Get ready for a long haul
Dylan says it better than I can.
I’ve mentioned it a few times, but here we go. Justin and I are about to set off on a long and exhaustive journey to fully document(to the best of our ability at least) the various strands of Christianity through punk rock, hardcore, and the more grassroots side of indie, emo, or rock in general. Why? Christian music can be pretty awful, I know it but not every band claiming JC was just a sanitized alternative to whoever was popular at the time. At the least, I hope some of you might be interested in this from a sociological and music history perspective. We are going to try and cover it all, from the preachiest 3-chord punk bands to the creative dynamos that unfortunately locked themselves into a terrible industry to the Christians in “secular” bands to the bands who were never remotely Christian at all but somehow found themselves playing Cornerstone Festival and their CDs sold in Lifeway Bookstores.
This book is probably going to take a very long time, there is a lot of research to do and a lot of people to track down to interview, not to mention figuring out how to go about publishing a book to begin with. We will be documenting this process on a blog that I will link to once we get started.
This is the music that we grew up on and I still have tremendous respect for a lot of those bands. The industry has always had its problem, we want to get first hand documentation of those things but we are not just looking to expose the dirt. There is a lot of good in it, spiritually and creatively. We are not trying to proselytize; just document and occasionally comment from both sides of the fence. My biggest hope is that we can generate interest in this book and the blog from outside of the Christian industry, I really want to bring to light a lot of underrepresented music and report interesting stories.
One of the big reasons why I want to do this is because bands who play in the Christian music industry, tend to be forgotten very quickly, even on both sides of the fence. Non-Christian music fans usually never give these bands a chance because they don’t agree with the beliefs. Which is a shame because the music some of these bands have created it some of the most creative and enjoyable music ever. I’m not really sure why Christians forget about these bands so often, but I’m sure the lack of documentation has to do with it. A ton of labels just let these albums go out of print because they didn’t sell well enough. You can’t really fault them for that, but this doesn’t really allow newer generations of fans to discover the music.
I want to talk about the bands who started it all. The bands that perfected it. The new groups that know their roots. The labels that took on this amazing task. Spirit Filled Hardcore, JCHC, trend followers, and the true artists. The massive impact of Tooth & Nail Records and Facedown. Everything!
I’m excited for the opportunities this book will bring. Even if it’s for the selfish reason of meeting some of my heroes and finding out what made them get into this business in the first place. Though I do hope that once it’s printed, some kid out there will pick up a copy of the book and really look into all of these bands, hopefully creating some new favorites.
