Sects-y Times: Totally Crushed Out vs. Joel Heng Hartse
By Ryan Pangilinan

Joel Heng Hartse is a musician turned blogger turned Ph.D student turned author, but unlike people who have been given book deals on the popularity of their Twitter accounts, he also has years of experience under his belt writing for actual printed publications in addition to his personal musings, The Un-scene. For his first book, Heng Hartse has written “Sects, Love and Rock and Roll: My Life on Record” (Wipf and Stock Publishers), a collection of essays that oversee his history with popular music.

Totally Crushed Out: For as long as I’ve known of your writing, you’ve found a way to openly (and unabashedly) write about both Christian and secular music without boundaries. Was that the impetus behind “Sects, Love and Rock and Roll?”

I’m glad to hear that’s how you see it. That kind of was the point, I think. Basically, when I first got into pop music, I was in a time and place where I got super-obsessed with Christian rock. I just loved it. Then I got a little bit older and started to feel like if I loved pop music so much, it was insane to limit myself to listening to whatever a few “Christian” entertainment companies were selling, so I just started listening to everything. But I kept listening to that stuff I first fell in love with – to this day, Sixpence None the Richer is my all-time favorite band, and I will defend them to the death. So when I started writing about music I wanted to just write about stuff I really liked, whatever it was. My first two music-writing gigs were Paste magazine, which is sort of this pseudo-Christiany thing that doesn’t really cover Christian music, so that was a great fit for me, and at the same time Tablet, which was a really low-budget Seattle paper that was run by basically irreligious punks, as far as I could tell. I guess I’ve just wanted to write about stuff that is awesome, for whoever will publish or read it. Lately I’ve been focusing on more Christian or religious outlets, just because I’ve wanted to help push things forward in that realm, writing about more obscure bands that aren’t associated with any kind of religiously-themed moneymaking industry.

Now you are one of the few Christians I know who’ve been successful at maintaining a balance of faith and a semblance of (what society would deem as) normality. Do you think that the book will break down any preconceived notions about people of faith?

Well, I think all people are normal. Most people now and in the entirety of human history have been religious, so I don’t have a lot of patience for like “oh, Christian fundamentalists are psychotic and irrational” (even when they are), because we’re all just people trying to live. I guess on kind of a superficial subcultural level, it would be great if somebody who wasn’t an Evangelical Christian read the book and was like “hey, Christians aren’t psychotic,” but that’s not really the point. I told one of my friends that the reason I didn’t think it was self-indulgent to write this book is that the kind of stuff I wrote about is a common experience that tons of people have had.

I find the Facebook page for “Sects” pretty interesting because the bands whose videos and songs you’ve been posting are a mixed bag, some aren’t as expected as others. Have you gotten any responses from people who’ve looked at the page and were surprised that maybe they weren’t the only ones who would remember an obscure band like The Cootees?

I haven’t gotten a whole lot of responses. My goal with the songs I’m posting is just to turn people on to stuff that I think is really good and it usually has some kind of resonance with faith or religion or just the Evangelical subculture. I was bummed that nobody commented on the live version of “Holy Are You” by the Electric Prunes with Richard Aschcroft singing, but I was really happy that people had a positive reaction to “Goldie’s Last Day” by PFR. Greatest pop song about a dog ever.

In the last few years, I feel like there’s been a surge of bands that have either started in Christian rock or have songs about God that have entered the mainstream consciousness and are rather popular (Manchester Orchestra, Eisley, Brand New and Paramore come to mind). Typically, indie rock culture has shied away from these kinds of bands. What do you think has changed in the last five to ten years?

I don’t know much about those bands, but I do think that Christian rock culture has kind of disappeared, or at least it’s not the same as it used to be. I can’t think of a Christian indie label that has started up in the last 5 years, because there’s just no money in it anymore. I’m glad though, because hopefully that means fewer people are drawing lines in the sand about what kids can or can’t listen to. Although if you’re a teenager who still isn’t allowed to listen to ‘secular’ music, you have a lot fewer options now, it looks like.

As a kid who listened to Tooth and Nail bands, I always thought it was funny that many of those specialized labels pushed the Christian version of a popular band. With that in mind (and in a tongue in cheek sort of way), would you say that you’re the Christian version of Chuck Klosterman?

Even though it goes against everything I believe about music and art and religion, I would have to say yes, if it will help me sell more books. Actually, hopefully no one will call me that, because there are swears in my book, so according to the gatekeepers of that culture, it could not possibly be a Christian book. Thank God!

Joel Heng Hartse will be embarking on a tour promoting “Sects, Love and Rock and Roll.” Details can be found at his blog, The Un-Scene and the book’s Facebook page.