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keith-40918
Reviews
The Jesus Music (2021)
Almost Got It
I started listing to CCM in the late 70's, so I experienced much of this in real time. In the 90's to early 2000's got to be an insider for a while in a band myself. I was a long subscriber of CCM magazine, so I have a wealth of useless CCM knowledge in my head. When I started seeing the trailer for this movie I was both excited and skeptical. "No way they are going to get it right," I thought after seeing the artists who would be the presenters.
After watching it, I was pleasantly surprised. They started exactly right and I loved the time they spent with those pioneering artists like Love Song and Larry Norman. Rez Band was one of my favorites, so comments from Glenn Kaiser scored points. Petra probably got too little screen time as a brief mention as an 80's band. Petra actually started in 1970 near the beginning, so not enough love there I thought. Giving some time to Steve Taylor was absolutely a win for alternative, though they could have thrown a bone to groups like Daniel Amos, 77's, Adam Again, The Choir, whose influence in their genre was monumental. No mention of White Heart is criminal. They owned the 80's Christian rock scene.
It is true, they could never mention every artist that meant something to someone in two hours. There are just too many to cover. Maybe they could have squeezed a few more in if they hadn't spent so much time with Kirk Franklin and Lecrae talking about there were no black artists for them to follow since Andrae Crouch. Off the top of my head names like Leon Patillo, Larnelle Harris, Bebe and Cece, The Winans, Anointed, Take 6, Mary Mary, John P. Kee to name a few. And Lecrae is miles away from being the first black Christian rapper embraced by the CCM community (Michel Peace, PID, ETW, SFC, Gospel Gangstaz, T-Bone, Dynamic Twins, JC & the Boyz, DOC, JC Crew, Mike E, The Rapsures, GRITS, Verb, all came before Lecrae). It was a bit of a slap to these artists to be dismissed as having not existed.
I was a Stryper fan through the 80's and never knew about their tie to Jimmy Swaggart. Found that interesting. There were many other Christian metal bands that would have been nice to see a nod to, like White Cross. Geoff Moore and the Distance? David and the Giants? John and Dino Elefante were big influencers in the industry.
All that said, I still give 9 stars. Only docked 1 star for the racism section. I would have like to seen more, but it would have been a trilogy to rival Lord of the Rings to include everyone I felt worthy. Good job and maybe we can have a part 2, the ones we forgot :)