Creepy puppets for Jesus.
June 15, 2015 4:37 PM   Subscribe

"There has never been a recording artist quite like Marcy Tigner." Marcy Tigner started out as a trombone player but soon created a puppet in her own likeness and used her child-like voice to teach others in Learning to do God's Work. All in all she put out more than 40 albums, and passed away in 2012 at age 90. YouTube: Join the Gospel Express (part of the Incredibly Strange Music series); Christmas with Marcy; Men in the Bible. Recent mention on Cracked.com (scroll down to end of #1)
posted by Melismata (22 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Just no.
posted by kinnakeet at 4:54 PM on June 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


I grew up around this stuff... there is a surprisingly deep rabbit hole full of christian puppeteers and artists who create this alternate reality folk art that is so weird it makes you want to do drugs to forget it.

The very worst of the lot who have similar acts, travel to schools and (I'm not kidding) perform christian puppet and christian song centric shows about the dangers of sex, drugs and rock and roll in a folksy East Village in the 60's way, but the puppets are all asexual Pat Boone.

Thankfully, Marcy Tigner's records are pretty common and mostly resting very dustily in midwestern Goodwill and Salvation Army record bins.

I blame her for Rob Zombie, Insane Clown Posse, and Limp Bizkit.
posted by bobdow at 5:25 PM on June 15, 2015 [4 favorites]


Hoped for more creepy puppets.

Am disapoint.
posted by allthinky at 5:37 PM on June 15, 2015


> it makes you want to do drugs to forget it

or enjoy it!
posted by ostranenie at 5:50 PM on June 15, 2015


There were only two things that could possibly salvage your day, when you'd been dragged to chapel at your little Baptist school, prepared to hear another sermon about how much Jesus loves you but hates how naughty and loud you are, prepared for another hour of silence and jostling and getting in trouble: Magicians and puppets. And there were a lot more puppets than there were magicians.

But that was okay, because puppets are amazing. Ventriloquism is like magic itself. A grown up sits on a stool on stage. She (always she) is accompanied by a black box off to her side. She introduces herself, when suddenly she is interrupted by a muffled, nasal voice. Look! It was the voice of her dummy! And we would laugh so hard when she'd take the thing out. Rosy cheeked, strangely elongated features, and that voice, that voice that Marcy Tigner could also do, something about that ngya sound, I don't even know how to translate it, nasal and uvulal at the same time. Always a joke about the little dangly feet. Always a joke about sawdust. Earnest talk at the end about Jesus, whose s's became sh's in the dummy's mouth, Do yaw beyeeve in jeshush?

I had to have this magic! I tormented my mother. Library trips were taken. Reams of notebook paper were sacrificed to highly detailed diagrams of my vent doll (see, I'd learned to call them that in the books), which was going to be so much better than the lady had at school!

When these women would come, I'd study them. I'd watch their mouths, their throats. I'd watch the doll's mouth too. Not all of them had jaws that moved. Some seemed to have lips moving instead. One seemed almost to have no jointed parts, just some smoothly flowing skin, like plastic. That's the kind of mouth I wanted mine to have.

I made endless puppets--socks, paper plates, paper bags, nothing in my house was safe. My passion for making puppets was going to overtake my passion for making robots out of shoeboxes and duct tape. But puppets, plain old puppets, weren't good enough. I worked. I drew. I practiced my ventriloquism in front of the mirror. I practiced my ngya. And finally, finally, I had my plan. And this was going to be the best, best vent doll ever.

I started with this log we had out in the yard. I don't know what kind of log it was. Doesn't matter. What matters is that I also had a Fisher-Price bowling ball, that I would use as the head, on top of the log body. Now, bear with me here, I don't have time to go into the details of how I'd turn that hollow plastic bowling ball into an articulated head, but I had plans.

I decided I needed to paint it, to try to get it the same color as that orangey-pink the dolls at school had. My dad had a can of pink Krylon that might do the trick. He wouldn't mind if I used it, I was sure. So I took my log and my ball and the spray paint out to the back yard. I carefully balanced the log so it was standing upright (it was a really good log), and with the gentlest touch placed the ball on top of the log. The head, as it were, atop the body. Then, aiming the can just so, and leaning in to examine my precision work, I pressed the button on the spray can.

You know, it's a funny thing about spray paint. It's easy enough to tell which direction the paint will come out, unless you've never really been allowed to use spray cans before, and it doesn't occur to you that the little hole should point at your target. Rather than, say, at your face, your eyes. Another funny thing about spray paint is, it burns!

I am sorry to say that the world will never see the glory that would have been my vent doll. Log and ball found their way into the trash, after my mom finished washing me up.

