THIS ALBUM CONTAIN(13-TRACKS)
1-I CAN'T TAKE MY EYES OFF OF YOU
2-THE GLORY ROAD
3-GET INTO THE BUS ALOHA
4-EVENGELINE
5-UNEASY LIEAS THE HEAD OF THE CONFIDENCE MAN
6-THE ORGAN BAR
7-DONA NIETCHE AND SUPER RACE
OF KICK BOXING UBER PARROTS
8-OUR NIGHT TO HOWL-TIME TO GO DANCING
9-SINS OF THE FATHER
10-TURN THIS OFF
11-LOVELAND
12-WHEN EVERYONE WORE HATS
13-MY HAND TO GOD
DANIEL AMOS-PREACHERS FROM OUTTERSPACE-1994
THIS ALBUM CONTAIN(14-TRACKS)
1-SHOTGUN ANGEL
2-ABIDIN
3-HAPPILY MARRIED MAN
4-SALVATION WINGS
5-HOUND OF HEAVEN
6-SECRET SCRIPTS & 3D GLASSES
7-HORRENDOUS DISC
8-POSSE IN THE SKY
9-MARY BAKER EDDY
10-I LOVE YOU # 19(DEMO)
11-YOU ALWASY RUN AWAY FROM LOVE(DEMO)
12-AS LONG AS I LIVE(DEMO)
13-I GET AROUND(DEMO)
DANIEL AMOS-BIBLIELAND-1994
THIS ALBUM CONTAIN(12-TRACKS)
1-BROKEN LADDERS TO GLORY
2-BIBLIELAND
3-THEO'S LOGIC
4-LOW CRAWLS & HIGH TIMES
5-BAKERSFIELDS
6-OUT IN THE COLD
7-THE BUBBLE BURSTS
8-PETE AND REPEAT
9-CONSTENCE AND UNIVERSE
10-I'LL GET OVER IT
11-SHE'S WORKING HARD
12-STONE AWAY
DANIEL AMOS-MOTORCYCLE-1993
THIS ALBUM CONTAIN(14-TRACKS)
1-BANQUET AT THE WORLD'S END
2-TRAPS,ENSNARES
3-HOLE IN THE WORLD
4-(WHAT'S COME)OVER ME
5-BUFFALO HILLS
6-GUILTY
7-MOTORCYCLE
8-WONDERFUL
9-SO LONG
10-MY FRONTIER
11-GRACE IS THE SMELL OF RAIN
12-NOELLE
13-WISE ACRES
14-SO LONG AGAIN
DANIEL AMOS-ALKOUN-1991
THIS ALBUM CONTAIN(11-TRACKS)
1-BIG,WARN,SWEET,INTERIOR CLOWING
2-IF YOU WANT TO
3-KALHOUN
4-I WILL RETURN
5-TRACKING THE AMOROUS MAN
6-VIRGIN FALL
7-GLORYHOUND
8-PRAYER WHEEL
9-NOTE TO ANNA
10-FATHER EXPLAINS
11-GATE OF THE WOLRD
DANIEL AMOS-LIVE BOOTLEG '82-1990
THIS ALBUM CONTAIN(13-TRACKS)
1-I LOVE #19
2-I'AM ON YOUR TEAM
3-FACES TO THE WINDOW
4-MALL ALL OVER THE WOLRD
5-EVERYONE'S FALLING DOWN
6-BABY GAME
7-THROUGHT THE SPEAKER
8-ALARMA!
