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David Bazan's alter ego, the band Pedro the Lion, demonstrates Gen-Y's fascination with the deeper issues of moral dilemmas. This is not the happy, sugary pop of Contemporary Christian Music. A quietly engaging twenty-something, Bazan writes with edgy, obsessive solemnity. The tensions he sees between classes, families, the haves, the have-nots and the sexes, get his full attention. As Bazan himself admits, "That tension is frustrating, but it also makes me feel alive". Giving lie to the myth that only Contemporary Christian Music is evangelical, Pedro the Lion's dark songs effortlessly touch a smart yet disembodied generation, a generation with "no universal authority". Like major label punkers MXPX or Jay Bakker (son of Jim and Tammy Faye, whose Revolution Ministry reaches out to punks, skate-boarders, skin-heads, and hippies), it's Bazan's open honesty that throws an embracing net over a melange of fans: shoe gazers, indie purists, tattooed and pierced street kids, college kids, punks, nerds, Christians, dot-commers and the ne'er do well. Bazan uses his modern day laments to wryly skew any sense of spiritual pretension. Bazan admits "In evangelical Christian music, there's no negativity ever ... Everything has to be positive for people to embrace it and that's a difference. Things are kind of negative in the way that they come out of me usually, but also it's kind of a critique on the things that frustrate me about it -- the way people treat one another." As he says later "I know what a messed up person I am ... it gives me a sense of power to be able to critique this thing that alienates me and other people like me, people who know they are messed up".
Blending artistic integrity with these issues, Bazan casts his unflinching gaze over a host of preoccupations, including interpersonal relationships, spirituality, and the conflict that comes up in the United States because "everybody views themselves as moral at some level, whether or not it's liberal morality or conservative morality". This conflict is highlighted on Pedro the Lion's most recent album, Get the CD "Winners Never Quit", a group of murky, modern day parables, somber in verse and music. The lyrically chilling opening track, Slow and Steady Wins The Race," speaks to the compassionless rationalizations in much of Christianity today.
i stayed on the narrow path / but my brother wandered off / deep into the wood / bitten twice by rattle snakes / tangled up in poison oak / he fell down and broke his legs / into a great ravine / when I arrived at grandma's house / she had made us tea and cake / she asked me where my brother was / i said "i don't know," and ate Bazan explains, "I think it's so common in evangelical Christian circles, to be so concerned about your own righteousness. The whole focus on personal righteousness really subverts any concept of compassion -- just being gracious to other people. And I think the end result is pretty final in the way that song is final, and [the brother] messed up so that's his problem, so I can't worry about it." This preoccupation with the consequences of our decisions continues throughout this record. In the song " Eye On The Finish Line," about the contemplation of suicide, Bazan explains "We're all at different levels of betraying our own standards of what is good and what is right and I think it's just a matter of being able to rationalize it to ourselves." It's refreshing reflections like these that separate this fourth generation preacher's son from the traditional mind-set of preaching. "I think in preaching there's always this idea of a hidden agenda, where the goal is to convert people and, for me, the goal is trying to continue my own personal search for truth and to help other people to be more critical and logical in that approach of trying to get at truth. And if what I set out to believe is actually true, then hopefully other people will come to that," says Bazan. Like the aforementioned Jay Bakker, or even the wildly popular David Eggers, whose book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is flying off the shelves, Bazan's work shows the shrinking distance between secular compassion and religious compassion today. Bazan mentions Chan Marshall's band Cat Power, The Innocence Mission and U2 as other bands addressing these themes. Expect this iconoclastic young troubadour to be around a long time, wrestling with the ironies and ambiguities of modern life. Nadine Condon continues to speak, write, mentor, produce, promote, and consult on the music business. She recently received her thirteenth and fourteenth gold record from current popsters Stroke 9 and Smashmouth. Related Links
Son of a Preacher Man
The Healing Power of Rhythm
Punks to Monks The Beatles, The Bible, and Bodega Bay: My Long and Winding Road
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slow and steady
