Christian Hits of the ’90s and Their Closest Secular Analogues
Christian Band: DC Talk
Christian Sound: Oh, man. It’s hard to explain (or overemphasize) the popularity and cultural impact of DC Talk to someone who wasn’t at least tangentially connected to evangelical Christian music in the 1990s. Imagine that the Fugees slowly metastasized into Nirvana over a period of several years, but with Bono.
Christian Hit (as the Fugees): “Lean On Me”
Christian Hit (as Nirvana): “In The Light”
Secular Equivalent: Probably one of those 40-minute long YouTube mashups of every popular hit from a given year.
Christian Band: The W’s
Christian Sound: Ska meets swing-revival. If Christian from Clueless went through a religious phase before he discovered Billie Holiday and Jason Priestly, he would listen to this.
Christian Hit: “The Devil Is Bad”
Secular Equivalent: “Date Rape,” Sublime
Christian Band: Jars of Clay
Christian Sound: I still have a very soft spot in my heart for these guys. The Christian Guster, I’d have to say. I still have a very soft spot in my heart for Guster, as long as we’re being honest.
Christian Hit: “Overjoyed”
Secular Equivalent: “Fa Fa,” easy.
Christian Band: Newsboys
Christian Sound: I can never quite get myself to feel very strongly about Newsboys. They don’t sound much like anything to me. Bizarrely, after the lead singer retired in 2009 (after something like 20 years with the band), they hired Michael Tait — formerly of DC Talk — to take over, which is sort of like if the Smashing Pumpkins got back together with Michael Stipe as the new Billy Corgan.
Christian Hit: “Shine”
Secular Equivalent: U2 or REM. Flip a coin, it’s your choice.
Christian Band: POD
Christian Sound: POD was the most popular Christian catchall for the kids who wanted to listen to anything from Tool to Blink-182 to Nine-Inch Nails to Korn but weren’t allowed. This was as heavy as it was allowed to get at your house. Neither of these hits are from the 90s, technically — they’re both immediately post-9/11 in the severest way — but they were so enormous (“Alive” was the most-requested song on TRL for all of September that year) they merit inclusion.
Christian Hit: “Youth Of The Nation”
“Alive”
Secular Equivalent: Linkin Park, I guess? Anything with very sincere yelling.
Tags: apples and oranges, christian music, comparing things, dc talk
I literally just got flush in the face with embarrassment. With a few more Christian ska bands thrown in, this was the soundtrack to my junior high life.
NO SHAME
OC Supertones…
I'm glad I stuck with electronic music to some degree – but also discovered the wacky stuff like Brother Danielson, and the mopey plod of Starflyer 59
Starflyer 59! I still listen to Starflyer. My husband, who hates all of my old Christian music with a passion, will listen to Starflyer. They are a legit good band.
I concur. I still listen to them fairly often. They (“he”) had an album or two that I didn’t like, but the last two seem to be back on solid ground.
I saw the OC Supertones and Relient K at Seattle Pacific University in 2003-ish. No pride, no shame – that is still one of the most fun concerts I've ever been to.
Also, despite going with people I knew from college church group, and the concert being at a fairly conservative Christian college, I didn't realize either of those bands were Christian for a surprisingly long time.
Reliant K!
Supertones Strike Back!
The Benjamin Gate is still a band I listen to. I don't care how good they are, I just like the lead singer!
I get that face-flush every time one of these pops up in my iTunes shuffle again. Would that I could scrub them (and that period of using Catholicism to avoid addressing my queerness) from my computer and my memory.
In 1999, I drove an hour and a half to go to the Holy Roller Tour–FIF, The Insyderz, The W's. I was a freshman in college. It was the highlight of my first semester.
I went to that too! At the Hollywood Bowl. Good times.
FIF!! Oh, I nearly forgot about them.
This was the soundtrack to my high school and college life. All you need to add is Plumb and, I don't know, Chasing Furies?
Jesus Freak and Much Afraid are still my two favorite albums of that era, even if I'm now a bit embarrassed to admit it.
I still listen to Jesus Freak on Grooveshark sometimes. It's so engrained in my head that it's the perfect background music while I'm working.
misread that as "chasing Furries" and i got really confused about the genesis of the furry subculture for a second.
I am unashamed of my Insyderz addiction in middle school, and would have been a fan even longer if my family hadn't moved to a new state where all my high school friends were way more into DC talk.
Sometimes I look back and wish I hadn't spent grades K-12 in Christian school…
Also the Christian radio station in my high school town was so conservative that they wouldn't PLAY Christian "rock" like dc talk. So, there's that.
Oh and my first concert ever was one of those CCM festivals at an amusement park on the NC/SC border, wherein one of the members of dc talk (think it was kmax) body-surfed and I TOUCHED HIS LEG.
The most popular club at my middle school was the before-school-on-Fridays bible club and there was a book everyone read about martyrs by DC Talk? Or affiliated somehow? Does anyone remember this?
Aside: I am kind of a little disappointed at the lack of MxPx.
Yeah, what about MxPx??
Also: OC Supertones were pretty great. And Five Iron Frenzy.
What on earth is MxPx?
The book is Jesus Freak, I can remember that much.
Wow, OC Supertones, REALLY into that one.
Their music videoes were so great.
May have to go listen to "One Voice": "1999 and the stakes is high." [sic]
I went to go see the OC Supertones 3? 4? different times because my youth group leader at the time was really into them, and going with my youth group to a Christian concert was pretty much the only way I was going to get to go to a rock concert when I was 15.
What… what on… what?? Mallory! MxPx was the BEST! Get thee to a Youtube video of "Chickmagnet" asap!
You missed out on MxPx? They were huge in like '89, Bremerton Naval Base's own bratpack with overtones of Blink, Green Day and FEAR stirred into mostly-sincere adulation of the Clash and Ramones.
Yes too all of those. I loved the OC Supertones. I was way into Miss Angie around that time too.
I feel like the secular equivalent of Five Iron Frenzy would be They Might be Giants in terms of pure silliness.
They recently got back together, and multiple people I know freaked out about it
(Raises hand) I freaked out about it.
Oh my god MxPx! There's a band name I haven't heard in years. Oh, nostalgia.
MxPx were a Christian band? Man, was I bad at catching on to that.
They had like 2 or 3 Christian albums, including one that was all cover songs, and then they did a crossover album. That was the one with "Chickmagnet" on it. It got a moderate amount of play on MTV and secular radio. A lot of people didn't know they had done some Christian albums before that.
To this day, whenever I'm considering having more than like 2 people over my brain goes IT'S ABOUT TIME FOR A PARTY AT MY HOUSE AND IT WOULDN'T BE THE SAME WITHOUT YOU NO NOT AT ALL.
Luckily I am a misanthrope and this doesn't actually happen that often.
I DO THE SAME THING. Except I don't hear MxPx singing it, I hear one of my high school dude friends singing it, because he sang it all the time.