9-LOVE HAS OPEN AMRS
10-HIT THEM(WITH LOVE)
11-HOUND OF HEAVEN
12-GHOST OF THE HEART
13-THE SURF SUIT:SURFIN'U.S.A/WIPE OUT/(NEAR-SIGHTED GIRL WITH APPROACHIN)TIDAL WAVE/ENDLESS SUMMER
DANIEL AMOS-DARN FLOOR,BIG BITE-2008
THIS ALBUM CONTAIN(25-TRACKS)
1-RETURN THE BEAT MENACE
2-STRANGE ANIMALS
3-DARN FLOOR,BIG BITE
4-EARTH HOLDHOUSE
5-SAFETY NET
6-PICTURES OF THE GONE WOLRD
7-DIVENE INSTANT
8-HALF LIGHT,EPOCH AND PHASE
9-THE UNATTAINABLE EARTH
10-THE SHAPE OF AIR
11-THE UNATTAINABLE EARTH(Instrumental Remix)
12-TURN THE BEAT MENACE(Instrumental Mix)
13-SAFETY NET(Live At Conerstone 1998)
14-INTERVIEW With Terry Taylor:Concept
15-INTERVIEW With Terry Taylor:Lyrics
16-INTERVIEW With Terry Taylor:Music With Cassette Demos
17INTERVIEW With Terry Taylor:Recording
18-INTERVIEW With Terry Taylor:The Band
19-INTERVIEW With Terry Taylor:Looking Back
20-PICTURE OF THE GONE WORLD(Instrumental Remix)
21-THE SHAPE OF AIR(Live At Cornerstone 2000)
22-HALF LIGHT.EPOCH AND PHASE(Instrumental Mix)
23-DARN FLOOR,BIG,BITE(Live At Cornerstone 1988)
24-THE UNATTAINABLE EARTH(Live AT Cornerstone 1988)
25-SACRED HEART(Demo Version)
DANIEL AMOS-DARN FLOOR-BIG BITE-1987
THIS ALBUM CONTAIN(10-TRACKS)
1-RETURN OF THE BEAT MENACE
2-STRANGE ANIMALS
3-DARN FLOOR-BIG BITE
4-EARTH HOLDHOUSE
5-SAFETY NET
6-PICTURES OF THE GONE WOLRD
7-DIVINE INSTANT
8-HALF LIGHT,EPOCH AND EPHASE
9-THE UNATTAINABLE EARTH
10-THE SHAPE OF EAIR
DANIEL AMOS-THE REVELATION-1986/1999
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THIS ALBUM CONTAIN(8-TRACKS)
1-FINALE:BERESHITH OVERTURE
2-LADY GOODBYE
3-THE WHISTLER
4-HE'S GONNA DO A NUMBER ON YOU
5-BETTER
6-SAIL ME AWAY
7-POSSE IN THE SKY
8-SOON
DANIEL AMOS-FEARFUL SYMMENTRY-1986
THIS ALBUM CONTAIN(10-TRACKS)
1-A SIGH FOR YOU
2-THE POOL
3-SLEEP SILENT CHILD
4-NEVERLAND BALLROOM
5-STRONG POINTS:WEAK POINTS
6-INSTRUCTION THRU FILM
7-WHEN MOONLIGHT SLEEPS(On The Frosted Hill)
8-SUDDEN HEAVEN
9-SHADOW CATCHER
10-BEAUTIFUL ONE
DANIEL AMOS-VOX HUMANA-1984
THIS ALBUM CONTAIN(12-TRACKS)
1-TRAVELOG
2-(IT'S THE EIGHTIES,SO WHERE'S OUR)ROCKET PACKS)
3-HOME PERMANET
4-IT'S SICK
5-WILLIAN BLAKE
6-DANCE STOP
7-LIVE AND LET LIVE
8-WHEN WOLRDS COLLIDE
9-AS THE WORLD TURNS
10-SHE'S ALL HEART
11-THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN
12-SANTUARY
DANIEL AMOS-DOPPELGANGER-1992
THIS ALBUM CONTAIN(15-TRACKS)
1-HOOLOW MAN
2-MALL(ALL OVER THE WORLD
3-REAL GIRLS
4-NEW CARS!
5-DO BIG BOYS CRY
6-YOUTH WITH A MACHINE
7-THE DOUBLE
8-DISTANCE AND DIRECTION
9-MEMORY LANE
10-ANGELS TUCK YOU IN
11-LITTLE CROSSES
12-AUTOGRAPHS FOR THE SICK
13-I DIDN'T BUILD IT FOR ME
14-HERE I AM
15-HOLLOW MAN(Reprise)
DANIEL AMOS-ALARMA!-1981
THIS ALBUM CONTAIN(16-TRACKS)
1-CENTRAL THEME
2-ALARMA!
3-BIG TIME/BIG DEAL
4-PROPS
5-MY ROOM
6-FACES TO THE WINDOW
7-CLOAK AND DAGGER
8-COLORED BY
9-C-&-D REPRISE
10-THROUGH THE SPEAKERS
11-HIT THEM
12-BAY GAME
13-SHEDDING THE MORTAL COIL
14-ENDLESS SUMMER
15-WALLS OF DOUBT
16-GHOST OF THE HEART
DANIEL AMOS-HORRENDOUS DISC-1981/2000
THIS ALBUM CONTAIN(9-TRACKS)
1-I LOVE # 19
2-HOUND OF HEAVEN
3-NEAR-SIGHTED GIRL WITH APPROACHING TIDAL WAVE
4-SKY KING(Out Across The Sky)
5-ON THE LINE
6-I BELIEVE IN YOU
7-MAN IN THE MOON
8-NEVER LEAVE YOU
9-HORRENDUS DISC
DANIEL AMOS-SHOTGUN ANGEL-1977/2001
THIS ALBUM CONTAIN(13-TRACKS)
1-DAYS AND NIGHTS
2-BLACK GOLD FEVER
3-PRAISE SONG
4-FATHER'S ARMS
5-MEAL
6-SHOTGUN ANGEL
7-FINALE:BERESHITH OVERTURE
8-LADY GOODBYE
9-THE WHISTLER
10-HE'S GONNA DO A NUMBER ON YOU
11-BETTER
12-SAIL ME AWAY
13-POSSE IN THE SKY
DANIEL AMOS-DANIEL AMOS-1978
THIS ALBUM CONTAIN(14-TRACKS)
1-JESUS IS JEHOVAH TO ME
2-THE BIBLE
3-ABIDIN
4-WILLIAN
5-PRELUDE:SERVANT'S PRAYER
6-DON'T LIGHT YOUR OWN FIRE
7-LOSERS AND WINNERS
8-WALKING ON THE WATER
9-RIDING ALONE
10-DUSTY ROAD
11-LOVE IN A YIELDED HEART
12-SKEPTIC'S SONG
DANIEL AMOS-ON VARIOUS-MARANATHA 5-1977
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THIS COMPILATION CONTAIN(10-TRACKS)
1-JERUSALEM BY GENTLE FAITH
2-AIN'T GONNA FIGHT IT BY DANIEL AMOS
3-MAYBY BY PARABLE
4-SYDNEY THE PIRATE BY MUSTERD SEED FAITH
5-FALLING BY FRED FIELD
6-SOMETHING HAPPENED TO YOU BY ERICK NELSON
7-SO MUCH LOVE BY BOB CULL
8-BRIGHT AND SHINING SON BY BETHLEHEM
9-GOLDEN AGES BY COMFORT BAND
10-PSALM 5 BY BILL SPROUSE & THE ROAD HOME
One of Contemporary Christian music's most enduring cult bands, Daniel Amos have taken their own idiosyncratic musical path since their mid-1970s beginnings. Singer/guitarist Terry Taylor has led the group through a host of membership changes and artistic shifts, creating an impressively diverse body of work in the process. Over the decades, the lyrical focus of the group has moved away from an explicit evangelical stance toward more personal commentaries on theological and cultural themes. Although Daniel Amos rarely play live, they returned to record-making after a five-year absence with Mr. Buechner's Dream in 2001. Named for two Old Testament prophets, Daniel Amos trace their beginnings to the San Jose, California, area. Taylor began writing songs at a young age; by his mid-teens, he was playing in a series of local rock combos, including the Scarlet Staircase and the Cardboard Scheme. The latter band was heavily influenced by the 1960s British Invasion, foreshadowing Taylor's Beatles-influenced songs of a decade later. The Cardboard Scheme opened for Van Morrison at a July of 1966 concert before breaking up shortly thereafter. After dabbling in drugs and exploring various religions, Taylor became aChristian in 1971. That same year, he joined forces with guitarist Timothy Warner and singer/percussionist Doug Montgomery to form Good Shepherd, a Christian-oriented country/rock group. His shift toward spiritual themes in his songwriting was natural and unpremeditated. "When I started writing songs about my newfound faith, I didn't think of it as being Christian music," he told Contemporary Musicians. "I wanted to say something about my discovery--I was excited about life and turning over a new leaf.... So I just sort of incorporated Christian lyrics into songs I was already writing at the time." In 1972 Warner left Good Shepherd, prompting Taylor to form another Christian country/rock combo, Jubal's Last Band. Shortly thereafter, the group moved from San Jose to Costa Mesa, California, where it became part of the thriving Christian music scene associated with Calvary Chapel. In 1974 Taylor and fellow Jubal guitarist Steve Baxter combined their talents with guitarist Jerry Chamberlain and bassist Marty Dieckmeyer to form Daniel Amos. A lineup change the following year resulted in Baxter leaving the fold and keyboardist Mark Cook and drummer Ed McTaggert joining the group. Maranatha Records (a Christian record label affiliated with Calvary Chapel) released Daniel Amos's self-titled debut album in 1976. Acoustic-oriented in sound, the band's initial effort displayed an upbeat, almost naïve sweetness. Such tunes as "Ain't Gonna Fight It" captured the starry-eyed glow of a newly converted believer. The songs on Daniel Amos preached the gospel in unambiguous terms. "In the beginning, because I was young, there was a real emphasis on evangelism," Taylor told Contemporary Musicians. "At one time, I thought that was primarily my calling, to evangelize through what I was doing musically.... And so, the sorts of songs that I wrote ... were insensitive to an audience at large. A lot of it was preaching to the choir." From Country Rock to New Wave Shotgun Angel, Daniel Amos's sophomore album, was issued by Maranatha in 1977. This song collection shows definite artistic growth, both lyrically and musically. Its tracks draw upon a potpourri of Southern California rock influences, from the Beach Boys and the Eagles to Steely Dan. Taylor's knack for mixing the divine and the ridiculous comes through in "Black Gold Fever" and "Meal," a pair of good-humored country/gospel tunes. "Father's Arms" expresses a strong message of faith