Description
Shake, sub-titled Christian Artists Face the Music, is a multi-artist promotional album featuring interviews and music by many of the leading pop-rock artists signed to Word Records in the late ’80s, released on Myrrh Records in 1988, a division of Word. This double album (housed in a gatefold sleeve) was sent out to radio stations across USA to be broadcast on Saturday, February 6, 1988. Produced by Jon Rivers for Myrrh Records.
Featuring interviews and music by the following artists: Russ Taff, The Imperials, Kim Boyce, Phil Keaggy, David Meece, The Choir, Benny Hester, Sheila Walsh, Steve Taylor, Bash-N-The Code, Greg X. Volz, Randy Stonehill, and Mylon LeFever and Broken Heart, as well as CCM producer Brown Bannister.
Statement of Faith
At Myrrh Records we challenge ourselves daily as to who we are and why we are here. Ultimately, after we shake off the dust of daily business – we are here to speak about Jesus Christ.
Through in-depth conversations we have captured a glimpse of the hearts and desires of our artists on tape. The result is a two hour insight into the lives of the people who are on this label.
This interview package was created for you to understand the intent of our artists. Music is the universal language and the redemption of Jesus Christ is the universal message. We feel honored to be a part of a medium which involves both.
2LP tracklist:
Side One
A1. Segment One: Russ Taff – 17:24
w/ Russ Taff – “Walk Between The Lines” (full song)
Side Two
B1. Segment Two: The Imperials (Jimmy Lee Sloas, Armond Moralis), Brown Bannister, Kim Boyce, Phil Keaggy – 14:56
w/ Imperials – “Get Ready” (snippet)
Imperials – “Devoted To You” (snippet)
Kim Boyce – “Love Resurrection” (snippet)
Kim Boyce – “Here” (snippet)
Phil Keaggy – (instrumental song – snippet)
B2. Segment Three: David Meece, The Choir (Steve Hindalong and Derry Daugherty), Benny Hester – 15:06
w/ David Meece – “All Is God’s Creation” (snippet)
David Meece – “Candle In The Rain” (snippet)
David Meece – “His Love Was Reaching” (full song)
Benny Hester – “When God Ran” (snippet)
Side Three
C1. Segment Four: Sheila Walsh – 17:11
w/ Sheila Walsh – “Jesus Loves The Church” (full song)
Snippets of “Human Cry”, “Love Is The Answer”, “Angels With Dirty Faces”
C2. Segment Five: Steve Taylor, Bash-N-The Code, Greg X. Volz, Randy Stonehill – 16:08
w/ snippets of four Steve Taylor songs
Steve Taylor – “Harder To Believe Than Not To” (full song)
Bash-N-The Code – “Soon And Very Soon” (snippet)
Greg X. Volz – “The River Is Rising” (intro only)
Randy Stonehill
Side Four
D1. Segment Six: Mylon LeFevre – 16:44
w/ Mylon LeFever and Broken Heart – “Love God, Hate Sin”
Snippets of “Crack The Sky” and another song
D2. Promo One – Jon Rivers – 0:60
D2. Promo Two – Jon Rivers – 0:60
Note: Simultaneously released on double cassette and 12-inch vinyl double LP by Myrrh Records.
A double-page advertisement for the radio special Shake: Christian Artists Face the Music to be aired on Christian radio stations across the USA on February 6 was featured in the January 1988 issue of CCM Magazine.
A note about Myrrh Records’ radio special Shake: Christian Artists Face the Music, aired on Christian radio stations across the USA on February 6, was featured in the February 1988 issue of CCM Magazine.
Face the Music
“When the shaking comes, if it’s real it will stand; if it’s solid it will stand. If it’s not, through the mercy of God, this shaking – things that aren’t real are going to fall away.” So stated recording artist Russ Taff in the opening salvo of what was to emerge as a two-hour apologetic for himself, his colleagues, Myrrh Records, and the genre of popular music known as contemporary Christian music. The occasion was ‘Shake: Christian Artists Face the Music’, a prerecorded radio program that aired on religious radio stations across America on February 6, 1988. Produced by Jon Rivers for Myrrh Records (a key subsidiary of the largest of the Christian music corporations, Word, Inc.), ‘Shake’ was a collection of interviews with twenty-one of the artists signed to Myrrh. Introduced with the claim that the program would give listeners direct access to the “hearts and minds” of the Myrrh artists and that “more than ever,” it was “a time for honesty, integrity, vulnerability,” the intent of the program was obvious: this was an opportunity for the Christian music industry, in the person of the Myrrh artist, to respond to and distance itself from the widely publicized scandals then plaguing the evangelical church. As a result of Jim Bakker’s extra-marital affair, Jimmy Swaggart’s solicitation, and Oral Robert’s spiritual extortion, the American evangelical church was, to use Taff’s language, shaking. As Rivers prompted the Myrrh artists for comments on issues such as sin, temptation, accountability, cleansing, commitment, and the power of music, it became quite clear that the function of ‘Shake’ was to buttress the foundations beneath Myrrh Records and, more generally, the foundations beneath the contemporary Christian music genre to which the label’s (an artists’) fortunes were inextricably tied.
A decade later the televangelism scandals have been largely forgotten, as, to be honest, have many of the artists heard from in that February 1988 broadcast. The program, however, remains a significant moment in the history of contemporary Christian music. Whatever the crisis to which it was a response and whatever its immediate goals, ‘Shake’ was fundamentally an opportunity for a group of Christian recording artists, a Christian record label, and, in many ways, contemporary Christian music itself to explicitly and publicly grapple with their identities. “The music was created by God,” claimed Jimmy Lee of The Imperials, and idea perhaps in part contradicted by producer Brown Bannister’s suggestion that the artists “know it’s a business” and Phil Keaggy’s claim that in his case making music was simply a vocation. But then Bannister further argued that despite the necessary evils of doing business, “the bottom line is that they want to touch people – they want to touch kids.” On this point Bannister himself was contradicted by Steve Hindalong and Derri Daugherty of The Choir, who claimed, “We don’t view music as a tool. We didn’t say, ‘Let’s change the world for Christ and music is the way we should do it.’ ” Consequently, while the “Statement of Faith” printed of the album jacket that was sent to broadcasters implied a unified front, the reality of the broadcast suggested something far different. [ The statement read: “At Myrrh Records we challenge ourselves daily as to who we are and why we are here. Ultimately, after we shake off the dust of the daily business we are here to speak about Jesus Christ…. Through in-depth conversation we have captured a glimpse of the hearts and desires of our artists on tape. The result is a two hour insight into the lives of the people who are this label… This interview package was created for you to understand the intent of our artists. Music is the universal language and the redemption of Jesus Christ is the universal message. We feel honored to be a part of a medium which involves both.” ] Presumably united in vocation, faith, and contractual commitments to Myrrh Records, the twenty-one artists heard on the broadcast nevertheless presented vastly different interpretations of what contemporary Christian music was all about. While ‘Shake’ shaped itself into an effort to (re)define Christian music, the definition that emerged was far from clear.
[Excerpt from the book ‘Apostles of Rock – The Splintered World of Contemporary Christian Music’ by Jay R. Howard and John M. Streck, The University Press of Kentucky, 1999, page 7-8]
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