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Christian music fans rejoice - Faithful listeners find problems with growing pop influence. by Lacey Lett and Jennifer Rickard

Christian students and musicians alike harbor an array of opinions and emotions on the Christian music industry. Approval, distaste, quirks and reverence pile Christian artists and those who listen to their music with varying perspectives.

Jennifer Casteel, drama senior, indicated her preferences in Christian musicians are selective.

The tendency for many of today’s Christian artists is to follow pop music trends, but Casteel said she enjoys the music of artists who are both unique and genuine with the music they create.

Casteel said she favors the band Waterdeep because the lead singer and his wife don’t sing about what’s considered a typical Christian topic. In contrast,most of their songs deal with the sick condition of man and his need for God.

Allie Tarpley, math education sophomore, said she appreciates Christian music for it’s ability to remind listeners of their faith.

“There are so many songs based off scripture it’s another way to memorize it,” Tarpley said.

Christian music can be enjoyable as well as a spiritual godsend, Tarpley said. She said when some lyrics in songs stand out to her, she’ll make them the focus of her prayers throughout the day.

Students indulge in Christian music carefree or selectively; on the other side Christian artists enter the music industry with many concerning thoughts of their own.

Weatherford based band Radial Angel was signed to Warner Brothers Christian label Squint. Jared Taber, lead singer and guitarist for Radial Angel, said he received problems with the record label regarding weight issues.

“It’s just sad that these Christian labels are run by business guys and not Christians, so it’s still all about money, money, money and not the music,” Taber said. “You have to look this certain image. It stands against anything Christian artists are about.”

Radial Angel is no longer with Squint, but Taber defends some of the Christian artists that have acquired fame.

“I’d say for bands like Switchfoot and P.O.D., when you get some success in the mainstream market, you can’t force your beliefs down someone else’s throat,” Taber said. He said there is still spiritual content in the bands’ songs.

Chris Smith, local musician, said he thinks it’s okay for Christian bands to be signed to a secular record label as long as it’s for the right reasons.

“If I were given the opportunity to join a major record label, indie or secular, I would have to pray about it a lot,” Smith said. He elaborates saying musicians need to think about why they are wanting to sign.

“Is it to bring glory to Him for the talent He has given me, or is it to just be a rockstar?”

Radio Expands Christian Music Format SIRIUS Satellite

New York, NY (AHN) - SIRIUS Satellite Radio expands its Christian music format by introducing a new music channel called Revolution that will be devoted to Christian rock music.

Revolution will join SIRIUS’ other Christian music channels, Spirit channel 66 (Christian Hits) and Praise channel 68 (Gospel). The new channel will be located on the dial at channel 67.

Steve Blatter, SIRIUS Senior Vice President of Music Programming says, “SIRIUS wants to be a leader in Christian music programming, and Revolution is the latest step in that endeavor.”

Revolution will feature today’s most popular, faith-based rock music, by artists such as Switchfoot, Relient K, Thousand Foot Krutch, and others.

Sales of albums in the Christian Rock genre grew an astounding 125-percent in 2004, according to the Gospel Music Association. Christian music overall is currently the sixth most popular in the U.S., behind rock, hip-hop, R&B/urban, country and pop music - and ahead of jazz and classical.
Douglas Maher - All Headline News Staff Reporter

Parachute Christian Music Festival hits Hamilton this weekend
Can you imagine anything more scary than 28,000 teenagers?! Well, they descend en masse this weekend upon rural New Zealand’s Hobbit shires and grassy knolls of Hamilton, for the GOD-rock fest that is Parachute.

From this Friday 23 January, Hamilton’s Mystery Creek Event Centre will play host for the first time to the largest Christian Music Festival in the Southern Hemisphere, Parachute 04. I attended every year for years when it first begun, and it spiralled larger and larger with passing years, losing its personal touch but gaining momentum and fervour and of course, its impact on the nation’s youth. As a force in bringing Christian message through the forum of contemporary music, Parachute has no equal in New Zealand and perhaps Australia.

Parachute Music expects a record crowd of 28,000 to come through the gates over the weekend to see over 100 bands including international acts Relient K, Newsboys, The Tribe, Pillar, Christafari, Parachute Band, Hillsong United, Paul Colman Trio and Darlene Zschech as well as a full ‘non-music programme’.

