#260 A PLACE TO STAND by Geoff Moore + the Distance (1988)

A PLACE TO STAND by Geoff Moore + The Distance (1988)
Sparrow • SPR 1151

Producer: Billy Smiley

File Under: Christian Rock

Time Capsule-Worthy Track:

Heart and Soul

This is the one where the graphic designer and photographer got all carried away in their eightyness. The font, the layout, the placement of the text, the clothing...it all screamed EIGHTIES. This was also the first one with Geoff Moore fronting a band, instead of just flying solo. And it was Moore's first project for Sparrow Records after three albums for the Benson Company.

Listening to it again, it's more muscular, more rocked-up than I remembered. Producer Billy Smiley had The Distance (Arlin Troyer, Lang Bliss, Dale Oliver and Tom Reynolds) sounding all rough and rowdy on some of these tracks. Help was given by such notables as Chris Rodriguez, David Mullen, Rick Florian, David Martin, and Carl Marsh. Even Bob Hartman and John Schlitt of Petra got in on the act on the title track.

Speaking of Petra, GM+TD cover Bob Halligan Jr's I Come Out Fighting - the same I Come Out Fighting that former Petra frontman Greg X. Volz recorded that same year. Now, Geoff Moore is a likable bloke and a fine singer. But I've got to believe that no one in his right mind would ever knowingly place himself in the unenviable position of being directly compared to the pipes of one Greg Volz. Even a slightly-past-his-prime Volz is going to sing circles around most others. So when I hear this GM+TD version of I Come Out Fighting, it only reminds me of Greg. Which is unfortunate because Moore actually does a fine job on the track.

Moore and the band write or co-write about half of the songs on A Place to Stand; the rest were written by a slate of well-known and very competent songwriters with names like Rob Frazier, Steven Curtis Chapman, and the aforementioned Perkins and Martin.

The band's recording of Dave Perkins' Calling Londontown is a high-water mark. But for me, the undisputed highlight of A Place to Stand is Heart and Soul, a heartland ballad that I used to play on the radio back in the late 1980s. Written by the very talented David Martin, Heart and Soul is given a bit of a Bruce Hornsby treatment as Moore sings about giving...giving to the poor and giving to meet ministry needs, but also giving everything that we are to the Lord:  

I took a walk one day 

Right down by the waterside

People were standing everywhere

Somebody called my name

Said son give me what you have

Little or much I don't care

Oh, He wanted everything

Said I'm giving You

Two hands

You can call them Your own

Two feet to lead

Wherever you want them to go

And two eyes to see

The things you want me to know

Said I'm giving You

Everything, everything, everything

Everything heart and soul

I passed a church one time

Where a rich man filled the plate

But he gave just a piece of what he had

An old woman that nobody saw

She didn't have much of anything

But the little she had you know she gave

Oh, she gave everything

She said I'm giving You

Two hands

You can call them Your own

Two feet to lead

Wherever You want them to go

And two eyes to see

The things You want me to know

Said I'm giving You

Everything, everything, everything

Everything heart and soul

Be it little or much

What you got's gonna be enough

If you can put it in His hands

Be it great or small

A little love can break the wall between us

I passed a hill one time

A Man, He hung in silhouette

As thunder rolled across the sky

That Man, He had no blame

And I can't forget His words

Not my will, oh, Lord, but Thine

Oh, He gave everything, everything

Said I'm giving you

Two hands

You can call them Your own

Two feet to lead

Wherever You want them to go

And two eyes to see

The things You want me to know

Said I'm giving You

Everything, everything, everything

Everything heart and soul

Heart and Soul would peak at #14 on Christian radio airplay charts in 1988.

Geoff Moore would record and tour with a band for the next decade or so. The members of The Distance would change over the years, but the group had a quite successful run, especially after making the move to yet another label home, this time Forefront. Moving more in a pop direction and focusing their efforts on the church youth group scene, Geoff Moore and the Distance would see no fewer than six singles climb all the way to #1 on Christian radio during the 1990s, with a slew of other songs garnering spins as well. Not to mention Dove awards and Grammy nominations. Not bad, not bad at all. At the end of the day, Geoff Moore secured for himself not only a place to stand but a place in the annals of CCM history.  

