The angel of death has taken Jerry Falwell from us today – delivering him through St. Peter’s wide-open pearly gates and into the arms of our merciful lord… or perhaps even somewhere else. As the title of Jerry Falwell’s Where Are The Dead? album asks, we know about as much about where his soul has gone as of press time as we know about the details of his demise. Typically, the “liberal media” is evading the cause of his death issue, only mentioning that the Reverend had “a history of congestive heart problems” and not dealing with the real facts. So for now we don’t know whether it was the feminists, gays, lesbians, and liberal groups responsible for 9/11, a rancorous purse-toting Teletubby, or the living Jewish anti-Christ that did him in.

But I’m writing to neither speculate nor explain the factors that took this great man, this bright burning flame, away from us all too soon. I’m not writing to remember Jerry Falwell the erudite religious leader, the man of letters, the media personality, the political figure, or the prolific businessman. I’m not here to remind you how he founded the Moral Majority in 1979, helping accelerate the Reagan revolution, tear down the Iron Curtain, exterminate Clintonian licentiousness, and keep a few zealots convinced that Bush and his policies actually have something to do with Christianity. Praise the lord. I’m not writing to tell you how his very important work has made me feel protected from the evils of abortion, homosexuality, and pornography – or hopeful that I may one day, teary-eyed, enter a public school to join the children in pure uninhibited daily prayer complete with speaking-in-tongues, snake-handling, etc. Amen.

I’m also not writing today to explain the child-rearing lesson I’ve gained from the fact that Falwell was raised by atheists. Or that he was busted in high school for counterfeiting lunch tickets. Or that he ran with juvenile delinquents before finding our blessed baby Jesus Alou lord almighty. Amen.

Additionally, I’m not to here to recall how we viewed Falwell as a legitimate threat to free thought and humanity as radical teenagers when we discovered him in the late 1980s. Nor how he brought us both stoned laughter and amusement on television at the end of a Saturday night college bender. Nor how, in our adult lives, merely bored, we would’ve forgotten about him entirely if he didn’t predictably reappear in the news every now and then hypocritically apologizing for some ridiculously insensitive and intolerant statement that he never really felt sorry for. Hallelujah…

No my brethren in mourning. I am writing today because this prestigious publication is indeed a music pixel-rag and, thus, we are gathered here today in cyberspace (haven’t heard that term for a while), not to mourn this sage, but to discuss his significant contribution to our favorite of the seven liberal arts.

Falwell didn’t only feature the lord’s music in his sermons, but was also the man behind radio’s Old Time Gospel Hour. Additionally, anyone who’s ever been to a southern thrift store knows that the golden fog of pulpit had a number of commercial releases in the 1970s and 1980s. And, plain logic has led me to conclude, from the frequency that the albums appear in those dollar bins, and the enormous quantities available, that the man either sold a quite a few records in his day, or a disproportionate number of folks with Falwell’s albums got rid of ‘em and the customers, perhaps seduced by the temptation of more malevolently suggestive titles like Billy “Crash” Craddock’s Rub It In, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’ Whipped Cream and Other Delights, and, Mitch Miller’s simply satanic Sing Along With Mitch, merely left poor Jerry’s unscratched, unplayed, near-mint records on the shelves waiting for the 99 cents plus tax of someone like me – a treasure-hunter who knows how to dig up a real hidden bargain when he sees it.

Though the music on Falwell’s LPs can be rather sterile, typical, and uninspiring, as in Elvis’ movie period, the recordings are often saved by the artistry of the man himself. Like Louis Armstrong, who could make even the most wooden band swing, Falwell radiant personality shines through and gives the otherwise bland fare some spice. And, like Ronnie James Dio, he’s an intense performer who gives it his all every time. But enough about style…

Jerry Falwell was a man of substance and the totality of his recorded output is a vast Rosetta stone for contemporary life. The culmination of his works include everything you need to know to find happiness and make the world a better place without ever having to move into the blasphemous ideas brought on by the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, etc. The cumulative effect of his discography adds up to the ultimate guide for applying rigid age-old values to the elastic ambiguities of today’s world – preserved in the glistening amber of the ultimate audio medium – pure rotating onyx black petroleum product.

I gotta run. I’m almost late for my bloodletting. But let me leave you with a list of a few of the Rev’s finest jams:

America – Back to God
Sunday Morning at Thomas Road
Where Are The Dead (see the cover at the top and beware brain-munching zombies – btw, where is Jerry?)
Why Troubles Come
and, most recently… God Save America (a 1998 tour de force whose theme is salvaging our great land from the moral destruction of the Clinton administration)