Like faith, music, and life itself, I imagine this blog as something
fluid, ever-changing, never fixed or static. We are four old dudes
reminiscing on our formative years. Of course, we’re not that old after
all, but live in a world that stretches adolescence as far as it will
go. At least one of us, let’s face it, has a serious Star Wars
fixation. We’re in our thirties, dads, some of us with many more
creative pursuits behind us than before us. And I think it’s safe to
say that we are all at different stages on the faith spectrum, with at
least one of us altogether absent. That’s not so much the point.
The point is that JH, perhaps with the understanding that as a new dad, I would be awake, texted me at seven-something on a Saturday morning to tell me that he was listening to Luxury, drinking coffee, and thinking back to a time in our teens when he and I first met. These moments are sweet, and happen with increasing frequency the older I get. This text exchange soon became an informal exploration of which Christian bands from our youth still hold up, at least musically, two decades later.
But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Christian alternative music. A subgenre of a subgenre, or of a subculture, and so often subpar in so many ways. A very specific subset: the nineties. Many of us listened to it because we thought we were supposed to, that in doing so we glorified God, and to listen to non-Christian, secular music, was to wade into some dangerous waters. We rightly understood the power that art can hold, but lacked an understanding of our own power to negotiate it. Or something. Maybe we were just some dumb kids that went along.
At any rate, these bands were everything to us at one point, and now that we’ve grown older and expanded our horizons, we know what we’ve always known — that we were on our own when it came to these bands. Our peers had no clue what we were talking about, and knew better ways to buy hardcore punk records than standing behind an old woman buying Precious Moments figurines at a Christian bookstore.
It’s kind of a weird club, and maybe this blog can be the secret handshake.
So the word is alive is the word. There are four of us, AK, DL, JH, and JR, and I imagine bios will be the next order of business. Opening words from the rest of the pack will likely follow below. - DL
The point is that JH, perhaps with the understanding that as a new dad, I would be awake, texted me at seven-something on a Saturday morning to tell me that he was listening to Luxury, drinking coffee, and thinking back to a time in our teens when he and I first met. These moments are sweet, and happen with increasing frequency the older I get. This text exchange soon became an informal exploration of which Christian bands from our youth still hold up, at least musically, two decades later.
But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Christian alternative music. A subgenre of a subgenre, or of a subculture, and so often subpar in so many ways. A very specific subset: the nineties. Many of us listened to it because we thought we were supposed to, that in doing so we glorified God, and to listen to non-Christian, secular music, was to wade into some dangerous waters. We rightly understood the power that art can hold, but lacked an understanding of our own power to negotiate it. Or something. Maybe we were just some dumb kids that went along.
At any rate, these bands were everything to us at one point, and now that we’ve grown older and expanded our horizons, we know what we’ve always known — that we were on our own when it came to these bands. Our peers had no clue what we were talking about, and knew better ways to buy hardcore punk records than standing behind an old woman buying Precious Moments figurines at a Christian bookstore.
It’s kind of a weird club, and maybe this blog can be the secret handshake.
So the word is alive is the word. There are four of us, AK, DL, JH, and JR, and I imagine bios will be the next order of business. Opening words from the rest of the pack will likely follow below. - DL
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