Saviour Machine Booted from the New Union

I heard the story years ago that Saviour Machine had played at the New Union in Minneapolis and was kicked off the stage. The story I heard was that they burned a United Nations flag. As I was browsing the band’s wikipedia page I found an interview with a link to the singer’s version of the story.

Saviour Machine, the Christian goth/opera band, was touring with Deliverance and playing at the New Union in Minneapolis, a well known Christian rock club. According to the band’s singer Eric Clayton, The band was unpluggged and kicked off the stage after the 4th song. Supposedly, the owners of the club stated that they did not care for the visual imagery of the group or they disapproved of the candles on the stage. In any event the band was removed from the stage by bouncers and locked up in a back room of the club until things quieted down with the raucous crowd. It was apparently quite a spectacle that ended Saviour Machine’s tour and lives on in infamy for those who attended and visited the band afterwards at White Castle on that freezing Minnesota winter night in 1993.

Greatest Christian Music Video Ever

DeGarmo & Key had its cheesier moments, but as far as being sincere and being about the Gospel message there aren’t bands like D&K anymore. The video was one of the first Christian music videos to be on MTV. Ironically, it was censored because of violence. Dana Key, the singer of DeGarmo and Key died last year, but like the frontman the music lives on.

The Imposter

Recently I saw The Imposter, which is a Christian film featuring Kevin Max, formerly of DC Talk. It tells the story of a singer of a Christian band who is not a Christian and is addicted to drugs. He has a wife who wants nothing to do with him and a brother-in-law who hates him, who is ironically a worship leader.

The movie did have a made-for-TV type feel to it. The acting and production were about the same as a lot of the other Christian movies with a little bit of cheesy musical interlude during dramatic scenes. I think where it went wrong was the script. Kevin Max’s character is so absolutely unlikeable I couldn’t find it in myself to cheer for the guy. I also feel like this movie and Steve Taylor’s “The Second Chance” are really like the Nashville people trying to tell a certain story to have some sort of commentary about their industry. Personally, I also don’t like movies where the actors lip sync to music or the actors are musicians.

With Christian movies there is always that urge to resolve the problems by the film’s end when in reality some problems never wrap up that neatly and progress comes very slowly. While the Imposter resists that temptation for Kevin Max’s wife to take him back in the end, it doesn’t leave the audience with a good sense of closure.

I think the goal of Christian movies is pretty noble, but if the script is not rock solid it’s going to be really hard to get that message across properly. In my opinion, in some cases the Christian music on the soundtrack seems to be more important than the actual story. While I do feel like a properly placed song can really benefit a movie, I think there is a danger if the music is overshadowing the film.

In the end it all gets back to writing because a typical Christian movie is not going to emphasize sex, drugs, gore, violence or in many cases special effects. Christians are often portrayed as a stereotype in movie such as Saved! As much praise as Hollywood gets for making movies it has rarely ever portrayed Christians as real people with real problems. I think Christian movies will be better received when they portray faith in a way that mirrors reality.

Cornerstone Festival: The Glory Days of Christian Rock

If there was one place where the Underground Christian Rock scene called home it was Cornerstone. On a large farm near Macomb, IL I spent a few 4th of July weeks of my youth listening to hundreds of bands. The last time I went to the festival was nearly 9 years ago.

As a kid whose parents were saved as part of the Jesus Movement, I went to Cornerstone in Grayslake, IL at the fairgrounds sometime around 1990. I was too young to have enjoyed any of the bands though. Before I went to Cornerstone I went to Jesus Midwest a few times. It was another festival with Jesus Movement era CCM artists such as Matthew Ward.

Around 1995 I started to get into bands like The Prayer Chain, Steve Taylor, MxPx and Poor Old Lu. In 1996 in the summer before high school I got a youth leader and three friends together and organized a trip to Cornerstone. Our youth leader had drummed for a few different Christian alternative bands, so he was happy to take us back to his old stomping grounds.

It was a blast seeing a ton of bands you would never see anywhere else like Saviour Machine. I bought a Crux T-shirt that I ended up losing. I also saw Joy Electric have a terrible time with their live show. I also got autographs from Value Pac, whose singer wrote about not having a girlfriend, when he didn’t seem to have any problem having girl fans. Around that time Christian ska or skacore was also starting to take off. It was a very different time because they had moshpits and stage diving and a girl I knew broke her ankle in the MxPx moshpit on the main stage.

