Marty Haugen: weapon of Mass destruction

Lawks, I just can't stomach about 98% of his 'music'. But it's not just him, of course: Haas, Landry, Schutte (and the whole St. Louis Jesuit gang), Ceasar (as in Buddy, not Julius)--the list goes depressingly on.  

Kevin O'Brien says it best:

Indeed, I personally think the heterodox music of the typical suburban parish is far more the cause of the abandonment of faith than the dumbing down of the translation of the Mass. Marty Haugen and his ilk have the distinguishing talent of having written appallingly bad music that defies genre or classification or description. There's no music this bad, this cloying, this icky, this smarmy anywhere else but inside thousands of suburban Catholic churches every day of the week. Almost no men like this dreck. And it's not even the insipid lyrics that do harm, but the utter narcissism of the melodies. These songs do not even make good pop tunes or Broadway show tunes - they don't make good anything but good distractions.

Then there's Catholic Music: It’s Time to Stop Making Stuff Up by Jeffrey Tucker:

Mandatory enthusiasm for someone else’s project doesn’t go over well in any aspect of life, especially not in music. Many just sit there vaguely and habitually protesting in their minds. So the musicians end up with a feeling of failure and confusion. Or they blame others and end up getting mad about the people and their refusal to go with the program.

I chuckled when I read this passage because it reminded me of a vist to a neighbouring parish where the semi-professional perfomers Music Ministers were trying to bully the congregation into clapping and swaying. As if.
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