Joe,

There are some lady TV preachers who appear to be pretty much as you have characterized Babs. Couldn't get the tops of your toes wet wading through their souls, from all that comes through in their telecasts. Sort of a "Soaps 4 God" approach to marketing religion to the masses. Glad they are out there as a means of reaching the soap opera crowd--and as a cautionary warning about how not to do religion for the rest of us.

I don't have dial up. An mp3 file would work great. My email is: <SkipJohnson777@gmail.com>.

Are you up in Garibaldi, Oregon? That's near Tillamook, isn't it? I think we talked about you living there a while back, as I recall. Had you moved from there since? Judi and I vacationed over there on the coast, if it is the place I'm thinking of, a few summers back.

I'll be looking for that mp3 if you get the chance to send it my way.

Thanks!

Skip

P.S. One of my first solo performances was at a college outdoor music festival as a student. I'd been writing all through high school, but had always pretty much not gotten to play my stuff for the really big musical events of the year. Then I hit college, and suddenly, they were ready to give me a hearing.

The song I auditioned for was called "Samson", and I had to play it in advance for the music department and a few other screeners, among whom was the head of the theology (preacher training) department on campus. I sang my song, which was a racy retelling of the relationship woes of the famous strongman of Bible lore, the judge called Samson, who engaged in a one man border war with the Philistine empire, bedding three of their women in the process, and finally was blinded through his lover, Delilah's, cunning, before pulling the fish god Dagon's temple down on the heads of 3,000 of his enemy. The point of the lyric was for young men to watch themselves carefully in the area where the strongest man who ever lived exhibited his greatest weakness--namely, his sexual hankering over the wrong pretty lady. The last verse went...

So let this be a warning
To all you eager lads.
Keep your hands in your pockets,
And your eyes in your heads.
And if you're easily taken in
By the way a woman walks,
Pray to God He'll blind you now,
Before your soul's in hock.

When I'd finished it for the stone-faced music department personel, one muttered something about "raunch and roll". I was pretty sure I was going to get blacklisted again. I believe it was actually the head of the religion department who came to my rescue, however. Dr. Taylor had just told us that in our preaching class that we needed to be sure our introductions were filled "with the realities of the human heart". I might be writing and singing nothing more than "raunch and roll", but it certainly was filled with the realities of the human heart. I saw him grinning.

They let me perform it. I recall looking out onto the grassy area where the guys and girls were sitting festival style in front of the outdoor stage before the bleachers began rising up behind them as I sang. Part way through my song, I saw a guy sitting on a blanket with a girl lean over and whisper something in her ear. I do believe his comment was elicited by the song I was in the midst of performing. The girl rose to her feet, and bodily heaved the offending male off her nice blanket. He had to apologize and beg and make nice before she would let him back on.

So I figured the performance was a success.

College crowds are a fun bunch to work with. Here in Boston, we've got 300 colleges. I'm looking forward to mixing and mingling and doing some storytelling and singing down there shortly.

Thanks for taking a look.

Skip

Last edited by Skip Johnson; 04/27/07 07:11 PM.