Ok, things seem more stable for now, so let's try and get back on track.
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Roots and Influences:
I - the Christian rock scene
So I don't talk about this directly much, though it's probably obvious from the breadcrumbs I drop from time to time, but I grew up in the church. I've had a rather complicated relationship with it since then, but I still have some connections from there. In those circles there is a lot of musical copycatting and unfortunate belief that if the message is right then the quality of the music doesn't matter, but there are also a lot of incredibly gifted musicians who are sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally siloed off from the rest of the musical world. From time to time a few catch on that would be more familiar to DTF like Neal Morse, Theocracy, Sufjan Stevens and such. I like to occasionally spotlight some of the more interesting other ones who receive less attention. I've actually mentioned a few already in earlier writeups, and a handful of others will be sprinkled in from time to time with less ado, but it was a significant enough part of my early life that it deserves its own section.
Jars of Clay - "Liquid"Here we dip back into my father's collection, though at the time it was just the latest addition to it. He's never generally been one to pay a lot of attention to new music coming out, but somehow the hype about this one came onto his radar, and thus onto mine. To this day this is one of the best examples I've heard of an acoustic-driven rock album, and this is one of the most salient cuts from it. The dual acoustic guitars, Dan Haseltine's excellent vocals, the Gregorian chant sample, the mandolin bookending the track, the brief chamber string arrangement - this is some of acoustic pop rock at its finest. Adrian Belew's fingerprints are all over it, with his producing and arranging of it, as well as playing mandolin, cello, and bass on this song and another I'll mention next.
I was really torn between including this track and "Flood", which has a delicious capoed open string chord progression, and a melancholically lovely string quartet arrangement in the middle again by Adrian Belew, so if you have an extra 5 minutes listen to that one as well, or maybe even the whole album, it should probably be a stealth honorable mention. "Worlds Apart" in particular is a quite beautiful ballad. And Ronn Huff (father of Dann and David, who we've discussed in earlier sections) is responsible for some of the string arrangements on other tracks - what a musical super-family.
Petra - "Let Everything That Has Breath"Easily one of the better of the bands that tended to evolve with the dominant rock sound of the day, I still retain special fondness for this era of their output. Vocalist Greg X. Volz had a crazy amount of range, only hinted at here, but even more evident on a song like "Adonai" on
Beat The System (and also featuring some of John Lawry's somewhat cheesy and dated yet endearing digital keyboard work). Volz also has ties to another band which I could reveal as yet another surprise early top 60 album mention that some people would definitely be familiar with, but I'll just save the callback for then, unless someone happens to already know or is bored and wants to do some detective work.
I also particularly love this track for earlier keyboardist John Slick's contributions, with tasty Hammond organ, and a delicious MemoryMoog synth solo in the middle. After this in the late 80s/early 90s Petra had a different vocalist with a bit of a rougher edge and a somewhat harder-driving hard rock/AOR sound that could potentially appeal to some people here - check out "I Am On the Rock" on
Beyond Belief if this piques your interest at all, as it also highlights some of guitarist Bob Hartman's fierier riffing and soloing, which is tamer on the selected track here.
Whiteheart - "Let My People Go"As much as I enjoy some of Petra's music, Whiteheart is really an even better group, who both still hold up quite well, and if they'd been in the secular market, probably would have been huge at the time. I'm biased, but I'd argue they have Journey or higher level of talent, production, and songwriting, but arguably greater depth. They were probably my favorite band until Dream Theater took over earlier-midway through high school. The amount of musical firepower Whiteheart had over the years is ludicrous. They had a dual lead vocal approach with Rick Florian handling the bulk of them, a true powerhouse tenor, and keyboardist Mark Gershmehl giving an exemplary contrasting baritone for certain songs. Together and with the rest of band they had one of the more scintillating stacked vocal harmony sounds around as well. I tried to split the difference a tad between their more rocking songs and their ballads with one that has a bit of both. They had a very expansive and immersive hard rock/AOR sound that is rather proggy at times (somewhat Kansas-like in moments), and tying in with an earlier influence, especially on this album
Highlands has some notable Celtic influences to connect things together (which I didn't even properly realize at the time).
With even more callbacks, their original guitarist was the again aforementioned Dann Huff (clearly a central figure in my early music explorations), though their original vocalist and songwriting wasn't quite as reliable in those days. Stellar future session guitarist Gordon Kennedy helmed the chair for a number of albums, but my favorite era of theirs had axeman Brian Wooten, who would go on more notably to work with Trace Adkins, but on these albums is very little country-flavored and much more of Trevor Rabin and Eric Johnson-inspired in launching crunchy riffs and kinetic, soaring solos. Anthony Sallee's bass playing is really juicy here, as is Jon Knox's immaculately-recorded kit and effects cymbals. Their prior rhythm section of Tommy Simms and Chris McHugh was also superb, and can be experienced best on "Let the Kingdom Come" from
Freedom (which also has Mark on lead vocals and Gordon on guitar), if you're curious. I might be crazy, but I hear some spiritual commonality in Gershmehl's playing with Kevin Moore's, though I doubt Moore would have heard of him.
Tracks #28-#30:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0T4IGrbCzG3ZV4128ZKOl5https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLISicXPLSax9twb8XnAQzmWSaoESqHpUcJars of Clay - "Liquid"
Petra - "Let Everything That Has Breath"
Whiteheart - "Let My People Go"
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Tomorrow or the next day we have the next related surprise top 60 album reveal. This one would be extremely difficult to figure out though.
Topic: LithoJazzoSphere Top "50" Albums - surprise #22 - way before lonestar... (Read 7764 times)