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NO CONTROL
by Eddie Money
released: 1982
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Alright now, I’m doing a little stepping back in time reviewing NO CONTROL, Eddie Money’s sharp, 1982, pink ‘n’ black album which found his slim frame in a suit and tie and looking so... ”money.”
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When Eddie’s debut album came to my attention in 1978 due to the radio airplay of “Baby Hold On” [#11 in Billboard], I bought it but didn’t spin it often. I thought most of the songs were too spare and unadventurous musically and that his voice was nondescript.
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I never purchased another Money collection until 1982’s NO CONTROL, though I scarcely remember acquiring it because I was drunk that year. And the next. In truth, those first 4 years of that decade were the height of my partying life. I was living in a house (it’s now a condominium) at 824 Bay Street in Santa Monica (just seven blocks from the skateboarding Z-Boys former surf shop hangout). At that time, 824 must have been the most consistently rowdy house in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. John Belushi and National Lampoon’s 'ANIMAL HOUSE'? Pish 'n' Pshaw! That was us when we were BEHAVING ourselves!
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We were THE LEAGUE OF SOUL CRUSADERS, and as Pooh said, “We drank. We drank a lot. We drank more than we did not.” And yeah, you might have heard some of these hard-rocking Eddie Money tunes blasting from 824 back in the day... and the night. (Our neighbors loved us so much that the entire street signed a petition to send us packing. I guess they enjoyed our act to such a degree that they wanted to see us take it on the road.)
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By 1982, Money had learned how to write a solid, head-banging Hard Rock tune, and how to use that slight croak in his voice to maximum effect. The rockers on this set, starting with the great road tune SHAKIN’, are all fiercely guitar-propelled and rhythmically driving songs that had all of us liquidated bad boys breaking out the air guitars nearly twenty-five years ago. We eventually grew up and changed.
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And that’s something else I liked about NO CONTROL: Five years after that other Eddie had revolutionized the electric guitar and had every player emulating him with Van Halenesque “tapping”, here we had Jimmy Lyon and Marty Walsh playing in the old Rock style -- more sustain and distortion -- and it suddenly sounded fresh and exciting again. And on DRIVIN’ ME CRAZY, Tony Brock is the guest drummer behind the kit. Tony Brock? C’mon, dude! He was the stickman for The Babys and, for my “money”, one of Rock’s more formidable and underrated drummers. In ANY BAND not named 'The Babys', Tony Brock would have received the attention he deserved.
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I don’t listen to Rock a great deal anymore; I graduated to the upper I.Q. of Jazz long ago. But every once in awhile (and especially after all my beloved Christmas songs at the conclusion of the Holiday season) I need to hear some fast tunes with loud guitars, and Eddie’s NO CONTROL is right on the money.
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Interspersed between the 80 mile-an-hour road runs on NO CONTROL, Eddie has some "school zone" ballads that drop us back down into first gear. Necessary I suppose for balance, but they suffer by comparison, seeming a little droopy. But the one great exception for me is [link> MY FRIENDS, MY FRIENDS, which is really the principal reason I reacquired this album on compact disc. It’s a wistful look back at the friends who made our old times so special and so memorable. It’s a sad song made sadder by some truly mournful harmonica playing beautifully rendered by the Moneyman himself:
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“My memories are happy / My memories are sad / But I love to take my pictures out / And see the things I had... / My friends, my friends / We never got together again / But I really do miss my friends”
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THE LEAGUE OF SOUL CRUSADERS: Torch, Pooh, Twinkie, Cranium, Napoleon -- hey, you guys, it’s me, Mr. Intense. I want you guys to know that I still take my pictures out and remember what we had. And I still love you guys... wherever you are*.
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*Actually, I do know where my brother, Napoleon, is. He’s outside beating up the biker and his pit bull again. I can tell by the dog’s whining and the biker’s crying. I guess it’s nice that one of us never grew up and changed.
