When the music died to be heard no more by David Chamberlin
Since Kurt Cobain's smack-fueled overdose-suicide, the music world has been ripped apart by drug-related deaths.
The list of early exits has been mounting at a record pace: Smashing Pumpkins' keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin, Sublime's Brad Nowell, Blind Melon's Shannon Hoon, former Replacement Bob Stinson, Skinny Puppy's Dwayne Goettel, Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, D.O.A.'s Ken Montgomery and Hole's Kristen Pfaff.
The list of those linked to drug usage or drug-related arrests grows almost as quickly as the mountain of political promises this campaign season.
And those are just the famous names.
Hundreds of musicians and music industry personnel struggle with their addiction out of the media limelight.
To deal with its growing substance abuse programm, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences' (NARAS) non-profit arm, MusiCares, has begun a confidential abuse referral program made up of interventionists, psychotherapists, helplines and a fund to help musicians who wouldn't normally be able to afford rehabilitation. At its first major meeting, some 400 music industry executives attended. Some signed up for future action.
But their well-intentioned and laudable intervention program might not be enough. Perhaps the label execs should tear a page out of Hollywood's script?
The motion picture industry faces a similar problem with drugs and actors. But after the recent arrest of actor Robert Downey, Jr. for possession of heroin, crack cocaine and an unloaded .357 Magnum, a new side of Hollywood has emerged, one that is taking a much harder line on hiring those with drug problems.
"There is a new ambience that's tough and hard and unyielding," Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, told the Los Angeles Times. "When the average cost of making and marketing a movie has gotten up to $54 million, the tolerance level for drug-taking has gone to zero. For the first time, people are becoming pariahs on movie sets because of their drug habits. It looks like we've found a really first-class, efficient way to cut down the drug use among talented people: the refusal to hire them."
Tom Pollock, former chairman of the MCA Motion Picture Group, refused to hire River Phoenix while at Universal because he had heard stories of his drug use. While some filmmakers and studio execs still hire those with drug problems, the level of tolerance for substance abusers is going down.
"While we are not policeman and have no obligation to go out and police people's lives, I think we do have an absolute obligation when we know of a person who is an abuser not to do anything that would encourage that abuse, including hiring him," Mr. Pollock said.
"If there's a drug or alcohol abuse situation, I think it's the policy of studios not to hire them, if they know about it. It doesn't help our society, it's not good for business and it doesn't help the abuser to be hired and given more money to continue it."
Signs are that the recording industry is catching on, perhaps simply because drug usage costs money - but maybe in time to save some lives too.
The Smashing Pumpkins finally took matters into their own hands in the middle of their worldwide tour in July, severing a nine-year relationship with drummer Jimmy Chamberlin after he was charged with heroin possession when police discovered he was using drugs with Mr. Melvoin at the time of his death. The band's actions have forced the postponement of 12 concert dates, costing the Pumpkins and their label, Virgin Records, a handsome sum.
More proof that drug-addicted artists cost money is found in thc drug possession arrest, and subsequent court-ordered drug rehabilitation of the Stone Temple Pilots' frontman Scott Weiland, which forced the cancellation of the Pilots' entire sununer tour, and cost everyone involved a pretty penny.
Increasingly, some music industry leaders like Ron Stone of Gold Mountain Entertainment are willing to take a stand against drug abuse.
"We had a horrible experience with Kurt Cobain, and from that day on, we have made a concerted effort to try and not be involved in a business relationship that is infected with drugs," Mr. Stone said in an interview with Music Connection.
"We have dropped four platinum acts that have done drugs, for the reason of their doing drugs. We've put out money where our mouth is very quietly by dropping them and distancing ourselves from artists who have had drug problems," Mr. Stone added.
MusiCares is a laudable effort, but one that may not go far enough. Until the music industry, like the motion picture industry, loses enough money and takes a unified stand to dump drug abusers, this concert of death and decadence is likely to continue.
David J. Chamberlin is an associate producer of Sweet! Digizine and an adviser to a number of organizations, including the Family Research Council. He lives in the Los Angeles area.
