Tuesday, April 26, 2011

"Roll the Rock Over” Video

"Roll the Rock Over” Video

September 15, 2010 at 8:46 pm
 http://www.youtube.com/user/LivingWatersUtube#p/u/3/FiB7RHDLFIg
www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_5924133 for a classic live version that is cut off at the end 

My notes tell me this was written in “spring 1983”.  As I recall, it was another one of Dave’s hook-y bass lines that got this started.  Mike joined in on piano and I started jiving with some words.  I was listening to a lot of old time rock and roll at the time and the words “rock” and “roll” kept showing up; for instance, I also wrote “Great Rock Road” at this time.  So the lyrics flowed right in and Greg started fleshing out the chord progressions I came up with.  It was truly a “Living Waters” song.

At first, I was playing a second electric part that was pretty cool, but in the early 80’s we began to work more on our presentation.  {We have since added an early version of this (above) when we did it this way.}  We soon saw the show value this song could have and got me out from behind the guitar to actually front the group.  This started a pattern and I would eventually front songs like “Nobody Else”, “Let’s Stay”, “I Will Go”, “Greatest Story”, “City of Joy” and so on.  Eventually, I think I got to be pretty good with it, and it all started around this time.  At some point, I started getting the crowd to ‘snap’ their fingers to start this out, and we developed our classic two-step forward and back little dance during the chorus.  We always did that a cappella chorus in the middle where we got everyone to stand and clap and the ending got to be a classic fast-strumming rhythm and blues ending.

This video is from the 2004 Reunion Show at Sheepgate Coffeehouse and our performance is somewhat more restrained than in our younger days, but it really does give an idea what Living Waters was like back in our heyday.  (You may notice Dave’s son, Matt, playing saxophone.)  This was a true staple through several time periods; don’t you just love it?  We were just playing this at our monthly LW pot luck this month and it was as wonderful to do as ever.

A pretty basic witness theme has to be ‘are you in a tomb in your life and don’t you know Jesus is the perfect Person to get you to rise out of that tomb’.  When I sang the verse, “If you put your hands together, they’re pointed to forever…”, I would literally put my hands together in Durer’s ‘praying hands’ pose and fall to my knees to try to convey the resurrecting power of prayer.  I’ve seen this too often to think this is just a nice song.  I know you really CAN roll the rock over and live again, thanks to the loving Sacrifice of the Lord…


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