An industry that doesn’t rock
Ohhhh yes. Christian rock.
I was ALL in it. All my friends were in it. Christian rock gave us the opportunity to, finally, enjoy rock-n-roll. Some of it was decent music. A lot of it, especially in the early days, was not. But it didn’t matter. If I saw a new album from a rock band in the Christian book store, I was going to buy it.
Wanted it. Thought I needed it.
The Christian rock industry is a fucking joke. This is, of course, my opinion, but I earned the right to an opinion having purchased dozens of cassettes and CDs. I contributed, too, as a song writer in multiple bands, some local, some regional, and 1 that recorded an album for a real label.
Well, I say real. But like the industry, the label was also a sham.
As I write this I realize that I have quite a lot to say, so the overarching topic will spread across a handful of posts. The gist for this one–industry.
Once industry becomes involved with a thing, it matters not what the original intent was for the thing. It instantly becomes sullied, and just continues to tank from there. It’s true of pharmaceuticals, self-help books, even health food and especially the “organic” food industry.
Sales. Marketing. Competitions for best band, best artist, best song. And the absolute grossest? Best worship song.
What?
Let’s pick that apart for a minute. Worship is, loosely, expressing adoration, generally for divinity or a being of some sort of elevated status. It’s love. It’s devotion. It’s honor. So when King David penned the Psalms, often the messages were worshipful. Sure, he rants and whines, too. A lot. But clearly he has deep admiration for the God of Abraham. The words are heart felt. And because we also have insight through his rants, we have a great deal of certainty that the writing is authentic.
But, let’s imagine there was a lot of psalmists then because an Office Max opened in Israel with camel loads of scrolls and plumes. And Psalmists Magazine launched with a contest for the best psalms of Israel for year 1026, BC. And let’s say David really wanted to win that contest. Would his writing have been pure? Would he have sweetened up the rants so they wouldn’t put off the contest judges?
Or as the father of 2 children, let’s say I held a contest every year to see which of the 2 wrote the best Father’s Day poem.
WTF?
In the late 90’s I played a show in Chicago with my band of the time. It was an all day event with a dozen or so bands. Some of the bands I respected were on the bill after us. Backstage, I overheard a few musicians chatting, and one of them said, “Dude, we should do a worship record. Worship is hot right now!”
Worship is hot? How can anyone string together a set of words that is more disgusting than that. Worship is hot?
Another thing, record labels knew they could count on a number of sales for every album published strictly because of dweebs like me, willing to shell out every single time a new record dropped. Because it was all we had. And they knew that.
I would never go on record as saying the above is a blanket statement for all contributors or behind-the-scenes folks in the Christian music industry. But the assholes running the show, for the most part, are the lowest form of human on this planet. And many of the artists as well.
There are so, so many other stories along these lines in my experience. I looked the other way for a lot of years because I believed in what I was doing and chalked it up to a few bad actors. Eventually, I could no longer. Things were shifting inside of me. Tension was building. And not just from the industry, but from a lot of people and places associated with Christianity.
I’ll leave you with a quote from a t-shirt of one of my favorite musicians, Dug Pinnick of King’s X. That band was put through the mill. They started in the Christian industry and wisely moved on. Dug’s shirt read: “Jesus, save me from your followers.”
Amen, and amen.
