Find Your Sound
This is tough, since I've not found the exact sound I set out to find. I think I need to find some parallel Christian universe to find Christian Deep Purple, Black Sabbath (with Ozzy), Led Zeppelin and so on. I have, however, found many new Christian bands I like.
The first step in my active quest was to ask around. I got one band name from a radio DJ and some loaner CDs from a guy at church. I bought Audio Adrenaline's Bloom from the radio tip, and discovered Big Tent Revival from the guy at church. Last night (actually 4 Jun, 02), I "discovered" six new bands with lots of potential.
I went to some of the Christian/Secular music comparison sites (listed in my links section). I scanned the secular column for bands with acceptable sounds, like: Bush, Stone Temple Pilots, Collective Soul, the classic rockers, and a few others. I then scanned the corresponding Christian artists and wrote down the ones I didn't recognize. I came up with a list of 15 bands I'd not heard of. While trying to find sound clips of those, I found another band as well.
Armed with my list, I went on to Amazon.com to get sound samples. Through Amazon, I got to hear four of the groups. Two of 'em sounded really good, and one has potential, if the vocalist doesn't turn his yelling into screaming --there's a subtle difference. One didn't feature any vocals, so I couldn't put it on my buy-list.
MP3.com gave me another artist to hear. Most of the other bands came up, but only with links to Rolling Stone articles. I think my list was of a bunch of hard-to-find "indies" (independents -it's gonna take me a while to get used to that term). Christian Book Distributers had another group's music (on $0.99 cassette) available, but I'll wait.
I then went to the Sound and Spirit record club to look them all up again. I found one additional group that way, but they didn't list any sound clips. The hunt took a couple hours, but I found three of the groups I'd sampled and liked at Sound and Spirit. I had a buy one, get two free, and unlimited for $2.99, so I ordered three of my new finds, and -don't chastise me for this choice, but- a Cheri Keaggy. I know, Cheri's a bit out of character, but I'll try to justify my deviant behavior in another article.
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