ROCKING FOR GOD

My review of a Larry Norman best-of collection Rebel Poet, Jukebox Balladeer ran today. It's the kind of longer music history piece I love writing and don't get to do as often as I like. (I've got another one, a review of Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue running next week, too.) I'd never heard of Norman until he died at 60 earlier this year. He was billed as the "Father of Christian rock," which didn't much entice me. But his stuff is pretty incredible. He was a forceful, eccentric voice perfectly in tune with the confusing time of the early-'70s. I can't recommend the collection highly enough, or the material I've heard apart from that album. Here's one of many cuts warning of a loom apocalypse that he seemed to feel was close at hand: