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Jesus Sound Explosion (review)

As a person who actually does, in fact, feel uncomfortable saying “under God” during the Pledge of Allegiance, I hardly expected Mark Curtis Anderson’s memoir, Jesus Sound Explosion, to engage me. But in its own, quirky way – like all good memoirs – it allowed me an all-access pass to a world wholly foreign and fascinating: that of a Baptist minister’s family. Being part of such a family, of course, meant Anderson was constantly subjected to close scrutiny by his father’s congregation, a fact that haunted him as he grew up and battled fierce desires to be a part of the world around him instead of a mere spectator. The most powerful temptation, perhaps, came in the form of rock and roll, which Anderson’s mother broadly, hilariously labeled as “jazzy music.” When the Fab Four’s sound began to lure Anderson as a child, his mother explained that John Lennon once said that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. Anderson writes, “That’s all I needed to hear. Case closed, deal done. Still, whenever I heard a song by The Beatles at a school friend’s house, I wanted to hear it over and over, so I’d be able to play it in my head later.” Already, it seemed, the struggle for Anderson’s soul was on. But what the memoir makes clear is that rock and roll did not contribute to Anderson dismissing his faith so much as it provided him a vehicle with which to root out and question Christianity’s contradictions. In one instance, he held fast to his affection for Bruce Springsteen’s music as a sixteen year old in California, despite pressure from his Baptist friends.