in a sleek jazz/rock setting. Shotgun Angel's second side is devoted to a suite of songs based upon the Christian Bible's Book of Revelation; these include the giddily operatic "Better," mocking materialism, and "Lady Goodbye," a bittersweet farewell to the world. Daniel Amos grew to a sextet with the addition of percussionist Alex MacDougall shortly after Shotgun Angel's release. Hitting their stride creatively, they began to arouse interest beyond the confines of the Christian music world. The band was offered a contract by Warner-Curb Records, a mainstream label, in the late 1970s. Unfortunately, the deal fell through, largely due to a contractual battle between Daniel Amos and Solid Rock Records (founded by Christian rock pioneer Larry Norman). As a result, their album Horrendous Disc wasn't released for three years. When it finally appeared on the Solid Rock label in 1981, Horrendous Disc was hailed by many Christian music critics as a major breakthrough. Leaving its country leanings far beyond, the band fully emerged as a modern rock unit. "I Love You #19" is built around a ferocious lead guitar line, while "Sky King" and "Man in the Moon" feature elegantly atmospheric strings and harmonies. Many of the album's lyrics (written mostly by Taylor) comment on the fragility of the material world and the boundless power of God in sardonically humorous terms. By the time Horrendous Disc was released, Daniel Amos had slimmed down to a quartet consisting of Taylor, Chamberlain, Dieckmeyer, and McTaggert. Signing with the Benson Company-distributed Newpax label, this lineup recorded Alarma!, the first of four interrelated albums collectively called the Alarma Chronicles. Intentionally jagged and jarring, Alarma! comments on the alienation and materialism of the modern world in tunes like "Faces to the Window" and "Colored By." Its treatment of spiritual topics is often subtle and tinged with satire, unusual for Christian music of the time. Replacing Dieckmeyer with Tim Chandler on bass, the group released Doppelganger in 1983, a further indictment of mankind's sorry state. Such cuts as "New Car," "Real Girls," and "Mall (All Over the World)" overlay portraits of soulless thrill-seekers and consumers on top of cleanly rendered pop/rock tracks. "Hollow Men" invokes the bleak poetic visions of T.S. Eliot to convincing effect. Touring in support of Doppelganger, Daniel Amos created an elaborate stage show, featuring Taylor and his bandmates wearing masks with battery-operated lightbulbs in their mouths. Some fans were disturbed by the dark tinge of these concerts, and the band was heckled as well as cheered. Chamberlain left Daniel Amos prior to the recording of 1984's Vox Humana, which features a more prominent keyboard sound courtesy of new member Rob Watson. If anything, the satiric content became even sharper this time out, with "Home Permanent" and "The Incredible Shrinking Man" skewering '80s-style conformity. Reminiscent at times of the jittery New Wave sounds of Devo and Wall of Voodoo, Vox Humana lacks some of the graceful melodicism heard on previous Daniel Amos offerings. This lack is offset somewhat by "Sanctuary," the album's hymn-like closing number. The Alarma Chronicles series concluded with Fearful Symmetry, released by Frontline (a Benson-associated label) in 1986. Taking its title from a line in a William Blake poem, the album features the guitar/keyboard contributions of new member Greg Flesch. By turns brooding and ethereal, this song collection tempers its caustic ironies with such serene moments as "Beautiful One." As ever, the band had a knack for odd genre combinations, as evidenced by the New Wave country stomp "Sudden Heaven." On Christian Music's Far Edge Taken in sum, the Alarma Chronicles were a bold step artistically, far more adventuresome than most Christian pop music of the time. Commenting on the Alarma albums after their rerelease as a CD boxed set in 2000, Phantom Tollbooth reviewer Terry Wandke noted that Daniel Amos "used biting wit and social critique and set it to music that pushed the envelope of Christian music in the eighties." Unfortunately, such creativity didn't lead to wide exposure or popularity. Looking back over the band's career since the 1980s, Taylor told Contemporary Musicians that "Christian radio left us long ago.... I think we don't compose feel-good music--I think it's honest music, and I think sometimes honesty is a threat to our lives and it's something we'd rather not hear. It doesn't fit into the format." Undaunted, Taylor led his band through a period of creative change, losing Watson and moving away from synthesizers toward a more basic guitar-centered sound. For a number of albums, Daniel Amos shortened their name to DA, then returned to their original moniker in the mid-1990s. The group released much of its 1980s output on various self-launched custom labels--including Alarma and Refuge--distributed by the Benson Company. A number of releases on Frontline (another Benson-backed label) followed. For much of the 1990s, the group distributed albums on its Stunt label through Brainstorm Records before signing with Word for several releases. During this period, the group's