Idle Cure - Idle Cure

I had heard of them from my buddy Dave back in the day. Dave was pretty dialed into what was happening in Christian music and generally had decent taste. By '86 my interest in a lot of CCM (for the unwashed that stands for Contemporary Christian Music) because most of what I was hearing was inferior. I know Larry Norman asked, "Why should the devil have all the good music." He wasn't entirely right, but he was close enough to bury most of what passed for music being sold in Christian Bookstores.

One the hallmarks of being Christian was trying to copy what was popular in "secular" music. The problem was there was a lag of about five or more years. Of course I'm generalizing, there were a handful of bands that were just plain good, but for me most was borderline awful.

Around this time some smaller aggressive labels started to pop up.  Frontline was one of them and the acts they were signing were actually contemporary. The problem was for them to be marketed to the bookstores and youth pastors there needed to be one of those "sounds like" grids that would enable the kids to be able to listen to bands who sounded like what regular kids were listening to and not feel left out.

Idle Cure were just a contemporary rock band. They were sort in the hair metal mix, but they were more Journey than Def Leppard. Well, actually more Mr. Mister than Journey but they were slotted in with the "arena" rock bands. Actually they weren't hair metal or glam at all ... they were a rock and roll band ... which I already said so I'm just repeating myself now.

I have to admit the first time listened to this I was playing the match the song to the band, and quickly realized I was doing Idle Cure a disservice. There were countless bands out there who were mining the same musical vein and frankly the music fell into one of two categories.

• Good
• Bad

Pretty simple, and who doesn't like simple?

Idle Cure was good. In fact I'd go so far as to say they were right in the mix with their contemporaries in the real world. I'm guessing the album recorded on a modest budget, Lord knows they didn't put any money into the cover art, but man producer and engineer Bill Baumgart made the guys sound like a million bucks.

It's hardly fair to dismiss Idle Cure as a poor facsimile of those "real" bands trudging away in the secular world who sounded like a whole host of bands who were mining the genre, and to that end when taken at face value Idle Cure were just as good as anybody else.