Anyway, by chance I came across his blog today, The Thoughts of Chairman Parker. And it referred to a single he released last October called "The End of Faith" [---][/---] a title inspired, as you might guess, by Sam Harris's book of the same name. Reading that book, along with Dawkins's The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, was a "mind-expanding experience" for Parker. He's been rather anti-religion for quite a while (see Rolling Stone, 21 August 2001), but he's been loath to call himself an atheist. Now, it seems, he's lost his last inhibitions. Out of nostalgia and curiosity, I spent 79 pence on downloading the track from iTunes. Here are the lyrics, as far as I can make out:
Well, he certainly loved that subtitle.I can’t wait till all the mosques are turned into discos
And I can’t wait till all the priests move to San Francisco
I can’t wait till God is dead and over and done with
I can’t wait till the Age of Reason is the world we live in
And I can’t wait till the synagogues are turned into dance halls
And I can’t wait till the temples rock and the Vatican rolls
And I can’t wait till the end of faith
I can’t wait till the end of faith
I can’t wait till we rid the world of superstitions
And I can’t wait till the holy books are in their final editions
I can’t wait till this nightmare’s finally gone
And we’ll look back and wonder how it went on for so long
Till there’s only earth beneath and only sky above us
And Heaven’s Gate is just the name of a movie that cost too much
Oh, I can’t wait till the end of faith
I can’t wait till the end of faith
Yeah!
I can’t wait till this grand illusion is finally thrown out
And I can’t hate this insanity any more than I do now
Why is it our fate to spread this poison in the hearts of children?
It’s not too late; we can stop this madness that perverts and kills them
And we can come to the end of faith
Yeah we can come to the end of faith
I can’t wait till the end of faith
The end of faith
Religion poisons everythang!
Even the best lyrics tend to look a bit lame in print. And these aren't the best lyrics. But I can't honestly say that they're much better when attached to a melody and an arrangement. The trouble is, my musical taste is very different from what it was in the late 1970s. Graham Parker, on the other hand, sounds a lot like he did then [---][/---] at least, he does on this track. As much as I'd like to, I can't get enthusiastic about the song. It's all rather repetitive and predictable and clichéd and ... slightly embarrassing.
And yet, at the same time, when I listen to it, I feel an overwhelming affection for the man. Nowadays Graham Parker lives in Woodstock, New York, and to judge from some of the comments on his blog he has a lot of US fans who are Christians. But he's not afraid to piss people off. He may be pushing sixty but he's still passionate, still snarling, and I rather like that.
But then, I used to be something of a fan. And these things never really die.
Emma