Scott Toderash – Page 8

Darrell Mansfield Band – Live – 1983

Recorded in January 1980 and released on MRC in 1983, this live album features mainly songs from Darrell’s Get Ready album. The concert was recorded on a 2 track system at Calvary Chapel in California. The Get Ready album was released in 1980, so these songs were probably completely unknown to the audience at the time.

This band knows how to entertain. The live versions of these songs give them plenty of life. Darrell always has had a great stage presence, and he brings it out here.

MRC was not Darrell’s regular record label, and in fact this is the only album of his released by them. Darrell was signed to Polydor at the time and appears courtesy of Polydor.

The Amazing Grace guitar intro to “Mr. Rock and Roll” is the perfect setup for this song. As often happens, this fast paced tune is even faster live and the band just hums through it.

The band does an extremely polished version of “That’s Alright” from Darrell’s 1979 debut solo album. They catch the power of this song perfectly, and Darrell’s harmonica playing abilities are really let loose.

Track Listing:
1 – LIfesaver
2 – Mr. Rock And Roll
3 – That’s All Right
4 – Heaven Southwestern
5 – Power Of Love
6 – Get Ready

Credits:
Arranged By – The DMB
Artwork – Rick Griffin
Bass Guitar – Jimmy Perez
Drums – Donny Vosburgh
Electric Guitar – Tony Dean
Electric Guitar [Rhythm] – Dennis Carothers
Keyboards – Jeff Lams
Lead Vocals, Harmonica – Darrell Mansfield
Photography By – Chuck Schmid

Jerusalem – Volume 1 – 1978

Beakthrough Swedish rock reached North America in 1978 thanks to Jerusalem and the vision of Ulf Christiansson. At that time there was precious little rock’n’roll available in the CCM scene, as the metal breakout of the late 80s was still a decade away.

Jerusalem are the Swedish pioneers of hard rock that parallel what Resurrection Band were doing in Chicago, but with a European stamp.

Everything about this band and this debut album is pure fun, pure rock, and pure CCM. They could have been a Swedish April Wine or some other band. The fact that they chose record a separate English version of their albums was a bit of a struggle for them, but it was a choice that allowed them to become a worldwide sensation over the next few years.

Track Listing:
1 – Noa – 3:30
2 – Jesus Is The Most Fantastic – 2:23
3 – Maybe – 4:22
4 – Daddy Who Has Made – 3:50
5 – Mr. Ego – 3:22
6 – Come To Me – 3:40
7 – If You Only Care To Listen – 4:08
8 – Neutral – 2:42
9 – Days Passing By – 4:54
10 – What If Jesus Is Right – 3:34
11 – High Tide – 5:26

Credits:
Bass – Bertil Sörensson
Drums – Danne Gansmoe
Keyboards – Dan Tibell
Vocals, Guitar – Ulf Christiansson

Leslie Phillips – Black and White in a Grey World – 1985

Black and White in a Grey World was Leslie Phillips’ third of four albums on Myrrh Records, once again produced by Dan Posthuma.

The songs on this record sound just like her but a little older. She is more mature in music, in delivery, and with even deeper songwriting than on Dancing With Danger. There are still plenty of praise songs and messages of encouragement here. Later, Leslie would say that she felt a lot of pressure from the record company to record certain kinds of songs and that is why she eventually left to go to Virgin Records.

Leslie does a great job of pulling in the pop/new wave high energy sound into her her songs without watering down any message. This album is very well done and deserves even more critical acclaim than it got.

Tracklist
1 – Black And White In A Grey World – 4:20
2 – Tug Of War – 3:20
3 – When The World Is New – 4:31
4 – Psalm 55 – 3:48
5 – Your Kindness – 4:03
6 – The More I Know You – 5:00
7 – Smoke Screen – 3:37
8 – You´re My Lord – 4:13
9 – Walls Of Silence – 4:54
10 – You´re The Same – 4:14

Credits:
Backing Vocals – Tata Vega
Bass – Nathan East, Neil Stubenhaus
Drums – Carlos Vega, John Robinson
Guitar – Dan Huff
Keyboards – Alan Pasqua
Mixed By – Bill Schnee
Percussion – Paulinho Da Costa
Producer – Dan Posthuma

Classic Petra – Back To The Rock Live – 2011

Petra recorded this album (using the name Classic Petra) on November 20th, 2010 at Trinity City Music Hall in Hendersonville TN.

Picking 12 songs to perform and record out of a catalog as large as theirs must have been a difficult process however I think they did a great job. The choices are a wide variety of their material and I believe they left out some of their biggest hits quite intentionally. Because of that, this retro release is just about perfect.