music took on an abrasively hard edge, while its lyrics continued to ponder theological issues with intelligence and humor. The title track to 1987's Darn Floor, Big Bite, for instance, compares man's quest for knowledge of God to a gorilla's attempt to understand an earthquake. Taylor's gifts as a lyricist sometimes celebrate the simple wonders of creation as well--"Grace Is the Smell of Rain," from the band's 1993 album Motorcycle, has a luminous country tinge to it. As a vocalist, Taylor strained against his limits, often shouting out his songs with a preacher's righteous fervor. Keeping the Cult Alive Unlike most Contemporary Christian music groups, Daniel Amos were unafraid to criticize their fellow believers. The title track to the 1994 release Bibleland excoriates Christians who trivialize their faith. As ever, though, Taylor's lyrics temper expressions of outrage with zany humor and a genuine love of pop kitsch. The 1995 release Songs for the Heart manages to balance such weird interludes as "Donna Nietche And Her Super Race of Kick Boxing Uber Parrots" with serious spiritual paeans like "My Hand to God." During the 1980s, Taylor began to delve into side projects outside of Daniel Amos. His first solo album, Knowledge & Innocence, appeared on the Shadow label in 1986. His 2000 solo work Avocado Faultline, released on Silent Planet, was a deeply personal effort featuring a tribute to his father, "Papa Danced on Olivera Street." A number of collaborations with musical peers have kept him busy as well. Together with fellow Christian singer/songwriters Derri Daugherty, Eugene Andrusco, and Mike Roe, Taylor formed the Lost Dogs, a country-rock unit, in 1992. This genial combo scored a Christian radio hit in 1993 with "Pray Where You Are" and survived the unexpected death of Andrusco in 2000 to continue actively recording and touring. Taylor also joined forces with present and former Daniel Amos bandmates Chamberlain, Chandler, Flesch, and Watson to form the Swirling Eddies, a comedy-slanted Christian group that released several albums in the 1990s. Since the late 1990s, Daniel Amos have recorded and performed live only sporadically. Taylor, Flesch, Chandler, and McTaggert have remained the core band, working with guest players in the studio on occasion. A two-decade retrospective, Our Personal Favorite World Famous Hits, was released by KMG Records in 1998. After a five-year hiatus from recording, the band released Mr. Buechner's Dream on the Galaxy 21 Music label in 2001. This limited-edition two-disc CD found the group in vigorous form, examining questions of Christian faith in tunes like "Ribbons and Bows" and "Small Great Things" with its trademark quirky humor and sure melodic touch. Reviewing the CD, ChristianityToday.com praised Taylor's "knack for expressing timeless truths with originality" and hailed Mr. Buechner's Dream overall as "a brilliant and remarkably well-crafted Christian rock album." Since the 1980s, Daniel Amos have been sustained by a limited but intensely loyal fan base. In evaluating his band's fortunes, Taylor takes a philosophical attitude. "It gets a little exasperating that there isn't a wider audience," he confessed to Contemporary Musicians. "But I love music so much that it really doesn't phase me or keep me from continuing to do it. I know that my legacy by and large is to my children. They're going to be able to look back on Dad's records and go, 'Here was a guy who struggled with his faith but always believed. He's left something of value and worth to us.' That's important to me." For the greater part of its history, there has been nothing quite as unhip as Christian rock — taking one's own grandmother to spring break might come close, but otherwise it's hard to imagine anything else as off-putting as contemporary Christian music (cCm) and its usually laughable combination of outdated musical styles and shallow, simplistic lyrics. The overwhelming majority of it has existed mainly to offer Christian youngsters a guilt- free alternative to the Devil's music. If it wasn't cool with God to enjoy those nasty boys in Mötley Crüe, well, there was always Stryper for a similar (but safer) thrill. For the most part, secular music fans couldn't have cared less, and cCm fans were quick to cry religious intolerance when it seemed to them their music was being slighted. (That, of course, ignores several thousand years of the Lord's music, from Gregorian chants to bluegrass and gospel, all of which has been widely embraced beyond church walls). But where traditional music styles communicate spiritual concerns in ways that are universally powerful and moving — Mahalia Jackson or the Carter Family can bring atheists to tears — cCm speaks its own, exclusivist language. It's meaningful to the initiated, but puzzling themes and jargon can be off-putting for the heathen masses. Plus, Christian music's segregation from the mainstream was voluntary — it was marketed directly to the faithful through a network of Christian bookstores. It's not hard to understand mainstream indifference: why would anyone go out of their way to seek out lousy music with lyrics they suspect are condemning them to Hell? Pity, then, the