For the 1500 volunteers and staff however the festival began as early as last Monday setting up seven stages, laying out the tent city and preparing ‘The Coca-Cola Village’ where everything from cuisine to fashion will be sold, as well playing host to New Zealand’s largest Wireless Internet Hotspot.

Mark Mortlock, festival director said “The advantage of the Mystery Creek site is that you can look down over the whole site and see the magnitude of it. It’s going to be a huge weekend!”

“The huge volunteer force are a vital part of Parachute 04, in fact, without their help there is no way this event would be so successful,” Mortlock said.

Gates open at 11:00am on Friday for those with pre-purchased tickets or 2:00pm for gate sales. Parachute 04 tickets are available at NZ Post or at Parachute 04.

There will be a bus service running between Hamilton and Mystery Creek over the weekend.

Gospel Music Benefit Concert For Katrina Victims - Concerning the Katrina crisis in the Gulf Coast region, the Gospel Music Channel is partnering with the Gospel Music Association, Paxson Communications Corporation’s i (formerly PAX TV), and veteran promoter Peter Conlon to nationally televise a live benefit concert of hope, Gospel Angels, featuring acclaimed Christian music artists. The concert will take place at Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park.

“America is facing an unprecedented crisis of people torn from their homes and left with nothing but the clothes on their backs. It’s critical that we step up to meet this next phase of the crisis in their lives, providing tangible assistance as well as hope, which gospel music communicates like no other music,” said Charley Humbard, co-founder of the Gospel Music Channel which is producing Gospel Angels.

At the time when victims are desperately in need of hope, love, and inspiration, the gospel music industry wishes to fulfill these through this God-centered benefit concert.

The concert will provide refugees with physical needs as well. 100% of the money raised through ticket sales and donations from concertgoers and viewers of the national broadcast will go to hurricane victims through relief organizations including World Vision and Feed the Children

The program will air Thursday, Sept. 22
Gospel Music Channel - 7:00pm, 10:00pm EDT
i(formerly PAX TV) - 8:00pm, 10:00pm EDT.

Gospel singer Damaris Carbaugh, soloist with the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, gave a free concert at the First Baptist Church on Wednesday 1 September.

She was stopping at Grand Cayman on her way to the Barefoot and Breaking Free retreat on Cayman Brac.

In between songs, Ms Carbaugh encouraged the audience to trust in God, and said that He could be trusted to see us through even the hardest times, as nothing was too hard for Him.

She spoke about the hurricane damage to New Orleans, but said that she found encouragement here by seeing how people had rebuilt after Hurricane Ivan.

Ms Carbaugh has known commercial success since the age of 15, when she was talent scouted to sing commercial jingles for some of the world’s biggest advertisers including Coca Cola, Pepsi, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Minute Maid and Wrigley’s Double Mint Gum.

Despite such early success, Ms Carbaugh retained a desire to be a servant of Jesus Christ: “I don’t want a career, I want to be faithful,” she said.

Ms Carbaugh’s mother was an evangelist and her father a singer, and when they weren’t preaching the gospel on the road they attended the Thessalonica Church in the South Bronx.

When she was three months old, her parents moved to Cuba to serve as missionaries, in the days before Fidel Castro came to power.

A year later they moved to Puerto Rico and Ms Carbaugh’s childhood years were spent between there and New York.

At the age of eight, Ms Carbaugh gave her life to Christ.

At 15, she was asked to sing at a recording studio, and soon she was in demand by New York producers and advertising agencies.

In 1982, while seeking a secular recording career, she won the American Song Festival Talent Search and received a recording contract with CBS Records.

Her album was released in January 1984, but in Ms Carbaugh’s own words, “It went nowhere.”

A turning point came in 1988, when she visited a group of Christian believers in Argentina who were living in poverty. She was struck by their devotion to the Lord in spite of their circumstances, serving just because they loved Him.

As a result, Ms Carbaugh began praying for ways to use her talents more fully to serve Jesus.

Eventually, she was asked to sing on the bible teaching television programme, “Day of Discovery”, where she sang as both a solo artist and a member of the Discovery Singers. Ms Carbaugh was asked to be the label’s first solo artist, resulting in the album, Never Alone.

Ms Carbaugh has also been singing with the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir and Singers since the early 1980’s and has appeared on many of the choir’s albums.

“It’s easy to say, ‘I just want to be a servant’,” Ms Carbaugh said, “but that’s what I’m striving to be. God has been so merciful to me. I want to share His love and His mercy with others and encourage them to draw closer to the Lord

Amy Grant looks for new direction with ‘Three Wishes’

(NBC)
‘Wishes’ granted: Christian singer-songwriter Amy Grant makes her reality show host debut Sept. 23 on “Three Wishes.”