Yeah, it was called Jesus Freaks, and it had cover art that matched the Jesus Freak album, and it told stories about all kind of people who were prosecuted or martyred for their Christian faith. I never read it, but almost everyone I knew at the time did.
wasn't it like, Foxe's Book of Martyrs revised for the Youth Of Today?
I didn't read it, I was too busy reading purity books (*deep shudder*)
You read I Kissed Dating Goodbye, didn't you?
I personally read both, and was the worse for it.
I read both Jesus Freaks books (there was at least one sequel) and thought they were great… then I graduated high school, converted to Catholicism, went back and read the book and was HORRIFIED at how anti-Catholic they were. Like, yeah, okay, the Inquisition, I know, but can we all please move on?
AND THIRD DAY?! I don't even know anything about them, but I went to a concert of theirs? Man, memories. Of when youth group was basically the most exciting thing about any given week.
I remember seeing Third Day open for Newsboys. Not the highlight of my concert-going past by any means.
When I was at a giant weekend youth conference once, Third Day was the closing band on the Sunday night, and my poor exhausted self was so tired from "sleeping" on a church basement floor with fifty other overstimulated teenagers that I curled up in our back-row-of-the-arena seats and went to sleep.
That book is probably somewhere on the bookshelf in my childhood bedroom.
Maybe I'm geographically biased, but was MxPx really big outside of the pacific northwest? I mean, my friends saw them a half dozen times at the local community college in high school. Or maybe they got nationally big after I stopped listening to them (Life In General was the last album I bought).
I grew up in Ohio and my friends and I loved MxPx. But we were also kind of Tooth and Nail groupies, if that could be a thing, and listened to pretty much anything in their catalog. The skater boys in youth group were especially into MxPx.
I was most definitely a Tooth & Nail groupie. The Dickies jacket they sold me was the apotheosis of my high school fashion sense. I'm sure I owned most of their catalog too.
I still listen to Starflyer 59.
My brother and I and a bunch of my friends were into MxPx, and we were in Kansas City.
I grew up in northern NJ and listened to MxPx but was @fleurdelivre87 suggesting they were a Christian band?? I never knew that, but it explains why I didn't get as into them as much I did other bands that will remain nameless.
I grew up in Southern California, and was a militant atheist from the age of eleven, and I knew who they were. Though I don't know if I knew they were Christian? (It makes sense, I went to school with a lot of evangelicals.)
I'm in the same boat as you, I think it was hard to grow up in SoCal in the '90s and not have at least a passing familiarity with Christian punk and ska.
I definitely remember MxPx from the east coast (DC area) as well as when I lived outside of the US. I think there was some overlap with other pop punk bands (ex. blink 182), I didn't even know they were christian until today!
Grew up in SC, saw MXPX in concert I think 3 times? My first boyfriend was a mega-fan, so we hung out on their tour bus once, which was, overall, a depressing and weird experience.
MxPx! They were a Seattle band, no? Or at least they were on the Tooth and Nail label, weren't they?
It's so strange to me that this parallel universe exists–but actually in this universe where I live–replete with Christian music trends.
Or maybe everyone is making it up and I'm falling for it. One or the other.
The fact that one of the songs is called "The Devil is Bad" strongly suggests that it's made up.
I wish I still had my "The Devil is Bad" tshirt. I would wear it for the pure irony now.
oh the memories of screaming along to that one "You are the devil and you are bad!!"
No joke, multiple people at my Christian high school sang that song for the talent show one year. Multiple people.
That song was always cheesy but it was fun to dance to… Not the best song the W's ever did certainly.
My absolute favorite song they did was their "Country Roads" cover. Go figure.
That one is still fun!
Didn't one of their albums have some secret tracks on it where they did their version of Wesley Willis songs? That was kind of weird in hindsight.
We played "The Devil Is Bad" every week in youth group. People flipped out as soon as I pulled out the trumpet.
YES.
The Christian radio station near my parents used to play a fair bit of stuff like this but now it's mostly praise and worship which is like a huge step downward in musical quality.
Right there with you.
I grew up under the impression that no one really actually practiced Christianity anymore beyond the occasional pop into a church for tradition, so I'm right there with you.
What is mostly seeming incredibly strange to me is having *other people* talk about this strange parallel universe that I lived in. I didn't know anyone else at that age who listened to these bands. (And yes, I still have a soft spot for a lot of them.)
if people were like me in HS, they talked a bit about going to church but never about the weird parallel universe aspect. Also: geography! I am from an area that is not super churchy. Now I live in Ohio. It's like the parallel universe became flesh and dwelt among us (Bible parody).
What of Reliant K?
ETA: Ok, they were mostly 2000 onward, though they were formed in 1998, which explains why I associate them with my middle school boyfriend.
Yes! I crowd-surfed at one of their concerts when I was 14. At a Christian music festival called "Lifest," no less.
Were you in Oshkosh, Wisconsin?!
I sure was!
I was definitely there as well, but probably eating a walking taco because I was there with a family who thought Reliant K was too wild and secular so we had to watch from the back.
I am unashamed of my love for Relient K. MmmHmmm is legitimately good.
I'll be unashamed of mine too!
Their Christmas album is so much fun! They're the only people who can make both "12 Days of Christmas" and Handel's "Hallelujah" actually sound like equally rockin'-out fun times.
Relient K was pretty much all I listened to in high school and I still love that album. Weirdly, I find them much less enjoyable to listen to know that they’ve pretty much gone completely secular and I’m an agnostic now.
Green Day!
This is a fun game, can we do some more? I'll go next.
Michael W. Smith?
I still love Michael W. Smith. His Christmas album "Christmastime" is one of my favorites.
It isn't Christmas without Christmastime!
My cousin gave me a MWS album for my birthday one year (just to change it up, usually I got Amy Grant). To this day, whenever I see either "strong" or "courageous," I start singing That Song.
RELIENT
One million apologies. I'd fix it if I could, but instead I will hang my head in shame for the rest of the day.
My girlfriend didn't know they were Christian affiliated. Were they also really successful in the mainstream?
They kind of were! There was a single called "Be my Escape" that I remember seeing on Fuse all the time.
Yeah I eventually got into them after one of their songs was popular. They weren't too bad.
SADIE HAWKINS DANCE…I think that was a "crossover" hit with the already pop-punk inclined.
"[Going to the] Sadie Hawkins Dance, in my khaki pants… there's nothing better OH OH OH" sounds much less innocent when written out than when sung, but still was pretty pivotal to my teenage years.
Also: "Marilyn Manson Ate My Girlfriend"
I have their covers of the Fraggle Rock theme and "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" on my ipod. (The latter is from a Veggie Tales movie. I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN.)
I was just about to ask thanks for taking one for the team. Also adding Pedro the Lion and Mae.
Was Mae a Christian band ever? I think Further Seems Forever should also be added.
It was like Pedro the Lion – Christian members/messages but not a "Christian" band
AFAIK, David Bazan eventually left Christianity – and did a couple albums about it! They were not bad. I still listen to a decent amount of his stuff from all eras.
