From Punk To Polygamy, Part 4: Conclusion

The Baron and me, Sedona, AZ, 1994 - cracking up at the g's sticking out of my shirt

As I mentioned in my previous post, when I joined the AUB, a large Mormon polygamous congregation in Utah, I went all ascetic and gave up the music I loved, thinking that it made me holier-than-thou.  This was in the early '90s.  As a result, I missed the whole grunge thing.  Which is really ironic.  Here I was on the crest of the whole alternative movement in the '80s, and I practically missed the whole Lollapalooza explosion of the scene in the '90s.  All because I was trying to be a good Mormon fundie young man.  I was trying to improve myself.

Then, I found myself out of favor in the AUB.  It's a whole other story that I won't go into now, maybe some other time.  I did talk about it a bit in my Year of Polygamy podcast interview.  It got me questioning things and re-evaluating my membership in the AUB.  But, thankfully, it got me to be a bit of my old self.  For instance, this post from my journal in May, 1994 (names omitted):

"____ wanted us to work on one of his jobs in Herriman, so we went out there. We ran into ______, and he was asking us if we were going to tomorrow's work project. I said no, so he gave us this nauseating parable about people who couldn't feed themselves, but they could feed each other. ______  is such a hypocrite.

"I'm sorry to say (or am I?) that I've found again my old friend – cynicism. I lost it when I first came into the Group, but I've found it again.

"After work, Sean and I went to the MLA building to help ________ move things to the new archives by the endowment house. _____ and _____ were there. Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum. Not necessarily respectively. Nor respectfully. _____  asked us if we brought the food, and I responded, 'No, I fed it to Sean, and he fed it to me.'

"They're building another building behind the RCA building.

"I told Sean, 'Watch me touch a nerve.'

"Then I asked _____ and ______, 'Which one of you brethren is going to get credit for doing the construction on the new building?'

"______ spoke up quickly, 'I am!'

"They're so predictable! They want to do good works to increase their good names. I'm so disgusted by them."

I was starting to get that punk attitude again.  And I gradually started to get into music again.  I guess you could say that The Cranberries saved my life.  They were the first new band that I had gotten into for a long, long time.  I had heard their song "Linger" on the radio and didn't think much of it.  But then I saw the play live on late night TV, and I was hooked.  Martha and I were newlyweds, sharing a house with a couple of other married couples, and we spent our time in our basement apartment, jamming to the Cranberries with our baby daughter, Sophie.

The Cranberries

Then, I got the news of a lifetime.  My all-time favorite band, Cocteau Twins, was playing a live show at Saltair, a venue on the shores of the Great Salt Lake.  This was literally a dream come true to me.  I had loved them all through the '80s when they were obscure and no one really knew who they were.  And I was going to see them live!  I bought two tickets - one for me and one for my brother.  On a chilly winter night, we drove to Saltair and ran into one of our friends from the AUB there who had actually met the band earlier that day.  We hung out for the show with this guy.  The shoegaze band, Luna, opened up for them, and then I had the delicious experience of seeing my favorite band play live, something that I will never forget.  It was my first concert in years, and Cocteau Twins would break up three years later.

On the way from the show, my old '77 Dodge threw a rod at midnight just outside of Saltair on I-80.  My brother and I started hitchhiking.  No one picked us up.  I imagine Cocteau Twins themselves passed us, but no such luck. It was the day before cell phones, so we walked the entire seven miles to Salt Lake Airport where we called for a ride from the lobby of a hotel.  I was wearing dress shoes that night, and my feet were covered with blisters the next morning.

Cocteau Twins

It wasn't long until I was excommunicated from the AUB, and my wife and I packed up our little Mercury Topaz with our baby and all of the belongings we could fit into the car and drove through the night to Mesa, Arizona.  (We saw a UFO that night, but that's another story.)  I was back by my old-stomping grounds, although my wilder days were over as I now had a family.  But I rekindled my old friendships, like with the Baron, who played in a post-grunge band with other guys I knew in high school.  I went to their shows in local venues several times.  Now that I was out of the AUB, music was no longer forbidden to me, and I started to listen to rock again.  I didn't realize how out of touch I was with music until I went to a wedding reception in the Verde Valley, and a friend of a friend asked me, "I hear you're into music.  Can you suggest any good new bands for me?"

