DeGarmo & Key - This Ain't Hollywood

Back in the early '80s Christian music was a bit of a mixed bag of Licorice Allsorts. It was pretty rare to get a good one, and if there were any of the good ones someone else usually got there first leaving me with the weird orange blobs of sugary shitness.

DeGarmo & Key were among the early pioneers who had chops and made records that sounded like honest to goodness records. Of course back then my budget was pretty thin and the only exposure I had to new stuff was through some of the older kids in my youth group. I wasn't exactly a kid but I was still in high school. I'd heard some of the songs from the band's first two albums and they were solid and when they dropped their third album it took me a bit but I would pick it up in '81 and really really tried to like this it.

It was the band's third album and they had moved decidedly into the adult contemporary lane and while there was still plenty of guitar the songs were more like extensions of Christopher Cross or The Doobies. Dana Key's uncanny resemblance to Michael McDonald was at times a distraction, but my goodness that guy could play, and his guitar tone was immediately identifiable and so tasty. That mid range scoop was pretty cool. Anyway it's weird to think I dismissed this because it was contemporary pop. I liked Christopher Cross. Still do.

Now don't get me wrong, there were some really good songs here, and some that have grown on me over the years. I still get a thrill when I hear the closing song from side one, "All Night" with the slow groove that builds until it breaks open and the slide guitar carries the song over the finish line. It's an awesome song. The copy I found didn't have the insert or credits, which I'm sure my original copy had. I'd love to see who played what. Oh well.

The album also features a generic paint by numbers duet with Amy Grant "Nobody Loves Me" which I'm sure was a boost to both artists. Back in the day it was DeGarmo & Key who were the bigger deal and Amy was just starting out. She had a pair of early live albums with D&K as the backing band and they were really good. Honest.

This Ain't Hollywood is actually really good. Much better now than it was to me back then, I suppose I expected to have my mind blown and my face melted and instead I got ten tracks of middle of the road pop songs that occasionally had a bit of rock and roll on the side. Despite the occasional song that I really liked, "All Night" and "Light of the World" the rest was perplexing, and the album's R&B infused "One Step Closer" was horrible ... although now it's kind of fun, but I can definitely see my younger self having to swallow twice to get the bile down. At least that's how I thought of the album back in the day.

I mean I was actively ambivalent, so much so that after their '82 live album I wouldn't buy anything by DeGarmo & Key until '87 when they dropped their self titled D&K which was the rock I was hoping for and then I stayed with them to the end.

Listening now you get the sense the band was trying to figure out how to transition into the '80s. Although there are a bunch of albums I've never heard that came out during their dark period when I'd abandoned the band, I wouldn't pass them up now if I was to find them.

Time has actually been a lot kinder to this than I expected, and while This Ain't Hollywood it Ain't Bad Either.

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Old Enough to Forget

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