Main Page |
NOW THE TRUTH CAN BE TOLD - 1994 (2 discs)
1. | I Want To Be A Clone |
2. | Whatcha Gonna Do When Your Number's Up? |
3. | Whatever Happened To Sin? |
4. | Bad Rap (Who You Tryin' To Kid, Kid?) |
5. | Meltdown (At Madame Tussaud's) |
6. | Sin For A Season |
7. | Guilty By Association |
8. | Hero |
9. | Am I In Sync? |
10. | Baby Doe |
11. | This Disco (Used To Be A Cute Cathedral) |
12. | To Forgive |
13. | Drive, He Said |
14. | I Just Wanna Know |
15. | On The Fritz |
16. | Lifeboat |
17. | We Don't Need No Colour Code (live) |
18. | You Don't Owe Me Nothing (live) |
19. | Under The Blood |
20. | Bouquet |
21. | I Blew Up The Clinic Real Good |
22. | Jim Morrison's Grave |
23. | Innocence Lost |
24. | What Is The Measure Of Your Success? |
25. | Since I Gave Up Hope I Feel A Lot Better |
26. | Svengali |
27. | A Principled Man |
28. | Harder To Believe Than Not To |
29. | Murder In The Big House (with Chagall Guevara) |
30. | Escher's World (With Chagall Guevara) |
31. | Violent Blue (With Chagall Guevara) |
32. | Winter Wonderland |
33. | Dream In Black & White (demo) |
34. | Shark Sandwich (more demos I forgot to erase) |
"Two CD-set chronicles the Sparrow career of contemporary Christian music's still-reigning iconoclast, premiere lyricist, and--as this compilation amply shows--a pretty fair rock'n'roller as well. The brilliant, disturbing, biting, ironic, sometimes outright funny lyrics tend to overshadow the melodies, but classic tunes like 'This Disco,' 'On The Fritz,' and others show Taylor's true genius. Also included are tracks from Chagall Guevara, a couple of unreleased tunes, and an inventively wacky reading of 'Winter Wonderland.'" (Billboard Magazine review 10/29/94)
Liner notes:
"The writer who emphasizes spiritual values is very likely to take the darkest
view of all of what he sees in this country today. For him, the fact
that we are the most powerful and wealthiest nation in the world doesn't
mean a thing in any positive sense. The sharper the light of faith,
the more glaring are apt to be the distortions the writer sees in the life
around him...My own feeling is that writers who see by the light of their
Christian faith will have, in these times, the sharpest eyes for the grotesque,
for the perverse, and for the unacceptable...The novelist with Christian
concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him,
and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience
which is used to seeing them as natural."
Flannery O'Connor
"Make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh."
Donald O'Connor
"So, Steve, what's this song about?"
-Disc Jockey Raymond Bannister, of alternative rock station KROG-FM in Los
Angeles, asking Steve Taylor to explain his song "I Manipulate" in 20 seconds
or less to a listening audience full of teenaged Adam Ant fans.
Genuinely pious, and agreeably peevish, too (at least on record), Steve Taylor
has proven an important missing link between the King David and David Letterman
generations: A highly visible Christian artist and unabashed ethicist full
of conviction, candor and, perhaps, most definingly, cheek. It's a
dirty job, but somebody had to get to it.
If Steve Taylor didn't exist, as figurative theorists like to say, the gospel
music industry would have had to invent him. Grudgingly and belatedly,
most likely, would this invention have happened - with all the joy of childbirth
or passing a kidney stone, probably - but surely someone would've eventually
caught sight of the Taylor-shaped hole in music and taken on the unseemly
task of filling it for us. Thank God Taylor came along first and saved
them the trouble. It may be hard to remember at this late date just
how brash his belly flop into the then-stagnant pool of Christian rock seemed
more than a decade ago when, decked out in new-wave duds and armed with a
purposeful absurdism, he more or less single-handedly brought "alternative"
sensibilities to an earnest but essentially unprogressive movement.
Nowadays, no one bats a wary eyelash when a musician of faith deigns
to pull an irony from the fire and stab westward in search of some extra-Edenic
truth. Few would recently find radical the notion that satire is simply
part of the shared aesthetic language which allows contemporary Christian
culture to interface with a changing world that has lost much of its semiotic
innocence in the last generation. Do not presume it was always so,
young traveler.
