So long, "Old Ladies Reading the Bible"
Saturday, May 1st, 2010 will be my last performance of "Old Ladies Reading the Bible." We're retiring it from the setlist. I know we're just another unknown Bay Area rock band, so maybe it's pretty silly for me to write a whole long piece about this, but it's of personal significance, so I ask that you indulge me.
So first I'm going to explain how the idea to retire the song came about: There it was, the end of rehearsal one night last year, and we were starting to make a setlist for an upcoming gig. Current drummer Ben Adrian chimed in right away, which is kind of unusual, as he usually tends to just go along with the flow. "I really think we should end with something besides 'Old Ladies,'" he said. "You've been closing with that song at all your shows for years." (Ben came to a fair number of Collisionville gigs before he joined the band.) He was right. It had become so automatic that I hadn't even thought about it in ages. In fact, I didn't even really know what else to do, but we drew up a setlist that had "Old Ladies" 2nd-to-last, and put down "Rock n' Roll Tornado" as the closer.
Predictably enough, at that gig I totally blew out my voice on "Old Ladies" and could hardly make a sound during "Tornado." I have a recording that I won't share. It's ridiculous. We haven't played "Old Ladies" since then.
So yeah, the simplest reason we're retiring it is just because we've done it so many times, and it's just not a good idea to be that predictable. There are some other reasons that I'm going to go on about at great length in a minute here, but let me next point out that these are NOT reasons for retiring it:
- Because Obama won the election and Democrats control Congress
- Because the Religious Right is losing the culture war, so the song isn't relevant anymore, or will soon cease to be relevant
- Because it's just a silly joke and everybody's heard it now
And now I want to give you a short history of the song, and then I'll move on to an explanation of what it means to me and what it's meant to a few other people.
I actually wrote the song in 1994. Or the first draft of it, anyway. Obviously the Contract With America would have been weighing on my thoughts at the time. But the moment of inspiration came from flipping around the television dial one afternoon. "Dances With Wolves" was on, and I happened to tune in right as Kevin Costner was about to engage in sexual intercourse with the Native American heroine. There was a closeup of her naked hip, and you could clearly discern the shape of her naked butt.
I was aghast.
"Holy fucking christ, they're having sex!" I shouted. "They're naked. What if a little kid sees that?!!?"
Seeing that this problem required a solution, I started thinking to myself, "What would constitute completely harmless entertainment for television? Something that would stand no chance whatsoever of corrupting a single susceptible mind?"
Over the next 10 years, I recorded quite a few 4-track demos of the song, and two different versions in East Bay recording studios, and played it live with several different band lineups. In the days before CD burners and before the internet became the cheif means of booking shows, I submitted cassette demos of it to a few different clubs that enthusiastically called me to book right away. I had friends going on to me about how much they loved it (my friend Paul in Denver told me after first hearing it he would do stuff around the house like sit down with the Denver Post and call out "Paul Moore, READING THE PAPER"). One of our first Bay Area shows was with a funk-rock band called Zonk, who asked us to open for them at about a half dozen subsequent shows, and their guitar player linked to us on their website with the comment "'Old Ladies Reading the Bible' is the best song anyone is playing in San Francisco right now."
And so on, culminating in 2008 with this piece of actual national media publicity:
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/06/mp3-collisionvi.html
What I'm trying to say is, ever since I first started playing the song, there have been a number of people who have responded very strongly in a positive way, and no, not all of them have been friends or family, people predisposed to having a positive opinion. That Wired blogger, Eliot Van Buskirk, did turn out to be a friend of a friend -- but he didn't know that when he wrote that piece.
So maybe you can see why I thought I was onto something with this song, and why I stayed with it for so long. I really did think that I had a miniature "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on my hands. And by that I just mean, an instantly recognizable song that was going to win people over, something I'd be known for by some people. No, I didn't think I was going to sell 10 million copies. But I thought I might have some kind of underground college radio hit on my hands.
It wasn't only for mercenary reasons, though. As much as I wanted to be known for it, I also really wanted people to hear it and have their day changed by it. I wanted the statement to get out there. And for all the times we played it, most often (but not always) getting a big response, I'm still not sure how many people ever really heard everything I was saying with it, and this has as much to do with anything as to why it's being retired. This Owl Mag reviewer, still the person other than me to write at the greatest length about it, definitely made me feel heard:
http://www.theowlmag.com/album-reviews/cd-review-hotter-heads-prevail-by-collisionville/
The part about "Perhaps we all share this human quirk in some way or another," that's important. Really, if the song were nothing but a silly joke, I wouldn't think it needed to be played more than once or twice. But it isn't only about me making fun of people whose ideas I despise. Listen, I get pretty worked up doing this song at a gig. And I always used to introduce it with something that was intended to jar people. Like at the Starry Plough in the summer of 2004, when I said, right before launching into it, that we were there that night to do what we could to deliver the city of Berkeley to George W. Bush in the upcoming election. And not in a jokey, wink-wink kind of way. The effect I was always going for was intended to leave at least some part of your mind wondering, "He doesn't really mean it, does he?"
