praying with Richard Patrick and Filter

  "I tried to pray..I'll give it a shot" (lyrics to  Filter's "Captain Bligh").


I know; I'm behind the times.

Filter is a new band to me: I heard "Skinny" the other day, and found it captivating and spiritually moving.  The band is basically Richard Patrick and whoever rallies around for a given album.season.

For someome who claims to (no longer?) be a believer..I wonder if  he doth prostest too much.

Pretty God-haunted.

 Even though Captain Bligh is supposed to be about Patrick's leaving his former band (NIN):
to me it smells like another singer (Peter Gabriel)'s song ("Solsbury Hill") that is officially about him leaving his former band (Genesis)..but reads like a journal following a  God-encounter.

  Even though one album is "Anthems for the Damned," it feels like a pulling a Johnny Cash.



 Skinny:

Captain Bligh:




 9:37ff on Bono and Christianity:

 Quote:
" I’ve even said it in interviews: 'We’re the heavy version of U2.'”
 Article excerpts:

After shows, we stay until everyone who wants an autograph gets one. The biggest rock stars are all nice guys: Bono, Mick Jagger," he says.

Since it's agnostic Carl Sagan's birthday, I ask him how his own agnosticism influenced the new album. As far back as Filter's first release, Patrick has peppered his songs with jabs at organized religion, but on The Trouble With Angels he's more direct, like he's no longer pulling his punches. "Did you hear the one about heaven? There's a guy that's running the sky," he sings on the title track.

"Science is awesome," he says, displaying an almost childlike enthusiasm for the natural world that's infectious when you're in his presence. "I can see beauty in the rings of Saturn. Why does there have to be a reason for everything?" He's a non-believer in religion and a believer in science. He launches into a lengthy diatribe on the theory of evolution, ending with, "How much more proof do you need?"

His wife is a Christian. "She's moderate, she prays at night," Patrick says. If everyone was like his wife, he says, he wouldn't have as much of a problem with religion; it's the fanatics that get under his skin.  link