At the height of her career, Amy Grant was in an extraordinary position in the music industry. Her songs were played on American Bandstand and she was a guest on The 700 Club.

The singer-songwriter was a groundbreaker. She was the most successful artist to emerge from the contemporary Christian music scene, in terms of record sales and impact. She helped change the face of the genre.

But entertainment careers wax and wane, and Grant’s is no exception. It has been eight years, an eternity in pop music, since she enjoyed a mainstream-radio hit.

Her career is about to enter a new phase, as she gets ready to star in a reality show called “Three Wishes” that premieres Sept. 23 on NBC. Hosting a TV show may seem like an odd turn, but it’s just the latest twist for a woman who has lived more than half her life in the public eye.

“The music industry has changed so much,” Grant says by phone while driving to her office in Nashville. “Musically, I don’t really know what it is I’m trying to do.”

It was 20 years ago that Grant put Christian music on the mainstream radar. That was when she released “Unguarded,” an explosive album that was marketed simultaneously to pop and Christian audiences. The curly-haired singer hit the mainstream Top 40 with the engaging “Find a Way,” and a new kind of entertainment career was launched.

Grant, now 44, released her first album in 1978 and more than a dozen have followed, each showcasing her insightful way with lyrics and her dark, dusky voice. While “Unguarded” introduced her to the secular world, the 5-million-selling disc “Heart in Motion” (1991) and such tunes as “Baby Baby” and “I Will Remember You” made her a bona fide pop star.

But for the first time since she was a teenager, music will take a back seat.

“What I’m going to do this year is mostly do TV instead of concerts,” she says, although she’s performing in a few cities through October, according to pollstar.com. “Sometimes, it’s nice to take a break, even from something you love doing.”

Although her pop success made her a household name, her inspirational recordings form her greatest legacy.

Her five Grammys are for religious recordings. The 1982 disc “Age to Age” is considered the first Christian-music album to be certified platinum by the Rec-ording Industry Association of America, signifying a million discs sold. The brutally candid 1988 album “Lead Me On” was named the No. 1 Christian-music album of all time in a CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) magazine poll five years ago.

In 2001, the RIAA chose her recording of “El Shaddai” as one of the most significant songs of the 20th century, right behind Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” and ahead of such recordings as Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” and Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi,” which Grant covered on her 1994 “House of Love” album.

Late last year her manager got word of the TV show, in which she’ll travel to different towns and help make people’s wishes come true. Even though Grant’s profile wasn’t particularly high at the time, “Three Wishes” executive producer Andrew Glassman says she was his first choice for the job.

“She was the only person we ever considered,” he says. “On the first day of working on the show, we kind of sat down before we had any idea what the show was exactly going to be. We thought, ‘Whose public persona represents the warmth and compassion that we want the show to be about?’ Amy’s name was the very first thing that popped into my mind.”

So far, the show has filmed episodes in Northern California, Iowa and New Mexico. Everywhere the crew goes, Glassman says, the reaction is the same: People are drawn to Grant not only for her fame, but also for her unforced natural warmth.

He recalls meeting some adolescent girls while taping the pilot. Grant left for four days for other commitments, he says, but when she returned she remembered the name of each youngster she had met.

“When she’s there with you, she’s really there,” he says. “She really listens.”

She seems content and optimistic, saying the TV show is injecting new energy into her career.

“Everything in my career felt scattered,” she says. “I hadn’t had any radio success for a while. I feel artistically I’m at the best place I’ve ever been, but activity-wise I felt like I was dumbing down, because there was not enough juice behind me. It all felt disorganized.”

By Randy Cordova | Gannett News Service

Mana-Fest showcases Christian music - ROSEBURG: A Christian concert series, featuring the likes of Sonic Flood, Rebecca St. James, Kids In The Way, and others will take place Sept 2 to Sept. 4 at the Douglas County Fairgrounds in Roseburg.

About 20 artists will perform, with proceeds benefiting Casa de Belen, which provides opportunities for homeless and estranged teens. Tickets and concert details are available at www.mana-fest.com or by calling 677-0073. Tickets are limited and cost anywhere from $20 to $140, depending on age and the number of concertgoers. They will be sold online through Aug. 25. Camping is also available for a small fee