Prevailing notions paint a bleak picture of today's twenty-something generation. But there's more to these"Baby Busters" than gloom and doom. A Gen-Xer explains why.
I am a member of the misunderstood and multi-named generation the media have anointed with the monikers "Generation X," "The Lost Generation," "Baby Busters," "Post-boomers" and "The 13th Generation," (referring to the "unlucky youth, born 13 generations after our founding fathers and the first downwardly mobile generation in American history").
I believe I'm pretty typical of my generation. I grew up in a family of four in a midsize town. Both of my parents worked full-time and at night, so they weren't home too much--most Xers tend to come from two-job families or the ever-increasing number of single-parent families. In high school, I realized my parents were having marriage problems. To work through my emotions, I turned to alternative rock and rap music and began to identify with the hopelessness and raw emotion in many of the lyrics--busters feel they are barely able to save themselves.
As a college freshman, I was so depressed at the prospects of what was going on at home, and with the transition to college life, that I found myself contemplating suicide--Xers lack even the memory of a hope-giving gospel to help them face the challenges of life. Before I graduated, my parents divorced--50 percent of Xers are children of divorce according to the popular statistics floating about.
Don't get me wrong. It wasn't all bad. I attended private schools and a private Christian college in the Midwest. I was never a hair-dying, flannel wearing, spotted owl-saving, Doc Marten-owning, ear pierced and tattooed, post-modern rebel. I love my parents and my sister. Thanks largely to the Lord placing male mentors in my life at various stages, I learned that it was my job to take responsibility for my reactions--that as theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said, "I need to ask God for the serenity to accept what can't be changed, the courage to change what should be changed and the wisdom to distinguish one from another."
I am still skeptical of authority figures. Having grown up in the midst of the most pervasive media-influenced generation yet has allowed me to watch numerous church and political leaders abandon their principles. But thanks to God's grace, I've made it out of the depths of despair. Unfortunately, not all of my fellow Xers can say the same.
Getting to Know Us
Xers are seen as a confused, cynical and hopeless generation. But who can blame us? We may be more educated than our parents, more likely to get involved in social causes and more tolerant of interracial marriage, but we have rampant materialism, divorce in record numbers (divorce rates doubled during our generation), very few two-parent families or mentors, guns in schools, AIDS, a trillion-dollar debt, downsizing, pollution, stagnant wages, high education and housing costs and the most intense information/media overload of any previous generation.
The media can't even decide when our generation begins and ends (various accounts have us being born as early as 1961 or as late as 1985) or where our most popular label, "Generation X," originated. Was it from the title of a British youth-pulp book published in 1964; the name of Billy Idol's '70s punk band; a chapter in Paul Farrell's 1983 book Class; or was it Generation X, that now-famous 1991 novel by Douglas Coupland?
Despite the unending stereotypes and adjectives placed upon Xers, if you really take the time to know us, you'll discover a diverse and fragmented group of people who are really just hurting, lonely and searching. Or, as George Gallup Jr. and Robert Bezilla say in their book, The Religious Life of Young Americans, today's young people "appear to be motivated by three basic drives: (1) a search for meaning in life and their purpose in the universe; (2) a search for meaningful and sensitive relationships with others; and (3) a desire to serve others."
A 1995 MTV survey of 804 Xers found they "believe that a sense of personal and family security is missing from their world. They wish they had the same prospects for a bright, promising future that young people in the previous generation had."
If the church and the family don't begin to identify with and meet the needs of Gen-Xers, something or someone else will. Throw the anarchic nature of cyberspace on top of the pervasive media influence of TV, radio and pop culture, and these factors have the opportunity to speak more loudly and more clearly where the family has failed or been weak. It's not a pretty picture. Just look at three of the many music icons of Generation X:
* Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of Nirvana and the cutting-edge icon of our generation who tragically committed suicide in 1994. He was so pained by the divorce of his parents that he once held a gun to his head and told his wife, "I'd rather die than divorce."