Track Listing:
1 – Bema Seat – 4:38
2 – Clean – 3:32
3 – Angel Of Light – 4:45
4 – Rose Colored Stained Glass Windows – 4:43
5 – Godpleaser – 5:07
6 – Second Wind – 4:55
7 – More Power To Ya – 3:37
8 – Let Everything That Hath Breath – 4:29
9 – Grave Robber – 5:24
10 – Adonai / Back To The Rock – 9:21
11 – Too Big To Fail – 4:50

Credits:
Art Direction, Coordinator [Project Coordinator] – Mark Kelly
Bass Guitar, Vocals – Mark Kelly
Booking – H2O Artist Agency
Design [Art Design / Creation] – Julie Sturgeon
Drums – Louie Weaver
Engineer [2nd Engineer] – Jon Blass
Engineer [Live Tracking Engineer] – Greg Malenovsky
Engineer [Mix Engineer] – John Jaszcz
Guitar, Vocals – Bob Hartman
Keyboards, Vocals, Producer, Edited By [Studio Editing], Engineer [Tracking Engineer], Engineer [2nd Engineer] – John Lawry
Lead Vocals – Greg Volz
Legal [Legal Counsel] – Lannie J. Cates
Management [Band] – Bob Bender Productions
Management [Business] – Kim Hartman
Photography By – Jon LeMay

Amy Grant – Tennessee Christmas – 2016

This is Amy Grant’s second Christmas album, her first one being some 30 years earlier.

This album includes appearances by her husband Vince Gill.

Track Listing:
1 – Tennessee Christmas – 4:27
2 – To Be Together – 4:11
3 – Christmas For You And Me – 3:04
4 – Melancholy Christmas – 3:02
5 – December – 3:29
6 – White Christmas – 2:23
7 – Joy To The World – 3:08
8 – I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm – 3:24
9 – Baby, It’s Cold Outside – 3:15
10 – Christmas Don’t Be Late – 3:16
11 – Still Can’t Sleep – 3:11
12 – Another Merry Christmas – 2:22
13 – O Come, All Ye Faithful – 3:07

Credits:
Executive-Producer – Peter York
Producer – Ed Cash (tracks: 7,9,11,12), Mac McAnally, Marshall Altman (tracks: 3,4,6)

Randy Stonehill – Born Twice – 1971

This is Randy’s debut record from 1971 or maybe 1973. This copy is marked 1973. He has another release from 1973, “Get Me Out of Hollywood” but this isn’t that one.

Side one is a live recording that sounds a little like a church basement, but also a lot like an old school coffee house performance. The crowd is incredibly courteous, completely silent during the songs and responsive to each one. You can almost picture someone sitting in front of Randy holding a little microphone and a hand held cassette tape recorder. I think it was a higher quality affair than that, but it is this intimate.

Side two is a series of studio songs, several of which would later be recorded in more famous versions by Larry Norman. Some were released with different song titles. Larry produced this album, so it’s a little unclear how the songwriting credits were supposed to work. In particular, the song “Norman’s Kitchen” ended up on Larry’s 1990 album “Home At Last” titled “Sitting In My Kitchen”

This is a rarely heard treat that shows us the early start of Randy Stonehill, who is still going strong with a busy touring schedule over 45 years after recording this.

Track Listing:
1 – I Need You
2 – Hand In The Hand
3 – He’s Got The Whole World
4 – Help Me Lord
5 – Thank You
6 – Never Can Repay
7 – All Right Now
8 – Passing Stranger
9 – I Love You
10 – Christmas Time
11 – Norman’s Kitchen

Credits:
Producer, Arranged By, Photography By – Larry Norman

Larry Norman – bARCHAEOLOGY / Labor of Love – 1984

The songs on Labor of Love are a refreshingly different sound to hear from Larry Norman. They are far less brooding, and much less singer-songwriter or blues artist approach to songs. The reason? These songs are written by Tom Howard.

Labor of Love is one of 3 records included in the bARCHAEOLOGY boxed set released in 1984. Labor, and Letter of the Law, another of the 3 records in the set are comprised mainly of songs written by Tom Howard. There was also an album released called Quiet Night, under the name “Larry Norman & The Young Lions” although there is no evidence that the Young Lions were anyone other than Larry and his brother Charly. Actually that’s a pretty credible theory.

Larry was promoting Tom Howard on the Solid Rock label, and produced one album for him. Apparently at one point Larry decided that if he recorded some of Tom’s songs, they would be easier to promote, and it would result in better album sales for Tom.

There isn’t any evidence that this was a big boost for Tom Howard’s career, but he did have a few albums out on his own, including the one on Solid Rock Records.

There are a couple of “L’Etudes” tracks here, which are the only pieces written by Larry on this record. They serve as interludes between some of the songs.