Prior to Taylor's arrival on the scene in the early 1980's, with certain
visionary exceptions, the great mass of so-called Christian rock music could
charitably have been considered to be well on its way toward a legacy as
an 8-track genre in a digital world. Prophets were few, unblinking
positives were many, and Norman Vincent Peale's unspoken position as poet
laureate for the movement appeared all to secure. Our boy was by no
means the first fellow to bring intellectual chutzpah to evangelical pop,
but certainly he was among the most influential singer-songwriter types to
come down the pike informed by that artistically liberating, classically
Christian Weltanschauung which would have it that, before the Gospel
is the famous good news, it's really, really bad news. News so terribly
bad, in fact, that it's nearly funny in its awful need for grace, or unbearably
sad, or possible both at once.
Enter the angry young journalist. Taylor almost instantly expanded
the acceptable palette - "We Don't Need
No Colour Code" indeed - so that suddenly Christian music was a broad
enough little category to include topical, possibly savage songs about racism,
adultery, abortion, consumerism, the pop-star system, various and sundry
hypocrisies and (his seeming personal favorite target) modern America's
all-invasive, excuse-making, politically boundary-crossing relativism. Some
of these pet peeves were worldly wide, as it were, while others of his
four-minute exercises in trenchant cultural criticism were narrow cast to
bullseyes positioned comfortably in the churched world.
More of the songs than not were overtly funny - laugh-a-line novelty tunes,
at times, with an approach somewhere between Spike Jones, Randy Newman, and
the Wittenburg Door - yet some were sober, smirkless, and grave, even. The
uniting thread was usually human frailty and failing: sin, if you will, original
or otherwise. Cynical as some of these third-person vignettes may have
been, though, Taylor, our tragicomic-Greek-chorus of a narrator, always revealed
himself in the clinch as never less than completely idealistic, with that
curious, nearly incongruous mixture of post-modern impropriety and pre-modern
piety. Dreaming the impossible dream, undistorting the impossible
distortion. Ah, but lest this session seem like a eulogy for someone
still breathing, working and weighing in with new product in his wiry 30's,
let it be noted that we come to box-set Taylor, not to bury him.
And though we could continue with talk about just how influential our honoree
has been on the contemporary crop of "alternative" religious bands - so
influential that, in 1994 some of them recorded their own tribute album of
Taylor's songs, the first time that's happened in Gospel music "pre-mortem"
- it might instead be best to go ahead and begin our back story with a look
at the maverick thinkers who influenced Taylor's own formative years in a
meaningful (if not all clone-like) way.
Where to begin? There would be the aforequoted Ms. O'Connor, of course.
And Francis Schaeffer. And Steve's Baptist minister Dad. And
The Clash. And John Davidson. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer. (Together
Again, etc.)
A pivotal moment in Taylor's mind, in which style and substance came together
for him in some seminal way, is the fall of 1979: "I was enrolled in a filmmaking
class at Colorado University, and someone used 'Lost In The Supermarket'
by The Clash for a soundtrack. When I picked up the Clash's 'London
Calling' it all finally made sense. Musically, that album saved my life.
It had raw passion, it had lyrics that were a slap across the face, it had
everything but hope. The Clash saw the problems of the world with startling
clarity, they just weren't offering much in the way of solutions. To sum
it up, I'd found my mission."
Little would Joe Strummer have likely imagined that from afar he was effectively
ordaining an emissary to the mission field. And certainly little in
Taylor's background up to that point, by his own telling, would have marked
him as a potential punk-rock aficionado.
"I'd love to tell you that I heard my first Captain Beefheart album when
I was five, learned sitar in the seventh grade, and was experimenting in
atonal serialism during High School," Taylor says, "but I think my earliest
influences were The Chipmunks and The Cowsills. I didn't get an FM
radio until I was 16. And maybe it was Denver's lack of progressive
stations, but in that 'golden era' of disco and The Eagles, I couldn't figure
out what the fuss was about."
Roland Stephen Taylor was born December 9, 1957 in Brawley, California, and
shortly thereafter moved to Denver at the strong urging of his parents, the
Rev. Roland Samuel Taylor and his wife Gayle Yvonne. Upon graduating
High School in 1976 he came back to Southern California to take communications
and Bible classes at the Evangelical Biola University, but after his freshman
year hotfooted it back to Boulder, Colorado, where he went on to earn his
BA in music (vocal emphasis) at CU. Not without some strain on his
part and the faculty's.
