Monday, March 19, 2007

The Jesuits Love Tom Waits

Here's something of note from Down Under:

"Even if Tom Waits's songs, which include Dragging a Dead Priest, are sung in a rasping voice that seems to have been soaked in a whisky barrel, he has won over friends in the Jesuit order. Barely a week after the Pope told of his dislike for the 'prophets of pop' and Bob Dylan in particular, the Jesuits in Rome have embraced Waits as a Christian role model.

"The latest issue of Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit journal whose contents are subject to Vatican approval, says Waits represents 'the marginalised and misunderstood.'

"Father Antonio Spadaro, 40, who normally writes about literature but is emerging as a Catholic authority on pop music, said Waits had lived a youthful life of 'drugs, alcohol and sex'"as an outcast on the streets of California. He therefore understood 'the lower depths'" of society and was able to convey the desperation of those on the margins. His past enabled him to express their 'capacity for hope and instinct for happiness' in 'authentic songs devoid of vanity and false illusions,' Father Spadaro said."

Will the Civilta Cattolica become the new Pitchfork?

P.S. I've been away and busy, but I hope to start posting regularly again.

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