Posted: 26 March 2010 at 8:56pm | IP Logged

There is a campaign running on Facebook to get a Christian song to No.1 in the charts for Easter. How many of you wonderful people in ATF land will be downloading the new Delirious single, History Maker, next week? If you want to know more use the link below!

http://www.facebook.com/invadetheairwaves?ref=nf

Posted: 27 March 2010 at 9:16pm | IP Logged

I have played bass on History Maker in a band where all the other members could have been my children, and I can understand a certain appeal it has, especially to the youth - in Germany too, where English is very popular. But I too have reservations. The claims of the song are very radical - not at all bad, but far to easy to sing on a surface level. We  need to think about what we really mean when we sing "We'll see dead men rise" or "I'm gonna (owch!) be a history maker in this land." Its a bit more than an acclamation of accepted Christian faith ! Will it still be true for us next week/month/year?

So I agree with Banksy. Sorry, Kingfisher; I don't think any of us would want to dampen your spirits. For myself, for Easter Sunday morning, I think I'd like to play "Halleluja" from the Signs of Change CD extras very loudly, based as it is on the mighty hymn "Christ the Lord is risen today". I don't care if it never gets to No. 1 (manipulated or otherwise), but it has more relevance to Easter for me.

Posted: 29 March 2010 at 6:07pm | IP Logged

The charts are manipulated by the music companies etc anyway. 

What the public listen to on the bbc is forced(ask Terry Wogan how much input he had in the latter years)

I remember not too long ago e mailing the bbc to preassurise play some of Robs' stuff.....how is that any different.?..If

Without some sort of fight back and trying to get certain songs or Christian messages into the charts at certain times then surely that is just bowing down to the restrictive powers that control the airwaves.

I didn't like Cliffs the lords prayer but remember a big Christian backed campaign to make sure it got to number 1 at Christmas as radio 1 refused to play it.The campaign worked.

My mate John Otway got into the charts at no.9 a few years back and Woolworths refused to stock it or acknowledge that it was in the official charts as the artist was too old for their customers........just making up the rules as they go along.

Control of the music business has changed alot over the years and I for 1 see no un christian reason why campaign groups should not try(through legal means) to get a Christian song on top of the charts for Easter.

Which one or who decides which one is a whole different debate but fundamentaly I can't see what is wrong with increasing Christian awareness at Easter.       

Posted: 29 March 2010 at 8:27pm | IP Logged

My life-long friend Stephen Deal .. co-founder of the theatre company we were in many years ago .. was responsible for the Cliff song. He suddenly thought of the idea in his kitchen,and got an Ivor Novello for it. George Michael descrbed it as vile. This is the same George Michael who gave us Wake Me Up Before You Go Go and Last Christmas. The song began as a finale for a mammoth tour we had set up in 1998. I did the military drumming for it live on stage. Paul Field asked (Sir) Cliff to sing it for the cd, and he liked it so much, he put out the single. Stephen bought a garden shed with the royalties, now named the Cliff Richard Millennium Shed. But the song was naff, written as a sugary, over the top musical finale, not as a single. That was Cliff's move.

My own thoughts on this Christian music in the charts debate is that it is so old hat. It's such an old fahioned and out-of-date approach. I thought we'd got past this obsession. But memories are short. It's been going on for 50 years. ATF were expected to do it in 1979, and every couple of years a new band is pounced on to fly the flag. Every five years, Buzz magazine would do a spread on the latest hopes .. invite some secular journalist in and force them to listen to hours of turgid, tedious pap and then sit back with folded arms and ask them what they thought of it. Usually not much.

But why do we do this? Why must we shove this stuff in their secular faces? Don't we like them? Outside the HMV in Bristol a preacher shouts all day long. All sodding day. And I want to go outside and tell him .. literally .. for the love of god, to shut up. Just shut up and learn to be salt. To stop shouting at me, and learn some subtlety.

I like to see Christians in the charts. And they are. Regularly. Christians are almost always in the chart, quietly making a difference. Being salt and light in a dark world. But not in the silly, rather smug look at us way that many would ask of them. The the very last thing I want to see in the charts is 'Christian' music, by which I mean that produced by the self-confessed purveyors of it, the so called CCM 'industry'. I find most of this stuff insular, unimaginative and incestuous. Why do virtually all worship leaders sound the same? Exactly the same? Why do vrtually all worship songs sound exactly the same? Exactly - the - same. Where's the creativity? Where's the pushing back of boundries?

Bill Mason .. yes he .. famously said that CCM was six years behind the times, but that the BMB were only six months behind. He acknowledged, albeit with some humour, that CCM never leads, it always follows. Why can't we lead?

If History Maker makes it to number one, it would make not the slightest difference. Because 1. it will have been hyped there, so 2. the press will be ,quite rightly, outraged by this fraudulant action, leading to 3. severe criticism of our dishonesty. It would do more harm than good.

Having said all that, I did rather like Len Magee.

Posted: 29 March 2010 at 11:29pm | IP Logged

Banksy, I know from your blog that your opinions are very considered, so I imagine you'd probably have "much more" to say than your short twitter! What you twit (just because it is a twit) might possibly come over as a knee jerk, no real thought required-reaction to buy the big issue, especially if it were to be just an Easter gesture. And I 'm not quite sure how it fits in to the music industry debate. I buy music because I or someone else likes it, and in this sense it has earned its purchase, (give me a free download, like Faith, Folk and Anarchy, and I'm really not complaining, because it's gold!) - but the reason I buy the Big Issue or its equivilent is not the same. I havn't seen it recently, but the street issues in Germany do not grab my reading attention particularly, to be honest. I buy it in order to help the sellers maintain some dignity. I respect the effort they have made to do something, even if the product doesn't greatly appeal. And in this sense, it only makes sense for me to do so as a habit, i.e. regularly, and even then in the full knowledge that its just a drop in the ocean.

So then, to do this "for Easter" (which is not what you actually said, but what might be interpreted...) would not be so very differerent from putting a song on peoples' lips, which sounds radically spiritual, but is rather too easy to sing, and actually more about me than God. If the Face Book goal were achieved, what would actually be achieved? Whether good or bad (go back, and see what Jules the knowledgable gnome writes - he may have a point), it hasn't got much to do with our being salt and light -has it?

But at the end of the day I don't think God has a problem with it, and I'm sure he honours all sincere impulses. He probably loves the music of ATF, Delirious, and Brotherhood of Man equally!

I appreciate the respect that exists in this forum, and so trust that disagreement & strong opinions will not strain the good basis we have. Kingfisher, what do you make of the reaction you've sparked? Give it to us straight!