Well, no, I never really meant it. But I did mean it.
The reason I thought liberal or left-leaning people populating rock shows in urban metropolises ought to be listening to the song wasn't because I was looking for solidarity with like-minded people. It wasn't because I thought it would be fun if we all laughed together, "Oh how ridiculous and outrageous these TV preachers are!" Really it was more about making a point of how strong the conviction is of someone like Pat Robertson, and how unshakable his worldview is. It's a perfect system of thought he has, really. Sure, it's full of lies and contradictions. But there are things in that system of thought that completely put to rest any doubts that lies and contradictions bring up. Everything is figured out, everything has an explanation. It's the most well-organized and well-funded political movement in the country. For those of us who disagree with Pat Robertson et al, the question is, "What do you have to battle against that conviction?" That's why I would start getting into character while introducing the song. It's not a joke for all of us to share. It's supposed to rattle your cage. And yes, I know it's funny, too. That's part of how it's supposed to work, to get under your skin.
Here now in 2010, a friend asked if the song was being retired because Obama had won the election. Well, let me tell you something. People have been telling me for over ten years now that someday I would have to stop playing the song because the Christian Right would die out and it wouldn't be relevant anymore. Like for instance, back in early 2000, my friend Brian Keizer, an author/screenwriter/music critic/etc. wrote a piece about me in which he said "I've thrilled to the deadpan overload of 'Old Ladies Reading the Bible,' a song that will only date when there is no religious right to fly the flag every four years and scare the mass into realizing how few votes away from Roe vs. Wade's overturning we are."
Now, Brian is a lot smarter than I am (and I couldn't resist using the phrase "deadpan overload" in the press release for this show), but I didn't think it was in danger of becoming irrelevant then, and I don't think so now either. I could start pointing out specific examples, like the Texas School Board's recent textbook folly, but really more than anything, it's just that everywhere I look I keep seeing an absolutist mentality taking a hold of people everywhere, and the world's not getting any cleaner or simpler, so why do you think stuff like this is going to vanish? Not to toot my own horn too much, but I think this song is going to keep being relevant for years to come.
Ah, so why aren't we going to keep playing it?
Well, look. There are a lot of reasons, including what I mentioned earlier about having no answer to Ben's challenge with regards to predictability. I also said something earlier about thinking, at one time, that I maybe had a college radio hit on my hands. Okay, I was kind of lying about that. I really thought that this was a song we should be playing on Saturday Night Live, or David Letterman. I wanted the whole country to hear this song. And from the way certain people have responded to it over the years, I thought there might be a million people in this country who'd want it in their collection. But it hasn't worked out like that. I don't know what it is, but I have so many people speak of the song so enthusiastically to me; and yet, trying to promote it here in the Bay Area for the last 12 years, I've run into some very hard walls. Elliot Van BusKirk, KALX DJ Marshall Stax, and a few bookers aside, it seems like everytime I hand it over to someone who's in a gatekeeper-type position to help shine a little more light on it, to expose it to a larger audience, I get nothing. The alternative weeklies around here won't respond to me no matter what I do. There are hip radio programs for which the song would be perfect -- they won't play it, won't answer me.
I guess it's just a very peculiar song that really hits with certain people, and does nothing at all for others. I've literally screamed myself hoarse with it for 16 years now, and the last few times we played it, I just didn't feel the same way. I didn't bother thinking in advance about what I wanted to say to introduce it. We'd get to the end of the set and I just didn't feel the same urge to punch everybody in the face with it.
That said, I really am looking forward to playing it this one last time on Saturday. If you can come, I will definitely be ready to give you more than your seven dollars' worth. This is a special occasion after all.
And I'm going to give myself a little wiggle room here. I'm going to allow that this won't necessarily be the last time we ever, ever play it. It's just that we're not going to feature it in our sets anymore. Like most bands that have been playing for a few years, we have a lot of older songs that we don't play anymore, just because there's newer stuff that we're more excited about (and those of you who've been at some of the recent shows might be noticing that we're currently moving in a more rootsy direction, and "Old Ladies" doesn't exactly fit as well now). "Old Ladies Reading the Bible" is now our most notable older song we're not playing anymore. I'm going to stop short of saying "never." But it would have to be a very special occasion before I would want to bring it back out. Like for instance, if Stephen Colbert asked us to do it on his show or something. That's a ridiculously crazy dream, and I know it's not going to happen, which is too bad, because I think it would be a great fit for something like that.
