Our family was visiting friends in Southern California during the Christmas of Break of 1981/82 I persuaded our host and father to drive me in the family car to Calvary Chapel in Anaheim. I had consulted the back pages of CCM Magazine and was going to see Daniel Amos in concert.
These days the church stage is quite common, but back then it was rare — we usually trooped off to the church basement for “coffee houses” and the truly rowdy material. Here the crowd was warmed up by a large guy with dark hair and a Bible. “You know the movie posters say ‘Apocalypse: Now.’ I say, ‘Apocalypse: Soon.’”
Then Daniel Amos front man and song writer Terry Scott Taylor took the stage and sang, “Big Deal.” He was wearing a black leather Elvis suit and playing what I later recognized was a Gibson SG. The stage was bright and well-lit. Mennonites had more ambience, really.
When the band finally did an encore they reached a second time for “I Love You #19” “You liked it so much we’ll do it again!”
TST spoke of a quadriplegic who had acquired this condition because the driver of her vehicle was swatting at a bee while navigating the highway. They rolled over. “I asked how she was doing. ‘She’s serving Jesus.’” In hindsight TST was rubbing the fur the wrong way with the “believe it and you’ll see it” crowd.
I got picked up at the end of the concert. “I simply HAD to pee in a washroom marked ‘Brothers,’” said our father.
We flew back to Winnipeg and I promptly bought a used bass. No chords, no arpeggios and certainly no amplifier. It would have been roughly this vintage:
Links: here is my obituary for DA bassist Tim Chandler; Strange Advance came out with “Worlds Away”at the end of 1982 which I listened to and sang along with in the family car, an experience I blog about here. And Pearl Jam performs “Alive” here. The Daniel Amos time line is here.
2 comments:
Well yes Daniel Amos ….but I am distracted by the jersey you are wearing? Tell me about it? It reminds me of the heavy cotton baseball jerseys in Little League and looks like what might have been called Red Sox
The jersey was indeed a baseball jersey. I used to wear it to MBCI, open with buttons, DEVO, U2 and Daniel Amos. I think we see the DEVO button here. I was also fond of my pointy-toed cowboy boots I got for $20 from Kasper's Pick 'n' Pay in Steinbach. I would wear these with my baseball jersey and lope around. The baseball jersey was second-hand, of course.
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