My life on record

Music serves as reminders of some of life's most important touchstones

By Kurt Armstrong and ChristianWeek | December 1, 2010

There's a scene in Steven Frears' film High Fidelity where record shop owner Rob reorganizes his entire record collection after his latest breakup. "How are you organizing them?" asks his friend, Dick. "Chronologically?" "Nope," says Rob. "Not alphabetically," says Dick. Too obvious. "No," says Rob. "Autobiographical."

Likewise, Joel Heng Hartse's book is an autobiography via of his Christian rock collection, the artists, albums and songs that serve as touchstones for his life. It's a story of growing up in the weirdness of the evangelical subculture without thinking there's anything weird about it. But it's not the least bit cynical. Fortunately, Heng Hartse can write about his nerdiness and naÃ¯vete as a Christian rock fan without making fun of all his formative loves.

When he writes, "Evangelical rock music is evangelical identity music" in the first few pages, I knew exactly what he meant. I fell in love with Christian rock when I first heard Michael W. Smith's Project (which is still surprisingly good after all these years), and started to fall out of love when I saw Whiteheart in concert in 1994 (why do Christian bands playing for Christian audiences in Christian venues have an altar call?). Heng Hartse's book is top-notch rock writing, music snobbery at it's self-indulgent, self-effacing best.

No doubt this book strikes a chord with me because my experience with Christian music is so similar to Heng Hartse's and our musical tastes overlap so much. Nearly every Christian artist or band he mentions–Michael W. Smith, Petra, Stryper, Starflyer 59, Prayer Chain, to name a few–was music I had known and loved at some point in my life.

But the book also works well because Heng Hartse is so good at finding words to describe the evangelical experience. When he talks about using Christian music as an evangelistic tool, the awkwardness he felt wearing Christian T-shirts to school and the thrill of listening to demo tapes at the Christian bookstore, he absolutely nails it. Now his tastes have changed–long ago he switched from reading CCM to CMJ, shelved Audio Adrenaline and picked up Deathcab for Cutie–but he still listens to music with a theological ear, and he writes about it so well.

It's a rare book that makes me laugh out loud, and Joel Heng Hartse's fantastic book might be the only Christian book that's ever done that. I have only two real complaints about the book: one, he somehow neglected to mention that The Seventy Sevens is the best Christian rock band ever, and two: I didn't write it.