Church Music

It may come as a surprise to some of y'all but for many years, up until covid came calling, I regularly attended church. Haven't been back much since things opened back up but #ThreeTuneTuesday seemed like a good excuse to revisit those days.

Mind you this wasn't your ordinary church, it was cut from a different cloth so to speak. No pews, just bar stools and a cover charge. Over the years the congregation faced their fair share of trials and tribulations but not even fires and police raids could dampen their enthusiasm for Church.

Ever since the schism with the Crystal Methodists, services have been held in one bar or another and dispensed with the preaching and praying altogether to focus on the music. One thing has stayed the same though, and that's the Merry Pranksters. Not those guys but they could have been their younger brothers. If you can picture a bunch of old heads that have been playing music to trip out to for the past forty years then you've got a pretty good idea of the Pranksters. At some point they put out original music but they quit bothering to long ago and now just do covers, which brings us to the church music.

Friend of the Devil by the Grateful Dead was far and away our most popular hymn. Usually they saved it til near the end of the third set, when it was about 3:30 in the morning and everyone was good and twisted. It'd have half the bar up and doing that peculiar drunken sway that is hippie dancing. Don't know if it was because of how close it was to daylight when we were listening to it or just the amount of pot smoke in the air but we all seemed to relate to this tune.

I know there's some deadheads out there, what's your favorite performance of this tune?

Usually churches and me get along about as well as David Gilmour and Roger Waters. At least that's my excuse for not having more church photos. Long before Louisville had an official mushroom church, Church was where you went if you wanted a side of psychedelics with your service. For a while there LMPD was even attending services regularly.

With that sort of vibe, how could they not play a little Pink Floyd? I've always been a sucker for a good guitar solo so I had to go with Shine On You Crazy Diamond. The Pranksters may not been Pink Floyd but as long as he wasn't sober their lead guitarist could probably give Gilmour a run for his money.

Alright my Floyd freaks, what's the best Pink Floyd tune to melt out to?

This last tune is one of my favorite road tripping tunes, I'd catch myself singing it as I cruised through East and West Bumfuck. Ended up spending the night in Tucumcari, New Mexico just because of it on my road trip in 2017.

Willin' by Little Feat was a special treat at Church, unless I requested it they only played it on special occasions like Pranksgiving (the reason why everyone showed up to Thanksgiving hungover). The crowd at Church was usually a nice mix of hippies, rednecks, and bikers, with a stray normie or two that'd wandered in, so the tune pretty much had something for everyone. Think Southern California pre-Altamont and you should have a pretty good idea.

That's probably enough church music for one day, it's still a long way til Sunday. First two photos are from the Chapel of the Transfiguration in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Third photo is the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Third and fourth photos are from somewhere in East Bumfuck along the Oregon-Nevada state line. Photo above is from somewhere in North Bumfuck, Nevada (it's all desert and mines before you get to Winnemucca). Photo below is of a salt pan in the Great Salt Desert near the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

Was scrolling the youtubes this past Sunday looking for something to listen to when it suggested a livestream of some band I'd never heard of. For shits & giggles I gave it a play and was rather entertained by how much the band, setlist, and crowd resembled Church with the Merry Pranksters. They were playing some little bar down in Florida but if I closed my eyes I could pretend I was at Church. Did get me wondering how many other places have a local equivalent to the Merry Pranksters holding services every week.

Anybody else go to a church with a cover charge?