"I decided I wanted to be a music major, but that required me to do things
I wasn't very capable of, the main one being piano proficiency. I tested
out of all my theory classes, because I was pretty good at theory and
composition, but I couldn't play the piano to save my life. I became
a voice major because there wasn't anything else I could do."
Our next scene resembled the moving climax of "Flashdance," with a slightly
less bravura capper. "At the end of my sophomore year I had to sing
for the faculty 'jury.' There was this swirl of activity in the back
of the room when I was finished. They were all wondering how I had
made it past their screening process without getting weeded out early on.
The only reason I didn't get kicked out of music school was that my
teacher was the head of the department and she told them not to be too
rash."
Taylor's ultimate triumph in the aftermath of such chagrined evaluations
is a classic he-showed-them! story in the making. But as with
any heroic saga, the journeyman of record must first sink to some form of
dregs before making his phoenix-like ascent. what dregs be these: "I
got through three years of college and actually started feeling a bit desperate:
'I'm a music major. I can't play any instrument. I can't sing
opera. What do I do now?' So I did what anyone else would do
in the same circumstances - I auditioned for John Davidson's Singers' Summer
Camp."
Davidson - a Las Vegas icon best known to us baby boomers as the toothy,
perfectly coffed star of such Disney flix as "The Happiest Millionaire" -
had mentioned this dream of holding forth a Tommy-like summer camp during
an appearance on "The Tonight Show." Taylor was one of 100 young
impressionables chosen from 20,000 hopefuls to spend a month on California's
Cataline Island learning the tools of the showroom trade from the likes of
Tony Orlando, Florence Henderson, and, of course, the master himself. "I
actually had a blast," Steve confesses, shameless to the end. "I even
learned how to tap dance. The thought of going to a camp to learn how
to play the big rooms in Vegas - it's like going to Pope school. Even
then we all recognized the absurdity of it all, and not in my weakest moment
did the thought of being a professional lounge lizard sound appealing. The
frightening thing was, I was actually quite good at it, and Davidson was
very encouraging. I came home more confused than ever. I really
desired to do something that had my Christian faith as its core inspiration,
but I couldn't find a musical expression that meant anything to me."
Shortly after this no-so-faithful brush with fame, Taylor heard his first
aforementioned Clash song, which provided the budding artist just a slightly
better musical paradigm to work from than the multiple versions of "Everything
Is Beautiful" that'd filled his ears at the lounge wanna-be workshop.
After a year of writing his own songs, he penned
"Whatcha Gonna Do When Your Number's
Up?" as well as his early hallmark "I
Want To Be A Clone." The demos for those songs were recorded during
his last year of college. While working as a youth pastor and as a
janitor at his father's church, and while recording in his spare time, Steve
was preparing for a career that would explode a lot sooner than he thought.
"If I hadn't been a youth pastor, I doubt I would have done this. My
generation didn't listen to politicians or sport heroes. We got our
world view, for better or worse, from our music. The trick was discovering
how to communicate my Christian world view in a medium that mattered."
Upon completion of those early demos, Taylor went to California to try to
get a deal, taking fruitless meetings with labels and publishers mostly on
the mainstream side of the business. "I met with as many as I could get to
talk to me," he recalls. "The response from the pop people was that
they liked the music, but they were afraid the lyrics might offend their
listeners. And I couldn't even get past the receptionists at the Gospel
labels."
Taylor did meet a fellow named Jim Chaffee in California, who was enthused
by the young comer's tape. But, in a Davidson-like twist of irony,
before helping usher Taylor on to his eventual career as the rock demagogue
we know him as today, Chafee first enlisted Steve's services as assistant
director of The Continentals, and evangelistic singing troupe that was then
about to head to Poland. This stint with The Continentals, while not
exactly reflecting Taylor's own taste (think Up With People or The Mike Curb
Congregation, those older of you readers), did provide a source of trivia
questions and unending amusement and what-if speculations among Taylor cultists
to come. Not long after, Chaffee also helped get Taylor a gig as director
of Chuck Bolte's Jeremiah People, a Christian musical comedy troupe "whose
satire strongly influenced me while I was growing up," Taylor says.
