In an ongoing series, Dw. Dunphy takes an occasional look back at Christian contemporary music (CCM) of the past and makes the case for a new audience to rediscover the best of it as great, lost pop music.
Next year marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Adam Again’s Gene Eugene. Born Gene Andrusco, he found fame at an early age as a child actor, most memorably as the young Darren Stevens on the TV series Bewitched. Later in life he was able to combine full-blooded funk, rock chops, a love of classic R&B from the likes of Bill Withers and Marvin Gaye, and the lyrics of Leonard Cohen and make it all stick in his version of CCM, probably the most unique and underrated in all of that subgenre’s history.
The band’s second album, Ten Songs by Adam Again (1988), was a bullhorn to staid and button-down listeners that this probably wasn’t their dad’s idea of Christian rock. If the cover of Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” wasn’t an indicator, the groove of “Tree House” and the sheer mournful weight of the closing “The Tenth Song” certainly was. Homeboys (1990) went even farther in describing through song some of the city’s dark side as the title cut detailed memories of a relatively happy childhood, even in the worst of landscapes. Gaye’s “Inner City Blues” gets a respectful but certainly not pedestrian run-through. The funk of “The Fine Line” tends to deceive. Listen to the lyrics about a man trapped inside his drug addiction and you get a vastly different impression than the fat party groove might impart.
The dichotomy between artist and the art is often easily reconciled by the public. In music, artists of all religious persuasions exist, yet their choice of faith doesn’t negatively affect their music; it may inform their art, but they’re never called on the carpet for it. Bruce Springsteen, for example, was born a Roman Catholic, and aspects of his religion can be found in his music (I certainly hear it in Nebraska), but it doesn’t dominate its description: Springsteen is not a “Catholic rock star,” and you probably wouldn’t immediately make the association. George Harrison, on the other hand, went deep into Hindu spiritualism, which appeared blatantly in his work. Still, the public accepted it. (Former Beatles always get the benefit of the doubt.)