Syllable 7

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Local band Syllable 7 plays Saturday afternoon on the banks of the Mississippi River next door to the USS Kidd Veterans Memorial & Museum, helping traveling Christian philanthropist Christopher ‘Cody’ Anderson persuade people to donate international phones cards for troops overseas. Anderson is returning to the spot this afternoon, and the band is scheduled to play again 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

* By CHARLES LUSSIER
* Advocate staff writer
* Published: Sep 19, 2010 - Page: 1B

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Along the banks of the Mississippi River, rock music blared out at high volume from a red 2006 Ford Ranger on Saturday morning, although no one was around to hear it.

At least not yet.

The disc jockey, Christopher “Cody” Anderson, was hoping for a bigger crowd later in the day when a Baton Rouge-based band, Syllable 7, was supposed to perform with him near the USS Kidd — it’s returning to play again Sunday afternoon — and support this unusually determined man who is spending his days trying to help U.S. troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For the past couple of years, that effort has focused on persuading people in town after town to go to local stores, buy international phone cards and donate them to him so that soldiers overseas get to talk for free with their loved ones back home.

Anderson pulls out a stack of cards he’s received. He, however, is upset to find out that the phone company has reduced from 200 to 125 the number of minutes that these $10 cards provide.

“I’d like slap them all the way back to Afghanistan and leave them in some ditch somewhere without backup,” an upset Anderson said.

Anderson estimated that he has managed to collect about $300,000 worth of these cards. In the past, he used to deliver them directly to the military, but now he sends them to a friend he said he met while playing in Georgia two months ago: Maj. Michael A. Reeve, 3rd Infantry Division Headquarters, Building 1, Third Floor G-3, Fort Stewart, GA 31314.

Anderson said he gets a wide range of reactions to what he does.

“I get ’em from one extreme to the other,” he said. “They either … love me or they ignore me.”

He chalks the negative reactions to the unpopularity of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to lack of patriotism. But he said people need to help with more than words.

“Talk is cheap,” he said. “If all you’re doing is going around saying you’re supporting the troops, that ain’t supporting them.”

The divorced father of two said he used to work at a music-and-video store, but these days he tends to rely on the good will of others for food, gas and shelter.

He said he’s in Baton Rouge because a man from here who saw him in Florida was so taken with his message that the man bought Anderson a laptop computer. That man is now putting him up at his house in Baton Rouge, Anderson said.

But Anderson has had some problems here. He said he tried unsuccessfully to persuade a local church to lend him money for gas and said he went twice to Mayor Kip Holden’s office and couldn’t get any help.

“I just tell things as it is. I’m just not going to be polite when I think somebody’s a jerk,” Anderson said.

This is not his first cause.

Anderson has spent decades on the road, living on the edge of destitution, to raise money and attention for causes. To prove it, he pulls out a big binder filled with press clippings from his past.

In the 1970s, he pulled a covered wagon across the country to support the American Heart Association. A decade later, he cycled across the country on a three-wheeled bicycle mocked up to resemble the space shuttle to fight world hunger. One of his clips dates back to a 1989 stop in Baton Rouge on that space shuttle tour.

Anderson said he became a Christian when he was 12, after watching the movie “King of Kings.” When he finished, he asked his mother if the movie was true and she assured him it was. Well, if it’s true, he wondered, then why aren’t people living Christian lives?

So, Anderson set out to do that. He said he’s given away all his possessions three times in his life already.

He gets impatient with people who don’t see the world as clearly as he does. He dropped out of high school — later got his GED — because he felt the adults were standing in his way.

“All they want to do is teach you how to fit into a broken world,” he said. “I don’t want to fit into a broken world, I want to fix it.”

Supporting soldiers is a passion that goes way back as well. Anderson, who is 55, credits his patriotism, in part, to his birthday, July 4.

Anderson is mystified why anyone would not automatically see the righteousness of his cause and want to immediately help him.

Anderson said he doesn’t think it’s too much to ask people who are in town to have fun at an LSU football game to do something small for the soldiers who make such activities possible.

“All these people are going to be going to the game and everything, and I’m like, ‘Look, how about a phone card?’ ” he said.

Baton Rouge may be his last stop for a bit. His mother, who lives in Blue Ridge, Ga., is ailing.

“Your mom’s your mom and you only have them for so long,” Anderson said.

But the phone card effort is not over. He recently started a Facebook page and said he updates it every day with the latest in his apparently unending quest. - The Advocate

www.visualcrack.info by Ja3mik3 on 08/17/2010

“Syllable Seven is a band out of Baton Rouge, LA that has found the perfect blend of Rap/Rock/Alternative sounds which brings you this wonderful head nodding Ep that has been in my Cd Changer since it touched my inbox. I can see S7 making major moves in 2010. Their sound reminds me of Black Milk raps over live instruments but the infuse an alternative sound with no electronic touch ups.”

- visualcrack

“Funk, Reggae, Rock & Hip Hop, these are the elements that forge what is known as Syllable7. Combine bass driven tunes with melodic funky guitar, intricate percussion’s, backed by vintage vinyl, topped with jazzy trumpet and fronted by the intellectual flow of an MC pushing consciousness to the limits and you get what we like to call “Feel good Music.”

- The Green Room