Body Piercing Saved My Life
Inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rock
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Body Piercing Saved My Life is the first in-depth journalistic investigation into a subculture so large that it's erroneous to even call it a subculture: Christian rock. Christian rock culture is booming, not only with bands but with extreme teen Bibles, skateboarding ministries, Christian tattoo parlors, paintball parks, coffeehouses, and nightclubs,encouraging kids to form their own communities apart from the mainstream. Profiling such successful Christian rock bands as P.O.D., Switchfoot, Creed, Evanescence, and Sixpence None the Richer, as well as the phenomenally successful Seattle Christian record label Tooth & Nail, enormous Christian rock festivals, and more, Spin journalist Andrew Beaujon lifts the veil on a thriving scene that operates beneath the secular world's radar. Revealing, sympathetic, and groundbreaking, Body Piercing Saved My Life (named for a popular Christian rock T-shirt depicting Christ's wounds) is a fascinating look into the hearts and minds of an enormous, and growing, youth culture.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
According to Beaujon, contributing writer for Spin, sales of Christian music totaled 47 million albums in 2003 outselling jazz, classical music and New Age combined, with sales climbing 10% each year for the past five years. Beaujon came up with the title of his book from a T-shirt he saw at the Cornerstone Christian music festival depicting Jesus's hands with holes in them. In addition to promoting fundamentalist evangelical Christianity, such messages, Beaujon explains, delivered in either folky ballad lilts or throat-wrenching Steven Tyleresque heavy metal screams, are strongly antiabortion ("stop killing my generation"), staunchly conservative (70% of Christian rockers and their fans are Republicans) and provirginity ("dating is prostitution"). Beaujon developed the book from a series of pieces written for Spin and, consequently, the text reads like pithy, onsite, you-are-there set pieces. In "Black and White in a Gray World," he profiles a day in the life of youthful prolife Christian rockers who tout their anticontraception, antiabortion and anti stem cell research messages through prolife rock music. Many of Beaujon's musical references may be obscure to those over 25, but his insider view of the ideologically passionate world of Christian rock is compelling. Beaujon an agnostic reports well but passes no judgment.
