What's On Jesus' iPod?
Protest anthems, Zeppelin, gospel, classical and, of course, Nine Inch Nails. And, yes, Jesus does P2P
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
You know he has one.
You know it's the big 60GB model, loaded, flawless and gleaming and radiating a strange liquid ethereal glow and couched in a beautiful custom rainbow-colored biodegradable case made of clouds and eagle feathers and wine.
And of course Jesus gets his iPods wholesale, given how he and Steve Jobs go way back, back to the time when Jobs was a scruffy twentysomething geek ever praying for revelation and God finally gave Jesus the green light to inspire the first Mac.
The iPod and Jesus -- it just makes sense.
After all, Jesus was a rebel. Jesus was the Original Liberal. Jesus was a devoted pacifist and a badass egalitarian and his best friends were all whores and dissidents and freethinkers and miscreants, artists of every shape and size and haircut and of course, were he walking around today, Jesus would be pretty much loathed and ostracized if not outright hacked to bits by the Christian Right. "Goddamn hippie liberal tree hugger," they'd sneer, waving scythes and Bibles. "What the hell?" Jesus would say.
All of which places Jesus in direct line of the iPod's marketing demographic and all of which naturally raises the question, well, so just what does the great mystic and healer and closet Buddhist and funky savior of humanity have on his holy iPod?
It is, after all, a pertinent query. It is the modern-day personality test. Your iPod's contents are now considered more revealing than your porn collection or your prescription drug addiction and it has now been widely reported that even our barely articulate president owns one, and poor old Dubya's iPod is rumored to be home to a handful of mediocre boomer rock tunes and weak country music by grizzled alcoholics and songs about, uh, baseball, a reported whopping 250 songs out of a potential capacity for 10,000 but as everyone knows, Dubya is nothing if not all about the inability to expand memory competence.
Jesus, on the other hand, is a monster music fan. You just know it. After all, Jesus was an agitator. Jesus protested. Jesus battled the demons of the status quo and he defied the sad dictatorial norms of his day and as such the Holy iPod is surely home to a huge number of songs of protest and resistance and hope, rebellion and triumph and joy. Just for starters.
Of course this means lots of old Bob Dylan and a little bit of Peter, Paul & Mary and CCR's "Fortunate Son." This means slightly stale but always eternal protest classics like Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" and Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" and the Youngbloods' "Get Together" and Edwin Starr's "War (What Is it Good For)" and even Eminem's "Mosh," right alongside '70s cheeseball monster hits like "Dust in the Wind" and "Freebird" and "Roundabout," despite how they've been pumped through the airwaves so many times it makes God cringe.
But it doesn't stop there. Jesus has wide and varying tastes. Jesus is all over the musical map. He is into old Deep Purple. Obscure Zeppelin. (Jesus gets all the good bootlegs.) He has a thing for anthem rock and music that inspires the masses and yet he can just as easily spin around and go for the quiet and the folksy and he loves, for example, old Jim Croce. He has a lot of Nick Drake and Iron & Wine's "Woman King" EP, Ani DiFranco and the Be Good Tanyas and yes, even old Cat Stevens. (Jesus just shrugs that silly religio-political stuff right off. It's just who he is.)
Gospel? Hell yes. Goes without saying. Classical, too. Chopin, for one, makes Jesus' heart ache. Bach makes him sigh. Mozart makes his ringlets bounce. He thinks Wagner is sort of a jerk, but of course, Jesus forgives him. Dvorak's "New World Symphony" inspires the hell out of him when he's out in the backyard studio, painting. And nothing but nothing makes Jesus weep like Gorecki's Third. If you've heard it, you understand.
But here's the interesting thing. You might think Jesus would be all about the cheeseball holy music. All about only caring for tunes that praise him and him alone and no one else but him because hey, the only music that's truly acceptable is music that celebrates God, right?
Wrong. Just look. See? There's Jesus, rolling his eyes.
See, Jesus knows true worship, true spirit, has nothing to do with giving away your sense of self to some angry bearded deity who will just as easily love you as smack you down and condemn you to hellfire for all eternity with no access to chocolate or HBO or old AC/DC records.
Jesus knows this Big Obvious Secret: All music celebrates God, because God is merely another word for life and life is merely another word for "hot divine energy force" and "hot divine energy force" is merely another word for, well, "Steven Tyler." So there you go.