Chaffee and wife Janice continued to beat the drums, as it were, for Taylor's
own music, and finally convinced Cam Floria, the founder of The Continentals,
to give the young singer a small slot at Floria's annual Christian Artists
Conference in Estes Park, Colorado. It was Taylor's first genuine live
set - two songs backed by a hastily arranged band. But the crowd's
reaction impressed Sparrow president Billy Ray Hearn so much that he was
literally waiting when Taylor got off the stage. The deal quickly
followed.
Sparrow decided to debut their chancy signing via an EP
"I Want To Be A Clone," released in early
1983. The six songs were musically informed by what would've been
considered the sonically edgier secular bands of the time, from The Damned
to The Cars, but lyrically were directed almost exclusively toward the
evangelical world, addressing such sometimes insular issues as church-hopping,
judgmentalism, Christian complacency, and spiritual deceit in the most overtly
satirical tones. Amid religious store shelves stocked mostly with the
mellow likes of The Imperials, Glad, Evie and John Michael Talbot, "Clone"
sold an impressive 85,000 units. Taylor may not have been the first
"new-wave" influenced rocker to release an album on the Christian label,
but he was the first to make the Gospel industry stand up, pay attention
and pony - pogo? - on over to the position that this jumpy stuff represented
a significant niche, not a novelty.
It wasn't jut record label folks impressed by the breakthrough. In
an encouraging letter to Taylor following a visit to L'Abri in Switzerland,
popular theologian and author Francis Schaeffer said of the "Clone" record:
"The combination of music and lyrics really works on a very high level, and
the message, therefore, comes across with real clarity...in the light of
the gifts that the Lord has so obviously given you, and which you obviously
developed with care and hard work, I do urge you with all my heart to press
on. You are really doing something marvelously worthwhile. I
must say the words really cut a wide swath in the need in the church today."
Considering that he had studied Schaeffer's works scrupulously, the
rabble-rouser-in-training took this seminal exhortation preciously to
heart.
The success of "Clone" caused him to assemble some of his studio musicians
into a live band that would long thereafter be billed with typical Taylor-esque
grandeur as Some Band. In 1984 came the first real album,
"Meltdown," produced, like its predecessor, by
Jonathan David Brown. Like "Clone," some of its electronic textures
may seem dated in retrospect, some of the targets a bit easy. Yet there's
no doubting that "Meltdown" qualifies easily as one of the handful of most
influential Christian rock albums ever recorded: a wide-ranging,
take-no-prisoners assault on anything that might fall under the vast umbrella
of culture, with verve and sass. Subject matter ranged from the topics
as specific as the racist policies of a famous Fundamentalist college
(in "We Don't Need No Colour Code,"
long to be a concert favorite), media bashing
("Meat The Press"), infant euthenasia
("Baby Doe"), and the plight of believers
behind the Iron Curtain ("Over My
Dead Body"), to less moment-specific anthems like the unnerving relativism
in "Sin For A Season" and the
values-nastolgic wistfulness of
"Hero."
"Meltdown" sold a very considerable 135,000 units, and also produced what
is considered the first real concept video from a Christian label artist,
for the wax-museum-set title track, relaunching in semi-earnest the filmmaking
career begun by Taylor back in the Clash-filled halls of C.U.
That year Taylor played at his first Cornerstone Festival in Illinois, a
performance which crescendoed to a literally lame climax earlier than intended,
as our man spontaneously jumped off the six-foot stage and busted his ankle.
He limped and hopped his way through the remainder of the show on the
surviving foot before heading to the local hospital for surgery the following
morning. (The next night, in Detroit, he performed his entire set in
an electric wheelchair, which ran out of juice halfway through the performance.)
The bad news was that Taylor's miscalculated hop forced cancellation
of the trip he'd planned to Ireland to devote a few month's worth of undivided
attention to writing his next project. The better news was that, while
waylaid at home in Los Angeles, he happened to meet Debbie, the future (a
scant nine months future, in fact) Mrs Taylor...ankle schmankle: he loves
L.A.
