Today my essay “The Cannibal and the Eucharist” is available to read at IMAGE’s “Good Letters”  blog.

It describes my none-too-brave encounter with singer-songwriter Michael Knott’s song “Kitty” as a sophomore in high school. “The Cannibal and the Eucharist” is my first essay for IMAGE. I hope to write many more for them if they will have me. 

Read it here.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

That a man who has released over 40 albums remains unknown to the general public is a musical crime even more unforgivable than the recent release of Lulu–Lou Reed’s collaborative album with Metallica.

As anyone who has heard Lulu knows, this is no small claim.

I first became acquainted with the music of this man at the age of 15.

Based on the recommendation of underground independent magazine True Tunes News alone–without ever hearing it–I bought Lifesavers Underground’s (L. S. U.) Shaded Pain album for my sister Alyssa for Christmas in 1993. It painted the blackest picture of the Christian life I had ever come across in all my seemingly infinite fifteen years on planet Earth, but it was not without hope. It was funeral of a record–a ceremony held in the church to commemorate the death of something, but with the hope of a life unseen just beyond death’s thick black curtain.

My cousin Erin, who listened to (gasp) secular music, said it sounded like gothic rockers Bauhaus, and I trusted her judgment. That year, Alyssa and I decked the halls of our “haus” with the chrome cassette tape of a Christian goth album.

Shaded Pain introduced Alyssa and me to L. S. U.’s frontman Michael Knott. The album sounds like the work of a man possessed, with Knott’s demons commandeering the microphone throughout. Out of all the albums he has released in his lifetime thus far, it remains one of his best. It is by far his most harrowing.

Christian radio rejected Shaded Pain upon its initial release on Frontline Records in 1987, but it went on to become an underground classic and was reissued through Metro One Music the year I bought it for Alyssa.

When Knott signed with Word Records for his Rocket and a Bomb album, I wondered if he had staged a coup and seized control of the company. Word Records, after all, was home to Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, and Rich Mullins. I wore the print off of my cassette of Michael W. Smith’s Go West Young Man, so I was hardly immune to the charms of these Christian artists who were household names in Christian households.

But Word Records artists were–to borrow a Captain Beefheart album title–“safe as milk.” Milk was downright dangerous, in fact, when compared with the Gaither Vocal Band. Why would Word sign Michael Knott, who once performed in drag at a Christian festival and, at another, sang Shaded Pain’s titular piano ballad as a bloated clown, resembling none other than John Wayne Gacy?

Either Michael Knott had abandoned all integrity as an artist and issued a radio-friendly record, or he had chloroformed the execs at Word and locked them in the custodial closet so he could call the shots. At the local Christian bookstore, a place called The Lord’s Library, I sampled the record in the “demo booth,” which looked for all the world like a repurposed refrigerator with a car stereo installed inside.

As it turned out, this was not an album that would feature guest appearances by the likes of Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, or Rich Mullins. The lyrics painted Picasso-esque pictures of people I had never known the likes of, and probably would never meet in my hometown of Rolla, MO. I bought the album after hearing a excerpts from it, only to discover a soul-strangling song called “Kitty” upon listening to the entire record in the privacy of my bedroom. That song prompted an epic struggle in my mind, and that struggle is chronicled in “The Cannibal and the Eucharist.“

It is worth mentioning that when Knott’s secular band The Aunt Bettys signed to Elektra Records after being courted by none other than music mogul Seymour Stein himself, the resulting album featured an electric version of “Kitty” titled “Kitty Courtesy.” After Stein left Elektra, the Aunt Bettys were unceremoniously dismissed by the label, their lone album doomed to a short shelf-life and a slightly longer residency in the clearance bins. “Kitty Courtesy” ended up as something like kitty litter in rock’s refuse bins.

Read my article, listen to the song below, and go and buy the recommended albums listed below. Your trembling soul with thank you someday.

Michael Knott on the Web

Although Rocket and a Bomb is currently out of print, a limited number of copies of the album are available for purchase here.

Other indispensable Knott releases have been reissued and are available digitally. The three records below, along with Rocket and a Bomb, are classics. No serious collector of alternative music should be without these albums:

Lifesavers Underground “Shaded Pain”

Lifesavers Underground “The Grape Prophet”

Michael Knott “Screaming Brittle Siren”

Like a phantom whose name (somehow) happens to be listed in the phone-book, Michael Knott happens to be fairly active on Facebook.

If you like his artwork and are interested in buying one of his paintings, they are available here.  Oddly, the painting portion of his web site appears to be the only part that is regularly updated. All art on this page by Mr. Knott.

Listen to “Kitty” below. 

“Chad Thomas Johnston is an author, sonuva’ preacha’ man, PhD-dropout, singer/songwriter, music producer/sonic reducer, daydreaming doodler, gorilla/guerilla publicist, cinemaddict, & pop-culture obsessive. He is represented by Seattle, WA-based literary agent Jenée Arthur, who is currently shopping his debut manuscript to major publishing houses.

Follow Him on Twitter: @Saint_Upid

Read more at Chad Thomas Johnston