“God’s On the Phone”
Milo Miles
The Village Voice, November 19, 1991,
reprinted April 8, 2020
following the death of John Prine
Milo Miles is a music critic, working with NPR. He’s been at it a long time, at least as far back as 1991 when he reviewed a new album by John Prine. The Missing Years, it is called, referring both to the five years it had been since John had released an album and also the years in the life of Jesus between the recorded trip to the Jerusalem temple at the age of 12 and, years later, his baptism in the Jordan by his cousin John, at the age of 30 or so.
Miles writes, in part:
“…the songs that outstrip those of his old pal Steve Goodman and pull Prine into the realm of big Daddy Dylan are those like ‘Everything is Cool’ and ‘Jesus the Missing Years’—unclassifiable kinds of modernist religious meditations.
“Prine never gets caught shouting and banging on the high keys about this. His sense of the super-natural derives more from the everyday wonderment that causes people to invent phrases such as ‘I felt like I’d been pulled through a knothole backwards’ rather than the literature of surrealism or Biblical frescoes. Still, the man has been haunted by Christianity since his debut album 20 years ago; “Pretty Good” sums up all religions; God got mentioned frequently; Jesus died for nothing at the core of ‘Sam Stone,’ disapproved of killing on ‘Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore,’ and had to be found on your own in ‘Spanish Pipedream.’ Counter culturalists and the Nazarene were regular associates in those years, but to this day, when the celestial mood grips Prine the sky is thick with black angels, Jesus covers the waterfront, and God’s not in his heaven—he’s on the phone and won’t let well enough alone.
“People are a little ill at ease with artists who have a persistent, unconventional relationship with the divine, especially when they insist on using conventional names and symbols—it implies that standard theology is correct but that everybody else got it wrong. Long before he got bitten by T-Bone Burnett, the young Dylan did rambles where the Son o’ God had a walk-on as an ordinary soul passing through absurd misadventures and Prine goes one further here with ‘Jesus the Missing years.’ During that notorious gap in the Bible biography, Christ shatters time and space to get tangled up with James Dean and get on stage with George Jones and generally act out the fantasies of, as Prine put is in another song, “A young man from a small town/With a very large imagination.’ The singer’s identification with the Redeemer is plain, but again he’s not puffed up about it. The proposition seems to be that Prine, Dean, Mark Twain, you, me, and anybody at all could be Jesus.”
….
Transcribed by Dwight A. Moody, from a photograph downloaded from Facebook, on March 21, 2024. Later, the April 8, 2020 reprint was located.
“God’s On the Phone”
Milo Miles
The Village Voice, November 19, 1991,
reprinted April 8, 2020
following the death of John Prine
Milo Miles is a music critic, working with NPR. He’s been at it a long time, at least as far back as 1991 when he reviewed a new album by John Prine. The Missing Years, it is called, referring both to the five years it had been since John had released an album and also the years in the life of Jesus between the recorded trip to the Jerusalem temple at the age of 12 and, years later, his baptism in the Jordan by his cousin John, at the age of 30 or so.
Miles writes, in part:
“…the songs that outstrip those of his old pal Steve Goodman and pull Prine into the realm of big Daddy Dylan are those like ‘Everything is Cool’ and ‘Jesus the Missing Years’—unclassifiable kinds of modernist religious meditations.
“Prine never gets caught shouting and banging on the high keys about this. His sense of the super-natural derives more from the everyday wonderment that causes people to invent phrases such as ‘I felt like I’d been pulled through a knothole backwards’ rather than the literature of surrealism or Biblical frescoes. Still, the man has been haunted by Christianity since his debut album 20 years ago; “Pretty Good” sums up all religions; God got mentioned frequently; Jesus died for nothing at the core of ‘Sam Stone,’ disapproved of killing on ‘Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore,’ and had to be found on your own in ‘Spanish Pipedream.’ Counter culturalists and the Nazarene were regular associates in those years, but to this day, when the celestial mood grips Prine the sky is thick with black angels, Jesus covers the waterfront, and God’s not in his heaven—he’s on the phone and won’t let well enough alone.
“People are a little ill at ease with artists who have a persistent, unconventional relationship with the divine, especially when they insist on using conventional names and symbols—it implies that standard theology is correct but that everybody else got it wrong. Long before he got bitten by T-Bone Burnett, the young Dylan did rambles where the Son o’ God had a walk-on as an ordinary soul passing through absurd misadventures and Prine goes one further here with ‘Jesus the Missing years.’ During that notorious gap in the Bible biography, Christ shatters time and space to get tangled up with James Dean and get on stage with George Jones and generally act out the fantasies of, as Prine put is in another song, “A young man from a small town/With a very large imagination.’ The singer’s identification with the Redeemer is plain, but again he’s not puffed up about it. The proposition seems to be that Prine, Dean, Mark Twain, you, me, and anybody at all could be Jesus.”
….
Transcribed by Dwight A. Moody, from a photograph downloaded from Facebook, on March 21, 2024. Later, the April 8, 2020 reprint was located.
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