I went hot in the face.  "It's been a long time since I have been into any new music," I told him with shame.

Gradually, I started discovering new artists like Sky Cries Mary, early emo band, Sunny Day Real Estate, Live (still a guilty pleasure), and the revival of punk bands like Bad Religion.  My older brother from Utah gave me several used CDs that included Catherine Wheel and Sarah McLachlan.  One night in '94, I went with the Baron to Mill Avenue in Tempe.  We were eating spaghetti at a patio restaurant, watching people walk by like we always did.  All of a sudden, the Baron started choking on his noodles.  Right past our table walked Chris and Curt Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets, Mike Watt, Eddie Veder, and Dave Grohl.  The Foo Fighters - still without an album - played one of their first live shows, opening for Mike Watt, just feet away from where we were scarfing spaghetti.

And yet, it was strange for me coming back to Arizona, after having spent all of that time with the polygamists.  I never really felt like I fit in with the polygamists.  And yet, back in Arizona, I did not feel like I really fit in with the music crowd.  I had changed.

Me in 2007 - I had Kody Brown hair before Kody did

Shortly after coming back to Arizona, I went on another self-imposed exile.  My family all went in on a 40-acre ranchette near Concho, a small town in eastern Arizona.  It was an undeveloped piece of land down five miles of bumpy dirt road.  I moved out in December, 1995 into a rickety singlewide trailer.  The intention was to live United Order, a form of Mormon collectivism, which we did for several years.  We had no running water, no plumbing (we pooped in buckets and then buried it), no electricity, no TV, no music.

We gradually made improvements,  A well and tank, a septic system for toilets.  But I want to talk about the no TV thing for a minute.  A council member in the AUB that my dad respected very much once offhandedly told my dad that TV had ruined more United Orders than anything else.  My dad then told him, "Well, I like the documentaries."  And the council member said, "Well, I do, too."

Well, my dad was well-intentioned, but this story grew in the telling.  And after the passing of my dad, people kept telling this story, and it kept growing bigger and bigger.  This apostle prophesied with quivering rage that is we ever brought TV to the property, it would be the end of our United Order.  LOL.  People forget - I was there for this all.  I saw how the story "grew".

Me on the banks of the Congaree, South Carolina, 2009

Nevertheless, my dad drafted an agreement that we wouldn't bring TV onto our property, and I signed it.  I didn't want to, I didn't agree with it, but I signed it anyway.  Mostly because I wanted to please my dad.  Years later, other people tried to include computers in this agreement, and, by then, I had grown a pair and put my foot down.  The way I look at it now - I will never agree again to have any MAN control what I can or what I cannot have in my house.  Years later, after the United Order had dissolved, I bought a 7" DVD player.  It was like bringing fire to the natives.  My kids huddled around that thing like it might disappear.  Then a few years after that, I broke the agreement and bought a TV.  I guess I have always been a rebel at heart.  When I feel oppressed, I always have a tendency to do things out of the norm - like growing my hair long.  Maybe that's why I have this bushy beard right now.

Back in the early days of the United Order, all I had was a boombox.  Without TV, we listened to a lot of books-on-tape, radio broadcasts, and I listened to my music - at least as long as the D batteries lasted.  There was no internet, so it was hard to keep up with new music.  My older brother would send me mix tapes from Utah - Toad the Wet Sprocket, Heather Nova.  Once, on a trip to Phoenix, I got a free sampler from a CD shop.  I took that home and started listening to it over and over again.  I would up eventually buying everything on that sampler - The Badlees, Blue Rodeo, Jan Arden.

Me and my daughter Sara at the Puscifer store, Jerome, AZ

Around this time, I started practicing plural marriage, my attempt lasting thirteen years.  For years, as a punk, I was used to endure people looking at me oddly.  That was part of being a punk.  As a polygamist, I got a lot of strange looks as well.  Perhaps I have thrived on this.

