Christian Rock/Pop, CCM, etc.
ChastMastr
Shipmate
in Heaven
What Christian rock/pop or CCM (Christian contemporary music) do people here like? Or liked when they were younger?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_Christian_music
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_Christian_music
Comments
Nowadays the one Christian musician I listen to a lot is Matt Maher -- he writes praise-and-worshippy type stuff, but it's much more thoughtful and interesting (to me) than most "worship music."
Besides my tastes have shifted since then.
A lot of folks were into DC Talk, but I never did quite get it with them. I was, however, fond of the ska punk stylings of Five Iron Frenzy.
(To answer the OP - I really liked Bruce Cockburn, and Larry Norman. The former signed a beer bottle for me once at a hall in Selby of all places, and I went for a curry (!!) with the latter in Manchester. He was an odd guy, alright.)
Martyn Joseph went to the same church as a boy I knew in the county orchestra, and I once played the oboe in a carol service where Martyn was also performing (he was only known in Baptist and Brethren circles at the time, though was obviously a rising star).
Can I ask when you were listening to CCM originally? (I recommend the ones I listed very highly... they mostly became known starting in the 1980s.)
Well, that’s not quite true, if John Michael Talbot counts as CCM. I was a big fan of his music, which I still listen to from time to time.
I was a huge fan of Steve Taylor at one point ... I wonder what's become of him?
It's always disappointing (but not unusual) when I hear that a Christian artist whose music I used to like is now very vocally right-wing (of course this sometimes happens with the secular artists of our youth too!). On the other side of that it's been nice to see Amy Grant speak positively about affirming LGBTQ people.
I'm happy to report that he's doing well, and he's not a fan of Trump. As he said on Twitter...
He's released other albums since the 80s (some are just amazing!), and has been touring with Russ Taff recently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Taylor#2020s
I found their songs more interesting than most of the Christian Rock which were often not much more than rock versions of bits of the Bible, or rock praise songs.
Both albums can be found on YouTube. The Harvest Time track was about 15 minutes long and took one side of the LP.
I Used To Be Blind But Now I'm Short-sighted is about the struggle from childhood into adulthood to believe.
The Start Of The Run uses a metaphor of a Foxhunt for the life of Jesus with his resurrection to a dog who leads the blind.
Christianity Today did a podcast series a while back that covered the 80s/90s 'Satanic Panic' (look for Devil and the Deep Blue Sea)
ISTM the backwards masking hysteria relied on a particular level of tech (it was possible, but hard and required special equipment to play stuff in reverse) glomming onto the evangelical plausibility structure that allowed a narrative to be easily accepted if it came from someone with the right level of authority.
There was also a tendency of Evangelical Doomsayers to plant the idea of the backwards-masked word or phrase in advance, so that hearers were primed to seek and identify a specific thing.
Speaking of HYSTERIA, that album by Def Leppard still holds up. LOL
Virtually all of the examples dug up at the time were probably accidental -- the audio equivalent of a Rorschach test - finding patterns where there were none to be found.
Which, ironically, Petra made fun of in their song “Witch Hunt.”
(“We’re on another witch hunt/looking for evil wherever we can find it/off on a tangent, hope the Lord won’t mind it” with a batch of spliced-in backwards messages, quotes involving witches in movies and cartoons like “I’ll get you, my pretty,” etc.)
Styx’ album Kilroy Was Here is also apropos about the whole thing, including backwards stuff like the inscription on the US dollar bill, etc.
I think I saw them at a Greenbelt a long time ago. I went to...a few. But I don't remember more. Want to link to an album, or tracks, on youtube? (I'll be away for a week, so it'll take me a while to look for this - please tag me if you do it).