#261 INCANDESCENT by Crumbächer (1985)

INCANDESCENT by Crumbächer (1985)
Broken Records - BRA-0301

Producer:

O-Joe Taylor

File Under: New Wave

Time Capsule-Worthy Track:

Jamie

Crumbächer was formed in 1983 as a new wave group. They recorded an EP for Calvary Chapel's MRC label with O-Joe Taylor of Undercover producing and Derri Daugherty of The Choir engineering. The label was so impressed with the group that they decided to make it a full-length LP. The result was 1985's keyboard-dominated Incandescent on Broken Records.

The song from Incandescent that sticks out in my memory is Jamie, a song that was played on our local Christian rock AM radio station in Greer, South Carolina. It was also the inspiration for a music video that played incessantly on TBN's Real Videos and elsewhere. After all, this was the 1980s...and story songs made for great music videos, obviously,  because the story could be acted out on the screen. And by screen, we're talking TV screens. No one watched music videos on phones, tablets or computers in the eighties. 

Around that same time period, there was no shortage of Christian rock songs named after girls who were struggling after making some questionable life choices. Sweet Comfort Band's Isabel, DeGarmo & Key's Addy, Steve Camp's Lazy Jane and Rob Frazier's C'mon Elaine instantly come to mind. Jamie took things to a whole 'nother level. In fact, if the quite graphic music video was shown on a college campus these days, it would probably require a trigger warning. 

After some band footage up front, Jamie is first shown as a friend (or girlfriend?) of Stephen Crumbächer, just thrilled to be riding shotgun in his convertible through the streets of Hollywood. The actress chosen to play Jamie looks a little too old for Stephen, but hey...just go with it. She wants more than anything to be a dancer (in the post-Flashdance era) but fails her audition, legwarmers notwithstanding. Disillusioned, she falls in with the wrong crowd and her life quickly spirals out of control. She quits her job as a seamstress at the dance theatre, dons a wig and starts using her legs to attract customers. That's right, our girl Jamie becomes a lady of the night. She gets brutally beaten by her pimp (played out on the screen in uncomfortably graphic detail), and just when she points a gun to her mouth and is ready to end it all...she spots a Bible. And then, miraculously, she wanders off the streets and into a Crumbächer concert. At this point, Jamie is looking like she's been rode hard and put up wet (as they say down South). And the youth group kids at this concert are looking at her like she's some kind of space alien. She walks down the aisle and into the waiting arms of Stephen Crumbächer himself. Somehow, the lead singer of Crumbächer knew this was going to happen...because he hands Jamie a pair of dancing slippers. When the video ends, she's got a Bible in one hand and her dancing shoes in the other. And then she drops the slippers but clings to the Bible.  

Almost preposterously cheesy? Yeah. 

A totally awesome 80s music video? YES. 

By the way, Jamie is said to be the first song the band ever wrote.

Other highlights from Incandescent include Infrared/X-Ray Eyes (God is following you with His x-ray eyes) and Sweet By and By which marries lyrics from the classic hymn with a new wave musical treatment.

The hyper It Don't Matter is the group's message to Christianity's critics:

They say forget about the old traditions

'Cause they were never really meant to last

Welcome to the 1980s

Where religion is a thing of the past

They treat me like I was a barbarian

For believing in original sin

They say we're all at one with the universe

So we're basically good within

Still, I'm gonna believe

The way I do

Even though everyone around me

Is saying it ain't true

Everyday they're looking for answers

Something new to add to their list

'Cause if it can't be explained through logic

Then it simply just doesn't exist

I think I'll just stay unenlightened

And carry on my own way

Besides, I'd rather put my faith in God

Than in the human mind any day

It don't matter what anyone says

I won't ever fall away from You

It don't matter what happened today

I know You're always there to see me through

Never fall away

The lyrics to this song are quite poignant, considering that the producer of this album, O-Joe Taylor later renounced Christianity.

Crumbächer later signed with Frontline Records, transitioned from new wave to dance/pop, and released three very fine projects: Escape from the Fallen Planet, Thunder Beach, and Tame the Volcano (which contained a very memorable title track). 

A 2005 reunion show

Some critics feel that Volcano was the group's best-crafted and most polished effort. But we're going with Incandescent. Somehow, Jamie is still dancing her way across our hearts.

OK, maybe not...but it was an awesome video.