During my time as a Mormon fundamentalist, even now, I have a lot of people telling me that I shouldn't listen to rock music, to "music of the world", or that I shouldn't go to movies.  I think that is ridiculous.  These people should adhere to the Mormon motto which is: "Mind your own business."  They should not concern themselves what I watch or what I listen to.  I have come to terms with my own spirituality and who I am.  I have learned to embrace the part of myself that loves punk music.  It's part of who I am.  And I would not be a Mormon fundamentalist if I had not first embraced punk.  My "splurge" is that I allow myself to download four albums a month.  It is mostly stuff that is obscure and that you have not likely heard of.  But that's who I am.  To keep discipline in really listening to the stuff I download, I started a music blog called Moroni's Music where I review my downloads.  I love keeping current with music and new artists.  Check my blog out if you can.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, my kids follow after me and love obscure music as much as I do.  My kids are always getting me into new music.  But make no mistake - I get them into new music just as much as they do.  It's great to have that kind of relationship with my kids.

When I am an old man, I will likely still be rocking out, much to the chagrin of the polygamous communities!  Ha!

From Punk To Polygamy, Part 2: The Rave Years

Me in the Domes, 1988

The summer after high school graduation, in 1988, I went on a school-sponsored summer exchange program to Belgium.  Previously, I had taken four years of high school French.  When I got to Belgium, I realized that I really didn't speak French.  After a summer over there, I came back almost fluent, speaking French almost better than my high school teacher.  My time in Belgium changed my life.

First of all, it gave me a world view, breaking out of my colloquial bubble, experiencing culture, language, and food from an entirely new perspective.  I found that everyone knew I was Mormon because of my unique name, and everyone would offer me wine.  For the first half of the trip, I set a good example, being a good Mormon boy, and politely declined any offer of alcohol.  By the end of my stay, I was doing as in Rome and trying to see how many mugs of Jupiler it took before my ability to speak French was impaired.  Many raised their eyebrows when they found out that I came from a large family.  I was depressed my first week there.  Everyone was condescending and mildly sarcastic towards me.  After a week, I started throwing the sarcasm back at them, and everyone warmed up.  Some were impressed by familiar with Marx.  One guy had blown smoke in my face when I first got there and said, "You know, I really hate your country."  A week later, he was telling me, "You are the first nice American I have ever met!"

Me in Belgium, wearing a Meat Puppets shirt, 1988

Pierre, the father of the host family I stayed with took me aside one evening.  He told me in mixed French and broken English to be more proud of who I was when people asked me.  He pointed at himself, "I, Freemason."  He pointed at me, "You, Mormon."  Then the finger darted between us.  "Freemason respect Mormon."  Of course, I was 18 and dumb.  I had no clue what the significance was in that.  But to this day, I deeply respect Freemasons, thanks to Pierre.

While there, I would attend dance clubs.  The music at these clubs was dominated by pounding electronic beats as the acid house craze was sweeping through Europe.  The Belgians had their own version of this music called New Beat.  I fell in love with this music from Belgium, much as my dad had fallen in love with Mexican music and took some home with me - Front 242, Euroshima, Lords of Acid, Jade 4U, 101, S-Express, Bomb the Bass.  Once home, I bought a lot of this music, although, in the days before internet, it was tough, involving heavy catalogs at the record stores, special orders, and a lot of patience.  And everything was on vinyl!  I ordered a lot of Chicago house, Detroit techno, and everything in between with a hard beat.  I made everyone mix tapes and got pretty good at dubbing with the equipment I had.  I deejayed parties, much to the chagrin of my friends who didn't care for house music.  I remember going to an old cotton warehouse with some of my deejay friends, setting up equipment in the empty building, and spinning music as loud as we could, although I was sad that we left the recording levels down.  No one really listened to this music or knew what it was.