In 8th grade I convinced my mom to drive me and 3 of my friends all around South Carolina so we could attend not one, not two, but THREE Relient K shows in a row. I thought I was SUCH a badass.
Um, so, you know the song "Chapstick, and Chapped Lips, and Things Like Chemistry" where Matt Thiesen lost his phone in the lake beneath the Batman ride?
Um, I was THERE at the themepark that day and I MET HIM and it's basically like the song is about me.
THIS IS AMAZING. I always got really excited about whichever song mentioned Canton because my dad's family is from there.
OMG I APPRECIATE THIS.
. . .I cannot reconcile the fact that a website I love is responsible for getting "Youth of a Nation" stuck in my head.
WE ARE WE ARE
(weeeeeee aaaaaare)
THE YOUTH OF THE NA-A-TION
I knew I knew that song, but couldn't remember the tune and was grateful for that…until I read the comments above.
You're welcome!
Ahh I was OBSESSED with that Jars of Clay album. I played the song you posted just now, and even though I haven't heard it for like 15 years I could still recall every last lyric and note. The other band I was super into at the time was Sixpence None the Richer. Actually, I still kind of like them.
Leigh Nash has a great voice! She went on to do a solo record, but the writing wasn't that good…
Actually FOR REAL I was just explaining to my husband how much I listened to Jars of Clay, DC Talk, and Newsboys, and that JoC was the only one I think has stood any test of time whatsoever. Sixpence, now that you mention it, also still kind of like them. Not ashamed.
I have unashamed love for Jars of Clay–"Good Monsters" is truly incredible.
And ohhhhh, the 8th grade dancing around in my living room (when no one was home, natch) to "Love Song for a Savior".
OMG SIXPENCE I JUST CAME ON TO ADD THEM IN THE COMMENTS GOOD JOB SOLARSISTER FRIEND
This….is entirely accurate of my middle school years. Jars of Clay recently played near where I am living and I just had to smile.
This is my junior high/early high school life. An in I've seen all but POD in concert. Too edgy. I simultaneously want to listen to them all right now and furtively close this tab and continue pretending it never happened.
And what was with the whole late-nineties ska craze that completely overtook most youth groups? Not just the W's – we were all massively into the Supertones and Five Iron Frenzy and similar bands. One of my first dates involved going out with an older guy from my youth group to a Supertones concert and him making a big deal of teaching me how to skank. Wow, the embarrassing memories this is bringing back for me.
I still remember all the words to "Shine" but it has never struck me until today that they want their listeners to shine "the kind of light that might persuade a strict dictator to retire / fire the army / teach the poor origami".
Christian culture, yep yep.
Unrelatedly, I also have a serious soft spot for Jars of Clay.
Yeah, "Shine" is kind of awful, but the lyrics were written by Steve Taylor, who was actually hugely controversial in Christian music. One of his albums got banned from most Christian book/music stores because of the song "I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good", about abortion clinic bombings. He had a lot of songs that mocked popular Christian culture. I was totally into Steve Taylor and thought I was being so rebellious.
I did not know that about the abortion bomb song?!?!?! GOOD LORD.
To this day when someone lights incense I can't help but sing softly to myself, "Justin is adjustin' to the odor from Theodore's evergreen incense…" from Take Me To Your Leader.
DC TALK ON THE TOAST DC TALK ON THE TOAST
I am torn between posting the rap lyrics to Jesus Freak from memory and posting the rap lyrics to That Kinda Girl from memory.
Yes! I bust those rap lyrics out when drunk more times than I care to admit, but they are always a major hit with the right crowd.
the kind of girl who makes me sayyyy…
I hope she comes my way.
Until you said that, I didn't realize I still had those lyrics memorized, and now I'm scared of my brain.
Oh God, back in Ye Olde Daye, I may have posted a DC Talk songfic to ffnet called "Tolkien Geek." I think I had literally repressed all memory of that time.
guys guys guys no shame, if DC Talk reunited tomorrow I would SINCERELY go to that concert
I would go with you.
SO WOULD I. Jesus Freak was the first album I ever bought for myself.
I'd be the one in the back row yelling "I Don't Want It! Play the abstinence anthem of our generation, DC Talk!"
Hahaha, I'm afraid my abstinence anthem was actually Superchic[k]'s "Barlow Girl." (Containing the memorable lines "All the boys in the band want a valentine/From a Barlow Girl/Boys think they're the bomb/'cause they remind them of their mom."
I still have a lot of fondness for some of Superchic[k]'s other songs, particularly the girl power anthems, but that particular song and I are no longer friends.
I may still listen to One Girl Revolution….
Me toooo…
In all sincerity, their Supernatural concert (opening bands: Jennifer Knapp & the Ws) was amazing. A really, really good show.
Does anybody else still have the live Jesus Freak album memorized? "Welcome to our living room…" And KMax's poetry! My college roommate and I would recite to each other and giggle–"There is a treason at sea/ is it me?"
Yes! I was never that into KMax, but my best friend and sister had giant crushes on him, and pored over his poetry book. Books? Was there more than one?
DIVINE EROTICA
Jennifer Knapp! She came out a few years ago and is still making all kinds of music!
HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS. I may need to track down some of her new music now out of nostalgia/support.
Yeah I would definitely also go with you. I went to a TobyMac concert in high school, and one of my favorite pictures of me EVER was the photo I got with him (standing next to an attractive musician dude, hair looked great…)
Mallory, as if I needed any more reasons to love you. :-D I'm right THERE with you.
TAKE MEEEEE!!! We will wear flannels and doc marten's and WWJD braaaaacelets and stand during the call to chaaaaange our heaaaarrrrts!
I once got in huge trouble with my mom for going to a Jar's of Clay concert with a friend's youth group because it was in the next town over (so, like, half an hour away). It remains the most ridiculous thing I have ever been in trouble for and I STILL give her a hard time about it.
I was never huge into the Christian music scene, but I did go to Newsong (a local festival) every year to camp for a few days without a lot of supervision and innocently flirt with cute boys. And I like Relient K, who my husband opened for a couple times in Northern Ohio when he was in his own shitty but locally-successful Christian punk band. I have a fondness for the genre, despite not really listening to much of it.
Oh, and I like Pedro the Lion a lot, but I'm not sure that counts.
I kind of want to know who your husband is, because I grew up in NE Ohio and went to some of Relient K's first concerts, like ones where it was just me and four of my friends from youth group in the audience. CHRISTIAN ROCK STREET CRED.
And Pedro the Lion stands the test of time as still being good.
Pedro has the added benefit of now being David Bazan – and him now being an atheist/agnostic who really doesn't like middle-class american capitalist culture. I saw a show with him where some guy, during the Q&A, asked "So, you don't like, believe in Jesus anymore?" and David just kinda shook his head and said, "Uh, no"
He was in a couple bands, but the one that I think opened for Relient K (and Sanctus Real, once) was called Nontheless. Mighta been Grandview Heights.
