During a fervid, teenage brush with asceticism I spurned all worldy musical influences. Which, in practice, meant classifying my CD collection by "artist has made explicit public profession of Christian faith" and "other", and giving the latter portion to my sister (except for the particularly 'dangerous' ones which of course I dutifully destroyed...CDs are actually quite hard to break). I was left with a ramshackle collection of (mostly) mediocre 'CCM'*, a few 'worship' CDs**, and some desperately tenuous "mainstream artists who I don't actually like and who aren't exactly evangelical but, well, they said something about God in that interview I read so they're in". Hmm. In truth, I don't regret this as an act of surrender, albeit a comically confused one. I can't exactly remember how long I kept it up but it was in the order of years - long after the initial naivity had worn off. Eventually, I recognised that ...