#262 "LIVE" by Andrus, Blackwood & Co. (1980)

Andrus Blackwood & Co. LIVE (1980)
Greentree Records • R-3570

Producer:

Phil Johnson

File Under: CCM/Pop

Time Capsule-Worthy Track:

Jesus You're So Wonderful

This otherwise modest live recording spawned a single that became a mega-hit. It was a bit of a novelty song, a 50's knock-off that gave Terry Blackwood and Sherman Andrus a chance to goof around a little and elicit a few laughs from the audience. It had been previously released as a track on the pair's 1978 2-record set titled Following You. Who could've predicted that Jesus, You're So Wonderful would dominate CCM radio charts at the #1 position for TWENTY straight weeks in 1980-81.

"Jesus You're So Wonderful was mostly Sherman's idea," Terry Blackwood told me in July of 2020, "and I just added my touches. We never dreamed it would be so popular."

I also reached out to Sherman Andrus. "Jesus You're So Wonderful just took off," he said. "We had been singing it with great success but recording it live was just a bonanza for us. The glasses that I used were Gary Chapman's, who had some good friends in our band. The skit that we did was first done at a festival called Ichthus in Wilmore, Kentucky in 1978. I was prancing all over the stage like James Brown."

Now apparently, Sherman would ask the audience members to please not rush the stage. "Yeah, the whole deal about not having our security with us and asking them not to charge the stage, that started in Wilmore, Kentucky," Andrus remembers. "No one knew us, so we had to create an illusion of being popular."

Wait...what?! Sherman had been a member of two of the most iconic franchises in Christian music history - Andrae Crouch & the Disciples and The Imperials...and Terry, also an Imperial, had backed up Elvis Presley and had a last name that was synonymous with Gospel music...and no one knew them? Maybe it was because Ichthus was more of a rock festival.

So back to the story, with Sherman Andrus begging the crowd to not charge the stage: "Well, that was like saying sick 'em to a dog," he said. "That song is what put us on a roll." 

    

Recorded in a hotel ballroom in Evansville Indiana for just $12,000, this record is part concert/part worship service. Several of AB&C's smooth, radio-friendly pop tunes from Grand Opening and Following You are included here as well as a tune that Terry and Sherman had previously made popular with the Imperials (Give Them All to Jesus). But the group also takes time to minister with audience-participation praise and worship on tracks like He's Here Right Now, Bless That Wonderful Name, and If You Abide In Me. 

Sherman does most of the talking, at one point exhorting the crowd with, "If anyone should have an abundant life, it's those of us who've found the very Author of life, Jesus Christ." Speaking of the crowd, they were knowledgeable, greeting the intros of several recognizable songs with applause. 

Terry and Sherman are not known as songwriters, but they had an excellent track record when it came to evaluating the work of talented writers like Phil Johnson, Tim Sheppard and Bruce Hibbard. And to be non-family members, Terry and Sherman had a great vocal blend. Karen Voegtlin also added her voice to the mix on several songs to thicken things up with some 3-part harmony. Terry is one of the finest, smoothest lead singers in the history of Christian music, and several songs on this record feature Sherman's effortless falsetto (which reminded me in a really good way of the Imperials Live album from 1973).

But let's face it, the hit that opened side two is what this record will always be remembered for. 

"A guy named Steve Fromm wrote Jesus You're So Wonderful," Terry Blackwood told me. "I think we captured the essence of what he was trying to do with that song. Church youth groups sang it. We always brought some up from the audience to sing the background part with me. It was just such a fun song. People loved it and we did it for the rest of our tenure as a group." 

Change of plans...sort of...

OK...life is busy. 

Between work and coronavirus and my 70s blog and race riots and my YouTube channel and coin shortages and playing with various worship bands and running a household...it's a juggling act.

I want to make more frequent posts to this blog. Heck, I'd like to finish it before we all die.

But to do that, I just can't continue with the long, detailed, extensive posts that you have (hopefully) enjoyed heretofore. The research takes time, the writing takes time, tracking down comments from artists takes time, finding photos you may not have seen before takes time...and ain't nobody got time fo' dat.

So...the blog will continue. But the posts will be more succinct. Shorter. Fewer details. Fewer photos. More concise. I'm putting this blog on a diet. It's going to hurt me to make this change...but at least it will hopefully enable me to finish the blog while I'm still on this side of Heaven.

Thanks for hangin' in there with me.

Your 80s CCM pal,

Scott