OMG. My room growing up was plastered with posters of Delirious (my favorite), Audio Adrenaline, Relient K, The Ws, The Newsboys (I saw them 10+ times), etc. I was all about CCM in 90s. Used to stay up late on the weekends watching music videos on the weird Christian station (G-Rock! That one with T-Bone! Cafe Video!) I was rabid-crazy-had-all-the-t-shirts-moshing-at-the-concert fan.
Which looking back is hugely embaressing. And makes for really weird moments when I try to describe it to people who didn't grow up in that culture.
Audio Adrenaline! They were my pre-Switchfoot favourites, for sure. I still associate Megadeth with "The Houseplant Song".
YES to Switchfoot! I looooved them. (How hot were they? So hot) And they got me reading Kierkegaard & Augustine when I was about 14.
I can still recite all the words to "The Houseplant Song"!
I recently was cleaning out a bunch of my old CDs and ran across Audio Adrenaline's Greatest Hits album ("Hit Parade", I think it's called?) and I just couldn't get rid of it – it's like all my youth group memories in one album: "Hands and Feet" was the soundtrack to an inspirational video we made, belting along to "Big House" in the 15 passenger van on the way to church camp, dancing around to "Get Down", etc. etc.
Big House! A youth group/ retreat staple! Did ya'll do the hand motions and extra words? (pretending to toss the football and "A big, big table with lots and lots of food- yum yum!")
Oh man, oh man, MEMORIES. People would run across the room to catch the football…
My proudest memory from church musical camp was coming up with an additional "move" to add to that song! I can't remember what it was anymore, but we did it in front of the entire church and I felt like a ~*~CHOREOGRAPHER~*~
Yes! Totally with hand/body motions for all the aforementioned songs: "BIG BIG house" and "Hands! (hands hands hands) Feet! (feet feet feet) Go! (go go go)" and "I get DOWN, he lifts me UP" etc. etc.
I know exactly how you feel. I've still got all my CCM CDs because I have so many good memories centered around them, even the ones I'm kind of embarrassed that I ever liked.
Cafe Video! I watched so much Cafe Video!
Somewhere in my storage unit are VHS tapes with recorded Cafe Video episodes and CCM music videoes on them. I cannot bring myself to throw them out because they meant so much to me.
Are you me? Seriously, you are describing my junior high/early high school years to a T. I used to record stuff from Cafe Video on VHS tapes. And yes, it is weird now to talk about them with anyone who wasn't in that incredibly insular CCM/youth group scene.
Is Cafe Video the thing that used to play on PAX TV or whatever at like 10-10:30 on Friday nights? And then at some point the program/the network was changed to something like "The Box"?
I lived for Jars of Clay's "Crazy Times" video. Oh oh and this one is more early aughts I think but I really loved dc Talk's "So Long My Friend" video, the one where they take turns playing a fictious ex-band member who sold out and was doing interviews in "Rolling Stone" and "VH1." There was a kickline of dancing nurses!
urgh i feel this pain so badly.
delirious were the first band i ever saw live, and as someone who completely disassociated herself from her church no one in my life currently understands.
antiskeptic and the frugals ! and also superchick.
and i'm embarrassed at the amount of hillsongs and youth alive albums I have, but I still can't bring myself to throw them out because they cost me $30 a pop and that was a lot of money for a teenager.
There was another band I really liked for a brief period of time, but I can't remember their name! They weren't huge. They were sorta Jars of Clay-ish, kinda somber and acoustic-y and orchestra-y. They had kind of a funny name. Female + male vocalists? I think?
Can anyone help me out? I opened up an incognito Amazon tab so I could do some research without it affecting my cookies.
Caedmon's Call?
CAEDMON'S MOTHAFUCKING CALL, YES!!!
Oh god I was SO INTO them. I remember going to one of their concerts and they told the audience, in a sort of desperately weary apology, that they were not going to play the Bus Driver song anymore, no, the man has retired, leave him be, NEVER AGAIN.
omg the bus driver song.
I was never really into Caedmon's Call, but I really love the solo stuff that one of their former members, Derek Webb, is doing now.
Incidentally, he landed on the CCM shitlist for this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC0j6FTg1xU
I LOVE CAEDMON'S CALL.
*ahem*
Quite a bit.
All the tenors and wanna-be guitar players at my college learned their entire catalogue, and busted it out at a moment's notice–sometimes, when we had special music during chapel, the resident alto of the year would sing "Shifting Sands", and oooohhh, the feelings.
…
But seriously, their lyrics are solid, and they are still musically interesting,
which is more than can be said for a lot of pop music, let alone Christian pop music.
Important: the lead singer of Caedmon's Call, Derek Webb, recently engaged in a Twitter feud with Questlove. Worlds collide.
I completely forgot they existed, but that was my very first favorite band. My parents wouldn't buy any CCM CDs for me and I didn't have a job then, so I would get their CDs from the library all the time.
Sixpence None the Richer?
SIXPEEEENCE. Loved them so much.
My first thought for "somber and acoustic-y and orchestra-y" from this time period is Sixpence None the Richer (a band I still unashamedly love, particularly their self-titled album). That's pretty exclusively a female vocalist though I think.
Jars of Clay! My FAVORITE was "Love Song for a Savior," also known as "I want to faaall in love with yoooou"
"Flood" was always my favorite.
Ahh, I loved that song, too!
Was a lot of their music kind of stealth? I was raised Jewish in a very evangelical kind of town, and there was a bit where my friends were OBSESSED with Jars of Clay. That was the first concert I ever went to, and literally the first time I noticed they were a Christian band. I had no clue – but I was pretty clueless about a lot of things my friends were into. (See also – Harvest Festivals, why they're not just Halloween parties at church)
They had one crossover hit, "Flood," that made them somewhat stealth. That might explain it.
I totally sang that song for talent shows at church.
Love Song and Flood are still in my iTunes rotation. <3
Oh gosh. I always thought that Dishwalla song, Counting Blue Cars, was Christian – "tell me all your thoughts on God, cause I'd really like to meet her" but also used to be impressed that they used "her" but all Wikipedia can tell me is that it was emphatically their only, only, only hit.
I went through a religious phase in my late teens and early 20s, which happened to fall in the early 90s. (not just religious, but fundamentalist in the worst way. Creepy house church/cult, "spiritual warfare," rejection of all things secular, fervent longing for church/state fusion… shudder. You could say I fell in with a bad crowd. I'm feeling much better now).
Anyways, I have weird mixed feelings (kind of a cringey nostalgia) about a few of these bands. I remember attending a Christian "rave" with some friends (not even close to a rave, but none of us had any clue); I can't remember who all we danced to, but I do remember getting really crazy to DC Talk's "I Don't Want It" (did I mention that this was NOTHING like a rave?).
A weird side effect of all this is that I have basically no connection to mainstream pop culture of that era. I remember the 80s well and fondly, and then there's this 5-year gap where other people were listening to Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins. When people reminisce about that stuff I kind of just stare blankly at them. When I came back online, it was late 90s, and it was all Tori Amos and the Orb and Underworld. I sometimes jokingly refer to the early 1990s as my "convent years."