According to Village Voice writer Sarah Ferguson, the grunge pioneer's favorite TV shows included Leave It to Beaver and Mayberry R.F.D., which is quite revealing about today's generation. "Alternative music is music for kids who grew up too fast," Ferguson says. "It engages in a kind of mournful nostalgia for a childhood without violation."
* Rapper Tupac Shakur, who was fatally gunned down last fall, spoke for many minority youths as he vividly told the violent stories of the inner city and being raised by a single mother. His song "Dear Mama," from the multi-million selling album Me Against the World, shared the anger he felt at his father for not being there: "No love for my daddy, 'cause the coward wasn't there/He passed away and I didn't cry, 'cause my anger, wouldn't let me feel it for a stranger.../All along I was lookin' for a father--he was gone.../I hung around with the thugs.../They showed a young brother love."
* Eddie Vedder of the rock group Pearl Jam based his band's multi-platinum, debut album, Ten, on his tortured home life without a father. In fact, four hopeless albums later, "Jeremy," Pearl Jam's first video, which depicts a child committing suicide because he couldn't gain his parents' attention, is still one of the five most popular videos to air in the '90s on MTV.
Jay Kesler, president of Taylor University in Upland, Ind., and a popular author and '60's youth speaker, believes everything the parents of busters--baby boomers--were about is having its effects on their children. In the youth ministries class he teaches, he asks the class to tell him their grandparents' stories.
"I'll get, just like popcorn, really quick responses--patriotism, hard work, World War II, America, the flag, loyalty, 'can't tell a book by its cover,' and conservatism," he says. But when he asks for their parents' stories, it's a whole different ball game. "I get this long silence and they don't seem to be able to come up with anything."
According to Kesler, the parents are ambivalent of certain issues.
Parents don't want to be thought of as hypocrites so they don't say much about drugs, premarital sexuality or national purpose, because they may have been involved in drug use, youthful sexuality and war demonstrations.
"These kids are looking to their parents for some sense of absolutes or something to push against, and they don't seem to have it. But they find it with their grandparents," he says sadly.
"[The baby boomers] became very busy chasing the American Dream and didn't have time for the kids," Kesler explains, "so their kids feel estranged. They're reaching back for these values—stable homes, conventional marriages--yet they feel it's all too good to be true."
Life After God
This lack of stability has pushed Xers into a genuine passion for spiritual things. Although busters have been called the first "post-Christian generation," in a recent USA Today/CNN poll, 45 percent of those 18 to 29 stated that religion is a very important part of their lives.
According to Walt Mueller, founder of the Elizabethtown, Pa.-based Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, even Xers who were raised in non-Christian homes have a longing for a deeper spirituality.
"Non-Christian Xers who haven't had contact with the church have a more vocalized passion about spiritual things, because of their deep awareness of that God-shaped vacuum Pascal talks about," Mueller explains. "That's great news for the church, because they have an opportunity to minister to their needs."
Douglas Coupland captures the mood perfectly in his novel, Life After God, in which a young man named Scout and various other characters have "numbed themselves--via drugs, stupid jobs, empty sex--and are searching awkwardly for meaning."
The eloquent hero, Scout, expresses the spiritual hunger of the Xer generation in three sentences at the story's end:"Now here is my secret: I tell it to you with an openness of heart that I doubt I shall ever achieve again, so I pray that you are in a quiet room as you hear these words. My secret is that I need God--that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I am no longer capable of giving; to help me
be kind as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love."
But not so fast. The Xers who group inside the church's doors and are not "on fire," aren't expressing those same desires. In fact, "many have come to believe that the church has nothing to say to them," says Mueller, whose book Understanding Today's Youth Culture grapples with the subject.
"I used to want to be a Super Christian," said one Gen-X male during a Christianity Today online forum. "The reason I stopped pursuing that goal was because I had no role models. All the people from my church were hypocrites."
A 1992 Gallup survey report points to "six basic needs for young people. The need: to believe that life is meaningful and has a purpose; for a sense of community and deeper relationships; to be appreciated and loved; to be listened to--to be heard; to feel that one is growing in faith; for practical help in developing a mature faith."
