Hell's Bells

When I was in youth group, it was an interesting time in the world of popular Christian media. Mike Warnke had written his "revealing" book about life inside Satan worship "Satan Seller" and Anton LaVey was still the head of the church of Satan in California. As a youth I remember finding a vinyl copy of Highway to Hell by AC/DC in the church parking lot and feeling a bit frightened by it, and compelled to tear it up so I did. Hard Rock and Heavy Metal were considered at that time to be way to dangerous for young people like myself (which I would argue now seems the most absurd thing that I can recall from my childhood) and the Christian market was very focused on teaching youth to stay away from it. The cynical side of me suspects that this was a little too much of a coincidence timing wise with the burgeoning Christian rock market at the time. "Dont listen to that music, listen to the wholesome music that sells for an inflated price." And I did, and I still have a real love for 80's Christian rock and pop. Give me some good Stryper and I'm ready to go! Petra was another huge fav of mine, and Idle Cure still reminds me of Camp Luther but there is one memory that outdoes them all, Hell's Bells.

Hell's Bells is not just the name of AC/DCs popular song from the time, it is also the name of one of the most iconic youth documentaries from that time. I still remember going to Skylark Christian Books and renting it, and now that I think about it, it was the first time I ever dubbed a video and made a less than legal copy. Anyway, it was brilliant when I think back on it because it used so much of the music it was trying to downplay. It used the videos, concert footage and at the right moment would pause on the artists face contorted in the worst way as evidence they had just recently drank the blood of a bat.... or something. Essentially that facial expression meant they were conversing with the devil at the time. There was the segment on backmasking, the idea that when you play a record backwards it would convey and evil message. My personal fav was Queen's another one bites the dust telling me to start smoking marijuana. The key to it all of course was having the narrator interpret what you were hearing. On its own it was pretty tough to hear those words coming out of the music. Stairway to Heaven was probably the most convincing, but for the life of me I cannot remember what it was. There was also the nifty science segment that showed the host putting an egg up to a concert speaker and sonically cooking it, illustrating what we are doing to our brains at the concert. Personally I would be more concerned about the Mary Jane hovering in the air at most shows in Vancouver. I smelled pot at a Corrs concert here, true story.

The point of all this is that I found this little piece of nostalgia heaven on DVD and I am very much looking forward to watching it at home with my wife and giggling over my childhood naivete, after that I'll probably play some Lego Batman while I listen to my AC/DC discography.

Here's Stairway "backmasked"