Yeah, I grew up in a fundie church and only listened to CCM in the '90's, which means that I have no frame of reference for the music everyone references from that time… i
I understand.
I didn't know that most of these bands existed until college ('99)–it was weird to "discover" a band, and have friends tell me that they'd been around for five or six years already. Kind of a mindfuck, that.
I was raised on hymns, Keith Green, Beethoven, and the Beach Boys.
Didn't discover Tori Amos until 2003.
…
My husband jokes that I was raised in the '50s.
Even though I haven't been Christian for about six years, I totally still listen to Jars of Clay. They had such good songs!
My ex-spouse dragging me to a (free!) Guster concert was one of those I-should-have-known-then moments.
KEVIN MAX OF DC TALK JUST RT'D THIS POST I MIGHT DIE I MIGHT DIE
!!!!!!!!!!!!
mittenstheboar's exclamation marks are very fitting!
Apparently, he's now the lead singer for Audio Adrenaline, which I was really into during this period too.
"Anything with very sincere yelling."
CHRISTIAN SKA. Can I lie facedown under my desk the rest of the day? Do I still have those checkerboard Vans? How did I date two consecutive dudes in high school that were obsessed with Five Iron Frenzy and Roper even though I knew I was religionless at 15? aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAHH
(I knew it wasn't meant to be with the second boyfriend when he got all mad I wouldn't go to Cornerstone Fest with him)
Oh, I was SO PISSED OFF with my parents when they wouldn't let fifteen-year-old me go stay in a tent for several days with a bunch of 18-year-old guys at Cornerstone. You are SO UNCOOL, Mom and Dad!
I'm just going to hang out in the comments here all day. Christian "alternative" music was my life from about 1993 to 1999. My friends and I were obsessed with Tooth and Nail. We traveled across states to go to multiple Christian music concerts and festivals. We subscribed to Christian music magazines. I can admit this to you all because nobody here knows who I am in real life.
HM magazine made my life worth living.
I just fell into a Wikipedia hole and learned that Kevin Max of DC Talk is now fronting Audio Adrenaline. What is happening?
WHAT
Someone tell me that I'm not the only one who acquired/collected those "ConGRADulations" albums that were compilations of CCM songs specifically for graduates, labeled by year.
I had multiple years' worth of W.O.W albums, which were basically the same thing (the top hits of the past year in CCM)
I had those ones too! I also lived outside the US, so they were just about the only way to find out about the Hot New Bands, for CCM values of hot. And then the really cool with-it youth group leader would endear himself to all the teens by bringing in whole albums from those groups that we'd only heard a single song from.
Me too!
Nope, I had some of those too.
No, but definitely picked up a few of the WOW collections.
I did not know that Tait had taken over as lead singer for the Newsboys. I've always loved his voice (and maybe had a small crush on him in high school) but that… I will need to think about that for a while.
(Also, re: Newsboys and U2: there are a few songs on "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" that still make me twitch and think "eh? I still have Newsboys on here?" Particularly "Miracle Drug.")
Anyone else remember http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleming_and_John Fleming and John? I heard them on a minidisc player for the first time on a YWAM trip to swtizerland…
YWAM!!
Did you do YWAM trips too?
I did two trips to NYC in high school with a friend's youth group, but I was more tagging along to do a fun thing than being really into it. I was too shy for missions work.
My only two YWAM experiences were an SST in France/Switzerland where I was on the "skateboarding missions team" (and unsuccessfully tried to come out to friends), and then when we turned a YWAM owned coffee shop into a bar in Taipei while really hungover from dancing all night at Luxy and MoS.
Oh, wow. I did 6 weeks of coffee shop talk in Tamshui with YWAM. I actually did the training schools and was on staff in the U.S. for a few years though. Everyone else got more and more conservative, but the more I saw, the more liberal and the less evangelical I got. It was a strange experience.
WOW. that's the one. in Dan Shui. we stayed at the condo near the MTR station. what year?
'99. We stayed in a 4th floor apartment (bad luck! so it was cheaper) for the first few weeks and then moved into what I think was a condo halfway through. YWAM Tamsui had just purchased it so my team helped move all the furniture and set it up. It may have been near the MTR station, but every trip I did we considered things within walking distance if it was fewer than 3 miles away, even if the area had decent transportation options so IDK.
Were you on staff in Tyler? Did you know Jessica Brown? (she did mercyships a bit)
I was! And I think I did know her, the name is familiar, but not super well.
Very cool. Well… Tyler is terrible. But, yea, small world
It is. And behind the scenes stuff, financial and interpersonal. You have no idea. What year did you do an SST? My husband worked with that program for like one summer. '01 I think.
Lausanne, Switzerland. (It would be entirely too bizarre if he was one of the staff there)
He was in Tyler. Phew!
OMG, now there's a YWAM reference here. It's like my entire teenage experience is coming back to me in waves.
Fleming and John were Christian???
Sort of. Their first album was on REX records, a label that focused on christian alternative bands, but they were quickly picked up by (I think) Universal, who re-released it, and at least 1 other pretty good album. They were a far cry from the "cheerleaders for Jesus" music that most Christian bands fall into, but the themes of some of their songs were, I think, influenced by their faith. Which is as it should be.
On a side note, John Mark Painter (The "John" of F&J) is working on an album and tour this year with Steve Taylor, another aging, but brilliantly snarky christian songwriter and musician. OK, enough geeking out on musical minutia, but clearly this shows I never entirely got over my obsession with music from this scene, even though I definitely moved on…
Oh wow, I didn't know they were Christian. My preferred alt-radio station in the Bay Area (Alice 97.3) played them growing up.
I can probably still sing every word from the POD album "Satellite". Remember the rap song "Ridiculous"!?!? It still gets stuck in my head with embarrassing frequency.
SO MANY FEELINGS. STABBING ME IN THE FEELINGS. Youth group, mission trips, review copies of CDs my dad brought home from work, hip Gen X Christians who were younger than I am now rolling their eyes in a seminary basement while I was forced to stuff fundraising envelopes, faint fume headaches from mile-high stacks of [redacted] magazine, being forced to go to Cornerstone AUGH MY YOUTH IT BURNS
oh cornerstone… did you ever go to Purple Door?
…. maaaaaaaaaybe? I mean, I recognize the name offhand and it was in Pennsylvania (right?), so probably yes. You'll have to forgive me, I have a really awful memory and I spent a LOT of time behind folding tables at Christian events when I was a teenager.
I don't mean to sound too cynical about this stuff, though. I was really young and confused and (in the case of the festivals) not really into music in the first place, but the magazine's music guy (among other things) was the first person to introduce me to the concept of a leftist, social justice-loving Christian who cursed when it was called for and unapologetically enjoyed secular media. (He and his wife got my parents and I into Eddie fucking Izzard, so haaahaha yes.) He died in 2005 and I would attend a bazillion Cornerstones to hang out with him again. If he thought the events were worthwhile, they were almost certainly great and hideously underrated by my jaded teenage soul.