The break was well-healed by the time Taylor trotted down the aisle, but
this more consumptive affliction, love, had precluded his getting much new
songwriting accomplished by the time he ventured to New York to start recording
his third album "On The Fritz." This
time, he was looking toward making a significant musical change, with assists
from English Producer Ian McDonald (former member of King Crimson, Foreigner)
and a host of well-known session players, but without much preordination
of what exactly would replace the stylish touches he was shedding. "In
the past, I'd always come in extremely well-prepared, but with 'Fritz' we
did a lot more experimenting in the studio. I even dipped into my failed
classical background, messing around on three or four songs with a vocal
style the Germans called sprechstimme, which is somewhere between
singing and talking."
The on-the-spot nature of "On The Fritz" produced surprisingly fine results,
marking a real maturation and move toward subtlety in Taylor's writing style
and a more refined, less self-consciously herky-jerky instrumentation, though
the sound remained lively enough. It's very much a transitional album
in that some songs suggest a more serious and reflective introspection
("To Forgive," the stirring
"I Just Wanna Know"), while some
others seem like left overs from his orientation toward message-heavy, comedic
novelty tunes (the most out-of-place being
"Lifeboat," which, despite Taylor's
later regret at having recorded it, proved inordinately popular among fans.
Sales of "Fritz" were strong, and took a leap in newly receptive European
markets, though falling a little behind "Meltdown" domestically. Taylor's
next project was an interim one: the "Limelight" live EP and home video,
recorded at Castle Ashby, England with Some Band during the 1985 Greenbelt
Festival before an audience of 20,000.
It was the next album that marked a real turning point. Changing direction
toward an even more guitar-based sound, and adding the production prowess
of Dave Perkins, Taylor began work on "I Predict
1990," what was to be his most controversial - and, by critical standards,
certainly best to date - record. Increasingly legendary for what some
would call attention to detail and others might label perfectionism, Taylor
ended up going over-budget and over-schedule on his archly prophetic magnum
opus (as in: way over.) Sparrow, while supportive, wearied of the series
of delays that had trade ads periodically appearing to trumpet a non-existent
album. Moreover, the new material seemed to be darker and perhaps a
bit more arcane in tone, which didn't entirely jibe with the direction the
company was taking toward servicing the church market. In an example
of true cooperation between artist and label, Sparrow allowed one of their
premiere talents to negotiate a new deal for the still-unfinished album with
Myrrh Records via his friend Lynn Nichols (who was VP of A&R).
That the album's intentions were slightly less outrightly stated than before
helped lead to minor controversy. Some paranoiacs feared or assumed
that the "I Predict" cover art, which was designed by Steve's wife, contained
demonic tarot card images, and idea fueled by alarmist Fundamentalist conspiracy
theorists like Tex Marrs. Not-yet-discredited televangelist Jimmy Swaggart
took aim at Taylor and dedicated an entire chapter to him in one of his anti-rock
books. While obviously without merit and even good for some inadvertent
amusement, these attacks did nag at Taylor. On top of all that, the
satire of the album's opening cut, "I
Blew Up The Clinic Real Good," was taken literally by some as advocating
abortion clinic bombing. Despite critical success and a strong tour
(whose stops included a headlining gig at L.A.'s Universal Amphitheater),
Taylor was left feeling frustrated and drained. "It got to where I
was actually having to defend myself in interviews against charges of tarot-card
covers and even new age hidden messages. It was all pretty depressing.
I was spending more time defending myself than talking about either
my faith or my music."
Still, there were triumphs during this time: The "I Predict 1990 Video Album,"
featuring concept videos for eight of the 10 new songs, made history as the
first full-length home video companion to an album in the Christian marketplace,
and is still widely considered the best of its kind(and most sought-after,
being out of print and all). The Taylor-directed "Jim Morrison's Grave"
video showed up on MTV's "120 Minutes," boosting the track onto college radio
playlists, as Myrrh's secular distributor at the time, A&M, did some
promotion for the song.
But, as dissapointing sales figures for "Predict" came in and the ironic
juxtaposition of critical and commercial success became clear, Taylor feared
he'd zenithed. At one typically well-attended California concert date,
he announced that he was "retiring" from the business for a while. This
retirement was to end up like similar famous announcements by everyone from
Frank Sinatra to David Bowie: short-lived. It was Taylor the solo artist
who technically was retired, as a few months after leaving the scene he moved
from his temporary London digs to Nashville, got together with four other
fellow expatriates of the Christian music scene who shared much of the
same frustrations, dreams, desire and sense of humor, and with them formed
Chagall Guevara. After just a few months of existence this quintet signed
to MCA Records and set to work on a debut album with highly valued producer
Matt Wallace (Faith No More, The Replacements, John Hiatt).