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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NEW TESTAMENT ORIGIN
by George M. Lamsa
published: 1976
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The first real Bible I ever owned was the New King James Version, given to me as a gift, and it served me well for several years. But as my understanding improved and my thirst for water drawn from the deeper parts of the Spiritual well drove me into more scholarly directions, I eventually came to realize that the English version of [link> THE HOLY BIBLE FROM THE ANCIENT EASTERN TEXT translated from the Aramaic language by George M. Lamsa represented the most accurate and trustworthy rendering of God’s Holy Spirit-inspired Word.
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Lamsa’s native tongue was Aramaic and having grown up in the Near East with the ancient customs, and using some idiomatic phrases known since the time of Jesus, he was eminently qualified for his chosen life work of giving the world an English version of The Bible from the original Aramaic (the same language that Christ spoke).
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NEW TESTAMENT ORIGIN by George M. Lamsa is a small exposition that presents the author’s basic argument that “no portion of [the New Testament] was originally written in Greek”, but rather in Aramaic, the language of the common man in The Holy Land during the first century. If true, this means of course that the many Christian “scholars” who slave over the subtle shades of meaning of Greek words in order to gain greater insight into Biblical passages are sweating over foreign language copies of the original scrolls.
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My copy of this book is the 1976 edition with the bright green cover. While the NEW TESTAMENT ORIGIN is written in a very plain, straightforward and persuasive manner, my only complaint is that it could have been expanded with additional material. I know that this material exists as some of it appears in the Introduction to Lamsa’s Holy Bible translation, as well as in his 'IDIOMS OF THE BIBLE EXPLAINED AND A KEY TO THE ORIGINAL GOSPELS', which I also own.
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Lamsa explains his position with the use of sound logic and reasonable assumptions and the accumulated force in his thesis is bound to surprise many who are willing to put aside their dogmatic assertion that the New Testament was originally written in Greek long enough to weigh the evidence with an open mind. Lamsa writes that “Aramaic and Hebrew are the two closely related Semitic languages in which all sacred Jewish literature is written” and that the Gospel, written to sway and enlighten the Jews first, would have been written in the language commonly spoken by them at that time, makes perfect sense.
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Lamsa points out that “The Greek version contains many Aramaic phrases and passages directly transliterated from Aramaic documents, such as Talita Komi, Eli Eli lmana skabachtani, Raca, Rabuni, Abba and Maraeta.”
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In Chapter XXII he utilizes several examples of where the Greek translator’s limited understanding of the Aramaic originals he was working from created errors that become apparent only when compared with the words used in the Aramaic texts from the Eastern churches. Although I found some of the examples used to illustrate this same point in the Introductin to his translation of The Holy Bible to be more compelling, Lamsa does make one especially potent cultural point in NEW TESTAMENT ORIGIN: Acts 18:3, in the Bibles that are based upon the Greek scrolls, tells us that Saint Paul earned his livelihood as a “tentmaker”. According to Lamsa, that was improperly translated from the Aramaic word “lawlarey” which means “saddlemaker”, and furthermore that “there is no such occupation as tentmaker in the Near East. The tents are made by women in their own homes. There are, however, many expert saddlemakers who travel from town to town making saddles and leather goods.” Well, Lamsa was certainly the one Bible translator who would know!
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In 'The Holy Bible: From the Ancient Eastern Text', there are some startling differences between some verses based on the Greek manuscripts and those based on the Aramaic. I highlight a few of them in my review of that publication on this website. But if there is a real “smoking gun”, I would say that it comes in the form of the confusion over the Aramaic word “gamla” which can mean either “camel” or “rope” depending upon the context. Bibles based upon the Greek tell us in Matthew 19:24 that Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” A camel to a needle is a “non sequitur” to say the least, but a rope to a needle is in keeping with the imagery and displays a very obvious and organic relationship. Is it mere coincidence that “gamla” means both “camel” AND “rope” in the Aramaic, yet Greek-based Bibles conjoin a camel and a needle, creating a wildly nonsensical match? Is it not pretty evident that the Greek manuscripts were first copied from Aramaic originals by a translator not sufficiently knowledgeable with the latter language to avoid making such a contextual mistake? (Surprisingly, Lamsa did not include this example in his NEW TESTAMENT ORIGIN, though perhaps it does appear in the later version of it.)