----
And for those who haven't already seen it on Facebook, here's the video. This can be your farewell to the song, if you can't make it to Kimo's on Saturday.
So first I'm going to explain how the idea to retire the song came about: There it was, the end of rehearsal one night last year, and we were starting to make a setlist for an upcoming gig. Current drummer Ben Adrian chimed in right away, which is kind of unusual, as he usually tends to just go along with the flow. "I really think we should end with something besides 'Old Ladies,'" he said. "You've been closing with that song at all your shows for years." (Ben came to a fair number of Collisionville gigs before he joined the band.) He was right. It had become so automatic that I hadn't even thought about it in ages. In fact, I didn't even really know what else to do, but we drew up a setlist that had "Old Ladies" 2nd-to-last, and put down "Rock n' Roll Tornado" as the closer.
Predictably enough, at that gig I totally blew out my voice on "Old Ladies" and could hardly make a sound during "Tornado." I have a recording that I won't share. It's ridiculous. We haven't played "Old Ladies" since then.
So yeah, the simplest reason we're retiring it is just because we've done it so many times, and it's just not a good idea to be that predictable. There are some other reasons that I'm going to go on about at great length in a minute here, but let me next point out that these are NOT reasons for retiring it:
- Because Obama won the election and Democrats control Congress
- Because the Religious Right is losing the culture war, so the song isn't relevant anymore, or will soon cease to be relevant
- Because it's just a silly joke and everybody's heard it now
And now I want to give you a short history of the song, and then I'll move on to an explanation of what it means to me and what it's meant to a few other people.
I actually wrote the song in 1994. Or the first draft of it, anyway. Obviously the Contract With America would have been weighing on my thoughts at the time. But the moment of inspiration came from flipping around the television dial one afternoon. "Dances With Wolves" was on, and I happened to tune in right as Kevin Costner was about to engage in sexual intercourse with the Native American heroine. There was a closeup of her naked hip, and you could clearly discern the shape of her naked butt.
I was aghast.
"Holy fucking christ, they're having sex!" I shouted. "They're naked. What if a little kid sees that?!!?"
Seeing that this problem required a solution, I started thinking to myself, "What would constitute completely harmless entertainment for television? Something that would stand no chance whatsoever of corrupting a single susceptible mind?"
Over the next 10 years, I recorded quite a few 4-track demos of the song, and two different versions in East Bay recording studios, and played it live with several different band lineups. In the days before CD burners and before the internet became the cheif means of booking shows, I submitted cassette demos of it to a few different clubs that enthusiastically called me to book right away. I had friends going on to me about how much they loved it (my friend Paul in Denver told me after first hearing it he would do stuff around the house like sit down with the Denver Post and call out "Paul Moore, READING THE PAPER"). One of our first Bay Area shows was with a funk-rock band called Zonk, who asked us to open for them at about a half dozen subsequent shows, and their guitar player linked to us on their website with the comment "'Old Ladies Reading the Bible' is the best song anyone is playing in San Francisco right now."
And so on, culminating in 2008 with this piece of actual national media publicity:
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/06/mp3-collisionvi.html
What I'm trying to say is, ever since I first started playing the song, there have been a number of people who have responded very strongly in a positive way, and no, not all of them have been friends or family, people predisposed to having a positive opinion. That Wired blogger, Eliot Van Buskirk, did turn out to be a friend of a friend -- but he didn't know that when he wrote that piece.
So maybe you can see why I thought I was onto something with this song, and why I stayed with it for so long. I really did think that I had a miniature "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on my hands. And by that I just mean, an instantly recognizable song that was going to win people over, something I'd be known for by some people. No, I didn't think I was going to sell 10 million copies. But I thought I might have some kind of underground college radio hit on my hands.
It wasn't only for mercenary reasons, though. As much as I wanted to be known for it, I also really wanted people to hear it and have their day changed by it. I wanted the statement to get out there. And for all the times we played it, most often (but not always) getting a big response, I'm still not sure how many people ever really heard everything I was saying with it, and this has as much to do with anything as to why it's being retired. This Owl Mag reviewer, still the person other than me to write at the greatest length about it, definitely made me feel heard:
http://www.theowlmag.com/album-reviews/cd-review-hotter-heads-prevail-by-collisionville/
The part about "Perhaps we all share this human quirk in some way or another," that's important. Really, if the song were nothing but a silly joke, I wouldn't think it needed to be played more than once or twice. But it isn't only about me making fun of people whose ideas I despise. Listen, I get pretty worked up doing this song at a gig. And I always used to introduce it with something that was intended to jar people. Like at the Starry Plough in the summer of 2004, when I said, right before launching into it, that we were there that night to do what we could to deliver the city of Berkeley to George W. Bush in the upcoming election. And not in a jokey, wink-wink kind of way. The effect I was always going for was intended to leave at least some part of your mind wondering, "He doesn't really mean it, does he?"