Every year since my last visit I have the habit of looking at the Cornerstone lineup and guessing how many bands I know of. Usually I only know maybe a third of the bands and a lot of them are hardcore. What is different now is they didn’t used to allow heavy bands on the main stage. It was more for CCM mainstream acts such as Jars of Clay, Sixpence None the Richer, PFR, DC Talk, etc. What you find know is Underoath on the main stage with a band not considered to be a Christian act such as Shiny Toy Guns. So somewhere in the last 10 to 15 years there’s been a shift in which type of bands they allow.

The best thing about Cornerstone in those days was the community. You could go there with a group of friends and it was such a blast to hang out. What separates Cornerstone from a Warped Tour or Woodstock is that I wouldn’t want to camp out with those people. Could I even trust my stuff would be there if I walked away from my tent? Most of the Cornerstone people are church kids and so there is a sense of family with other Christians. A lot of the people there can be really polite. And what a lot of the punk and hardcore kids would find there is a place to belong if only for one week out of the year. It was also great to meet the musicians who seem more like regular people sitting at the tables in the merch tents.

The festival has always been about high school kids. In fact so much so that they sent out surveys asking about when the high schools went on summer break in my area. The date has remained around the 4th of July for some time despite the heat every year. Although the ticket prices have jumped up significantly in that time. I think it was around $60 or $70 the first time I went and it’s at least $130 at the gate. Unfortunately, it seems like no matter how high they raise the prices they say they never make any money. With bands charging a fortune for their appearance I can believe that.

I avoided going back to the festival because I don’t want to feel sad about leaving all those memories behind. Honestly, the thought of camping out in the heat to see bands I’m not crazy about doesn’t get me motivated to drive down there. If you think about gas being $4.50 a gallon this summer the cost of the trip with admission for someone from my area is $250 and that does not include any food. With the increase in gas and ticket prices it makes me wonder how long the festival can go on.

I’m sure there will always be some form of a Christian Rock scene as long as there are Christians. Cornerstone and the friends from those days have gone and passed me by. But the one thing I still hold dear is the memories of praying for a guy who got hurt in a Living Sacrifice most pit or taking a dry shower at the Macomb Wal-Mart. Warped Tour or any other secular music festival can never compare to the glory days of Cornerstone Festival because those festivals don’t have any sense of Christian community.

Starflyer 59 – Live at the U of I

This is from Dec. 6, 2008 at the University of Illinois.

Set list:
A Good Living
I Win
EP Nights
Minor Keys
The Big Idea
I Drive A Lot
Easy Street
The Frontman
No New Kinda Story

Christian Breakup Songs

Something funny that Rich Mullins once said was that he didn’t listen to Christian radio because there was an absence of good breakup songs. It is a little unfortunate that Christian singers sometimes have those songs where it’s unclear if the “you” is God or the singer’s girlfriend. Christians have a tough time with love songs too sometimes. Seems ironic though when a Spin Magazine writer visited Cornerstone and referred to worship music as “Jesus is my girlfriend” music.

It is unfortunate that what is presented as Contemporary Christian Music doesn’t cover the full extent of who we are as people. It’s also true there is a time and place for everything. Of course singing Brown Eyed Girl at church is probably not going to go over real well.

The reason why Christians should write love songs for their girlfriends or spouses is because you have Song of Solomon in the Bible. Not to mention that God instituted marriage in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. Not only that but Christians are referred to as the Bride of Christ. Which could be misunderstood incredibly today, but really means that Christ’s love for us is so much greater than our love for our spouses.

I think the type of love song that a Christian artist might write is different from “Since You’ve Been Gone” or “Hot N Cold”. It’s probably best not to suggest anything that could be interpreted as immoral.

A song like “Kiss Me” by Sixpence is playful and innocent, but it was never going to be nominated for a Dove Award. The New Testament says repeatedly to greet one another with a holy kiss. Now obviously the context was different, but the lyrics were “Kiss me down by the broken tree house” and not anything overly sensual.

I don’t really know what the answer is in terms of getting Christians to write better breakup songs. But I do think that there should be less ambiguity about whether a song is about the Lord or your significant other. I think people should give up on the top 40 when they’re down because there is no true hope found in those songs. The Bible actually has better breakup songs, many of them written by God. Just read the book of Hosea. But the difference between God’s breakup songs and the world’s breakup songs is that God’s have the hope of a restored relationship.

Starflyer 59 – I Drive A Lot

It’s another Starflyer driving video. I have a bunch of them on YouTube where I record my driving, speed it up and add Starflyer to the video. The first one I did was “I Drive A Lot” with a small Kodak camera. Apparently, it’s the 2nd most popular Starflyer video on YouTube. Now I use a Canon ZR800. Someday when I get rich I’ll make HD videos.

