Old Enough to Forget

By 1984 I wasn't buying a lot of Christian music. Oh, there were exceptions but for the most part I'd grown pretty weary of shitty sounding music wrapped around the same tired, heavy-handed lyrics within the structures of an inferior pop song. I'm painting with a wide brush here and I'm practically throwing the baby out with the bath water, but for every decent "Christian" record there was a mountain of trash that was supposed to be appreciated because it was a ministry, not an art. Now, to prove my point I'll enter into evidence those first three North American releases from Jerusalem. From 1980 through 1982 I bought three albums of rather tired hard rock that seemed to have lyrics translated into English from Swedish using a travel dictionary. I'll admit I look back rather fondly on these albums, but it's not because of the music. The cover of the first album was a homage to Boston, the second featured a Les Paul leaning against a smoking Fender ...