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The following may not be of interest to everyone, but I feel it worth mentioning that in the book [link> 'Bible Code Bombshell' -- the most current of the academic publications I have found on the Equidistant Letter Sequence (ELS) code believed to be contained in The Bible -- the question appears: “Do Bible Codes Show Up Only In The Old Testament?” and author R. Edwin Sherman answers, “Highly improbable ELS groupings have been discovered in preliminary research of the Aramaic New Testament. Since Aramaic uses Hebrew letters, available code search software can be used to research the ... Aramaic New Testament. More work needs to be done ... before conclusive results can be presented.” How odd that an ELS code has never been found within the Greek version of the New Testament, but that it may be present in the Aramaic Bible.
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I enthusiastically recommend NEW TESTAMENT ORIGIN by George M. Lamsa to anyone seeking to expand their knowledge about the language of Scripture. I own The Holy Bible in the King James Version, the New King James Version, the New American Standard version (largely considered to be the most “literal” translation from the Greek), and the George M. Lamsa translation, and while I do occasionally compare verses from these four texts, I long ago came to accept that when it comes to The Holy Bible, the version derived from the ancient Aramaic represents “the final word” in God’s Word.
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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JOY IN THE JOURNEY: 10 Years Of Greatest Hits
by Michael Card
released: 1994
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Michael Card's Greatest Hits compilation was released in 1994 -- one of the best years of my life. I recall hearing the song 'WHY?' for the first time in my (then) girlfriend's car, just as we were entering the Eastbound I-10 onramp at Sepulveda Boulevard. Only a couple of months earlier, on April 6th, while alone in an apartment in a grungy area of Los Angeles, I was quite unexpectedly driven to my knees, where Jesus Baptized me with The Holy Spirit. I didn't exactly know what had happened to me, or why. I only knew that I was suddenly changed somehow.
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Obviously, that was a special year for this reviewer, and when I heard Michael Card sing, "WHY DID THEY NAIL HIS FEET AND HANDS WHEN HIS LOVE WOULD HAVE HELD HIM THERE?" it perfectly described the Fire I felt inside me and the Love that I knew Jesus has for us! I asked my girlfriend to replay that song several times. For me, that remains one of the greatest lines ever written about my Savior King. And although I don't play it often, 'JOY IN THE JOURNEY' always takes me back to that magical year of rebirth.
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Michael Card does not have a particularly great voice, but it adequately conveys the obviously heartfelt convictions of his nicely crafted Gospel songs. What makes Card special is his lyrics; he is Christian Rock's premier wordsmith, able to create songs around deep theological concepts. He overreaches at times ("...the universe fell from His Fingertips"; "...He sent His only Son and so became a Holy Embryo"), but that's the cost of creating fresh, unique expressions and attempting to translate the Mystery into song. There may be an occasional misstep, but there's no doggerel verse here -- just first class Christian poetry sung with sincerity, and sometimes backed by surprisingly powerful "electric" passion ('Known By The Scars'; 'Scandalon'; 'So Many Books'; and my favorite track, 'Know You In The Now'). I'm rarely impressed by the lyrics of most songwriters, but consider these lines:
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HE CANNOT LOVE MORE AND WILL NOT LOVE LESS
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WE IN OUR WEAKNESS BELIEVED WE WERE STRONG / HE BECAME HELPLESS TO SHOW WE WERE WRONG...
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FOR THE POWER OF PARADOX OPENS YOUR EYES / AND BLINDS THOSE WHO SAY THEY CAN SEE
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THAT IS THE MYSTERY, MORE THAN YOU CAN SEE / GIVE UP YOUR PONDERING AND FALL DOWN ON YOUR KNEES
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NO FICTION AS FANTASTIC AND WILD / A MOTHER MADE BY HER OWN CHILD
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TO HEAR WITH MY HEART, TO SEE WITH MY SOUL / TO BE GUIDED BY A HAND I CANNOT HOLD
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TO TRUST IN A WAY THAT I CANNOT SEE / THAT'S WHAT FAITH MUST BE
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THERE IS A JOY IN THE JOURNEY, THERE'S A LIGHT WE CAN LOVE ON THE WAY
THERE IS A WONDER AND WILDNESS TO LIFE, AND FREEDOM FOR THOSE WHO OBEY
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TO BE SO COMPLETELY GUILTY, GIVEN OVER TO DESPAIR
TO LOOK INTO YOUR JUDGE'S FACE AND SEE A SAVIOR THERE
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Now THAT'S what I call "writing!" Most of these tracks are enthusiastic and catchy. If they played this stuff more often on Christian radio I'd tune in once in awhile.