Me & James in Yuma, 1989 - making the duck face before it was "cool"

By 1989, all of the clubs were playing acid house - all of them.  If you went to an alternative club, "She Sells Sanctuary" by The Cult or "Blue Monday" by New Order were no longer the longtime fixtures they once were - it was all house music, which I always described as tripped-out disco.  The clubs were mostly playing Belgian New Beat - which was a shock to all of my friends who came to visit Belgium in the summer of '89.  There were about six of them.  Imagine their surprise walking into Six Feet Under in Tempe -  which made the summer edition of Rolling Stone magazine that year - and the deejay was playing nothing but Belgian music that year.  Not only did we attend clubs, but we attended raves, or what we called back then simply "warehouse parties" - illegal deejay parties that sprung up in empty warehouses or buildings in downtown Phoenix, infamous for serving alcohol to minors and being busted by cops.

At the end of 1989, me and my good friend, The Baron, made a trip to Austin, Texas to see my friend Matt.  The first mishap - we were running late getting to the airport.  After checking our luggage, we were literally running through the airport to get to our plane.  Now, this is in the days before TSA, but we still had to go through the metal detector.  I had so many metal bracelets on both wrists that they kept setting the detectors off.  I was trying to take them off one by one to be able to get through the detectors, but it wasn't happening.  The plane was going to take off.  I pulled off all the bracelets off all together in one tug.  Skin came with the bracelets, and there was blood.  But we made the plane on time.  On the plane, I spent my entire ride staring at these business people - a man and a woman - engaged in conversation.  I really remember staring at them, realizing that I would never be like them.

Me in 1988

Once in Austin, we went to the famed 6th Street by the university with its bars and clubs.  We found this dance club.  The interior was pretty cool - three stories with a movie projector playing "The Blob" on the top story.  The club played acid house and Belgian New Beat, but the club's patrons were not sure what to do with it.  They were snobby, trendy kids with blond hair, expensive black clothes, and shiny,black shoes.  They stood on the dance floor and shuffled aimlessly to the music, not really into dancing, but there for some sort of fashion show.  Then there was the Baron and me - right out of the Phoenix rave scene, and we looked the part.  Smiley face t-shirts and buttons, leather biker jackets, the numerous bracelets were back on my wrist, hair hanging in our faces, getting into the music and really dancing.  The patrons stared at us in bewilderment, not knowing what to make of us.  It was, back then, one of the proudest moments of my life.  The evening finished out when a punk I knew by the name of John took me to party in the back of the club in an alleyway with some other punks, and I wound up on the hood of an Austin Police cruiser.  Frisked and let off with a warning.

Ghost Division, a punk band I sang for briefly

I guess I should say that, for a short time, I started experimenting with drugs.  It was part of rave culture.  I'm not really proud of it, but neither am I ashamed of it.  It was just something that happened and a learning experience.  I'm going to neither discuss it further nor glorify it.  But at this point, I was kind of in trouble spiritually.  At this time, my dad's long career in the LDS Church was coming to an end.  He was facing excommunication for belief in plural marriage.  I was the age to to go off on my mission, and I think my dad knew that I was struggling.  He started to push me in a direction to embrace my religion.  I already had had a few spiritual experiences, but nothing that I felt really defined me spiritually.  Not until one night when I was watching Martin Scorcese's "The Last Temptation of Christ", which was being boycotted by religious groups at the time because it depicted scenes where Jesus (Willem Dafoe) was married.  I had no problem with that.  As a Mormon, I already believed that Jesus was married - probably polygamously.  During the movie, the devil in the guise of an angel, portrayed by a child, tempts Jesus to come off of the cross and live his life the way he wants.  So he does and marries Mary Magdalene.  Decades later, on his death bed, his apostles come and scold him.  They gave their lives for him, and, in return, he was supposed to die for them.  He regrets his choice and wishes that he was back on the cross, and he wakes up, still nailed to the cross.  It was all a fantasy, a temptation.

