Ace musician, producer, founding member of The Dictators and Dangerous Minds’ friend Andy Shernoff has a new Youtube video and it’s a winner.

Andy shared with DM the history and inspiration behind the making of Are You Ready To Rapture:

I grew up in New York City so the only people I knew who believed that Jesus was actually going to fly down from the sky were mentally ill preachers screaming their lungs out in what was then a very seedy Times Square. I had no idea how widespread this revenge fantasy called the Rapture was until a few years ago.

I had the phrase Jewish Zombie rolling through my brain and wanted to incorporate it into a song.  I developed a fascination with Christian eschatology and researched it extensively. I wanted everything in the song to accurately represent what these knuckleheads believe. It took a few months and I probably wrote 25 verses until I had three with the right combination of drama, truth and sarcasm.

I felt the best way to communicate the song was with a cartoon. I met Brian Musikoff through a mutual friend and he was the only person considered after I saw his animation for a Patton Oswalt’s comedy routine, ‘Christmas Shoes’. I liked his visual style and felt he made a great bit even funnier.

Animation is very labor intensive so it took most of 2011 to finish it off. I busted Brian’s ass to get it done by October 21st the projected date of the Rapture and we posted it to YouTube on October 20th just in time to catch a little wave of Rapture publicity.

I find it terrifying that many Republican candidates for President not only believes that Jesus will return to earth in their lifetime, but that the ensuing destruction would be a good thing. They’re just so confident that they will be raptured while every person who has not let Jesus into their life will burn in the eternal flames of hell….. It is our patriotic duty as Americans to mock such irrationality.

By the way the song is available as a vinyl 45 from your favorite local record store with an unreleased Joey Ramone track as the B-side”

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Are You Ready To Rapture manages to do two things really well at the same time: it makes a timely political statement and it’s a terrific rock song. That’s hard to pull off and we haven’t seen much of it since The Clash and The Sex Pistols. Andy Shernoff, as punk as he ever was, reminds us that the history of rock and roll is also the history of cultural change and subversion - a revolution you can dance to. Nicely done Shernoff!