There are several opinions concerning the identity of the Alex Morgan who is credited for reading texts on the simply titled 2004 CD Be by Swedish progressive rock combo Pain of Salvation. This seems to be the case regarding anything to do with this recording, especially in terms of its aesthetic value. Whoever Morgan is, he gets to play God -- literally. He is one of several performers, male and female, who recite texts that are presented as messages communicated directly from on high. Some sort of cosmic music would of course be required to accompany such readings, music that some critics have drawn and quartered while others deliver praise ringing back into the heavens.

Morgan's involvement in a work that has been described as both a masterpiece and "the reason progressive rock sucks" may simply be a veiled reference to Jack Grisham, the original vocalist with California grindcore band T.S.O.L. Grisham, after all, used Alex Morgan as the first in a series of aliases on T.S.O.L. releases. Just as he supposedly made use of these names to avoid legal problems, a performer playing the part of God on a Pain of Salvation project might also be tempted to assume an alias in order to dodge negative feedback -- although in the case of divine retribution it can be assumed such chicanery would have minimal protective value.

This theory of a reference or "in joke" involving the name Alex Morgan is countered by the notion that sometime during his bid for governor of California in 2004, Grisham hopped over to Sweden to lay down these vocal tracks himself. There are prog rock specialists who do not accept this idea, however -- arguing that in the case of an assignment requiring a performer to act as God, Grisham would surely want to take credit under his own name. To help settle this question, a series of "blindfold tests" were conducted involving the Morgan sections of Be. These tests were closely supervised by former editors of Down Beat, the magazine that invented this process.

The results truly went to the heart of Grisham's entire off-and-on career with T.S.O.L., again a matter of controversy. Listeners who reviled Grisham under any name have always attested that he simply doesn't have the vocal chops for hardcore, i.e., "sings like a girl." In fact, some of the blindfolded participants identified the female readers who also play God for the Pain of Salvation as Grisham, provoking further confusion. Finally, the noted lab assistant Igor was brought in to conduct his own series of experiments, an unfortunate assignment that may have led to the end of a long and productive relationship between mad doctor and weird helper. Ten minutes after beginning his initial audit of Be, Igor slipped out by the back of the moat after leaving the following note: "Of all the torture I have had to endure in my sad, twisted life, nothing compares to this! I quit." ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi