1st Anniversary: Part II
When I started this topic, I had no idea what I was going to discover in Christian music. Christian music really has something for every musical taste.
I've made lots of growth since I started my quest for hard Christian music. It didn't take long for me to realize that hard music wasn't what I was after at all. My target sound changed to adult Christian music (not to be confused with AC). What I used to perceive as "hard" isn't the same stuff as what people now think of; and lots of the appealing music I'm finding isn't hard at all, by any definition. I'm really enjoying a wide range of music: lighter stuff like Cheri Keaggy and Jaci Velasquez to Audio Adrenaline's hard pop, alternative like Grammatrain and G.S.Megaphone, and even occasional death metal bands like Seventh Angel and Extol. My favorites, however, sit right around the middle of that range.
When I quit secular radio, I listened to Christian talk radio, because I really couldn't stomach that sweetsy Adult Contemporary (AC) class of Christian music. By the way, "Adult Contemporary" can't be broken down to define the category of music. It's sort of an arbitrary label. Personally, I'd scratch the "Adult" completely off the term, and add "Soft Pop" to the end. Contemporary Soft Pop would be far more accurate. [OK, back on track here.] It didn't take long to realize I missed music. I work alone for the bulk of my work-week, so I might have missed the music more than most people who turned off their radios. I tuned in to my local AC station (Spirit FM) since it was all the Christian music I knew about. I began to enjoy it, not so much for the musical style, but the messages of the songs. Occasionally, a song that was livelier than the rest would creep into their mix. The message and the rare gem kept me tuned --and Saturday night's Storm Radio Show played the stuff at the opposite end of the spectrum. Some of it was actually quite hard while still musically pleasing.
After a few months of AC, I discovered an ad for an AM radio station on the inside back cover of Christian Happenings magazine. I tried to tune my radio at work in to 1030 "The Light" because the ad pictured some livelier and harder bands than I normally heard on Spirit FM. I got a staticky sound and I recognized bits of one of the songs --it wasn't good sound quality. I returned to my CDs and Spirit FM for a while. I tried tuning 1030 in at home, and got it slightly clearer, but still not good. Persistence paid off. I think they were having a bad-spell in transmissions, or weather conditions weren't in favor of my receiving the station. I finally got tolerable reception, and discovered the joy of "Christian Hit Radio" (CHR). I've also seen CHR as referring to Contemporary Hit Radio. I'm not sure which is most accurate, or if they both are.
Latest Articles