poor artists who value artistic integrity and creative expression and found themselves trapped in such an unpromising milieu. They became a cult within a cult — part of a scene which for the most part reviled them for not fitting in, which itself was reviled by the world at large for generally sucking. But yet they persevered, and by the early-to-mid-'80s, such artists as the 77s, the Choir, Lifesavers, Mark Heard, Charlie Peacock, Adam Again and Leslie (Sam) Phillips had created bodies of work that deserved attention outside their original market. Despite lyrics more concerned with spiritual matters than most, the main thing separating them from such respected and openly Christian mainstreamers as U2, Bruce Cockburn, the Alarm, the Call, Maria McKee and T Bone Burnett was that the "Christian" musicians had the bad business sense to have signed with Christian labels. By the next generation of alternative Christian bands — MxPx, Sixpence None the Richer, Creed, Jars of Clay, Switchfoot and POD — found mainstream succes, while labels like Tooth & Nail had become accepted and respected by the music business at large, the elder statesmen of the movement had moved on, concentrating on production or day jobs in the music industry to pay the bills. The ground zero of Christian alternative rock is Orange County's Daniel Amos (band name courtesy of the Bible's table of contents page). Nearly every underground Christian band was inspired by or in some way connected with them. Stubborn, eccentric, fearlessly (and sometimes foolishly) confrontational, openly Christian but more inclined to whack believers over the head than try to flatter or patronize them, DA have followed their own muse for three decades now, veering from thoughtful and serious to howlingly goofy with little or no warning. Starting out as a Poco-ish country rock band in the early '70s Jesus rock realm, DA turned into the musical equivalent of Star Trek's Borg: assimilating influences of every kind into a unique whole. Led by the brilliant and mercurial Terry Scott Taylor, DA have gleefully tossed the Beatles, the Byrds, Devo, Talking Heads, the Sex Pistols, XTC, Echo and the Bunnymen, both Elvises and Love (whose "7 and 7 Is" has long been a DA concert staple) into the blender with C.S. Lewis, Billy Graham, St. Augustine and William Blake, with dashes of Monty Python and Sheb Wooley thrown in for good measure. The first two albums document DA's country-rock phase and offer a little insight into mid-'70s California Christian culture. With airbrushed cover art, mellow- groovin' music and Late, Great Planet Earth lyrics, Daniel Amos and Shotgun Angel are time capsules from the spiritual side of the Me Decade. Side two of Shotgun Angel is the first indication of DA's future eclecticism, incorporating the Beatles and prog rock into the mix for a sidelong dramatization of the second coming of Christ and the end of the world. Imagine Genesis' "Supper's Ready" written and performed by the Eagles — horrific but fascinating. The opus was later repackaged with commentary by radio evangelist Chuck Smith and reissued as The Revelation. DA delved further into rock on Horrendous Disc. The album contains few traces of country music beyond an Eagles harmony here or there. Guitarist Jerry Chamberlain's fuzzed-out riff (which is remarkably similar to the Buzzcocks' "Nothing Left," but given the time frame this is probably coincidental) on the opener "I Love You #19" announced that Daniel Amos was paying attention to the emerging new wave movement. The album also contains two other songs considered among DA's earliest classics: "Hound of Heaven" and "(Nearsighted Girl with Approaching) Tidal Wave." Due to the quirky nature and business theories of the Solid Rock label, Horrendous Disc sat unreleased for three years, and was actually beaten to the market by DA's next album. Alarma! began the ambitious Alarma Chronicles series, DA's state of the union for modern American Christianity. Strongly influenced by Devo, Talking Heads and White Music / Go 2-era XTC, Alarma took the church to task for being insular and self-satisfied while the world around it fell to pieces. The music is dark and danceable, a cross between Wall of Voodoo and The Teardrop Explodes, while Taylor's lyrics are harsh in their attacks on complacency and indifference. Doppelganger, the second chapter of The Alarma Chronicles, further examines contemporary spirituality, lampooning the extravagances of evangelicals and the rampant materialism of the American church. The third chapter, Vox Humana, takes on science and religion, examining where they intersect and how they both tend to let people down. Musically, the two albums push further into new wave and alternative rock and resemble contemporaneous work by Oingo Boingo, Wire, Shriekback and the Cure. Taylor's first solo album, Knowledge and Innocence, is a more somber affair than the anything- goes aesthetic of DA. A textured meditation on birth and death, it weds intricate arrangements to introspective lyrics with impressive results. The follow-up, A Briefing for the Ascent, delves further into the topic of death and was composed as his grandmother lay dying. The music has an epic