IT'S LIKE FINDING A LONG-LOST FRIEND

Have you ever heard a band and desperately wanted their music, yet no store stocked their albums? That's how I felt back in 1984 when a friend introduced me to a Los Angeles group called Daniel Amos. This Christian band didn't play the usual insipid music which my fellow church members offered me but real rock.

Back when I was a teenager, rock music was considered to be from the pit of hell. Some concerned Christians even warned me that the beat attracted demons and I might become possessed. How refreshing it was therefore when I discovered Larry Norman's music at the Edmonton Public Library in 1978. He wrote and sang genuine rock songs, not like the usual novelty attempts made by other bands to ride the religious pop gravy train. Larry was a committed Christian who put his complete trust in Jesus Christ.

Six years after that discovery, a preacher's son named Paul Morris introduced me to two wonderful Daniel Amos records. Not only did he play their Horrendous Disc and ¡Alarma! albums but he invited me to their concert while they were in Edmonton. I felt absolutely blown away at how fantastic the group's music was.

Though Paul made me a cassette copy of both albums, I still wished I owned the vinyl versions. Whenever I was at a Christian record store, I would enquire about Daniel Amos and get only blank stares from the clerks. As the years passed, my hope of finding even a used copy of Horrendous Disc or ¡Alarma! faded.

Only lately was I able to find the CD version of ¡Alarma! on Amazon and purchase it. To my delight, there was a second disc in the CD package containing unreleased tracks as well as alternate takes of the songs. Now I'm enjoying those memories of the summer of 1984 which the tunes bring to mind.

Since I know how to find even obscure artists on Amazon, I'm eager to buy all those albums which I taped or were given to me on cassette by friends. I've already bought many albums of German rock bands from the seventies and I hope to fill my shelves with many more memory-evoking recordings.

My love of obscure rock music and groups, considered wrongly as satanic, permeates my three memoirs. The first two are available from the Bruce Atchison's books page. How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity is stocked by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell's Books, and Virtual Bookworm Publishers.