Never went to Cornerstone, but a Christian friend of mine once drug me to Ichthus one year, billing it as the Woodstock of Christian music.
DC Talk was there. I was unimpressed. I mean, they showed bits of talent here and there, but it sounded just like everyone else that was there (except The Allies. They were actually pretty good).
I remain staunch in my agnosticism, however.
According to a story in the Roys Report (not a website in my heavy rotation):
How is it possible that I never heard of D.C. Talk or the Newsboys? 
I had heard of Icthus, but never went.
Most cool kids learned that DC Talk was lame. The big move was when they released Jesus Freak. Not only did they not write the songs, they did not play any of the instruments. And I include in concert. If you went to see them, other guys played the instruments while they just sang.
It was at that point most cool kids realized…wait…are these guys just lame?
They were a product much like many boy bands.
I liked Saviour Machine at the time. They were a big pull for me and were actually quite good. Here is the first song from their first album. Very different in the Christian music scene of the time.
Must be really niche. I’ve never heard of any of these people or their bands. But any Christian music I was ever exposed to didn’t make me eager to explore more.
One of my favorite ever bands clearly has Christian influences. That would be Chevelle. But the more albums they produced, the more fragmented and nonsensical their lyrics have become, so even with something like Vitamin R I’m not sure what they’re going on about.
And those band members are all related and pour their family angst into their music which is one reason I like them so much.
But they’re not trying to sell a message to anyone. They are just writing about their lives, which sometimes includes elements of faith.
I used to live in the region that eventually hosted the Cornerstone festival, which ended around 2012. It got NO press locally, even though sometimes there would be 20,000 people in attendance. I later heard that, not surprisingly, they usually didn’t get necessary mass assembly permits; they would just set up a stage, rent some Porta-Potties, and have it out on the farm.
TBH, I think it would have.
From what I’ve seen about the men he groomed and abused, it sounds like his victims were straight, no less!
It’s instructive to compare with Indigo Girls. Both of them are deeply Christian and their lyrics are strewn with Biblical references. Amy Ray is an out-and-out redneck evangelist (check out “Jesus Was a Walking Man”). But they never sold themselves as “Christian music” and their fans are mostly queer, and “Christian music” fans shun the Girls for being queer.
Modern scribes write in Jesus Christ
Everyone is free
And the doors open wide to all straight men and women
But they are not open to me
Emily Saliers, “Philosophy of Loss”
Most of all, Indigo Girls’ music is really good for all that it doesn’t sell itself as Christian.
Bushnell, IL?
Evangelical, right wing ‘christianity’. It is a hallmark of the whole right wing mentality. It doesn’t have much to do with actual Christianity. Enemies who are out to ruin everything are a necessity.
Martyrdom is a key component of Christianity and has been since the beginning. You can’t remove it and have it be the same religion.
Tsk, tsk, dudes, boastfulness comes under the “Vainglory” category of Pride in the list of the Seven Deadlies…
I actually lived in Quincy, but yes, the Bushnell location.
In the early 1990s, I was a big fan of the prog band King’s X, who didn’t call themselves a Christian band, at the time, but described themselves as a band made up of Christians. I actually figured that out after I discovered their music, and realized (correctly) in the mid 1990s that their faith was slipping, as did the quality of their music. They fell so far off my musical radar that when their singer/bassist, Doug Pinnick, came out in the late 1990s, I never heard about it until about 20 years later.
I HAD heard that the then-wife of their drummer, Jerry Gaskill, had been in a car accident that left her severely disabled, and then later found out this was not true; perhaps, the accident happened to someone with the same name? Not sure about that, but I did hear more reliably that at some point, they went through a really vicious divorce that included her trying to hire someone to kill him! I don’t know what happened to her in the legal department, or their children, custody-wise. I do know that all of them have put out solo albums, and regrouped in the past few years and made a new album, which I have heard but wasn’t impressed enough to actually buy.
p.s. I’ve long thought that a King’s X/Rush double bill would have been Da Bomb, but it never happened and won’t now. I sometimes watch the YouTube channel “Sea of Tranquillity”, which specializes in jazz, prog, and hard rock/heavy metal, and their main host, Pete Pardo, couldn’t name a band to which King’s X could be compared. I kept yelling, “Rush! Rush! RUSH!” at my TV screen, and also put that in the comments.
I was also a big Indigo Girls fan in their early days; the one concert I attended was not one of their better performances.
IASTR that there was a Doper who recently posted that they were at a big multi-stage metal fest, mostly composed of 80s hair bands and the like, and (presumably) he was walking behind one of the smaller stages. All he could think was, “I have no idea who this band is, but they are GOOD!” He walked around the corner, and it was none other than Stryper! He thought, “Sorry I made fun of you over the years, guys!”
People can be incredibly talented, but if they are performing original music and can’t write good songs, it’s for naught.
I had always heard Ted Kirkpatrick from Tourniquet(another Christian band) was one of the best drummers in metal.
Sadly, he died a few years ago. Saw him, with Tourniquet, a few times in Cornerstone. His drum solos were kind of amazing.
How much of that is Christianity and how much of that is adolescence? It seems to me that their music was primarily targeted towards young people at the peak age for “What will people think?” and concern for how they’d be labeled and whether they were cool and what subculture they were a part of.
I do think Jesus Freak was more about “people at school and in life will call me ‘Jesus Freak’” and how that is just part of being a Christian and dealing with it is tough.
Now Carmen had a few songs that were downright concerning. One of his whole songs is dedicated to the downfall of America from its core Christian founding. That’s right, Christian(and anti-gay) Nationalism. It’s OK; we all thought Carmen was LAME!
Carmen was incredibly talented, but yeah, his songs and acting parts WERE lame MHO.
I saw an interview with this book’s author on C-SPAN II’s “About Books” and read the book. It’s not for everyone, because it’s quite academic (footnotes, that kind of thing) but I personally found it interesting. BTW, the song “God Gave Rock & Roll To You” is best known as a Petra song remade by KISS, and it is and isn’t; it was originally recorded by Argent (of “Hold Your Head Up” fame); Petra wanted to re-record it with a few words changed, which Argent agreed to, and the KISS version is a true remake of the Argent song.
I haven’t been a Christian since adolescence, but it seems to me there are a lot of adults whining about religious persecution. See: Trump voters.
My friend would love that. I love Rush, too.
I’m not anti-theist, though I have some specific major issues with Christian theology. I am anti-whatever kind of Christianity is attempting a fascist takeover of America. Even though I came from an evangelical conservative context, even a Pentecostal context, modern-day evangelical Christianity has become unrecognizable from what I grew up with.