Well, first of all, we’re of the belief that the spirit of rock and roll predated Elvis, Wynonie Harris, Bob Wills, even Louis Armstrong. We think it’s an impulse toward freedom that’s in the country’s soil. It sure ain’t (nor has rarely ever been) perpetuated by this country’s leadership; hell, the majority of our founding fathers were pro-slavery and anti-democracy (their take: running the zoo from the monkey cage--which is what it’s turned out to be anyhoo). It emanated from people robbed of their culture and forced to invent a new one; from people sick of spiritual, intellectual, and physical regulation; from people who caught the fever of an open land and had to sing it; from people who wished Europe would go to hell; from people who had to find some way to extricate themselves from ankle-deep muck with some serious downward suck, if only in their minds; even from people who didn’t quite get it, but could sure-as-shootin’ feel it (I’m thinking of minstrels here--the granddaddies of rock and roll and every other kind of great American music if there are granddaddies to speak of). So, really, we’re about music which either sets out or unintentionally manages to file away at the chains that bind our hearts to a dying animal (was it Dylan Thomas who scribbled that?). If that friction comes from a Mississippi Sheik fiddle or a White Stripe guitar, it makes less than no difference. If, after drinking in those sounds that couldn’t have been produced anywhere but on our turf, you’ve felt those chains fall away, we feel our Church is your Church, Buster Brown. If that doesn’t sell you, well, in this world of hip enclaves, which are half about being knee-knockin’ scared of the diversity of the unwashed masses, we are foursquare FOR interconnectivity. Face it, we’re goin nowhere with our heads in the sand. At the risk of sounding like Walt Whitman trying to be and love everything, we hear sympathetic frequencies in everything from bluegrass gospel to hip-hop nihilism, and that makes us feel like citizens of the planet, not refugees from the planet. And that’s the way we wanna feel. We hope there’s a germ of that desire in our readers, too.

Secondly, life in America ain’t a goddam rose garden, and one of its worst recent developments (though its axioms have, ironically, produced some eternal works) is that its art products are disposable: “The Replacements are old hat, Daddy-O!” Too often, the result of this epidemic thinking is great treasure troves of liberation songs (if you will) vaporizing and wafting into the Great Unknown. A little musical education would prevent some of this, but kiddos ain’t gonna learn about Dramarama, the Minutemen, Gary Stewart, Howard Tate, Glenn Barber, Roy Brown, Bob Dunn, or Emmett Miller in school. Thus...the First Church. We are dedicated to keeping those giants and their sounds growing before the eyes and twisting through the ears of our readers, even if we draw only one per day. Who gives a shit about the Royal Crescent Mob, or Vernon Oxford, or Percy Mayfield? We do, and we felt a reason to when we punched their numbers on the Church jukebox. We’re just hoping a phrase or a description posted on this site might send you on a quest that’ll result in that beautiful, euphoric feeling of freedom that hollers, “No--this ISN’T all there is. There’s something worth being alive for! Keep your eyes peeled, your ears and heart open, ‘cause it’s a blessed secret cornucopia!” If it gets you one more step forward down the road, then we’ve done our duty.

And--I’ll be frank: it’s a vehicle for yours truly to blab, since it’s damned hard to find anybody in my immediate orbit to split a sixer, crank up some good tunage, bob my head, theorize, exalt, and argue with. I know I’m not alone in that particular kind of bereftness. So...come on in, and let us know what’s rocking you and what’s not. But don’t forget to launch of prayer of gratitude to whomever or whatever’s responsible for the inexhaustible variety of spirited music that’s come out of this dirt. Don’t be proud; drop to your knees if you have to. That’s where I’m headed right now--let us pray: