This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #358, on the subject of DeGarmo and Key, Not a Country Band.

It was said that when Amy Grant realized she wouldn’t listen to her own records if they weren’t hers, she called Eddie DeGarmo and Dana Key to collaborate with them on something with more of a rock sound.

It was probably a good choice.  They were clearly a rock band at the beginning.  Somewhere on their live album No Turning Back–Live one of them says, “We tried doing country music, but nobody could figure out what country it was from so we gave it up.”

The first of their albums I encountered was their third, 1979’s Straight On, and four songs stand out from it.  The opener, Jericho, was definitely rock in the Christian music world.  My favorite was undoubtedly Long Distance Runner, but I also remember the short instrumental Enchiridion which preceded it(although this reminds me of Chris Christian’s challenge, what makes an instrumental Christian?), and I Never Knew You.

Amy got in on the next album, This Ain’t Hollywood, collaborating with them on Nobody Loves Me Like You, the cut that got all the attention, upbeat for Amy but already the band was starting to mellow toward a more commercial sound and look, as demonstrated by Special Kind of Love from 1983’s Mission of Mercy.  You can’t blame bands for trying to sound like whatever sells, but it is disappointing to lose something unique (and unique is never the popular sound).

They continued releasing albums through 1994, with two best-of albums following in 2003 and 2006.  I know nothing about that.

*****

The series to this point has included:

1. #232:  Larry Norman, Visitor;
2. #234:  Flip Sides of Ralph Carmichael;
3. #236:  Reign of the Imperials;
4. #238:  Love Song by Love Song.
5. #240:  Should Have Been a Friend of Paul Clark.
6. #242:  Disciple Andraé Crouch.
7. #244: Missed The Archers.
8. #246: The Secular Radio Hits.
9. #248:  The Hawkins Family.
10. #250:  Original Worship Leader Ted Sandquist.
11. #252:  Petra Means Rock.
12. #254:  Miscellaneous Early Christian Bands.
13. #256:  Harry Thomas’ Creations Come Alive.
14. #258:  British Invaders Malcolm and Alwyn.
15. #260:  Lamb and Jews for Jesus.
16. #262: First Lady Honeytree of Jesus Music.
17. #264:  How About Danny Taylor.
18. #266:  Minstrel Barry McGuire.
19. #268:  Voice of the Second Chapter of Acts.
20. #272:  To the Bride Live.
21. #276:  Best Guitarist Phil Keaggy.
22. #281:  Keith Green Launching.
23. #283:  Keith Green Crashing.
24. #286:  Blind Seer Ken Medema.
25. #288:  Prophets Daniel Amos.
26. #290:  James the Other Ward.
27. #292:  Rising Resurrection Band.
28. #294:  Servant’s Waters.
29. #296:  Found Free Lost.
30. #299:  Praise for Dallas Holm.
31. #302:  Might Be Truth and the Cleverly-named Re’Generation.
32. #304:  Accidental Amy Grant.
33. #312:  Produced by Christian and Bannister.
34. #315:  Don Francisco Alive.
35. #324:  CCM Ladies of the Eighties.
36. #329:  CCM Guys at the Beginning.
37. #332:  The Wish of Scott Wesley Brown.
38. #335:  Bob Bennett’s First Matters.
39. #342:  Fireworks Times Five.
40. #345:  Be Ye Glad.

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #352, on the subject of Why No One Cares About Your Songs.

On a Christian musicians group someone posted the question, as near as I can reproduce it,

I have written 1200 songs; why does no one care?

I replied, mostly copied below, and apparently he benefited from my answer and deleted the question from his original post, but I kept thinking that what I wrote might have value to others.

*****

Wow. Tough topic.

I’ve been writing songs since 1968. Some of them are great, not just in my opinion; most are not great. It’s very difficult for the creator to evaluate the worth of his own material. Conan Doyle hated Sherlock Holmes; Isaac Newton believed he would be remembered for his works in theology. Identifying which are the good songs is a major challenge.

I remember a guy I knew who called me one Monday to report that on Friday night he had been baptized in the Holy Spirit and over the weekend God had given him five hundred songs. I had to come hear them. I was not overwhelmed–he knew three chords and had to stop to change between them, sang almost monotone, and all his lyrics were direct passages from scripture without any work to make them poetic. I didn’t want to discourage the guy, but I’d heard better commercial jingles. (Not to denigrate commercial jingles.) Not to say your songs are all bad songs, but if you’ve written as many as you say I suspect a lot of them are below par.

But let’s suppose I’m wrong, and you’ve written 1200 great songs.

First, it’s been demonstrated that songs are not popular because they’re good; they’re popular because they’re popular. You don’t get a following because you write good songs, primarily (although if you write bad songs, that gets in the way). Your songs are loved because you have a following, because people already like you. Many of my songs are as good as some of the best out there, and most of the ones I still sing are better than a lot of the popular ones, but I have maybe a handful of people who really like them and most people don’t even bother to listen when I post free recordings of them. I’m not popular; that means my songs aren’t popular.

Second, have you any idea how many people have written how many original songs? They get posted here every day. One of my hobby careers is that I created a role playing game, one which got good reviews (O.K., it got bad reviews, too). I’m a known RPG theorist and writer; many of my articles get translated into French and republished abroad. For several years I participated in web sites that helped aspiring game designers. One thing we were constantly telling people was don’t worry about sharing your ideas: they aren’t worth stealing. I had to learn that about my music, that nobody was going to steal my songs because even great songs are not usually worth stealing. Everyone and his brother, or nearly so, has written a song and thinks that people should care. Songs are no longer significantly marketable. I can teach people to write them. Your great songs might be better than songs by famous recording artists played on the radio, but the songs people listen to are not the greatest songs, they’re only the most popular, and usually because the artists are popular.

Third, a friend once asked me why I, as the most promising musician he ever knew, didn’t make it. Well, there are a lot of reasons for that. Oddly, though, I once went to a Renaissance Faire and heard a band that was making a living doing genre music, had several CDs, and their lead male vocalist and rhythm guitar player was a guy we used to joke about in high school as the worst drummer in town. I asked him after the show whether of all the musicians who played in his garage anyone would have picked him to be the successful professional, and he laughed. You get there partly by chance, partly by hard work.

I was a CCM DJ in the early 80s, and I’ve been writing a series on the history of CCM/Rock from the time. You should read the stories of Chris Christian and Amy Grant. They both just about fell into their careers.

Finally, though, no one cares because that’s not where God is leading you, and He needs you not to care so much about all those great songs you’re writing and just use them where you are, how you can.

I hope this helps.

I want to give you those links, but while I was looking for them I found this one: web log post #163: So You Want to Be a Christian Musician.

This on Chris Christian.

And this on Amy Grant.

*****

I want to add one more link, web log post #107:  Miscellaneous Music Ministries, not for itself but for the links it contains to the series on music ministries.

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #342, on the subject of Fireworks Times Five.

When I first heard Fireworks first album, I was very disappointed.

That, though, was very unfair.  I had already heard their second and third albums, two of the best Christian rock albums of the era, and that the lighter more pop sound of their earlier work was a disappointment is hardly a criticism of it.  It really was a good album.

The only name I ever knew was Marty McCall, who was lead vocalist and keys through most of the band’s career as many others changed around him (although he once mentioned someone named, I think, “Gwen”, as having sung on the live album).  He also released a solo album in the middle of the run of Fireworks albums, which tended to confuse people because the band was so much him but the solo album was a much lighter sound.  I spoke with Marty more than once, so I have a number of anecdotes; I also have a huge number of favorite songs.  Marty had a powerful Irish tenor voice that dominated the music and made the rock sound work.  He told me that before they were a band they were studio musicians providing support for other artists, and then they realized they could do this themselves, wrote some songs, and went forward.

The back cover of that first self-titled album explained that the name Fireworks was talking about the works that pass through the fire.  I don’t remember any titles, but it opens with upbeat New Day, followed the memorable slower Don’t Look Back (this video has a full minute of dead air at the end), the funkier Carrying On (also with dead air at the end), the upbeat rockier Presence of the Lord (and again), the gentler rock ballad Forever With You (seems to be a thing), the bouncy Maybe It’s Love and offbeat Family, the racing Open Your Eyes, the calmer Talks With My Father, another bouncy Takin’ A Rest, and finally New Man (another long space at the end).  Overall it was very good stuff for 1977, and very promising.

Yet I don’t think it prefigured the next release, listed by Christian Contemporary Music Magazine as one of the best of 1979, Shatter the Darkness.  From the powerful opening chords of Change My Heart it was evident that this was now a rock band.  The gentle opening of Beautiful Woman still moved into a rock sound.  After the Rain had the familiar bouncy racing sound of some of the first album’s songs, followed by the quieter rock ballad Calling My Name.  The A side ended with the rocking Rock Band, a musical defense of Christian rock music.

