In 1981, the hammered-dulcimer maker Jerry Read Smith recorded Strayaway Child, a sparkling collection of traditional Celtic melodies with "Over the Rainbow" and Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" included for good measure. Shortly afterward, the Black Mountain, N.C., craftsman sensed that his days as a low-profile builder of Appalachian instruments were--like his custom-made instruments themselves--numbered.

"That was a great piece," Jason Ringenberg told WORLD recently, in reference to the positive review of his band that ran in our April 22, 1995, issue. "You guys are The Way, right?" No, WORLD. The Way is published by a cult.

"WORLD. Cool. It was a wonderful piece to send to my mom."

Mr. Ringenberg laughs. Not long ago, after all, nothing would've seemed less in keeping with the wild, country-punk image of his band--Jason and the Scorchers--than for its leader to worry about pleasing his mother.

Against the background of the presidential race, the Simpson case, and the Kervorkian disgrace, a discussion of the best party music currently available might seem flippant. Yet when a person wants to celebrate or merely forget the turns our culture takes, and hopes to select a soundtrack appropriate to his mood, it's hard to beat the bright, uptempo, southwestern-Louisiana music known as zydeco.

Cultural conservatives who pursue happiness by searching for signs of intelligent life in the pop-music universe sometimes have to defend the pursuit against those who consider it a frivolity. If we're sharp, we remind our accusers that holding low culture in disdain is not so much "conservative" as elitist, and that just as one can enjoy the English and Scottish ballads collected by Francis J. Childs without indulging in intellectual slumming, so one can--in theory, at least--legitimately enjoy the best that pop music has to offer.

Just before Christmas, Rush Limbaugh devoted a segment of his radio show to a discussion of "One of Us," a song by Joan Osborne that over the next few months went on to turn the grammatically ambiguous and theologically curious question "What if God was one of us?" into one of the most recognizable refrains on rock radio.

Last February, at the height of Pat Buchanan Mania, another well-known, middle-aged, conservative Christian Pat B. announced that, to "get attention," his next recording would consist entirely of heavy-metal songs. It's June, and Pat Boone in a Metal Mood has yet to hit the stores, but that doesn't mean that conservative Christians with an interest in cultural oddities have been left in the lurch-not when one of the top-50 bestselling albums in the country for the past two months has been I Love to Tell the Story, a collection of hymns sung by Mr. Mayberry himself, Andy Griffith.