“ALL ROCK AND ROLL MUSIC IS SATANIC!”

Me and my friends laughed at him. Well, they did. I was a bit too scared to laugh, as my Dad was a local Southern Baptist church pastor. But in Dublin, California, we didn’t call it Southern Baptist. We moved from Arkansas in the spring of 1980. My new friends and I were sitting in the back pew, cutting up and making fun of the parishioners, like young boys do.

Church for us was small, consisting of maybe thirty or forty congregants, a majority of which were women over sixty and their husbands who dutifully followed their wives to their regular spot in the pews one row back from the front row. That was specially reserved for the pastor, his wife, and children. But my Dad did his best to be the ‘cool’ Dad, which, to be honest, most of the time he failed miserably, like this Sunday.

“YOU MUST BURN THE DEVIL OUT OF THE MUSIC! ROCK AND ROLL IS STRAIGHT FROM THE PIT! EVEN THE ARTISTS THEMSELVES ARE UNAWARE OF THE BACKWARD MESSAGES YOU CAN HEAR WHEN YOU PLAY THE RECORD BACKWARD! IF YOU ARE LETTING YOUR CHILDREN LISTEN TO THIS GARBAGE, YOU ARE SENDING THEM TO HELL!”

Dad could sell the whole ‘burn in hell’ idea while making himself look good. But messages coming through records, recorded intentionally backward? I was ten years old, and even I didn’t buy that.

It was 1981 and we had settled comfortably into our new life in Dublin, me and my sister doing our best to lose the stupid southern accent we grew up with. It could’ve been a lot worse. There was a new girl in school, from somewhere in Tennessee if I remember right, whose drawl made me and Tina look more educated than her. Tina adapted to the new school, making friends with several of the most popular girls at Christian Center School with zero effort. Yeah, a private Christian school. Where else would a Baptist preacher send his kids? Our Mother almost didn’t graduate high school, so having her try to teach us was out of the question, not with Dad’s iron fist at home. He was the man of the house. He was the final authority; God said so. Tina, even in second grade, was the prettiest girl. The California popular girls wanted to be her, even if they secretly hated her clothes.

As for me, being the oldest and the PK (preacher’s kid) put a bullseye on my back. And, just like it was back in Arkansas, the kids made of that fact. I got into a fight during my first week at the new school. Well, more like I finished a fight that I never started, a fact that my Dad was more than a little pleased with. He always said, “Finish it. Don’t start it.” And I did.

Greg had it coming, anyway. He was calling me names on the playground and broke the cardinal rule of playground etiquette; he pushed me! I wasn’t the type to fight – usually. But today? Today I had taken enough crap from the other kids. Now Greg was the one with a target on his back. But I waited until I got back up, my face growing redder by the second. “You have one chance, dude. Apologize now, or I’m going finish what you started.”

“Apologize?” Greg laughed in my face, closing his eyes for a split second. That’s when I punched him, clocking him right in his nose. I would learn later that Greg had random nosebleeds for no good reason. It just so happened that when I punched him, his nose decided to bleed. He hit the bark dust with a thud, knocking the wind out of his lungs. Gasping for breath and blood pouring from your nose is a terrible way to start a Wednesday morning. I didn’t have any blood on my fist, surprising me and the small crowd of kids circling us. Someone picked Greg up, one of his friends, who gave me a high-five and wink. The recess lady, a frumpy third-grade teacher named Mrs. Lorhi, pronounced Lor-ee, had a whistle around her neck that she blew long and loud. “What’s going on over there?!” she shouted. Greg was being carried over to her, blood splashed down his pale blue uniform shirt. “Oh, for crying out loud, Gregory!” she shouted, snatching him from his friend by the shoulder and marching him to the office. “How could you be so stupid!”

“But I didn’t do this!” Greg shouted. “He did!” Greg pointed back to me. “Just look at his right hand! Look!”

The kids around me parted, and I held up my hand. “I didn’t do anything,” I said, showing her my not-blooded hand.

She scowled at me, screaming, “Marcellus! You are coming with me!”

The telephone call home was a good time, I explained to Dad what happened. But backward messages on rock and roll? I wasn’t sure where he got that from.