Muzack in Church

Faithful reader Teresa sent us an article from the Catholic Register about bad music in Church.

Among my bad experiences remains the blasted folk choir that played at my old church for about ten years. They had a group of lousy singers lead by a group of lousy strumming guitarists. Every song they played began the same way: STRUM strumma strumma STRUM strumma strumma. About every other week their opening hymn was "Gather Us In," except for the ten week stretch where it was the opening song for every week. The most memorable time I heard that song was the Christmas Eve they played it for an opening hymn at Midnight Mass. I can understand why they did- I mean, there's hardly any suitable music for that time of year. As I sat there, in my pew, grinding my teeth and offering it up for the poor suffering souls in purgatory, I felt most... unchristian.

Oddly, though, they and the priest from that time were quite popular and the Masses were quite full. However, once that priest left the choir broke up soon after, many people left as well. I suppose their soil was thin. Or perhaps it was a bad seed to plant. At any rate, after they left my mother and put our heads together and tried to remember the number of songs we had heard them play over the years- and we came up with 18. Ten years listening to a repertoire of 18 folk songs. I hope I shaved off some serious Purgatory time with that.

As a side note, to this day I still refuse to sing "Gather Us In" and the others. One day I may fisk the lyrics for this blog, although many others have done an able job on it.

However, absolute worst for music goes to the time I was at another parish and I heard some kind of band play- and I am not making this up- Stairway to Heaven as an opening hymn. I sat in the pews and I heard the opening guitar riff and I thought "Hey, that sounds just like.... naw...."

Feel free to offer any bad music stories you have in the combox.