A new book that I am definitely giving to a select small group of people for Christmas in this year of 2000 is one by my old friend and a great photographer, Rich Remsberg. Actually, it's not a music book -- unless by music you include the sounds of heavenly singers making their joyful noise.

The book is a new one from the UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS. (See my previous post here for the blue clicky thing to their website.)

The title of the book is RIDERS FOR GOD---The Story Of A Christian Motorcycle Gang. Photpgraphically and also through lyrically splendid printed rhetorical sections, the photographer/author from Bloomington, Indiana "takes us into a world generally inaccessible to outsiders, one situated at the crossroads of two seemingly incongruous realms; motorcycle gangs and Spirit-filled Christians."

Rich Remsberg, a photo journalist with an amazing eye, is also a long-time afficianado of things folk. He did a fine tape of folksongs a short few years ago.

I highly recommend this volume from Judy McCulloh and the U. of Illinois Press. Included is a beautiful situational perspective afterword by COLLEEN McDANNELL -- the Sterling M. McMurren Professor of Religious Studies and a professor of history at the University of Utah.

As Woody Guthrie might've said, "These pitchurs is good !!"

Art Thieme