{"id":77765,"date":"2020-05-06T05:21:09","date_gmt":"2020-05-06T09:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=77765"},"modified":"2020-05-05T17:59:07","modified_gmt":"2020-05-05T21:59:07","slug":"teenage-wasteland-theology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2020\/05\/teenage-wasteland-theology.html","title":{"rendered":"Teenage Wasteland Theology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Loren Rosson writes about the classic rock song \u201cBaba O\u2019Reilly\u201d by The Who<\/a>:<\/p>\n

[The 1970s] was a confused decade, but a groovy one that saw a lot of transgressive creativity, especially in music. \u201cBaba O\u2019Riley\u201d is much about that burgeoning artistry.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s also about something else, something more esoteric: Townshend\u2019s infatuations with two particular figures. The first is Meher Baba, an Indian spiritual master who claimed that he was an Avatar, or an incarnation of God. Baba had his religious awakening at age nineteen (in 1913), and began teaching that reality was an illusion \u2014 a bunch of misguided beliefs and perceptions formed by weak minds. The Universe is imagination, he said, and each human soul is really God passing through imagination to realize his divinity on an individual basis. The second figure is Terry Riley, a minimalist composer and musician in the \u201960s who used tape loops and delay systems to make musical patterns. Now, Townshend somehow got it in his head that when musical patterns like Riley\u2019s were played simultaneously, they would overlap and interlock to make a harmonious whole \u2014 a single giant chord capturing the harmony of the universe envisioned by Meher Baba. The song \u201cBaba O\u2019Riley\u201d, explains Townshend, is basically what would happen if the spirit of Meher Baba was fed into a computer and transformed into music.<\/p>\n

Maybe Townshend himself was on acid when he came up with that explanation. But I appreciate what drives him. There\u2019s something about music that makes it \u2014 in my opinion \u2014 the purest art form. Purer than literature, film, and painting, which is probably why I find it hard to review. The power of music is elusive. It\u2019s easy to perceive the work of the divine when something resists analysis. And yet music works on a level so simple \u2014 far more simple than writing, film making, or drawing \u2014 that you hardly need to pay attention to it. You can lose yourself in music while doing other things. There\u2019s power in something that infectious.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest of the post on his blog The Busybody<\/a>. An interview with Roger Daltrey<\/a> from a few years back that highlights what he feels is the song\u2019s message for today\u2019s generation may also be of interest.\u00a0Some of you will be surprised that I have blogged about music from the 1970s that doesn\u2019t bear the label \u201cprogressive\u201d (although The Who\u2019s interaction with them at stream of British rock is obviously noticeable) and about \u201cthe other Who\u201d that was then and still is popular.<\/p>\n

Loren\u2019s blog has a whole series of retrospectives on great music. See also his posts on the Rush song \u201cLosing It\u201d<\/a> which really is a masterpiece in so many ways, and also the Genesis song (or suite, or album side, as you prefer) \u201cSupper\u2019s Ready.\u201d The former stands out from Rush\u2019s repertoire with its 11\/8 time signature and the presence of electric violin, but as Loren highlights<\/a> it is the lyrics that make the song so incredibly poignant. It is about the pain of finding oneself unable to do something incredible, creative, and artistic, such as dance or write, that one previously was able to, and ponders whether it is worse to never have known creative genius or to have known it and lost it. The latter is a song I\u2019ve blogged about here in the past<\/a>, but I\u2019ll let Loren have the last word<\/a>: \u201cThe \u201970s were a golden age of music and film making. \u201cSupper\u2019s Ready\u201d is the\u00a0Godfather<\/em>\u00a0of rock songs. Both were released in \u201972, and we\u2019ve rarely seen their like since.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Loren Rosson writes about the classic rock song \u201cBaba O\u2019Reilly\u201d by The Who: [The 1970s] was a confused decade, but a groovy one that saw a lot of transgressive creativity, especially in music. \u201cBaba O\u2019Riley\u201d is much about that burgeoning artistry. But it\u2019s also about something else, something more esoteric: Townshend\u2019s infatuations with two particular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":78007,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[16702,16705,16699],"class_list":["post-77765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-loren-rosson","tag-pete-townsend","tag-the-who"],"yoast_head":"\nTeenage Wasteland Theology<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Loren Rosson writes about the classic rock song \u201cBaba O\u2019Reilly\u201d by The Who: was a confused decade, but a groovy one that saw a lot of transgressive\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2020\/05\/teenage-wasteland-theology.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Teenage Wasteland Theology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Loren Rosson writes about the classic rock song \u201cBaba O\u2019Reilly\u201d by The Who: was a confused decade, but a groovy one that saw a lot of transgressive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2020\/05\/teenage-wasteland-theology.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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