Lord of the Ringos

First Things has a piece on the anonymous garage band that may have helped inspire J.R.R. Tolkien to keep the Beatles from ever getting their mitts on The Lord of the Rings and making a movie out of it starring themselves.  Whenever I contemplate what a massive train wreck that project would have been I always think of this:

You will read things out of the Red Book, and keep alive the memory of the age that is gone. so that people will remember the Great Danger and so love their beloved land all the more.

In remembering bad things that have happened, it is too easy for us to forget how many far more horrible things never happened, and all the good things that happened instead.  The Beatles never made their version of LOTR, Deo gratias, and Peter Jackson did.  My sons and wife never died in childbirth, but live and are happy.  I didn’t start through that intersection 30 years ago when I should have, because I was fiddling with the radio and didn’t see the light change.  So the teenager who was doing 50 when he ran the red light only clipped the front of my car instead of killing or crippling me.  I wonder how many Great Dangers have come to nothing?

Anyway, thank you anonymous garage band for saving us all from a Beatles Lord of the Rings.