Please Answer without Googling First

originally posted by: TexasTruth
Islam, hence his current name. He still promotes the "peaceful" side of it.
Until he doesn't?? Good tunes and would be a great spokesman, especially if you look at his older quotes and lyrics.
"Ooo baby it's a wild world! Hard to get by, just upon a smile." (Insert kick ass acoustic riff)

The riff is a descending major scale. The triplets do give it a hook.
Funny how that works.
This next lyric seemed benign, just a Cat trying to rhyme, until a guy from Galveston
said it infuriated him, and that caused me hear it with a different mindset- and made me
wonder how I'd missed it:

If you wanna leave
take good care
hope you've gotta lotta
nice things to wear

(hmmmmm.... teetering on the edge he was)

just remember there's a lotta bad
everywhere...

Bad? How's this for starters:

"Ban Apple Gas"

I do recall being traumatized by this 'music' video
back when MTV came on the air,
and I saw it just once,
which was one too many times.
Maybe it was the clothes...a
lemon day-glo blazer with a matching tophat
clashing with, and amplifying wildly, his olive tones and ringlets of shiny hair....

"Sometimes we forget how music can embellish video." *

thank me for not posting a link.

Now I have trouble with the color tan, reflexively looking for exits,
wherever tan is used for interiors,
and I can't watch Harold and Maude, ever again.


# 819

Islam, like others have said. I didn't google. Here's another. Lady d'Arbanville.

Islam of course. What's point?

Thats a nice method to put the M.E. to the test here on ATS.

originally posted by: queenofswords
Cat Stevens was a popular British song writer/singer in the late 60's and 70's. (I think he's still performing to some degree.)

He had a "religious conversion" sometime in the late 70's. If you remember this singer, was his conversion to Buddhism or Islam?

Please reply only if you remember.

Jusif Islam is what he changed his name too.

He became a Muslim.

Had the "Tea for the Tillerman" and "Teaser and the Firecat" albums back in the 70s. Played them until they only had one side. Good times.

[ETA] And yes I remember when he changed his name (Cat Stevens was a stage name, anyway) and converted to Islam.

a reply to: queenofswords

If you remember this singer, was his conversion to Buddhism or Islam?

Please reply only if you remember.

I know that I answered in a way consistent with what seems to be true now, however ...
I also remember hearing someone say, "Oh he converted to Tibetan Buddhism, gave up his music career, and entered a monastery in the Himalayas."

Problem is, I can't reliably recall when I heard it or who said it. Wracking my memory, trying to recall at least where I was physically (surroundings/setting) when I heard it from an individual, yields a scene consistent with where I was in 1972, 73. According to Wikipedia that would be about the time when "In 1973, Stevens moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as a tax exile from the United Kingdom, however, he later donated the money to UNESCO" (Williamson, Nigel (29 March 2005). "Music is Part of God's Universe". The Guardian. Interview with Yusuf Islam. UK. Retrieved 1 February 2010.)

Is it possible that Stevens was hiding out in Rio, and some music magazine or other entity started a rumor that he had converted to Buddhism and was in a monastery in the Himalayas so that people (like taxman) wouldn't look for, or find him in Rio, and that the person I heard it from had heard it or read it somewhere? Or, ME? Or my memory is just all fubar?

a reply to: yeahright

I reflect on the times. It must have been difficult for young Steve to assimilate all
the conflicting tensions. 1970 was the cusp of decadence as lots of younger sisters and brothers ( I guess the proper term would be young adults) were then being influenced by
vinyl spinning in older sibling's bedrooms. 1970 was also the year of "Joe", which was critically acclaimed and largely applauded, to the horror of hippies everywhere.

I remember hearing Steve's music, along with a lot of Gordon Lightfoot, and eventually,
some disco was seeping through the floorboards. After that, all hell broke loose and the vibe changed from bad to worse. I was left with all the non disco stuff which was left behind when the storm hit. I listened to a bit of it, it had a certain sincerity.

Steven converted to Islam in '77, for the record, which is when Donna Summer was
giving out widespread coke contact highs to anyone who would listen. There's stuff by Bowie that soon followed which was a fairly direct plagiarism, though expertly masked, of "I Feel Love", and Eno was said to have burst into the studios during a '77 session with a copy of "I Feel Love" and announcing that this was what we will be hearing for the next 15 years. You can buy God, indeed. Who knows what would have happened to Hendrix had he not mysteriously expired. A little modesty was in store for him, having sickened of the clown scene he became enmeshed in, and we all know he wanted out.

Back to Steve. His contemporaries were professionally going from one bedroom to the next, on skis.
Laurel Canyon was rife with soul swapping, and Zappa stood as the straight gatekeeper who could not hope to salvage every sack of flesh that showed up with long hair, a guitar, pignose amp, and a soul for rent. How many of them wound with bare feet and limbs sticking out of the shrubs, lifeless, right in front of their crash pad, once the deal was violated, only God knows. Steven was up against a veritable battalion of amped up cocksmen, from Mick Jagger to George Harrison, James Taylor and his handymen, Chuck Manson and all things in between. Even Ringo was swinging right off the rails, man. Steve must have felt like an angel in Satan's Sweet Shoppe.

Looking at Steve's discography, it is clear that he had been aware of his calling early on, again, 1970. The boy with the moon and star on his head was penning plaintive poems about the existential crisis, the certitude of death, the trappings, and trade offs, of selecting evil, and how to screw a lot of chicks without using a pocketful of ludes, a crate of Led Zeppelin 8 tracks, winding up in hell, or turning into Peter Frampton over it. One can hear the eerie, buzzing human honeybee hivemind chorus in Lady D'Arbyville, which reminds one of a call to prayer, or a hornet's nest. His male dominance God theme seems consistent and I can't help but wonder when, exactly, he visited Morocco, and for the first time, considered music as a offering, an offering to God.

Throughout 1969 Steve was laid up in a London hospital, with TB. While everyone else practiced free love and soared high, he was tied down with IV cables and life support gear. This might explain the bittersweet tone his songs frequently emit- he wrote 40 of them while recovering there. There is no doubt he struggled to tame demons, and urges with which he was properly endowed. Probably this, these urges, led him to Islam, for when put to bed, at least they get to have (sort-of) normal sex for a few weeks pending defilement, whereas Christians are given dickless bodies to flutter about with a guy sitting on a cloud somewhere, which must have sounded really gay, back in the day, before "Star Wars", "Cocoon", transgenderism, His 'n Her KY Jelly, and Viagra came about. Too, in 1976, just before his conversion, when he was experimenting with becoming a Beach Boy, he was aghast to find himself drowning. As soon as he prayed, the tide turned and swept him ashore. This was also the year he offered Ban Apple Gas - before or after the miracle is not known. It must have been a hellish decade for him. Trouble...set him free.

# 821

a reply to: TheWhiteKnight

Did you get too close to the Banapple gas?

whereas Christians are given dickless bodies to flutter about with a guy sitting on a cloud somewhere, which must have sounded really gay, back in the day, before "Star Wars", "Cocoon", transgenderism, His 'n Her KY Jelly, and Viagra came about.