Purple. Door. The highlight of my Christian music listening life was seeing Poor Old Lu reunited at Purple Door in 2001. That festival was also memorable for the argument my friends and I got into with the people at the Rock for Life table followed by the collective realization that the pro life movement was basically bullshit.
I was there that year! wow. it's one of 2 times I've been to pennsylvania. My friend who I was there with just wanted to watch Ludakris (I think was the name? really heavy band). I just wanted to watch Starflyer and Danielson. It was actually a decent festival…
I used to be grateful that the worst I was exposed to in the late '90s was the black and white "ABORTION IS MEAN" merch at festivals, but your story makes me think I missed out on getting my bullshit goggles off earlier.
It was pretty awful/great. In our talk with them, we came to the realization that not only was abortion wrong to these people, but so was every single form of birth control. Of course, birth control pills are mini abortions, right? Because science backs that up. And condoms are unacceptable because, I quote, they hand them out like lollipops at school. That's…not even a reason. And if you're married and don't want kids? Then you just pray and let God have control over it. It was at that point that we just kind of stared at them agog and then walked away and then renounced all our former associations to the pro life movement. And that's how Rock for Life made four new feminists!
Other christian/formerly christian lesbians – who was your christian lady singer crush? Or did you do what I did and just *also* listen to hella Bikini Kill, Tegan&Sara, and Tori Amos?
I'm mostly-straight, but I did adore Jennifer Knapp and am still angry about what happened to her. Her coming out as a lesbian (actually even the rumors of it, long before she officially did come out) ruined her music career in CCM and got her run out of town, although she wrote some of the best music from that era. I was obsessed with her stuff for a long time until she disappeared (she has since come back and put out a new album on a different label, apparently)
Jennifer Knapp is a lesbian?!?! I definitely had impure thoughts about her as a closeted babydyke at youth group.
Bisexual. Jaci Velasquez, when I was 12. When I was slightly older, the voice of the lady from Sixpence None the Richer, but probably by movie soundtrack association because I thought the girl from She's All That would make a good girlfriend before her conversion.
Jaci Velasquez! I had totally forgotten about my massive crush on her, but, oh yeah. This was, of course, during the part of my life where I was desperately trying to deny my attraction to women, leading to some massively confused squishy feelings whenever I saw a picture of her.
Did anyone else ever go to Creation Fest at the Gorge? That was my first festival experience. I got dehydrated and passed out the first day, but the rest of the trip was wonderful and sweaty, and I got to see Smalltown Poets, who I loved.
My youth group went but I was never allowed to go. I'm still mad at you, parents!!
I went a couple of times! And to the one in Pennsylvania.
OH MY GOD YES. I went in 2000 and 2001 I think? I remember seeing DC Talk, the Newsboys, going to some mosh pits at the smaller stage, getting handed a LOT of "my generation supports LIFE" stickers and patches. My youth group drove up every year. AMAZING.
ALL of this is amazing. Listened to it all in the 90s! Zero shame. Also found Waterdeep in the late 90s and I will never let them go. I love them. Oh, side story, my dad got tinnitus after taking our church youth group to a Newboys concert. Yes, his ears are still ringing today.
Waterdeep! "Sweet Jesus Roll" still makes me cry every time. Ridiculous. Did you also listen to 100 Portraits?
Now listening to "Much Afraid" and enjoying it in a genuine and not-solely-nostalgic way. THANKS. (no really, thanks)
Wait, why isn't this tagged "the shudder of recognition"?
Bringing back a loooooooooooooot of 11th-grade feelings over here.
HEARTILY SECONDED. 9th/10th grade for me, but yeahhhh.
Except for the POD songs I didn't know any of these (a combination of too young/mostly at the youth group for friends) BUT I do appreciate the discussion of late 90's/early 00's pop-punk/punk rock/punk/rock/whatever you want to call it! (I am very bad at naming music genres)
Maybe early 2000s, but does anyone remember the Christian version of Destiny's Child? They had this song that got a lot of airtime in European clubs in 2001-02, and all I remember of it is, "take these shackles off my feet so I can dance, I just want to praise you, I just want to praise you!"
Major bump and grind song, among the kids who didn't understand what it was saying.
Mary Mary! They apparently have their own reality show now.
They have a REALITY SHOW? what. what what what.
Mary Mary? Right?
Out of Eden?
OoE was cool! I remember really wanting their wardrobe (I'm remembering a magazine spread of them–maybe in Brio?)
Brio Magazine!! I loved Brio! This entire post is making me realize just how much of the koolaid I drank…
OH MY GOD, BRIO.
Do you remember the annual summer article about how to stay cool without baring too much skin?
Or about how your makeup should reflect your godly glow?
(I distinctly remember being drawn to the "goth" makeup, and getting upset over the writer (Suzi???) saying, "Why look like the darkness if you are not of the darkness?", or something to that effect.)
Mary Mary and I legitimately enjoy that song to this day!
I listened to all of the late 90's/early 00's "alternative" Christian music. Project 86, Living Sacrifice, Extol, Saviour Machine, Rackets and Drapes (a Christian culture attempt at an answer to Marilyn Manson—it's really painful), Blindside.
My subscription to HM [originally "Heaven's Metal", rebranded as "Hard Music"] magazine got me through my late teens.
You might be interested to know that my husband played in Xalt (they may be familiar to you, but maybe not) and tried out for the Newsboys when their original bass player left. The dude with the curly blond hair got the gig. Bummer. Or not.
How about the WOW cd's? I was waayyyyy into those, AND the music videos!
OH, AND: "Secular Equivalent: U2" come the fuck on
When I was in elementary school DC Talk did a cameo on a Steven Curtis Chapman CD. He tried to do their late-80's/early 90's "yeeeeaaah boy!" thing and they were correcting him. I can still hear it in my head like it's straight off the album. So awful, so funny. I am pretty sure they faded out for a few years, and there were even some rumors about one of them being arrested for something awful, and then Jesus Freak came out and they were back. I had already moved on to sneaking NIN The Downward Spiral into my house and never got very into their newer stuff.
Who else went through at least one phase where they threw out/smashed up/burned all their secular music after a Come to Jesus speech at youth group or summer camp? Yeah. That phase introduced me to Five Iron Frenzy though, and I still love them. They even had some feminist-ish lyrics. "One Girl Army!"
Yeah, I recently dug out my old Five Iron CDs and played them for my daughter because I thought she might think they were funny. A lot of their songs are very social-justicey. I think the lead singer ran for office as a Democrat in Colorado in the past few years or something?
And I also remember that little vocal skit between Steven Curtis Chapman and DC Talk. Or rather, had forgotten about it until you mentioned it here!
In trying to look up that FIF information, I found out that they reunited in 2011 and released another album last fall. Wow. Still social-justicey, which is cool. I actually met them in '99 or '00. I had a story to tell them related to one of their songs, and Micah was so nice about it that he brought me around to all the other members so I could tell them too. It was really kind and sweet; we had a moment. So I'll always adore them even though there are so many parts of that era of my life that seem like they happened to someone else now.