Rich Mullins had a beard???

I thought it was Keith Green with the beard for a moment. This was Rich Mullins’ band Zion in 1982. Someone who worked with Amy Grant heard this song and decided to get Amy to record it. I find it kind of funny because it’s almost as though Rich has backup singers.

How Do You Know You’re Getting Old?

Rock music is primarily singing about being young or pretending like Peter Pan to be eternally young. The problem is that even the biggest pretenders have to face the fact that they have families and responsibilities and they can’t just live the rock and roll dream forever.

As a fan, listening to Christian bands as a kid in high school I felt part of a community, whether it was at church or at concerts. But as I’ve grown older I’ve lost touch with most of those people and many of my favorite bands broke up years ago. Going to a show now I feel out of place standing for 3 hours and I only want to show up for the band I want to see. Forget the openers.

As everything in society seems to get more and more competitive, so too there are more bands trying to make it big in a sea of mediocrity. For example, if you look at Tooth and Nail Records the music from 1995 to 2000 is better than anything since.

Not only does most of the new music not appeal to me, but it doesn’t feel as genuine as it used to when I first starting going to shows. Throw in the scenester kids with their tight T-shirts and jeans who seemed so bored by every band. When I was younger kids loved concerts so much they could watch six bands and couldn’t wait to see six more. Some of the kids now just seem to have a glazed look in their eyes like nothing is exciting in life and nothing a band could do could really excite them. I guess the downside of technology is that it makes people impatient and constantly bored when they don’t get something really sensational to hold their interest.

The purpose of this blog is to focus on bands from the past in the Christian industry. The nice thing about the past is you can always look back to the glory days without dealing with the present. And as far as this blog goes I don’t mind being older because it gives me more perspective and I can remember a scene that no longer exists, but it is very much alive in the entries of this blog.

The Truth About Rock

The Truth About Rock was a ministry started in Minnesota to educate Christian young people about the negative influences of secular rock. There was a seminar that they taught about music called “What In The Devil’s Wrong with Rock Music?” With bands such as Kiss and the more edgier metal bands of the early 80s there was more obvious anti-Christian sound compared to something you might hear off the top 40 station now.

Since that time the Christian rock scene kind of took off until what is today, which very much blurs the lines between what is mainstream and what it is music from the Christian market. There are some other anti-secular rock guys like Jeff Godwin who are also very anti-Christian rock, but he appears to have dropped off the map.

There are the anti-rock videos such as Hell’s Bells and Sounds of War. While they are fascinating videos, I don’t know how effective they are in convincing kids not to listen to secular rock.

In high school I got involved with a chapter of Rock for Life. While they didn’t get into the evils of rock and roll, they make a direct link between top 40 artists and their support of abortion and Planned Parenthood. In essence saying that if you’re supporting those bands you are indirectly supporting abortion.

I think music can be a gray area for Christians in a lot of ways, although in many ways it is less gray than people think. There are those who decry that all music that isn’t on the Christian radio is evil and there are those who don’t believe in Christian music and don’t believe that any music can be evil.

As Christians I think we need to look at the lyrical message of the songs we listen to and the type of spirit the music carries. For one Christian the Beach Boys might be a fun mix tape for the car and for another their lyrics are a subtle form of lust. Whereas someone like Marilyn Manson shouldn’t be something that any Christians listen to. Any song that the Spirit convicts us about should be avoided immediately. It doesn’t benefit you at all to listen to music that is anti-God and music like that is a negative influence. And I’m not entirely sure that adopting Marilyn Manson’s sound with Christian lyrics is the way to go either.

The type of music you listen to is important because Christians are called to make a new song to God. That doesn’t mean you have to be in love with KLove, but it does mean that you need to have a desire to worship God with music. If you think music is just for your own personal entertainment and that its ultimate purpose is not meant to be sung for the Lord, then I think you may need to re-examine your faith.

If we honestly love rock music more than Jesus it’s time to re-evaluate whether perhaps the music is an idol. And it doesn’t just stop at music. We have to look at sports, TV, food, the Internet and the other idols of Western culture and decide to put Christ first. So what you listen to is just as important as what you do with your time, your money and who your friends are. We have to look at the areas of our life and determine whether we have compromised our faith and our values as a follower of Christ. Are we truly surrendering all of our lives to Christ or are we just keeping some parts for ourselves?