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Underground > Radio & Music >

Jars of Clay & CCM

  
 
Foust is SO authentic
22:09 / 15.04.03
I was looking over my CCM CDs from days of yore, and at random picked up my Jars of Clay Stringtown CD. It was only available online, but I'm not sure why. It's a live CD, and the performances are energetic and diverse enough to make it Jars' best album, studio or otherwise.

I assume some of you will remember them. Evangelical Christians had a real "local-boy-makes-good" pride about them, considering their air time on secular radio. Check out the song Blind preferably from the Stringtown CD.

Over the years, several Christian artists have made, or attempted to make, the leap from the CCM ghetto to mainstream play. Groups like DC Talk and Caedmon's Call have done their best to sound like music that could be played in a setting other than church; I'm wondering if you folks remember these attempts, and what you thought of them.
 
 
Jack Fear
22:26 / 15.04.03
I remember Jars of Clay's "Flood," which was remixed for radio play with aditional electric guitar by Adrian Belew. Not a bad little pop song.

Then there's Amy Grant, who may or may not even be considered CCM any more. Sixpence None The Richer are supposedly a "Christian band," but they're not at pains to make it obvious in the music itself.

I'm wary of "Christian" bands, though, who use their Christianity as a hook, as a category—who make "Christian rock" in the same sense that Weird Al Yankovic makes "comedy rock," and have about as much depth or dimensionality.

Christians, like everybody else, live in the world: Christians, like everybody else, live and die and fight and fuck and struggle and worry and fall in love and (sometimes) mess up their lives. Christianity may give them a different slant on the human experiences we all share, bu the emotions are universal. Musicians who "happen to be" Christians may never write explicitly about their faith (although they might), but their faith shows through in the songs in a way far more genuine, to my ears, than in rah-rah variations on "We will praise you, Lord."
 
  
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