliberately put that together as a ploy - as an advertising, promotional ploy, or who had seriously misgauged us as a band. There was no collaboration so I don't know who was responsible for it. I guess someone thought it would be a good idea and thought that was what we represented" (source: antimusic.com)

And why would he lie about this? He states categorically in the interview that the band really liked the cover and back cover artwork. So who is this woman?

Well...that's a tough one. Some sources claim that her name was Louise, and that she was hired to be on the cover. Tony Iommi, the guitarist, says that following a concert, the band walked backstage to find her standing there. That’s a cool story! But I know one that is even cooler! If that’s not a word, it is now. It has been said that when photographers took the picture of the mill for the album cover, when the picture was developed, this ghostly woman was mysteriously present! Louise the Ghost-Woman! A great Black Sabbath apocryphal story! Still, you can’t really blame Black Sabbath for the use of the inverted cross in the artwork of their first album. And whoever came up with it, and sorry Bill Ward, was acting on an incorrect interpretation of the symbol anyway. But even if a popular misconception of the symbol is assumed, and it certainly exists, can be anymore disturbing than…

Burning a wooden cross destroys it. I would think that burning the symbol of the resurrected Christ would be something that only heathen, pagan haters of Christ would do. And I’m sure I’m right. So I made the following image, intended to make an important point…

Sacrilegious? Blasphemous? Any more so than:

You decide. Mind you! I’m sure the president and his Republican minions would say…there’s some fine Americans in that shot! And he has documentary proof to support that claim:

Sorry...my bad. That is President Trump signing an important executive order. Still, good, decent Christian people dedicated to spreading the news that a Jewish carpenter died and rose from the dead to save all those who would believe in him. But let’s move past the KKK and go more main-stream:

And:

It could be a bit more frightening, I feel sure:

Dull and ordinary? A bit Freudian? Perhaps…a touch of Projection?

And for Evangelicals, they feel better about this if they get children to do it. Let me guess! Joseph and Mary burned books too! Well, perhaps in Alabama.

Ban the Beatles! And I’ll bet that none of these people did anything other than read a single quote from a larger interview. Sort of like tearing a verse from the Bible out of its larger context and hurling at someone. I’ll bet none of them attempted to understand where John Lennon was coming from…or what he meant. And here’s a good one…why weren’t these people burning copies of The Passover Plot? It seems disappointing that the Evangelicals who led a crusade against something they didn’t understand couldn’t have become full-fledged book-burning followers of…

Joseph Goebbels, who helped organize the destruction of all elements of German cultural that the Fuehrer didn’t like. And strangely enough, there were book-burners in America, the Home of the Free:

Yes…rounding up and burning comic books.

Fredric Wertham was the one who set-off the war against comic books. And he actually said:

I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry.

It would seem that no response to something like that is even necessary. And it is particularly disturbing given the fact that the world was still re-cooperating from the war fought to stop Hitler and the Nazis. In fact, death-toll estimates for the number of people who died in the war started by the Nazis range from 42 million to as many as 56 million. But comic books are worse! Why? Wertham argued that Superman was a secret fascist, Batman and Robin were gay, and Wonder Woman was a Lesbian…

Sure…Superman the Fascist. Please! He was invented by Jerry Siegler and Joe Shuster, both of whom were Jewish. And such nonsense about Batman and Robin!

That is an inference…not an implication! You have such a dirty mind! Still, I made an interesting collage of odd Batman and Robin scenes:

Oh. Hmmm. I do like the pink Batman outfit. I’m not sure I understand the sleeping arrangements. The shower scene and the almost nude sun-lamp scenes were rather ahead of their time. Batman’s teeth marks are still in the thong? What would become of poor Robin after Batman marries Batwoman? Surely there are no sexual innuendos with the Joker:

Why in the world would you laugh at the Joker’s boner?

I doubt that Wonder Woman was….

Of course. I don’t suppose men came up with Wonder Woman, did they? Hey! Why didn’t you make the S&M boots black?

That doesn’t necessarily mean anything!

Wonder Woman is a Lady’s Slave? Wait…aren’t those underage girls? Maybe Wonder Woman should run for a Senate seat in Alabama!

I’m gonna spank Wonder Woman’s bottom! Well, spanking is a common fantasy. But doing it in front of a crowd of little children seems a bit…controversial.