There were rave reviews in places like Rolling Stone Magazine; a UK tour
with pop legends Squeeze; a slot on the "Pump Up The Volume" soundtrack,
and other promising breaks. But promotion was - to say the least -
limited, a planned U.S. tour never materialized, and the album failed to
match any of Taylor's past sales levels. After just one terrific recording,
Chagall Guevara, rather than set to work on a second album and kick what
appeared to be a seriously ailing horse, asked to be let out of its deal
with MCA and called it quits.
Back in Nashville, where his wife continued to be successful as a painter,
Taylor did a few odd jobs while deciding which way best to re-retire: he
produced an album for the Newsboys and directed the occasional music video,
which barely assuaged his restlessness. After several months of persuasion
by longtime friend Norman Miller, followed by strong and ultimately decisive
encouragement from his pastor, Taylor struck a new solo deal with Warner
Alliance (Warner Bros.' Gospel label), leading to the late '93 release of
"Squint," accompanied into an unsuspecting marketplace
by Taylor's second home-video album, his self-directed globetrotting epic
"Squint: Movies From The Soundtrack." With high-concept song titles
ranging from "Smug" to
"Sock Heaven" (the coded saga of
Chagall Guevera) to "Jesus Is For Losers," it was quickly obvious that, true
to the conspiracy theorists' worst nightmares, the friendly, cranky, topical,
subversive, exhortative Steve Taylor everyone knew and loved - or, well,
not - was back from the industry grave and better than ever.
Then, of course, proving true Andy Worhol's maxim that in the future everyone
will have their own boxed set, comes the inevitable two-CD tribute you clutch.
O'Conners Flannery and Donald can once again rest easy that their
respective legacies live on in very good - but especially very long and
lanky-fingered - hands. Disc jockeys can once more puzzle over what might
seem to those without ears to hear like sarcastic obscurantism that has a
good beat and you can dance to. And Msgrs. Davidson, Strummer and Schaeffer
have just a little more to live down. Steve Taylor, the unlikely upstart,
the erstwhile blip on the Christian rock radar screen, now the stuff living
legends are made of? There are plenty of things that're harder to believe
than not to.
Chris Willman
(Chris Willman is a pop music critic for the Los Angeles Times. His writing
has appeared in Musician, Rolling Stone, Grammy, Pulse, New York Newsday,
CCM, Christianity Today, and other publications)
There are actually three things in life
that are inevitable for those of us with multi-record deals: death, taxes,
and repackaging. It is my silent fear that a compilation of this type may
cause premature again in one so young, but I thought the same when I first
caught wind of a rumoured 'Steve Taylor Tribute" album and immediately called
my doctor to see if he was keeping any secrets. If the truth can indeed by
told, I suppose the act of listening to each track and writing a remembrance
or two of things past may bring back mixed emotions: sighs of relief and
satisfaction ('My, this one's aged well'), minor embarrassments ('that snare
sound used to be hip, right?'), even morbid fascination ('whatever possessed
me to perform an entire song as a woman?'). On second thought, this could
turn out to be a lot like going to the dentist: prolonged X-Rays, muffled
voices mumbling second opinions, and the occasional sound in the background
of someone screaming. Let the drilling
commence."
