Old Enough to Forget

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 C...

It's Valentine's Day, who loves you baby? Jesus Loves you. Since my first VD post was probably a little suspect, let's try and wash things clean with a little classic Christian rock. I'd always wanted to get the first couple of DeGarmo & Key albums, but never did. I did pick up their double live album No Turning Back in '82 that contained a decent selection of songs from their first three records, so it sort of scratched that itch. I am getting ahead of myself though. The first record of theirs I got was their third release This Ain't Hollywood , and at the time I found myself mostly ambivalent to many of the songs on the album. There were a couple I really liked, but mostly I listened to it because I wanted to like it, and frankly I didn't have so many records that I had a lot of choice. I remember the CCM Magazine review wasn't a glowing endorsement either. Funny the shit that sticks in the old bean. The other day my wife and I were scouring throug...