Track Listing:
1 – Where His Love Touches Down
2 – Let The Master Make It Right
3 – Stairway L’Etudes
4 – Farther On
5 – Come On In
6 – Piano L’Etudes
7 – Mansion On The Sand
8 – Twilight L’Etudes
9 – Higher Calling
10 – Jesus Is The Song
11 – Drum L’Etudes
12 – One More Reason

Daniel Band – Run From The Darkness – 1984

Great rock’n’roll out of Canada! This is Daniel Band’s third album and by this time they had everything going. They had the sound, they had the energy, and they had the clear response to all those 666 t-shirts the rock fans in the 80s were wearing.

The 1980s high school uniform for a while was one of those baseball style 3/4 sleeve shirts done in black and white with an upside down cross, a bat, some blood, and a 666 on it.

Daniel Band took that 666 and drew a circle around it and put a line through it. They found a way to embrace the genre without embracing the wrong message and it really took for them.

Track Listing:
1 – Don’t Give Up – 3:51
2 – Run From Darkness – 4:41
3 – Walk On The Water – 3:38
4 – Never Gonna Die – 3:42
5 – Sixteen – 3:07
6 – Live Connection – 2:50
7 – Let’s Get Ready – 4:19
8 – Walls – 3:52
9 – It’s Over – 4:15

Credits:
Drums, Percussion – Matt DelDuca
Lead Guitar, Rhythm Guitar, Lead Vocals – Tony Rossi
Lead Vocals, Bass Guitar, Keyboards – Dan McCabe
Mastered By – George Graves
Mixed By, Recorded By – Mark Wright (3)
Rhythm Guitar – Bill Findlay

Randy Stonehill – Equator – 1983

There were moments when 1983’s CCM version of Weird Al Yankovic was Randy Stonehill. His sense of humour comes through on a number of songs in this collection.

Randy was a serious musician and had been for a long time. He has several very serious songs on this album, including the opener “Light of the World”, “China”, and “Turning Thirty.” However there is a good collection of novelty songs on this one. He always enjoyed hamming it up, going all the way back to “Lung Cancer” on his Welcome to Paradise album.

American Fast Food, Shut de do, Cosmetic Fixation, Big Ideas, are all fun songs but not light on message.

Track Listing:
1 – Light Of The World – 4:10
2 – Big Ideas (In The Shrinking World) – 4:37
3 – Shut De Do – 2:46
4 – Even The Best Of Friends – 4:52
5 – American Fast Food – 3:19
6 – China – 5:32
7 – Cosmetic Fixation – 4:17
8 – Turning Thirty – 3:49
9 – Hide Them In Your Love – 3:29
10 – World Without Pain – 3:54

Credits:
Art Direction – Paul Gross (3)
Concept By [Album Cover] – Randy Stonehill, Terry Taylor
Engineer [Engineered By] – Thom Roy
Illustration – Kurt Triffet
Management – Ray Ware
Musician, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Lead Vocals – Randy Stonehill
Musician, Bass Guitar [Base Guitar] – Tim Chandler
Musician, Drums, Percussion – Alex MacDougall
Musician, Keyboards [All Keyboards] – Tom Howard
Photography By [Inner Sleeve Photography] – Charles Allen (7)
Producer [Produced By] – Terry Taylor

Rick Cua – Koo-Ah – 1982

Rick Cua is one of 49 members of The Outlaws over the past 6 decades or so. The “Southern rock” sound of The Outlaws translated somewhat into his solo career, but Rick has his own sound.

Rick left The Outlaws after turning to Christ and wanted to start making music with a message. He made several Christian albums, but never quite made it to household name status.

This debut from 1982 is a classic to me nonetheless. It reminds me of those teenage years spent listening to music in the basement, and all the time spent with friends back then.

Listening to it now, I think this was a greatly underrated record.

Track Listing:
1 – Fly Me To Heaven – 3:38
2 – Spirit – 3:53
3 – The Rock Was Rolled Away – 3:14
4 – Eternity – 4:07
5 – Heaven Was Made For Everybody – 3:34
6 – You Can Still Rock ‘N Roll – 3:01
7 – Crossfire – 3:19
8 – Just A Little Bit More – 3:56
9 – I Wanna Be Like You – 4:46
10 – Melt My Heart – 2:53

Credits:
Backing Vocals – Diane Tidwell, Donna McElroy, Lisa Silver
Design [Album Design] – Bill Brunt
Drums – David Dix, Joe English
Engineer – Jeff Levine
Engineer [Assistant] – Haran Hunter, Jim Baird
Executive-Producer – Ray Nenow
Guitar – Freddie Salem, Will McFarlane
Lacquer Cut By – HW
Lead Vocals, Bass – Rick Cua
Percussion – Matt Greeley
Photography By – Larry Dixon
Piano – Mike Duke
Producer, Arranged By – John Rosasco, Rick Cua
Synthesizer – Alan Steinberger
Written-By – Greg Nelson, Rick Cua, Scott Roley