the Wikkid podcast
church upbringing gone wrong, depression... and music
About the show
Being raised in a strict fundamentalist Christian group in the 1980s can cause some very predictable problems. Depression can be a Christian teenager's most constant companion despite church promises to the contrary. Dark humour, and even darker music, can help. This podcast is centered around the songs I wrote to deal back then, and what happened when I then picked away at recording workable versions of them for decades.
contact me with questions and comments at [email protected] or on Twitter @WikkidPerson
the Wikkid podcast on social media
Episodes
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Episode 11: Bigger Frame
May 5th, 2021 | Season 2 | 39 mins 19 secs
bible, christianity, depression, fundamentalism, george turcotte, guitar, hell, home recording, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, therapeutic, yamaha mt120
In order to grow out of things, you need to change, and change is hard and can be scary. I get my first multitrack recorder and explore various things that could be done with it. Home-made smurfs. Backwards guitar solos. Does Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" really say "it's fun to smoke marijuana" when played backwards? Meeting non-Meeting musicians. Why recording a band is hard. Why working together in a band is harder. Getting drums on my stuff. Did my late uncle's voice sound surprisingly like fellow Torontonian Jordan Peterson's?
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Episode 12: Intentions/Leathery Wings
May 12th, 2021 | Season 2 | 40 mins
bible, christianity, depression, fundamentalism, guitar, hell, home recording, maranatha, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, therapeutic
By listener request, I break down the contradictory basic theology spoon fed to use as Christian kids. Also, I talk about vows made while drunk on the mountaintop experience of youth camp and bible conferences. A case against repression and denial of flaming youth. Sometimes you need more cowbell but you don't have one. It might get loud.
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Episode 13: Hello, Down There!
May 19th, 2021 | Season 2 | 31 mins 42 secs
bible, christianity, depression, fundamentalism, guitar, hell, home recording, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, robert smith, the cure, therapeutic
Girls. Chickadees. Depression helped along by a double-barrelled romantic failure to launch. Meeting Brethren creatives? Trying to sing like Robert Smith? A very silly song.
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Episode 14: Hippipotame
May 26th, 2021 | Season 2 | 21 mins 58 secs
bible, bleu nuit, christianity, depression, fundamentalism, guitar, hell, home recording, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, schtroumpfs, therapeutic
As I grew up in Canada with a French-Canadian grandmother and a British one, and as Quebec is a short drive from here, as is America, there's a lot to say about that. Pretty short podcast episode, though. Stuff about all things French, having French Brethren who needed a translation other than the King James Version to read, and who were culturally fairly unBrethren. Les petit phoques suffoque sur les flocons de glace. Bleu Nuit. Cheech and Chong in French? Why I was somewhat chagrined to see Flight of the Conchords do a funny song in nonsense French about twenty years after I had. More shenanigans with my Brethren creative friends. Smurfs/Schtroumpfs. My silly songs usually go over better than my serious moody ones.
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Episode 15: Eugene's Poem
June 2nd, 2021 | Season 2 | 36 mins 37 secs
bible, christianity, depression, fundamentalism, guitar, hell, home recording, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, therapeutic
Sick of trying to sharpen iron on jello, our protagonist starts frequenting people who are smarter than he is, and crazier too. Looking for Mr. Miyagi. Poetry intended to cause offense. Too much thinking being done, in the opinion of the old folks at church. Stealth beer. Kids raised to blandly crave intensity. Scottish drinking songs. My best "fit" in a band. I don't sing the lead vocals on this one. I don't write the lyrics either. (Enjoying the wonders of collaboration.)
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Episode 16: Killer Qualms From Inner Space
June 9th, 2021 | Season 2 | 32 mins 6 secs
bible, bryan potvin, christianity, depression, fundamentalism, guitar, hell, home recording, jay semko, john gorka, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, the northern pikes, therapeutic
The giant killer conscience, created in the lab/church, goes on a rampage, stamping on pool halls, arcades, video rental stores, Dungeons & Dragons and other random things. Our church divides in two, and I try my first beer, movie at the theatre, and live musical act, at age 21.
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Episode 17: Headfirst Into the World
June 16th, 2021 | Season 2 | 52 mins 42 secs
90s, bible, christianity, depression, fundamentalism, guitar, hell, home recording, mindy amelotte, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, therapeutic
A Wikkid Contest: There's a 90s pop culture game in this week's podcast! Email me at [email protected] with your best identification of the many 90s computer and video game sounds, standup comics and live bands in the montage that starts around 20min in. Winners will be mentioned by name (unless they request otherwise) in future podcast episodes.