Phil Spector sweep, matching the grand themes of faith, fear and loss. There's a first-rate cover of the Beatles' "Long, Long, Long" (George Harrison's spiritualism has always resonated strongly with the alt- Christian musicians.) Ascent is a powerful album: honest, painful but hopeful. Fearful Symmetry, which concludes The Alarma Chronicles on a strong but down note, was released around the same time as Ascent and shares its solemn tone. The lyrics of sin and loss shade hope with despair and resignation. Despite DA's offbeat wit and oddball touches, the overarching feel is dark. Songs which might have sounded goofy on other albums turn deadly serious here, from the Ultravox-does-a-Mexican-hat-dance "Neverland Ballroom" to the Chinese-disco-with-English-heraldic-horns of "Strong Points, Weak Points." Daniel Amos set out to take the measure of American Christianity and wasn't pleased with a culture more concerned with acquisition and political power than with compassion and forgiveness. Fearful Symmetry is DA's best album, ending the era of the band's most ambitious explorations. The Alarma Chronicles were later gathered and released as a three-disc set with a commemorative book. It's a nice set with some annoying oversights: when dividing four albums onto three discs, it would have been sensible to list the tracks as they appear on the discs rather than on the original albums. DA began its next era with Darn Floor, Big Bite, an album that is very close to Fearful Symmetry's equal. Named after Koko the gorilla's sign language description of an earthquake, the album deals with humanity's inability to fully comprehend or communicate the ideas of life, the universe and everything. The tone is much lighter than previous releases, like sunrise after a long and dark night. Taylor's songwriting is in top form, skewering televangelists (a favorite topic) on "Return of the Beat Menace." DA's most accessible album. In 1988, DA morphed into a sideband, the Swirling Eddies. Adopting jokey pseudonyms and giving longtime drummer/art director Ed MacTaggert a vacation (the subject of the supremely silly hula-dancing "Ed Takes a Vacation"), they made Let's Spin, an album that skews completely to the humorous side of DA's music. It's fun but lightweight. Taylor's humor can be brilliant, but a little goes a long way. The second Swirling Eddies album, Outdoor Elvis, is much better. Joined by Adam Again's Gene Eugene (here referred to as Prickly Disco), the Eddies tackle belief systems of every type and find large reserves of hypocrisy and lunacy in all of them, from Christian universities to the emerging cult of Elvis. Balancing nuttiness with well-aimed potshots, it's an extremely pissed-off album disguised as a good-time party disc. Daniel Amos returned with Kalhoun. Released in the aftermath of the first Gulf War, it casts a skeptical eye towards American imperialism and the attendant "God on our side" mentality. The music is straightforward, stripping off many of the new wave elements the band had accumulated through the '80s. If previous albums sometimes sounded like Split Enz, this leans more towards Crowded House. Though the lyrics never mention him by name, they have a clear undercurrent of distrust of George H.W. Bush. Unquestioning group think is targeted in "Big, Warm, Sweet Interior Glowing," as Taylor warns of following anyone just because they've wrapped themselves in God and the flag, while "Father Explains" is an attempt to explain war to his child. The anti-Bush sentiment is made explicit on the Lost Dogs' debut, Scenic Routes. A songwriters' collective of Taylor, Gene Eugene, the 77s' Mike Roe and the Choir's Derri Daugherty, the Lost Dogs were something of an alt-Christian Traveling Wilburys. For the most part, the album is good-natured folk-rock, but on "Bush League," Taylor and Eugene take aim at Bush I as directly as Eddie Vedder would at Bush II a decade later. How this song ever snuck into Christian bookstores is anyone's guess. It can't have earned them many friends, but all four Dogs by this point had pretty accepted their status as the fringiest of fringe artists. The second Lost Dogs album, Little Red Riding Hood, gained a bit of notoriety for Roe's Beach Boys pastiche, "Jesus Loves You, Brian Wilson," an odd little number urging the troubled genius to get born again. Back in DA land, Motor Cycle takes a psychedelic journey through an imaginary landscape. Reference points would be XTC's Skylarking, the Left Banke and Pet Sounds. On several cuts, the kitchen sink approach to pop psychedelia anticipates the Elephant 6 bands by several years ("Traps, Ensnares" sounds especially like Neutral Milk Hotel). In contrast to Motor Cycle's ornate arrangements, Bibleland strips things way back. Taylor, Chamberlain and Greg Flesch kick up a snarling three-guitar attack, making it the hardest rocking DA album since Horrendous Disc and the closest the band has ever come to straight-ahead punk. The thematic concept revisits many of the concerns of The Alarma Chronicles, again harshly criticizing thecommodification of religion. In a sign of how on-target the satire can be, an actual amusement park bearing a strong resemblance to the