I was looking for their 2011 album just now and THERE IS A 2013 ALBUM "Engine of a Million Plots." YAY ZUNE PASS
Definitely did the whole "get rid of all my music" phase for a hot minute. This was coincidental with "burn the things that make you lust" where I had to get really creative to not out myself.
Awkward! My youth groups, camps, and mission trip seminars never did a burn lust objects things, but there were a few "write down what you're struggling with and throw it in the campfire" kinds of things. You were always encouraged to say something to the group before you threw your paper in. I did one where I was trying to let go of some hurt from a guy friend, but in trying to be brief and vague, it started a rumor that I wasn't a virgin anymore! Horrors! There's something really awful about how many of these youth events urged kids to basically place ammunition right into the hands of their peers.
I remember one where a couple had the speaker lay hands on them to "restore their" virginity… So, yea. the whole thing was a really twisted form of child abuse and awful sex negativity.
The "oh, yea, i'm hella lesbian" thing I managed to keep mostly to myself… and the girls that were always "straight"
That gets into the stuff I can't laugh about. Twisted child abuse is absolutely correct. Two kids I was in schools and then on staff with YWAM came out years later, after leaving, and stuff that got laid on them before they left was just awful. It breaks my heart.
*nodding my head* yea. i tried to come out during one of those "let's pray for each other things" at SST… and I'm pretty sure that's why I ended up pretty damn closeted for the next 10+ years
I did the music purging thing. Twice.
So young, so stupid. So much money wasted!
Had to stifle a laugh at work re: your second sentence.
Shudder of recognition here. I burned a Van Morrison cassette tape and a Led Zeppelin poster.
This is all so interesting to me that these bands had/have such a following. I grew up catholic in a predominantly catholic area (I wasn't even aware of other varieties of christianity until 5th grade or so), and we just didn't have anything like this. I wonder how elementary age me would have felt about this.
Let's please also talk about Superchic[k] and their song Barlow Girls can we PLEASE. And T-Bone! (Smoke the what for your stress/ Nah dog, hold up, wait a minute/ Cause ain't no high 'less the Holy Ghost all rolled up in it/
I get drunk in the spirit on a day to day basis/ And preach the WORD, to my partners catchin' cases)
"All the boys in the band want a Valentine from a Barlow Girl. Boys think they're the bomb. 'Cause they reminds them of their mom." Wait, what?!
They don't date, they don't date, they wanna see how they're gonna grow up, who they're gonna be. But in the meantime, they might feel unloved, when all the girls around them are hooking up.
I still know all the lyrics to Barlow Girls, it turns out. Barf.
i just can't stop, makin' saucy gospel hip hop.
Real talk: at which of these concerts did you get "saved" at, or at least have a slain-in-the-spirit-come-to-jesus experience? That experience tends towards music festivals I guess, but off the top of my head: Jars of Clay, Third Day, the Newsboys, and Switchfoot shows all come to mind for me.
When I was 15 I had a HUGE crush on Matt Thiessen of Relient K. I met him after a Relient K/O.C. Supertones concert, and—at the urging of my youth group buddies, who were gonna rat me out to him—told him that I was going to marry him someday. (I think he was around 21 at the time?) He was kind of dumbfounded but really sweet about it, and he knew the chemical symbol for sulfuric acid off the top of his head.
A year later, when I'd started to get a better grasp on what was up with all the puberty feelings, I realized that I did not at all want to marry Matt Thiessen when I grew up, I just really really wanted to bone him.
This story is amazing. Also, Wikipedia just told me that Matt Thiessen dated Katy Perry in 2005. How could I have missed that?!
I remember being inordinately proud that Matt Thiessen is Canadian; I went to a show in Southern Ontario somewhere back in the day with my youth group and his whole family was there! It was adorable.
Also can we talk about the Newsboys movie where the lead singer inherits a circus?
Yes. I have that on VHS. Still not sure exactly what to think about it (even though I loved them so much).
I had forgotten about that! That movie was so strange.
Wait. What?
Oh my god, yes. You will probably appreciate this random gem on the youtubes if you remember DUTBT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbFNwOUbMXA
Daniel Mallory Ortberg, let's be friends! This post is amazing, although I would submit "Jesus Freak" as DC Talk's Nirvana analogue. Also, I recently found my copy of their "Supernatural" album at my parents' house and played it for the first time in 15 years and KNEW EVERY SINGLE WORD.
I don't really listen to any CCM (guys! Remember that magazine??) anymore, but I still ADORE Jars of Clay in a 100% sincere, unironic way, and I'm stoked to see that seems to be the only CCM refugee that people are unashamed of liking. Their new album is so, so good, you guys. SO GOOD. I interviewed them for a story and out of all the celebrities I've ever met or talked to for my job, it turns out that Dan Haseltine is the guy I lose my esht over. Complete fangirl mess.
Does anyone remember All Star United and Seven Day Jesus? Second to the requisite two-headed CCM titans of Jars and DC Talk, they were my other favorite bands.
And now I feel like Spotifying POD the whole day, thanks Mallory.
I begged my parents for a CCM subscription constantly and finally they said yes. I would pour over that thing every month…. mark down the CD release dates.
All Star United!!! Yes! They were so cool. SDJ were good too! (Butterfly!) I feel like you and I had similiar casette/CD collections.
Seven Day Jesus!!!
The first boy who ever kissed me gave me a tape with their entire album on it, and oh, the meaning I read into those poor songs.
Jesus Freak!
People say I'm strange, does it make me a stranger
My best friend was born in a manger
I had little to no exposure to mainstream music at the time (not because of religion, just because I lived in a small town with country radio and had no cable) so when I first heard this at church camp I thought they were so. hard.
Seven Day Jesus recorded what is, to date, my favorite version of "O Holy Night." And I still actually kind of love ASU. I saw them like a week after I became a Christian and was mesmerized.
Completely agree with your submission of Jesus Freak. I was thinking the same thing.
Late to this party, but wanted to say YES I remember CCM mag (and my bedroom at home still houses SO MANY of them omg), and Jars of Clay is still unironically my very favorite band. Inland IS so good!!
Was Switchfoot the 2000s? I ask because on top of listening to them, my family temporarily went to the church where the dad of one of their members preached! I remember liking his preaching at the time. Not sure how I'd feel about him now. It was an enormous church, though. A megachurch, I guess. It had a bookstore attached and that is where I bought my POD CD.
Separately, I remember hearing "The Devil is Bad" before youth group. Wow, I thought I'd lost that song forever.
I suddenly find myself feeling kinda grateful that the church I was dragged to as a teenager was one of those 'rock music has the devil's beat!' churches, so I have zero risk of surprise Jesus earworms 10+ years on. The stuff I did listen to was bad enough in that regard, really.
Strangely, even though I'm from a town with ample youth groups and music ministries, I don't know too many people who did listen to it. Obviously the people at my high school were all secret heathens.
Does anybody else remember Luxury, who if I recall correctly were sort of The Smiths for the Christian kids?
