Follow Your Call

Face it, almost all Christian music is kitschy to one degree or another, it comes with the territory. Readers of my work over the years are familiar with my sentiments regarding religionists, especially Xians ripping off the Christ's name without for a moment following his example (Jesus was an anarchist), so it'll come as no surprise that I'm not too nuts about Christers and their irritatingly commercial Bible thumping. Now, if you want to talk about real talent like Wes King, that's another story altogether.

Michael Anthony Milton is a preacher (strike 1) and a member of a reformed somethingorother church (strike 2), but he does possess a John Denver-ish quality, minus the mountain boy's teenaged pep club exuberances, in writing and exposition that I can see will attract those who crave such fare. On the other hand, Follow Your Call is his sonic pulpit (strike 3) and the lyrics are condescending and trite (strike 4), not to mention cliché (strike 5) as hell…or perhaps heaven. There's not a single thought here that hasn't been aired ad nauseum everywhere in Christendom…save perhaps for his take on the bizarre genealogy craze that's become so de rigeur in our culture.

Follow Your Call is folky, semi-symphonic, pleasant, easygoing, probably deludedly sincere, and I'm sure there's a place for this kind of work, but it's a milieu I fervently hope goes away before I step out of this incarnation, 'cause religion is one of the major sources of misery and oppression on the planet and we get nowhere until it goes away…all of it, every stripe. Meanwhile, Pastor Milton might want to read the books of Shelby Spong or listen to Welton Gaddy (Air America) for a few clues on how to humanize the excesses of the damned Bible. Erasmus seems not to have passed his tradition on to too many but it is, wherever it can be found, worth paying attention to and should long ago have been tuned up to modern times. The past is the past for good reason.

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Edited by: David N. Pyles
(dnpyles@acousticmusic.com)