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Michael Card's 'JOY IN THE JOURNEY' puts joy in my journey, and it calls to mind my personal "Summer Of Love." And when this world douses my spirit, 'JOY IN THE JOURNEY' can fan my embers into a Divine Flame again. Brothers and Sisters, I think you'll like it too.
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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16 MOST REQUESTED SONGS
by Johnny Mathis
released: 1986
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I usually tend exclusively to my own business -- I really do. I'm not in the habit of mingling in things that are none of my concern. But once in awhile a person encounters something so unjust or (in this case) so utterly stupid, that he is literally compelled to interject himself into the situation....
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It was close to two decades ago that I was sitting alone in a booth at a juice joint called THE SPEAKEASY on Pico Boulevard near 14th Street in Santa Monica, California. I was having a drink and reading a letter from a girlfriend when I heard this bellowing Blowhard surrounded by his uncouth cronies at the bar. "No Black man can sing!" he bellowed. "There has never been a really great Black male singer!" the Blowhard continued. I waited for someone with half an ounce of brains to enlighten the Good Ol' Boy, but his cronies just sat there mute, nodding their hollow heads.
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Blowhard bellowed his brainlessness too loudly yet again, and when even the bartender let it pass, I could restrain myself no longer. Now of course, I had many weapons in my arsenal. I could have whipped out Nat King Cole,or Sam Cooke. I could have pulled Greg Walker or Marvin Gaye or Jubilant Sykes or Ray Charles on him. But I thought: "Nah. Let's just go right to the jugular and immediately put this Village Idiot out of my misery". So, from my booth 35 feet away, I called out, "JOHNNY MATHIS!"
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There was a long, silent pause which must have seemed like a year to the Village Idiot while he frantically searched his empty head for some sort of answer to give this impertinent stranger. Finally he countered with, "Oh, he's a fag!"
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The point here is that even this Racist Retard was not stupid enough to deny that Johnny Mathis is a really great singer. To try and save face, he was reduced to changing the conditions of his premise. Suddenly we were looking for a really great "straight" Black singer. You just can't argue with a sick mind, can you?
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I'm not a fan of the crooners -- there are only 3 that I listen to regularly: Bobby Darin, the Yiddish-singing pop stylist Yoey O'Dogherty, and the incredibly gifted Johnny Mathis. 16 MOST REQUESTED SONGS is an excellent sampler containing most of his best-loved Pop hits, recorded at a time when his voice was still young and able to hit all of those gorgeous notes! Pay special attention to MARIA (far from being my favorite melody on this collection) -- there's a point at about 2 minutes and 20 seconds into the song where amidst the background singers you can hear Johnny's voice come in. It's so faint at first that you're not really sure you're hearing it, but then it powers through and over the other singers with just a single sustained note of PERFECT PURITY which subtly transforms into the name "Maria". Fabulous!!
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In terms of pure voice, I think Johnny Mathis stands alone. Add 16 MOST REQUESTED SONGS to your collection and you'll know what even the Redneck Maroons at THE SPEAKEASY know: Johnny Mathis was one heck of a singer!
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And with Christmas approaching, I also recommend his albums, MERRY CHRISTMAS and FOR CHRISTMAS. I've been hearing the first one every Christmas going back to when I believed in the Fat Man in Red. And the latter has his phenomenal last two notes on God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.
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All this reminds me of the time a few years back, when in a Phoenix restaurant, a man in the booth behind mine loudly told his companion that "No woman has ever written a great novel!" I had just opened my mouth, intending to mention Betty Smith's A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, when I caught myself and thought, "Oh, forget it, Stephen! Besides, he's an Arizonan, and you know you have to make allowances for them."
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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