21. Just Let Me Hear Some of That …

… Rock and Roll Music!  I wasn’t always a monk, of course.  Before I joined the Order after college, I lived in a dorm like any other kid and played in a rock and roll band on weekends.  I played keyboard, but I wasn’t very good.  I was just a key banger, white keys preferred.  You might remember that in the 1950s and early 1960s before the Beatles popular music wasn’t very complicated. 

Top 40 songs were almost always I, IV, V for the fast songs and I, VI, IV, V for the slow tunes.  (In the key of C that would be C,F,G and C, Am, F, G7 respectively.)  C, Am, F, G7 eventually worked for a host of later folk songs.  In fact the chord progression has obsessed music heard at Mass since 1963.  I am still astonished the last Pope didn’t canonize Peter, Paul and Mary.  Thank God we stick to medieval music for our liturgy here at Our Lady’s.  Every time I go to a “Folk Mass” in town I know what I would do to the guitars If I Had A Hammer.  At the local church, the one we call Saint Barrel Ass because of its pastor, the middle aged men and women who make up "the band"  appear stuck in the folk tradition like that guy in the movie who wakes up every morning to the same day all over again.  There's a beautiful organ we brothers would sell our souls for that sits unused up in the choir loft where an anonymous choir in years gone by sang real music, without screen credits.  Today, I notice even the kazoo players get their names in the Bulletin.   On our last visit in June we were treated to “Lord of  The Dance” done up tempo by a group of kazoo playing six year olds who ran out of breath and began to wander back to their mothers.  I shouldn't be so picky, I suppose.  Everyone got a kick out them.

Playing a guitar or kazoo and singing at a Folk Mass is probably enjoyable, but without young women screaming when you huff out your low notes,  I can't imagine it's as much fun as belting out a song to a hall filled with beer drinking sorority girls.  It’s amazing how many young men sang “For Your Love” or "Over the Mountains"  in the era of my youth.  In fact, of the eleven of us here at Our Lady, four were in college rock bands.  When Agnes is away alienating people down in the village, the rest of us drop everything and work on our music.  You should hear the neat arrangements we do of Kokomo and Little Deuce Coupe.  Raiser does a great cover of  Rock and Roll Music and his voice sounds just like Chuck Berry!