Yes! And the Violet Burning!
Yes! Luxury, and Fold Zandura (who used to be Mortal but changed names and lost their back catalog in a dispute with their label). And Violet Burning. They were like indie music for Christian kids.
You guys, Jars of Clay was my very first concert that I went to all by myself.
I was into the singer/songwriter dudes for a bit, too: Steve Camp (social justice guy), Larry Norman (aging hippie), and Russ Taff (my Van Morrison surrogate, after I decided VM was a cultist and burned his cassette) all got a lot of play in the tape deck of my parents' car. Anyone remember them? Oddly, "sensitive guy in a sweater" is probably the only genre of music that really annoys me now.
And my latent fondness for heavy metal got me hooked on "Silence Screams" by Rez band for a summer.
Ten years later, I finally understand why, after bringing a mix CD with a Jars of Clay song on it (their first tingle I think, and the only song of theirs I know) to work, my coworkers all thought I was religious. I probably should be, given how often that's happened since without a band assist.
I haven't expanded all the comment threads, so I apologize if someone already mentioned this. But if you are the kind of person who (like me) deals with these feelings by reading extensively about them, the book is Body Piercing Saved My Life: inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rock, by Andrew Beaujon. It is not perfect–I don't think he ever really gets it–but it captures this period of Christian rock in a fascinating way. (If you know of a different, better book from a secular journalist, please let me know!!!)
I realize this is about 90s CCM, but are there any other "second-generationers" out there? My parents got into the Jesus Movement in the 70s and I grew up with the music of Keith Green, early Amy Grant, Second Chapter of Acts, etc. (All that and I still wound up an agnostic. Sorry mom)
Yes! My parents had a bunch of those older Christian albums mixed in with all of their Eagles and Carpenters LPs.
OH. MY. GOD.
Dude, that was my entire childhood.
I read Melody Green's "No Compromise" biography at school in 6th grade, and couldn't figure out why people didn't want to talk to me.
That said, I still love Keith Green–his lyrics were so beautiful, and there aren't many pianists who had that kind of authority and ability to improvise. He was so good.
What about Glenn Kaiser?? My plan after college was literally to join the Jesus People commune in Chicago! Aaaggh!
Keith Green! Yeah, that was totally Mom & Dad Music, sort of like Simon & Garfunkel. And lots of Amy Grant, which was considered suitable for us wild preteens as well right up until we discovered Jars of Clay and DC Talk, and ran off in that direction.
Who here listened to The Elms? I definitely was crazy about them and have a handful of IRL friends I made on their message board.
Let's not talk about the fact that I named one of my cats after Jeff Frankenstein of the Newsboys….
Did you call him Jeff, or Frankenstein?
Oinch, because apparently that was his nickname. It suited my very large black & white kitty well.
THE ELMS. I remember their suddenly very rock ish album that didn't sound CCM-y at all and wouldn't get played on the radio! The Chess Hotel!
All I know is that the voice at the beginning of What If I Stumble was my very first crush.
Also, I feel like you just borrowed my WOW 1999 album and made a post from it. *Checks to make sure WOW '99 Disc 1 is still safely in my portable Panasonic CD player.*
Well, now I'm going to get nothing accomplished all evening, as I obsessively hunt down each track of "Much Afraid" and listen to them for the first time in fifteen or more years…
Man, you would think that no longer being an insecure teenager questioning everything about my life– and pretty solidly atheist after all that Southern Baptist angst– would make the words to "Frail" feel a little less like they're flaying me open. You would be wrong. Dammit, toast.
"Frail" hurts me to my bones.
I remember the first CDs I ever bought were Newsboys "Take Me to Your Leader", DC Talk "Free at Last", and Jars of Clay's 1st album. I can still remember this because the spines of the cases were red, white, and blue. Oh, the conservative south!
Just to chime in, Skillet, Stavesacre, and Bleach were my favs all throughout high school. I went to so many concerts by all of them and remember considering myself a "panhead". I still listen to Stavesacre periodically just because it's SO good and I've never found a secular equivalent that's quite right.
This is frighteningly close to summing up the music allowed to a younger me. If there had been mention of the first three Switchfoot albums, I would be too awed to post.
In our Lutheran youth group I distinctly remember hanging up a poster that listed popular bands and their acceptable Christian alternatives. The bands in this article were definitely there, there were your obligatory straight-up gospel belters subbing in for Mariah Carey et al, some xtian rappers. The one I really remember was a Zao recommendation for fans of "Early Marilyn Manson". I remember Zao actually having some credibility with post-hardcore kids, unlike practically every other devout alternative.
It's strange, thinking back to that time. My church was tiny and pretty old school but the megachurches, with their massive parking lots and ass-ugly architecture, were on the rise. Through friends at school I became aware of the weird shadow culture that evangelical churches basically created and maintained entirely on their own terms – basically any and all popular media was reproduced in as much detail as possible but scrubbed of anything and everything untoward. I was invited to a few of the big music festivals but never went.
It was like a sugar substitute, so forceful in its cheer that it felt inauthentic. There was also the sense even then that what a lot of evangelical media was reacting against wasn't sin, but blackness (the sense was that black evangelicals basically had their own niche that was basically its own thing). Anyway, the only area in which devout music and "real" pop intersected in a big way was via third wave ska. Pretty much all of those mugging, lily-white trombonists were all about Jesus.
This thread is giving me life, Toasties.
"Jars", "Switchfoot", and "Caedmon's Call" are still bands that I love and listen to–because they were musically sound aside from their messages. I never had patience, even as a teenage Christian, for odious music that was considered acceptable simply because it was "Christian". *pfft*
In some ways, I'm glad that I didn't know most of these bands until college–it allowed me to be a wiser listener, and to not be pressured into liking a group simply because they talked about Jesus. College allowed me to also simultaneously discover Tracy Chapman, Paula Cole, Tori Amos, Alanis Morisette, and Fiona Apple alongside the big Christian bands, and I think that seriously helped keep me from falling into the "It has to honor God or I can't listen to iiiiitttt!!!" trap.
ps (Geoff Moore and The Distance? Anyone?)
omg geoff moore. "I believe in evolution (changing of the heart, renewing of the mind!), it's the only possible solution, God is always working, changing lives (changing liiiives)…it's evolution re-defined!"
"Therefore, CRO MAGNON Man!…"
OMG, there's a blast from the past. Yes, loved them.
OMG (g for gosh, obviously). I used to go to the Family Christian Bookstore in my town and look in the "harder music" section for a Christian equivalent to stuff like Marilyn Manson and Coal Chamber. It's true that POD was about all you could find. I remember reading a story of Wuv punching someone in a bar–Kid Rock, maybe?–and being delighted that they were so edgy.
I tried very hard to get into these bands with my more evangelical friends in Jr. High, but I spent my childhood as a Presbyterian going to an Episcopal school. I never hated it, but there's neither a flicker of love or hate when I hear this stuff. Just vague reminiscences of this being severely Not My Church Music I Remembered.