I Know There’s an Answer

I usually listen to music as I do the bookkeeping at work, just to make things feel a little less monotonous. My favorite “at work” music is usually music from the 60s and 70s, with some current and fashionable indie-like bands thrown in there. Right now, I am listening to Brian Wilson cover songs. I think I like the covers better than the Beach Boys. The thing with covering the Beach Boys is that you can either go super professional sounding and make all the songs happy pop songs. And, since Wilson has awesome arrangement skills, it’s not hard to make the songs sound flawless.  Or, you can do what these artists have done and make the songs a little bit sad. I think I like them a little bit sad. I think they were supposed to be a little bit sad. My current favorite Beach Boy song is I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times. I’ve tried to play this song myself and it’s actually really difficult. The chords aren’t your standard I- IV- V. The lyrics may be a little teenage-sob-story, but I kind of like that. Wilson was a teen when he started writing these songs. The part that makes you realize how cool this song is, is when the lead vocal just sings “Sometimes, I feel very sad.” over and over. Well, ya, sometimes I do feel very sad. No flowery words, just straight to the point. And, it’s good.

80s/90s Christian Rock Music

I was watching Whip It last night and was so amused by Ellen Page wearing a Stryper t-shirt that I cannot even express my amusement to you. I am sure that I am one of seventeen people on the planet who will watch that movie and truly understand how random and hilarious that reference is. Seeing that shirt has lead me to investigate more of the Christian rock, pop, and metal bands that I listened to in the 80s and 90s. (Yes, I was five in the 80s. Yes, I listened to Stryper. That shows you what kind of family I have.)

The first thing I had to do was google “To Hell With the Devil”. Classic Stryper, and quite possibly the only popular (if it could be considered popular) Stryper song out there. I want to know what the members of Stryper have been doing since 1991. They disappeared, only to come back to music in 2003.  What did they do for those 12 years? They couldn’t have had any serious job without being mocked out of the building everyday. I know that I would certainly shout “To Hell With the Devil” was my morning greeting to them, if I’d been in the same office as them.

Stryper lead me to relive my first concert experience: Carmen, RIOT tour. Yes, yes I did. If you don’t know who he is, you just have to search YouTube for “Carmen No Monsters” and watch that video for yourself. Afterwards, read the comments, just for laughs. As a kid, I enjoyed listening to Carmen, but I think it had more to do with the actual instrumentation and rhythm than the lyrics. Because, as I sit here listening to “Satan! Bite the Dust”, I am surprisingly intrigued to realize that all of his music videos involve him casting demons out of random objects or characters. I knew as a kid that the videos were cheesy and just weird, but I don’t think I fully appreciated the oddity of teaching children to cast the demons out of their closets.

Then, there’s Terry Scott Taylor, Mike Roe,  and Derri Daughtry. They were in the Lost Dogs, 77s, Swirling Eddies, Daniel Amos, and about 75 million other bands that I can’t even think of. They were awesome. They covered everything from Bob Dylan to the Beatles and the Beachboys. And, they did it amazingly well. Just one glimer of musical hope that emerged from the Christian music scene in the 80s.