Accordingly, Jesus' iPod has lots of Aerosmith, especially "Get Your Wings." It has "Come Together" (both versions) and "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine" (the original and the dark, beautiful remake by A Perfect Circle) because Jesus deeply appreciates the lines "Imagine there's no heaven ... no hell below us ... no religion, too," because, well, if anything is causing humanity so much pain and confusion, it's organized religion. Jesus would hate that dictatorial dogmatic self-righteous crap. He really would.
Thusly, there are lots and lots of songs about unity and peace and the shared human experience on the sacred iPod (which is why Jesus is all about the eternal bliss of file sharing), and in quieter moments Jesus really loves chanting "Om Namah Shivaya" along with Krishna Das because, hey, all religions are one, baby. And as Jesus knows, there's nothing like good kirtan to get the divine juices pumping.
Jesus does indeed do musicals. Jesus is all over the "Hair" soundtrack, for one (he blasts "Good Morning Starshine" whenever he makes waffles on Sunday mornings). "Les Miz" stirs his holy revolutionary heart. "Jesus Christ Superstar" makes him a little giddy, despite how he secretly thinks Andrew Lloyd Webber is best left to the slavering minions of the underworld, right along with, you know, Mariah Carey. And Toby Keith. Celine Dion. And absolutely, positively Shania Twain. Hell, even Jesus has limits.
Jesus has an advance copy of the new Coldplay. He liked "God Put a Smile on Your Face," but thinks "Clocks" is a lot better.
Jesus has a playlist called "Music About Love," and it somehow contains roughly 14 billion songs.
Jesus really loves Marilyn Manson's cover of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus." He gets it. He really does.
Yes, there is Nine Inch Nails. This is the thing people forget about Jesus. He has a wicked sense of humor.
Jesus often listens to the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want" back to back, for cool karmic effect.
And oh, the women. Jesus' all-time favorite playlist is called "Divine Feminine Yay Yay Grrlz" and it makes him swoon, something about the smooth chthonic voices and seductive breathings and the half-closed eyes and so many fond everlasting memories of Mary Magdalene singing to him every night for all those years when they were alone together with nothing around but a few jars of warm anointing oil and winking starlight.
Jesus could listen to Beth Orton's "Central Reservation" all night. Ditto Eva Cassidy's "Live at Blues Alley." Also, Nina Simone. Fiona Apple. Joss Stone. Sarah McLachlan makes him yawn, but Diana Krall's version of Tom Waits' "Temptation" makes his holy toes curl, as does Madeleine Peyroux's positively celestial take on Leonard Cohen's "Dance Me to the End of Love." Who else? Sam Philips. Lhasa. Lamb. That woman from Mazzy Starr. So many more.
Guilty pleasures? Well, no. Jesus doesn't believe in guilt. But he does enjoy a few Sade songs. And Gwen Stefani makes him happy. And he has a secret thing for Kylie Minogue. But then again, so does God. Shhh.
What song makes Jesus smile the most? That's easy. Tom Waits, "Chocolate Jesus." He plays it when he's in the bathtub.
There is much free-form jazz. There is Coltrane and Miles and Mingus, Monk and Charlie Parker and Bud Powell because Jesus loves nothing more than wild improvisation, deep inspiration, notes that seem to emerge from deep in the soul of a musician who is truly lost in the swoon of a manic tune. That is, after all, Jesus' preferred domain -- the mystical, the transcendental, the unfathomable soulful groove.
There is much more. There are too many songs to list here. There are obscure and lesser-known ones and indies, spoken word and old radio shows and new and divinely funny podcasts. There is surf rock. There is true country. There is even a little disco. And there is, of course, more world music than anyone can fathom.
But oh, what a revelation it would be, could the world see just what's on Jesus' iPod, see the holy playlists, get an idea what the savior listens to when he's, you know, dancing, or working out, or building a new deck for Mary, or washing his dad's Caddy (Three Dog Night's "Joy to the World", always). What a revelation would be at hand, what a new understanding we could glean.
I know I have overlooked a lot. I know there are plenty of songs I missed. Got a tune you truly believe is on Jesus' iPod? Send me your song suggestions and a brief reason why you think it's on Jesus' iPod, and if I receive sufficient replies I might just run it in a follow-up column. Send suggestions to mmorford@sfgate.com no later than May 3, or by the Second Coming, whichever comes first. Praise Jesus. Or, you know, Steve Jobs.
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Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does.