Steve Taylor
Digitally remastered by Hank Williams at Mastermix
Compilations produced by Steve Taylor and John J. Thompson
Liner notes: Chris Willman
Song by song essays: Steve Taylor
Produced by Jonathan David Brown (tracks 1-10), Ian McDonald & Steve Taylor (11-16), Steve Taylor & Keith Bessey (17-18), The Beaufort Twins (19-28), Matt Wallace & Chagall Guever (29-31), Steve Taylor (32-34)
Management: Proper Management
PO Box 150888, Nashville, TN 37215
Booking: Jeff Roberts & Associates
PO Box 2437, Hendersonville, TN 37077
615/859-7040
Fan Club (USA): PO Box 150669, Nashville, TN 37215
Fan Club (UK & Eaurope): PO Box 94, London Swiv 4PH England
Art Direction: Buddy Jackson
Design: B. Middleworth
Photography: Ben Pearson
Thanks (listed alphabetically): Herb Allison, Randy Anderson, Bob Angelotti, David Benware, Holly Benyousky, Richard Bickersteth, Chuck and Soozi Bolte, Kent Talmadge Bowers, Steve Bowlby, Steve Brallier, Michael Brown, Tammy Brown, David and Sara Bruce, Terl and Juliet Bryant, Tony Campolo, Jim and Janice Chaffee, The Choir, Cora Cluver, Kerry and Julie Conner, Wayne Cook, Jonathan Cooke, Meredith Cork, Jeff Cowen, Kevin and Jan Craig, Crossroads Baptist Church, Roberta Croteau, Chuck Cummings, Tony Dummings, Debi Daniels, Bob Darden, John Davidson, Michael Dixon, Devlin Donaldson, Larry DuPont, Frank Edmondson, Paul Emery, Teresa Ensenat, Dave Etzen, Dale Fenton, Joey Fiamingo, Jimmy Fields, Cam Floria, Paul Franklin, Tex Frossard, Jacque Gibb, Steve Gilreath, Frank Gironda, Steve and Debbie Goomas, Thom Granger, Wally Grant, Richard Green, Tom Green, Greenbelt, Mary Gross, Os Guiness, Ian Hamilton, Jim Hancock, Malcolm Harper, Chet Harter, Chris Hauser, Jay Healy, Bill Hearn, Billy Ray Hearn, Michael Hodgson, Jim Hodson, Mark Hollingsworth, Glen Golmen, Dennis and Debbie Holt, Dave Huff, John Huie, Scott Huie, Chuck Hurewitz, I.M.S., JPUSA, Buddy Jackson, Wade Jaynes, Grank Jenks, Jack Kelly, Jim and Elma Krieg, Nancy Knox, Paul Kremen, Nancy Kronemann, Amy Kyker, Leen and Ria La Riviere, Tim Landis, Don Lawrence, Jenny Lockwald, Jim Long, Russ Long, Tic Long, Bob Ludwig, Roland Lundy, Philip Mangano, Rob Marshall, Brian Martin, Terry Mattingly, Simon and Hilary Mayo, Annie McCaig, Gary McCartie, Mark McCoin, Ian McDonald, Josh McDowell, Casey McGinty, Danny McGuffey, Glenda McNalley, Mike Mead, Al Menconi, DeAnne Meyer, Beth Middleworth, Norman Miller, Dave and Debbie Milligan, Don Milligan, Montrose First Baptist Youth Group, Cactus and Ellen Moser, Gerd Muller, the entire staff of Myrrh Records, Mike Nachtigal, Brian Quincy Newcomb, Jeff Quistad, Newsboys, Lynn Nichols, Gym Nicholson, David and Rebecca Nickel, Millie Paul, Shannon O'Shea, Lasse Olson, Stuart Ongley, Dave Parker, Ben Pearson, Victoria Pearson, Dave Perkins, Phil Perkins, Steve and Laurel Peters, Lars Peterson, Phil & John, Tim Philibosian, Dan Posthuma, Joey Powers, David Raven, Rez, Dan Rhodes, Steve Rice, Chris Richards, Dennis Rider, Jon Robberson, Dave Roberts, Jeff Roberts & Associates, Dan Russell, Ian Santiago, Francis Schaeffer, Dave Schiedt, David Schober, Roland Simmons, David Smallbone, Chuck Smith Jr., John Smith, Scott Smith, The Somervilles, the entire staff of Sparrow Records, Dona Spangler, Gary Stamler, Thom Starkey, Tim Stedman, Jeff and Kim Stone, Norman Stone, John Styll, Marlin Summers, John Sundberg, Tim Swift, Greg Szabo, Marek Szpendowski, The Taylor Clan, Harry Thomas, John J. Thompson, Dave and Debbie Thrush, John Tinker, Treff, Steve Turner, James Tweed, Lynn Van Matre, Rich Van Pelt, Barb Voorhees, Woody Waddell, Matt Wallace, Sheila Walsh, Ed Wannebo, Ray Ware, the entire staff of Warner Alliance, Alan Weed, Whitecross, Greg Wigler, Tom Willett, Chris Willman, Bobbi Wilson, Pip Wilson, Rob Woolsey, Word U.K., Paula Wright, John and Joe Wroe, Martin and Meg Wroe, Mike and Karla Yaconelli, Peter York, Steve Zeoli, and, always, Debbie.