Well, no, I never really meant it. But I did mean it.
The reason I thought liberal or left-leaning people populating rock shows in urban metropolises ought to be listening to the song wasn't because I was looking for solidarity with like-minded people. It wasn't because I thought it would be fun if we all laughed together, "Oh how ridiculous and outrageous these TV preachers are!" Really it was more about making a point of how strong the conviction is of someone like Pat Robertson, and how unshakable his worldview is. It's a perfect system of thought he has, really. Sure, it's full of lies and contradictions. But there are things in that system of thought that completely put to rest any doubts that lies and contradictions bring up. Everything is figured out, everything has an explanation. It's the most well-organized and well-funded political movement in the country. For those of us who disagree with Pat Robertson et al, the question is, "What do you have to battle against that conviction?" That's why I would start getting into character while introducing the song. It's not a joke for all of us to share. It's supposed to rattle your cage. And yes, I know it's funny, too. That's part of how it's supposed to work, to get under your skin.
Here now in 2010, a friend asked if the song was being retired because Obama had won the election. Well, let me tell you something. People have been telling me for over ten years now that someday I would have to stop playing the song because the Christian Right would die out and it wouldn't be relevant anymore. Like for instance, back in early 2000, my friend Brian Keizer, an author/screenwriter/music critic/etc. wrote a piece about me in which he said "I've thrilled to the deadpan overload of 'Old Ladies Reading the Bible,' a song that will only date when there is no religious right to fly the flag every four years and scare the mass into realizing how few votes away from Roe vs. Wade's overturning we are."
Now, Brian is a lot smarter than I am (and I couldn't resist using the phrase "deadpan overload" in the press release for this show), but I didn't think it was in danger of becoming irrelevant then, and I don't think so now either. I could start pointing out specific examples, like the Texas School Board's recent textbook folly, but really more than anything, it's just that everywhere I look I keep seeing an absolutist mentality taking a hold of people everywhere, and the world's not getting any cleaner or simpler, so why do you think stuff like this is going to vanish? Not to toot my own horn too much, but I think this song is going to keep being relevant for years to come.
Ah, so why aren't we going to keep playing it?
Well, look. There are a lot of reasons, including what I mentioned earlier about having no answer to Ben's challenge with regards to predictability. I also said something earlier about thinking, at one time, that I maybe had a college radio hit on my hands. Okay, I was kind of lying about that. I really thought that this was a song we should be playing on Saturday Night Live, or David Letterman. I wanted the whole country to hear this song. And from the way certain people have responded to it over the years, I thought there might be a million people in this country who'd want it in their collection. But it hasn't worked out like that. I don't know what it is, but I have so many people speak of the song so enthusiastically to me; and yet, trying to promote it here in the Bay Area for the last 12 years, I've run into some very hard walls. Elliot Van BusKirk, KALX DJ Marshall Stax, and a few bookers aside, it seems like everytime I hand it over to someone who's in a gatekeeper-type position to help shine a little more light on it, to expose it to a larger audience, I get nothing. The alternative weeklies around here won't respond to me no matter what I do. There are hip radio programs for which the song would be perfect -- they won't play it, won't answer me.
I guess it's just a very peculiar song that really hits with certain people, and does nothing at all for others. I've literally screamed myself hoarse with it for 16 years now, and the last few times we played it, I just didn't feel the same way. I didn't bother thinking in advance about what I wanted to say to introduce it. We'd get to the end of the set and I just didn't feel the same urge to punch everybody in the face with it.
That said, I really am looking forward to playing it this one last time on Saturday. If you can come, I will definitely be ready to give you more than your seven dollars' worth. This is a special occasion after all.
And I'm going to give myself a little wiggle room here. I'm going to allow that this won't necessarily be the last time we ever, ever play it. It's just that we're not going to feature it in our sets anymore. Like most bands that have been playing for a few years, we have a lot of older songs that we don't play anymore, just because there's newer stuff that we're more excited about (and those of you who've been at some of the recent shows might be noticing that we're currently moving in a more rootsy direction, and "Old Ladies" doesn't exactly fit as well now). "Old Ladies Reading the Bible" is now our most notable older song we're not playing anymore. I'm going to stop short of saying "never." But it would have to be a very special occasion before I would want to bring it back out. Like for instance, if Stephen Colbert asked us to do it on his show or something. That's a ridiculously crazy dream, and I know it's not going to happen, which is too bad, because I think it would be a great fit for something like that.
----
And for those who haven't already seen it on Facebook, here's the video. This can be your farewell to the song, if you can't make it to Kimo's on Saturday.
Click to view