Me after a rave, 1990

I drove home and thought about this movie.  Some at church had suggested that Jesus had no agency to act for himself, that he had to fulfill his calling.  God had declared the beginning to the end and had prophesied that Jesus would succeed.  So it was impossible for Jesus to fail.  He had no choice.  He had no free agency.  This made no sense to me.  How could he not have a choice?  The fact that he made a decision to go to his death made his sacrifice all that more meaningful.  So,after midnight, sitting in my car, I prayed for the first time ever, asking God to now if the sacrifice of Jesus was real, and the Spirit poured on me like sweet honey, tears flooding my eyes.  The punk, the raver knew for the first time that there was a God in heaven, and that his son was Jesus Christ.  From that moment on, I started studying every book on Mormonism that I could find.  Specifically, books on Mormon fundamentalism since that was the direction that my family was moving.

Around this time, the Baron called me up and drove me to downtown Casa Grande to look at an abandoned warehouse.  It was an old car parts warehouse, long out of use.  The Baron wanted to show it to me as an idea for opening a club in Casa Grande, which had none, yet was possibly big enough to have one.  There were catwalks all over the facility, including a cage that would be perfect for a deejay booth.  We started talking logistics about opening the club.  We were very excited over the prospect.

Me, a friend, and The Baron, Cornville, 1989

The the same time, I was approached by my parents who were very concerned about my spirituality.  They offered to pay for my schooling if I moved to Utah with my polygamist uncle and lived among the polygamists.  So, I had a choice - open a dance club, or move to Utah and become a Mormon fundamentalist.  Of course, I picked the latter.

The week before I was supposed to leave, I was mowing the lawn.  Fall was approaching in Arizona, but it was still hot.  With my younger brother, we drove to the LDS chapel for an appointment.  The building was empty except for the bishop.  He let us in and took us to his office for a very brief interview.  The first question he asked was, "Do you believe that plural marriage should be practiced in this day and age?"

My answer was, "Yes."

Next question:  "Do you believe that Ezra Taft Benson is a prophet, seer, and revelator, and the only man on the earth that holds the keys?"

My answer:  "No."

That was it, I was dismissed.

A few days later, we were loading up the car to go to Utah.  In the back of the car was a crate with all of my vinyl and cassettes.  In the hallway, as we prepared to leave, my dad stopped me.  He put both his hands on my shoulder, looked me in the eye and smiled.

"I don't think Utah is ready for you, son," he said.

A couple of weeks later, in Utah, I got two letters from the LDS Church.  One was an invitation to my priesthood court, saying that I had been excommunicated for apostasy.  The second was the result of my trial - excommunication.  So, it was official.  I was cut off from the LDS Church for BELIEF in plural marriage.  I was officially a Mormon fundamentalist.

In the next part, I will discuss being a Mormon fundamentalist, how music affected me, and what it is like being a former punk in this culture.

Year of Polygamy

So, I was recently contacted by Lindsay Hansen Park, one of the directors at the Sunstone Foundation, a Mormon think tank.  Lindsay has been a series of well-known and well-received podcasts called "Year of Polygamy".  I was honored that she picked me to be a part of it.  I quipped that this was what every narcissist needed - a forum to talk about themselves!

This last Tuesday, I was snowed in at home, and I had to fire up my generator just to talk.  I made a Skype appointment to interview with Lindsay.  She was very kind, and it is very nice to have someone at her intellectual caliber give Mormon fundamentalists and polygamists such an objective voice.  It was a pleasant experience.

Anyway, the podcast aired yesterday, and I am very pleased with how it turned out.  In essence, I give highlights from my life.  I hope it is interesting.  You can listen to it here.

Lindsay has given me the possibility of presenting at this year's Arizona Sunstone Symposium with a segment aptly entitled "From Punk Rock to Polygamy".  I am looking forward to it!

Moroni's Music

Hi, welcome to Moroni's Music!

My name is Moroni, and I am a polygamist who lives in rural Arizona with my two wives and children.

Music has always been an important part of my life. People are always surprised to find out that a polygamist has the kind of musical tastes that I do. My musical preferences have always been eclectic.

I have blogged for years about my lifestyle choice. But I decided to create a forum where I could discuss music and what it means to me. I intend on reviewing new music I come across, but also music that has been a part of my life for years.

I hope that you enjoy, and feel free to discuss!