imaginary one described in the title track opened in Florida several years after the release of Bibleland. The next Swirling Eddies release, Zoom Daddy, started as a game. Eugene and bassist Tim Chandler would suggest the most outlandish song titles they could think of, leaving it to Taylor to write the songs, resulting in such tunes as "I Had a Bad Experience With the CIA, and Now I'm Going to Show You My Feminine Side" and "God Goes Bowling." It's all predictably daffy, but Taylor manages to shoehorn more emotion and insight into the mix than one would think possible, turning "Art Carney's Dream" into a moving rumination on unworthiness and failure. Taylor took a similar approach on the next DA album. Coming across a thrift store album entitled Songs of the Heart, Taylor built a song cycle based on the imagined lives of the 1950s couple pictured on the cover. Beginning with a rendition of "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You," Songs of the Heart (Taylor lifted both the title and artwork for his release) traces the relationship of Bud and Irma Akendorf from courtship through Bud's death, with an odd pitstop along the way ("Donna Nietche and Her Super Race of Kick Boxing Uber Parrots"). Taylor speak-sings several cuts a la Stan Ridgway, an artist his work has often echoed. An expanded version of Songs of the Heart was later issued as When Everyone Wore Hats. Sacred Cows is an album of irreverent covers of cCm standards. Amy Grant's "Baby Baby" is the only song here that would be familiar to most people; the rest are from the bland sorts of acts reviled by Christian hipsters. On Sacred Cows, the Swirling Eddies shoot fish in a barrel for the amusement of a very limited audience. Daniel Amos took a back seat for the next several years, as Taylor concentrated on resurrecting his solo career and doing time in the Lost Dogs. Green Room Serenade is rockier than any of the Dogs' earlier releases, distinguished by a cover of Leonard Cohen's "If It Be Your Will." The band's next album, Gift Horse, returned to the mellower folk and country rock of Scenic Routes. As always, all four Dogs bring their own songwriting to the mix. Taylor's career took another turn in the mid-'90s as he began composing music for video games. Asked to create the soundtrack for Neverhood, a game featuring clay characters, he delivered an absurdly wild opus based on the music he imagined would be created by creatures made of modeling clay. It's not too far removed from the Residents' explorations of the music of imagined societies, though nowhere near as unsettling. The follow-up, Imaginarium, contains that flatulent adolescent doggerel classic, "Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit." John Wayne, the next proper Taylor solo album, has little in common with his '80s releases. Where those were deeply personal and introspective, this is close to a typical Daniel Amos album. Employing a wide variety of styles, Taylor takes a tour of his Southern California cradle, viewing it through the prisms of John Wayne (the actor) and John Wayne (the OC airport). Real Men Cry, the first Lost Dogs disc following Gene Eugene's sudden death in 2000, reflects on that loss with "Three Legged Dog." Unlike earlier Dogs discs, Taylor did all the songwriting on Real Men Cry (save for Roe's "Lovely Man"). Continuing the rootsy sound of Gift Horse, it's similar to Tom Petty or John Mellencamp. Taylor's next solo disc, Avocado Faultline, follows in the same vein, and is a lovely, introspective work. DA returned in 2001 with the sprawling Mr. Buechner's Dream, a lush and musically diverse double album. Drawing inspiration from theologian Frederick Buechner, Taylor and company craft a work that draws on all their usual sources (Beatles, Beach Boys, Clash and new wavers like Tears for Fears) and finds them in stylistic command throughout. Along with Fearful Symmetry and Darn Floor, Big Bite, one of DA's best. Nazarene Crying Towel establishes Taylor once and for all as the chief songwriter for the Lost Dogs. Roe contributes one solo composition, one collaboration with Daugherty and several with Taylor. More than ever, the Lost Dogs have become a vehicle for Taylor to revisit his long abandoned country-rock roots. Echoing the Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers and Poco, Nazarene Crying Towel drops Taylor back in the neighborhood the first two Daniel Amos albums occupied three decades earlier. On Mutt, Taylor, Roe and Daugherty bring songs from their own bands to the Lost Dogs. The concept is not too far removed from the self-covering approach of Sparks' Plagiarism. Roe's Byrds homage, "The Lust, the Flesh, the Eyes and the Pride of Life," is one of the standouts of his 77s catalog and is the best song here. The Reverend Edward Daniel Taylor disc is a compilation of tracks from DA, the Swirling Eddies and Taylor's '80s solo work. Our Personal Favorite World Famous Hits is a DA collection; The Beary Vest compiles the Swirling Eddies; and Glimpses of Grace gathers up Taylor's solo efforts. When Worlds Collide is a tribute album featuring such DA admirers as Starflyer 59, Poole and Big Takeover columnist Jeff Elbel(http://www.holymetalrob.com/)