Flipping the album over (yeah, we did that with vinyl), it opened with the quietly pleading Like Children, followed by I Know Power, an upbeat friendly piece.  The dramatic Love You Tonight leads into the rocking title song Shatter the Darkness, and then the album closes with the eerie The World.

It was an incredibly good album that still stands up today; yet the band then topped it the next year with Live Fireworks.  Opening with the driving fast-paced Rescued (“You might as well have been pushed off Niagra Falls in a paper sack”), it kept the tempo as it ran right into Listen and then the playful Target Practice (“taking up the bow and arrow, aiming for the straight and narrow”) before slowing a bit for Someone’s Got a Hold on Me.

The B side opens with another playful one, humorous lyrics that make a point in Toll Free (“He won’t forget your number, and He’s there all the time, You can go to the Lord when you ain’t got a dime.”), followed by the slower but powerful Good Thing, and the moderate and again playful Rusty Burdens.  It slows down again to a gentle call in It All Comes Down to You, and then goes out strong with Ready for the Rest of You.

As good as that live album is, Marty says it embarrasses him.  He couldn’t hear himself in the monitor, and instead of making a fuss to get someone to turn up the monitor he forced his voice, and when he listens he hears the forced sound.  I don’t; I think he’s in great voice on the record.  But I understand how he feels–there are a lot of recordings I’ve made over the decades that embarrass me for reasons that listeners who aren’t me can’t hear.

The following year Marty released a solo album entitled Up, but MCA/Songbird marketed it as by Marty McCall & Fireworks, presumably because members of the band were his studio musicians for it.  One song on it got heavily requested, entitled Adam, so when I had the chance to interview him I asked about it, and he said he did not like the song, but for reasons that really had nothing to do with the song.  He had set aside a week and rented a space for the specific purpose of writing songs, and in the week this was the only song he wrote.  So as good as the song is, it always reminds him of that failed week.

There was one more album from the band, Sightseeing At Night, pushing the envelope a bit further.  I am less familiar with that one, but I remember No Strings and Incognito.

It was a couple years later that I heard the band had dissolved, but I caught up with Marty at a solo concert in our area and chatted with him informally.  He said that he planned to stay home and write music for other people to sing.  Thus I was surprised a decade later to see his face on the album cover of Undivided by First Call.  It was good work, but heavily jazz influenced with an Andrews-Sisters vocal style.  Then another decade passed and he put his degree in medieval and renaissance music to good use by creating the album Images of Faith, using period instruments to create songs with an ancient flavor with modern and contemporary touches–we have gone through several copies of it by now.  But that’s long after the early days, and we could argue about whether it’s actually contemporary.

*****

The series to this point has included:

1. #232:  Larry Norman, Visitor;
2. #234:  Flip Sides of Ralph Carmichael;
3. #236:  Reign of the Imperials;
4. #238:  Love Song by Love Song.
5. #240:  Should Have Been a Friend of Paul Clark.
6. #242:  Disciple Andraé Crouch.
7. #244: Missed The Archers.
8. #246: The Secular Radio Hits.
9. #248:  The Hawkins Family.
10. #250:  Original Worship Leader Ted Sandquist.
11. #252:  Petra Means Rock.
12. #254:  Miscellaneous Early Christian Bands.
13. #256:  Harry Thomas’ Creations Come Alive.
14. #258:  British Invaders Malcolm and Alwyn.
15. #260:  Lamb and Jews for Jesus.
16. #262: First Lady Honeytree of Jesus Music.
17. #264:  How About Danny Taylor.
18. #266:  Minstrel Barry McGuire.
19. #268:  Voice of the Second Chapter of Acts.
20. #272:  To the Bride Live.
21. #276:  Best Guitarist Phil Keaggy.
22. #281:  Keith Green Launching.
23. #283:  Keith Green Crashing.
24. #286:  Blind Seer Ken Medema.
25. #288:  Prophets Daniel Amos.
26. #290:  James the Other Ward.
27. #292:  Rising Resurrection Band.
28. #294:  Servant’s Waters.
29. #296:  Found Free Lost.
30. #299:  Praise for Dallas Holm.
31. #302:  Might Be Truth and the Cleverly-named Re’Generation.
32. #304:  Accidental Amy Grant.
33. #312:  Produced by Christian and Bannister.
34. #315:  Don Francisco Alive.
35. #324:  CCM Ladies of the Eighties.
36. #329:  CCM Guys at the Beginning.
37. #332:  The Wish of Scott Wesley Brown.
38. #335:  Bob Bennett’s First Matters.