To meet these needs, Kesler believes families need to begin re-evaluating the biblical ideas of faith, fidelity, love and person-centeredness vs. materialism, individualism and thing-centeredness.
"We need to realize that in our culture, the nuclear family doesn't live in an old-fashioned rural village environment where you have the support of aunts and uncles, cousins, nephews and grandparents," Kesler says. "We need to be intentional about creating this kind of thing in the church--a surrogate, extended family in the church."
Xers are hungry for these types of relationships and discussions. "Our generation is very practical. Show me relevance. Help me deal with career decisions, morality, AIDS, dysfunctional families, substance abuse," said another respondent during Christianity Today's online forum.
To get to this point, parents and mentors need to listen and listen and listen some more.
"That is the one thing I hear over and over again from kids who are hardened to their parents and the church," Mueller says. "They've always been talked to, but never listened to."
Taking a missions trip as a family--even if the kids are in their 20s--is another great way to pull together parents and their children. It gives the Xers a way to act upon their desire to get their hands dirty and be involved in social causes. Mueller also believes working alongside one another pounding nails puts everyone in a situation that allows them to communicate around a shared experience. "It deepens their faith and their relationships with one another," he says.
Despite all of the negativity and hopelessness, this generation is far from a lost cause. Xers have the potential to use today's pervasive media influence to their advantage, especially if the church will make it a priority to provide us with a few listening ears and mentors who will show us the ropes.
The potential for ministry and outreach both to and by our generation is tremendous. The question is this: Will the church look beyond the bleak images associated with this so-called "Lost Generation" and see the great impact we can have on this world for Christ?
The X-Men Cometh: Listening to the movers and shapers of the "X-Generation"
Brad Abare, 18; Tulsa, Okla.
Vita: Editor of ReAL, a magazine for teens (Web site: www.realmagazine.com). Homeschooled. Involved in full-time ministry since age 15.
Motivation: "I have a vision to do something for my generation. I think the best way to reach this generation is with this generation."
Generation X is: "A phony label used by the media. This is the generation that can rock the world for God's kingdom."
Rudy Carrasco, 29; Pasadena, Calif.
Vita: Associate director at Harambee Christian Family Center where he reaches Latino and African-American youths. Writes on issues of justice and religion for national publications.
Reconciliation: "I believe everybody is racist and prejudiced, to varying degrees. But bludgeoning this generation with 'you are racist!' statements turns us off."
Generation X is: "Looking for transparency. We know life is not perfect, people aren't perfect. But don't hide this from us. Share it. Share your failings along with your successes."
Frankie Famadas, 22; Orlando, Fla.
Vita: Web site editor for Vida Cristiana magazine. Worship minister. Harvard graduate. Born and raised in Puerto Rico.
Xer needs: "We have a desire for an intimate understanding of how real God is. We desire stability, unity and a breaking down of cultural barriers."
Generation X is: "An American thing. It's the result of cultural developments in this country. Go to other parts of the world and talk about it, and they'll say 'Generation who?'"
Max Hsu, 27; Chicago, Ill.
Vita: Keyboardist/guitarist/songwriter for Church of Rhythm, a Christian alternative rock group. His band's latest release is titled Not Perfect (Pamplin Music).
Christianity: "My big thing is trying to make the church a place where we can be honest. I grew up thinking that being a Christian meant being happy all the time. But I've learned that Christianity is a process, not an event."
Generation X is: "A generation that values honesty more than almost anything else. The church needs to be a place where kids can have doubts and ask questions. If kids can't go to the church for answers, they'll go someplace else."
Ed Ollie, 25; Miami, Fla.
Vita: Campus chaplain at University of Miami and Florida Memorial College. Missionary with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.
Reaching Xers: "To reach this generation, we must have biblical answers to social problems. Our generation is rooted in the realities of daily life. What does the Bible say about the poor? About racism? My ministry is to bring the gospel to Xers by shedding biblical meaning on the here and now."
Generation X is: "Full of undefined promise. The potential is there, but a vision is what's needed. In many cases, our predecessors did not leave us a vision of biblical community, but of self-glorification and organized religion. We run from that."
