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| From | "Sager, Greg" <greg.sager@bankofamerica.com> |
| Subject | Re: Larry Norman / Jesus Rock |
| Date | Wed, 27 Jul 2005 03:29:41 -0500 |
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> Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 15:03:39 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Richard Brown <rbrown1985@yahoo.com>
> To: audities@smoe.org
> Subject: Larry Norman/ Jesus Rock
> Message-ID: <20050726220339.68896.qmail@web30812.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
>
> People who like "Jesus Rock" of that period should
> check out a group called Love Song. Their leader was a
> guy named Chuck Girard, who in the early and mid 60's
> was in The Castells and The Hondells (Little Honda!).
> Great songs, great harmonies (many Beach Boys
> inspired). They also were pretty good and putting out
> a nice country-rock vibe when the songs was right.
> Phil Keaggy was in the final version of the band
> before they broke up in 1973-1974.
The two Love Song albums, the self-titled debut and *Final Touch*, are both outstanding. And I'll second the endorsement of the early Larry Norman and Randy Stonehill stuff.
I used to own a lot of that genre from the seventies and early eighties: DeGarmo & Key, Daniel Amos, Rezband, Phil Keaggy, Keith Green. A lot of it hasn't aged well, but that's true of all pop music from that era regardless of lyrical thrust. As much as we all like to romanticize the past, the fact of the matter is that turgid and forgettable songs form a large proportion of the pop music of every era.
There were any number of good Christian Contemporary Music acts that came around after the longhair era, too. There was one I used to hear in the late eighties and the nineties that I liked called the 77s. They reminded me a bit of the Alarm. And while I don't really follow the scene today, I have a couple of good friends who do who assure me that there's still plenty of good CCM acts out there. They've passed along to me some of the albums done in power pop form that they knew I'd be receptive to hearing, stuff by acts such as Rick Altizer, Morella's Forest, One Hundred Days. Some of it's pretty good, some of it's ehhh. But, again, I say that about secular power pop as well. (On days when I'm feeling ecumenical and expansive, I'll play one of them back-to-back with my copies of George Harrison's *All Things Must Pass* or the Klezmatics' *Jews With Horns*.)
I'm no George Michael fan, but I subscribe to the adage he used as one of his album titles: Listen without prejudice.
Gregory Sager
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