To this day, I am fascinated by the things, the voices, the sly looks on the ones whose eyes move. They were the best thing about my religious education, and pretty much the only thing (well, maybe aside from the feltboards) I wouldn't have changed about my school experience!
posted by mittens at 5:51 PM on June 15, 2015 [38 favorites]


"Huffle: a piece of beaʃtiality too filthy for explanation"
posted by sneebler at 6:09 PM on June 15, 2015 [7 favorites]


Yeah, I remember her from Baptist school, too. I didn't make as much use of my education as mittens did, though!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:16 PM on June 15, 2015


Marcy! Oh man! In high school we used "Am I In Heaven?" in a tongue-in-cheek creepy video project. Put that record on and then slow it down here and there with your finger...
posted by Beardman at 6:26 PM on June 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


The Clang Quartet is my favorite Christian entertainment.
posted by idiopath at 6:39 PM on June 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


KEE-RIST! Hopefully my skin will stop crawling before bedtime...
posted by jim in austin at 6:50 PM on June 15, 2015


> > it makes you want to do drugs to forget it

> or enjoy it!

HYPOTHESIS:
Ingesting a recreational drug will either enhance enjoyment or impair recollection of vintage infantilist Christian American folk music.

SETUP:
- A Sound/Video capable Internet Device
- A Solopipe
- A bag quality weed.
- A comfortable chair in quiet, private surroundings.

PROCEDURE:
- Load the Solopipe bowl with weed.
- Light and smoke the entire bowl.
- Load this FPP into the browser of the Internet Device
- play each of the three linked Youtube videos
- record your emotional reaction.

OBSERVATIONS:
None of the videos could be watched to completion. A profound sense of emptiness and futility gripped the subject as each video progressed beyond 20% of full playback. This feeling of foreboding and doom persisted well past the conclusion of the videos and the dissipation of the effects of the weed.

CONCLUSION:
More drugs needed. ASAP.
posted by CynicalKnight at 7:26 PM on June 15, 2015 [7 favorites]




What strange cultural detritus is produced by this lovely plastic religion we have. There are a few billion of us and we're always terrified that the church is dying.
H. Richard Niebuhr challenged us to sort ourselves out with regards to the rest of the culture.
In my context, we eschew a lot of cultural artifacts as bulshytt.
But the success of the church can be credited to its viral malleability. We digested hundreds of native holidays, thousands of cities, millions of traditions - it is unsavory but the church of Jesus Christ is a universal human religion that can be bent to fit inside the mouth of a terrifying little puppet.
And the puppet will sing its little song and the devil dances on and the church spins and spins to keep from facing the fact that it kills its own messiah.
It's the job of the church to remind me that none of this is real. It's the job of the puppets to be just absurd enough to remind me that the good stuff is simple and doesn't require ventriloquism or slight-of-hand to communicate.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 7:56 PM on June 15, 2015 [5 favorites]


Now for an interlude from Pastor John Rydgren

I should watch this full screen, right?

"Yes."

Whoa.

But really. "Creepy puppets for Jesus" is just the Republican party now, yes?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:11 PM on June 15, 2015


this is a thirsty country....the blood of a thousand Christs.....
posted by thelonius at 8:28 PM on June 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


Now for an interlude from Pastor John Rydgren

In a similar vein: Wilderness Road's "The Gospel" (stick around for "Heavily Into Jesus")

sorry about the silly video, but it's the only instance I could find
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:10 PM on June 15, 2015


*shudder*

Previously: Lil' Markie.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:48 PM on June 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


The god of these puppets is evil purple soul -eater Barney.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 11:27 PM on June 15, 2015


We had the Walking In The Sunshine With Little Marcy album when I was wee. I stayed away from it, preferring instead to enjoy the (equally creepy in retrospect ) Kid's Praise albums featuring Psalty the singing hymn book.
posted by gnuhavenpier at 12:39 AM on June 16, 2015


Between Psalty (Xmas pagent in 1987ish), tons of pseudo-culture Christian shirts, and even those puppets (my uncles had a bus full of them...) I just remembered/flashbacked my childhood from East Texas. If 10 year old me would see my world view - would need a few drinks.
posted by aggienfo at 1:48 AM on June 16, 2015


Video or it didn't happen. (Trigger warning: bad puppetry.)

"When children grumble and complain, it makes the whole family sad and upset."
posted by jack_babylon at 5:09 PM on June 16, 2015 [5 favorites]


jack_babylon, when I first heard that song on The Simpsons, I thought, no, that can't possibly be a real song. How wrong I was.
posted by Melismata at 7:31 AM on June 17, 2015


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