Monday, April 18, 2005

I shall not want

PASTOR JOHN RYDGREN "The Lord Is My Shepherd"
I have a small sampling of albums from the late '60s/ early '70s where religious folks try to talk in the hip lingo of the day to attract the far-out kids to the savior Jesus Christ 'cause he's where it's at and stuff. They're really interesting and funny for about 70 seconds. I wish I had any records by Rydgren, but the dude's "spirit of Reformation" LPs were self-released and made for airplay only (he himself had shows on WPLJ and then WABC in the '60s), not to mention they're really amazingly good (or what I've heard is anyway) so they are crazy-rare.

The swingin' Lutheran pastor never cleared his use of the songs he'd rap over, either, which means even today if you wanted to reissue them it'd have to be as a boot (as Silhouette Segments was in a reduced form --double LP to single LP-- on vinyl in 2000), unless you are heinously rich or something. An original of Silhouettes went for $108 a year ago -- that's less than most Ammon Duul One LPs but out of my personal range. Ummm, and another is available here for only $1800.

Oft-compared to Ken Nordine, and it's easy to see why, what with that beat/ noir deadpan delivery over the crazy music, Pastor John (1932-1988)'s cover collages are pretty striking and I'd bet he did them himself -- check this out. Also, another, more swinging MP3 is here. Oh, and WFMU has one here. Ohhh, man here's another one here! Didn't even need to spend $1800...

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