Send in the Clones!

I've been extremely emotional the last month. Mostly good emotions, though often very sad, very lost. But, I've been trying to keep this blog from turning into The Mangina Dialogues. Don't know how long that effort will last.

But, in the meantime, I've wanted to do a bit of a run-down on Steve Taylor, one of the most important artists in the formation of my little art-sensitive mind. Taylor was a Christian music recording artist that blew the walls within Christian music. He wrote intelligent (sometimes belligerent, sometimes sensitive) and incisive critical pop music for the times, calling to task social issues like abortion, abortion clinic bombings, the life-boat mentality (evaluation of individual's worth to society and therefore, life), the absence of objective truth, racism (esp. in a certain 'Christian' liberal arts college in the South), personal, familial and public consequences for actions, the weight of heroes, the church-afied people mentality, etc., etc.

I want to periodically print up some of Taylor's lyrics and/or writings. Some of them are from his solo material (most in the 80's), and some from group work (his mainstream but short-lived rock band Chagall Guevera and another pop CCM mainstay, the Newsboys). Today's will be one of the many of the church-afied variety of Steve Taylor song. From the EP of the same name:

I Want to Be a Clone

I'd gone through so much other stuff
that walking down the aisle was tough
but now I know it's not enough
I want to be a clone

I asked the Lord into my heart
they said that was the way to start
but now you've got to play the part
I want to be a clone

chorus:
Be a clone and kiss conviction goodnight
cloneliness is next to Godliness, right?
I'm grateful that they show the way
'cause I could never know the way
to serve him on my own
I want to be a clone

They told me that I'd fall away
unless I followed what they say
who needs the Bible anyway?
I want to be a clone

Their language it was new to me
but Christianese got through to me
now I can speak it fluently
I want to be a clone

(chorus)

Send in the clones
Ah, I kind of wanted to tell my friends and people about it, you know
What?
You're still a babe
you have to grow
give it twenty years or so
'cause if you want to be one of his
got to act like one of us

(chorus)

So now I see the whole design
my church is an assembly line
the parts are there
I'm feeling fine
I want to be a clone

I've learned enough to stay afloat
but not so much I rock the boat
I'm glad they shoved it down my throat
I want to be a clone

Everybody must get cloned

Thanks to sockheaven.net for the lyrics and album cover art I just swiped.