About the Author: David Chamberlin is a free-lance writer and a regular contributor to Sweet! Digizine, a CD-ROM magazine. He can be contacted at dchamberlin@bigfoot.com.
SECTION: Part B; COMMENTARY; Pg. B4
New prophets of the altar alternative By David Chamberlin
Did you ever think you'd see the day when "Jesus Freaks" would crack music television's video rotation, enter the playlist of mod rock radio or garner recognition in Spin magazine?
Well, that day has dawned, and Christian acts such as D.C. Talk and Jars of Clay have crusaded right into the Alternative Nation with albums that share honestly about life, relationships and the struggle to keep their heads above water.
DC Talk's Jesus Freak debuted at No. 16 on the Billboard Top 200 charts and has spent 19 weeks in the Top 100 right alongside Oasis, the Beatles, Smashing Pumpkins and Green Day.
The album has garnered acclaim from the likes of USA Today, Rolling Stone, and even The Washington Post without the band watering down its message.
Billboard said Jesus Freak is, "A great piece of work that should find broad-based acceptance. This album will be the one that earns them well-deserved acclaim from the mainstream." Entertainment Weekly noted, "Successfully, if not derivatively, combines textured vocals, aggressive guitar and solid songwriting, especially on 'Colored People' and the raucous title track."
Jars of Clay's self-titled album has risen to No. 68 after claiming the No. 1 spot on Billboard's Heatseeker chart along the way. Their hit single, "Flood" recently reached No. 3 on Radio and Records Adult Alternative radio charts and No. 8 on the Alternative charts. The hit has been spinning on The Box and VH-I for weeks.
With the exception of Amy Grant, few Christian artists have taken their acts to the collective masses. Sure, you could see groups like Petra on Z Music Television, the Christian version of MTV, but not touring the same venues Pearl Jam plays or having their records displayed at Tower Records.
Previous reviews of Christian music have been critical at best. J.D. Considine, a writer for the Baltimore Sun and Rolling Stone recently remarked, "Frankly, I get a lot of records where there are messages I don't necessarily agree with. But what bothers me ... has nothing to do with their message - it has to do with the utter mediocrity of their music."
Music journalist Amy Linden stated on VH-1, "The problem with many of these 'Christian' music people is that they are more concerned with the Christian part than they are about the music. The music is terrible, it's bad, solid-gold dancer music, and they scare me!"
But these recent releases are different and they are charting undiscovered territory as they "break on through to the other side." Gone are electronic drum machines or poor productions. No more music that's two seasons behind the curve, no more poor engineering. They've taken their acts to a higher level and are now beginning to compete with many cutting-edge bands.
Part of the criticism has been the music's primary focus on joy, praise and worship. But whether you're a "Jesus Freak" or an agnostic, there is a frustration and pain side of life and recent Christian artists are tackling it and other life issues. However, parents and Bill Bennett shouldn't worry about these artists taking a Trent Reznor or gangster rap lyrical approach. No "Cop Killer" here.
Jars of Clay write about depression and child abuse in songs like, "He." It's just post apocalyptic alternative without the profanity, sex, violence and substance abuse.
"Don't try to reach me, I'm already dead. The pain when it grips me, for things that I've done. Well, I try to make you proud but for crying out loud. Just give me a chance to hide away. Exhaustion takes over, will this end someday? Fearful tears are running down. The pain you've laid, don't speak a sound. Don't take my heart away from me. And they think I fell down."
DC Talk vocalist Michael Tait said in a phone interview, "It's not all mountaintop experiences. We're going to screw up. We're going to write about our problems and how Christ is going to help us with them."
It's plain to see that these acts are moving beyond their previous borders, and new bands will surely follow as they continue to explore "the other side of life." And just maybe this "evangelism" will keep parents and politicians happy, while kids rock with the new prophets of the altar alternative.
David J. Chamberlin is the special assistant to the vice president for policy at the Family Research Council. He researches, writes and speaks on issues related to popular culture, Generation X and youth culture.
