Thursday, August 19, 2010

the happy goodmans!

i was youtubing a song i liked by the weavers, an old hymn called "i don't want to get adjusted" (and i found a pretty amazing bunch of videos of people performing beautiful versions of it and other hymns in churches in the south), when i stumbled across this version done by a gospel group from the 60s called the happy goodmans.



wacky video aside, i have a weird love/hate relationship with the sentiment expressed in the song, the idea that the material world is temporary and our real home is in the afterlife. for some reason i find the idea that "the world is not my home" (hello tom waits!) kind of beautiful and sweet and sad, but at the same time it seems to encourage apathy toward real-world suffering or trying to make a positive difference in the world. whether or not you believe in the afterlife i don't think it's a good idea for people to think that nothing in this world really matters.

4 comments:

kamapuaa said...

From the title I assumed there was something in Leviticus saying that chiropractors should be stoned.

Mr. Pony said...

If you can convince people that all the things they normally strive for (money, power, humping, even sustenance) are somehow irrelevant, and you can replace those regular goals with magic goals that you made up, then you are very, very awesome. You win a religion!

sokeripupu said...

kamapuaa, the weavers did it with an intro implying it could be anti-therapy (the psychological kind)!

Ruby Tenneco said...

An interpretation i prefer (I might be grasping because like the song so much) is not to try to get used to how crappy everything can be in the world, but keep striving for something that's better...

I'm not sure that's how all of the band is thinking of it though-- the guy sitting down in the background in particular looks kind of mean and gnostic.