Greg the Music Fan


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Greg the Music Fan

[Take cover! Greg is singing!]

This is a photo of the kids in Island Baptist Church and I singing a blues-y version of "Jesus Loves Me." People who have heard me sing tell me that I should really sing tenor... Tenor twenty miles away. <rim shot> Fortunately, you don't have to listen to me sing to enjoy the music that I enjoy. They say you can tell a lot about a person when you know what music they listen to. I don't know if that's true (nor do I know, if it is true, what this page says about me), but I would like to share some of my favourite music with you. I've included links to Amazon.ca, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and ChristianBook.com where they offer albums I like.

I like so much music that I simply can't keep it all on one page, or that page would get too big to load. So, I have divided up my music (like I have divided up my CD collection) into three parts: solo artists, groups, and soundtracks. (Unlike my CD collection, the reviews are not sorted alphabetically, but in order as I write or edit them, with the most recently written or changed review at the top of each page.)

There is a noticeable gap in my music collection. Up until 1985, when CDs took over from LPs, it's fairly complete. I can't claim to have a complete library of Christian music, but I have a nice little collection of music I like. Unfortunately, the switch to the CD format for music in 1985 coincided with one of my periods of maximum poverty (nearing the end of my schooling, with all the costs of tuition, books, housing, and so on, and then nothing but dirt jobs for the first few years after graduation.) And, of course, when CD players first came out, they cost the Earth. Therefore, it was some years before the price came down enough that I could scrape my pennies together and get a CD player. In the interim, some of my favourite artists had put out albums which, unfortunately, went out of print before I could lay hands on them. And, of course, many of the classic Christian albums never were re-released on CD. Then too, people's taste in music changed, and a lot of the artists I loved most just seemed to disappear from the Christian bookstores. Fortunately, there seems to be a trend of releasing either the original albums of "best of" compilations for many of my favourites. One sing/songwriter who has had compilation albums published is Don Francisco, who specialised in absolutely riveting ballads told from the perspective of different "minor" people from familiar Bible stories, such as "Got to Tell Somebody", told from the perspective of Jairus, the synagogue leader whose daughter Jesus raised from the dead. These songs broke all the rules of getting radio airplay: they didn't have three verses, a chorus, and a bridge, they ran far longer than three and a half minutes, and they didn't have repetitive words that listeners could sing along to by the end of their first listening, but they were absolutely riveting. Fortunately for my CD player, some of Francisco's more popular songs (but not, alas, my personal favourite) have been re-released on The Early Works [Amazon.com/Amazon.ca/ChristianBook.com] and Signature Songs. If you look hard enough, you can even find some re-releases, like Forgiven [Amazon.com/Amazon.ca/Amazon.co.uk].

For more of my opinions on solo artists, check out the soloists page.

Like other fairly recent groups such as Jars of Clay and The Newsboys, the self-titled debut album by Sixpence None the Richer [Amazon.com/Amazon.ca/Amazon.co.uk/ChristianBook.com] tends to sneak up on the listener. (In fact, the band snuck up on Hollywood, getting one of their cuts into the soundtrack of Not Another Teen Movie, an otherwise forgettable flick with a popular soundtrack album. So if "Kiss Me" sounds familiar, that's probably because you heard it on the radio.) That's not to say that the sound is boring. In fact, Leigh Nash's vocals tend to jump right out at you. She's unforgettable without being annoying. But the lyrics, most of which were written by Matt Slocum, are subtle, rather than overtly evangelistic. The music is moody and dark in places, as it explores the pain and confusion of life without Christ. For that reason, I tend not to leave this CD on "repeat all" as often as I do some of my other CDs. But musically, it's lush and precise, as you might expect, since it was produced by Steve Taylor and came out on his Squint Entertainment label.

To read more about my favourite groups, check out the groups page.

One of my favourite Biblical movies is The Prince of Egypt. It does less violence to the Biblical text than many (although it's still not completely faithful), and I love the music. No, I adore the music. Even though I was living in Hong Kong when I first saw the movie, and legitimate music CDs (as opposed to the pirated stuff) cost more in Hong Kong than they do in Vancouver, I rushed right out and got the soundtrack album [Amazon.com/Amazon.ca/Amazon.co.uk/ChristianBook.com]. The first cut on the version I got is an astonishingly bad cover of "When You Believe" with Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston (one of whom, apparently, still doesn't know enough not to breathe in the middle of a word), far worse than the soundtrack version (which, mercifully, appears in its proper place.) But once you get past that, you get the real classics: "Deliver Us", "All I Ever Wanted", "Through Heaven's Eyes", "Playing With The Big Boys", and of course, "When You Believe." As some of the songs are quite complex rhythmically and musically, I don't expect to hear them in church too often, but it wouldn't surprise me at all to hear them "covered" several times over the years.

For more of my opinions on soundtrack albums, check out the soundtracks page.

Unfortunately, it's not all that easy to find Christian CDs (or at least, the particular CDs I like) online. The big online vendors tend not to have the slection I'm looking for. One place you can look for Christian music is ChristianDiscs.com. Then, too, I should say that many of my favourite Christian albums are long out of print. Some of them, dating from the days of vinyl LPs, have never been re-released on CD. But you can look for them at used record sites like True Tunes etc. and Rad Rockers Emporium.