God and Country, Remixed

By all rights, Nevermind Nirvana, It's Grungicide!, a 1995 EP released by the Christal Methodists, shouldn't be funny. It's little more than a cheap shot, a 10-minute dance on the grave of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain put into circulation to play off the fame, notoriety, and violent death of grunge's high priest. The recording is a collection of a series of crank calls made by a so-called Methodista, in which a fake grunge promoter calls up golf pro shops ("Hi, I'm looking for some low-cost flannel golf pants"), and a faux Cobain phones record stores ("How many units have we sold?"), and radio stations to give IDs ("Hi, I'm Kurt Cobain from Nirvana, and I want you to support the S.F. Needle Exchange"; "This is Kurt Cobain from Nirvana, and when you're out there getting your grunge, don't drink and drive"). But cheap shot or not, it's hilarious.

Part of the amusement is that the Methodists were willing to joke about Nirvana's crisis of indie-rock-meets-mega-sales well before Cobain's suicide made it an easy joke. But more generally, the Methodists -- a loose collective based in Chicago and San Francisco -- spend time taking aim at a more lasting target: God. Or more precisely, Christian talk radio, where across three records the Methodists have layered roller-rink synth music over cut-and-paste tapes of crank calls to radio hosts.

On the recent Satanic Ritual Abuse, the tracks range from absurdist joshing about religious philosophy ("I consider myself an ecumaniac, and that's why I go to as many churches as possible") to the more frightening "Raped, Can I Get a Witness?" on which the caller claims to be a woman raped and beaten by her boyfriend. The host's response is disturbingly flip. "Well, you know, that happens. The fact is, you allowed yourself to get too intimate with him. ... Romance and trying to get somebody saved never goes together." Asked if she should press charges, he tells her that she can try, "but it probably won't stick anyway. If I were in your shoes, I would put it behind me."

Joel Schalit, aka Khmer Ribs, is the self-declared "coordinator of activities" for the Christal Methodists, and he invented the Christian crank-call concept mainly out of boredom. "I started listening to Christian talk radio because I couldn't stand rock radio," he says. In 1988, when Schalit began his anti-crusade, he was already deeply immersed in religion as part of his studies at Reed College in Oregon, which merged with his political interests growing up in Israel. "[The combination] never seemed to be an odd thing for me, given the way it is in Israel. But in the United States, of course, people always make a division between religion and politics."

Schalit found co-conspirators: Jody Bleyle of Portland's gay-positive punks Team Dresch, the Chicago-based Dr. Kritikal Dubbs, and in the Bay Area, Adrian Diamond to handle the group's visual installations and Guy Wire (not his real name) to handle recording issues -- not to mention a cast of friends and colleagues willing to make the actual calls. Schalit's own background in liberal politics (as co-director of the Berkeley leftist journal Bad Subjects) and punk rock (as associate editor of Punk Planet) helped to fuel his conviction that crank-calling Christian radio stations could help him do -- well, what?

Certainly not convince a Christian talk show host of the errors of his or her bigoted and sexist ways, at least not on air. And probably not get the Christal Methodists' records to reach an audience other than folks who already agree with the Methodists, either: None of the group's albums has moved more than 1,000 copies, though Schalit does say he gets the occasional piece of hate mail from Christians.

Schalit believes that college radio, supposed to be the left-of-the-dial bastion of radical political thought, isn't doing its job. And he also believes Christian talk radio is dangerous: "It disseminates information and preys upon people's highly acculturated religious sensibilities in a manner that potentially mobilizes them in a violent, anti-democratic way," he says, adding, "It teaches people to accept their own suffering as though it's legitimate and as though it's part of nature, and that is morally wrong."

Guy Wire says the Methodists' real hope is to use the Christians' own words against them: "The goal is to lure the talk shows into saying something that is particu-larly stupid. Perhaps somewhere, there will be some Christian who will be listening to that."