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Episode 18: Proud Someday
June 23rd, 2021 | Season 2 | 38 mins 11 secs
bible, bible truth publishers, christianity, depression, fundamentalism, guitar, hell, home recording, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, therapeutic
Excommunicated! Shunned for life! Unintentional fundamentalist outreach porn. (The winner of last week's Retro 90s Trivia Contest is Evan Sauve, who wasn't born yet in the 90s, with Troy Tuttle being disqualified due to having been at most of the same concerts I was at, giving him, I felt, an unfair advantage. ) This week: Failing to meet parental fundamentalist expectations, and trying to maintain a relationship with them anyway. Having one's birth culture/a global Christian community excommunicate and shun one worldwide, and for life. Unintentional fundamentalist outreach porn. There's nothing spiritual in laughing at people. Not even the children of Israel, St. Peter and St. Thomas. Worldly people and other churches either. Mocking: what Gen Xers, the 90s, and our Christian community, were all about. South Park. Tarantino formula = violence + pop culture + style. Twitter bans.
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Episode 19: The End
June 30th, 2021 | Season 2 | 58 mins 8 secs
bible, christianity, depression, fundamentalism, guitar, hell, home recording, john gorka, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, stryper, therapeutic
What happens when people are "raised on rails," like locomotives on tracks that take them to church and nowhere else, and they jump out of the groove and start heading up the road at speed? How bad can things get? Was the Lord speaking? (If trigger warnings worked, this ep would surely have one.)
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Episode 21: A Chance To Backslide
July 7th, 2021 | Season 2 | 43 mins 35 secs
alice cooper, bible, christianity, depression, fundamentalism, guitar, hell, home recording, music, music production, neil gaiman, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, therapeutic
Drunks who get saved into churchified sobriety have to ensure they don't backslide into the gutter, the misery and the puke. But people like me? We had to ensure we didn't backslide into that grey, bland, paranoid, controlled, muted, competitive piety thing. The "everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you." culture, with people dying inside. Why you don't need to buy a 12-string guitar to get a 12-string sound. The rise and fall of Kevin Smith. Kids know EXACTLY what their parents are getting wrong, but will most likely repeat the same mistakes or invent ones of their own when it's their turn. Neil Gaiman says "make good art." Deer hunting with toothpaste. Making sure that, like a shark, I keep moving forward, keep making stuff, to keep alive, even if people think it's amateurish, vain, negative or casts certain people and groups in a bad light.
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Episode 22: Who Are You, Anyway?
July 14th, 2021 | Season 2 | 29 mins 7 secs
bible, christianity, depression, fundamentalism, george turcotte, guitar, hell, home recording, michael sweet, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, stryper, therapeutic
What if your church took everything, leaving you nothing to "surrender all" to God? If God's real, are we cool with Him being a person with a personality? If so, what kind of personality? What does He want? Some lions are "Born Free" (by Andy Williams) and others aren't. Slipping restraining bolts, dwarf-following and joining Starfleet through the wardrobe. People can make texts appear to have only one possible interpretation, but that's simple-minded. Attempting a wikkid groove.
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Episode 23: Promises (God's Country)
July 21st, 2021 | Season 2 | 58 mins 10 secs
bible, christianity, depression, fundamentalism, guitar, hell, home recording, michael sweet, music, music production, oz fox, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, stryper, therapeutic
I get some help to attempt an country song, sung by the Almighty. Neon pink, bubblegum-flavoured church icing on your steak and mashed potatoes. Why doesn't Michael Sweet age? How much of Stryper is, as he claims, mainly just him? The Christian answer to everything (besides "go to church") is "surrender all to God." (Let go and let God.) Let God make all your life's decisions, essentially. Well, two problems: 1) if you grew up with your life entirely bound to church expectations, you have no say over your "all" to begin with. You can't surrender something you're not in possession of. 2) What if God refuses to make your life decisions for you? Bill tells us what Christians do. Teenagers wandering the street at night, drunk and looking for trouble, benefit from more rules, expectations and structure. Teenagers raised with no freedom are all full up. The Almighty covers Cheap Trick.
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Episode 24: Maybe Some Day...
July 28th, 2021 | Season 2 | 28 mins 57 secs
bible, christianity, depression, fundamentalism, guitar, hell, home recording, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, therapeutic
Cars rusting in fields. Gene Simmons of KISS action figures. Bass players and pretty girls who alike don't show up. Being told you're laid off work. Again. Did I write this song or did Martin Luther, Fanny Crosby or Thom Yorke? Tyler uses whatever he's got lying around the house. Two main kinds of churches selling two main kinds of product. What suited me about my own church, in retrospect. When are you making things better, and when you gilding the lily? My most-requested (noncomedic) song.
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Episode 25: How Long?
August 4th, 2021 | Season 2 | 59 mins 57 secs
bible, christianity, david lynch, depression, devil, evil, faust, fundamentalism, goethe, guitar, hell, home recording, milton, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, therapeutic, twin peaks
Last episode of Season Two. I've always had a deep and abiding interest in evil. (Not in doing it. In how it's depicted one way in the bible, and a very different way everywhere else). Making self-fulfilling prophecies about other people. Homer, Virgil, Dante, Goethe, Milton and so on. All the guys. Spitting in the eye of despair.