Saturday, March 08, 2008

Wowie Zowie! He Saved My Soul

He's the Rock that doesn't roll!

I am way behind the curve on commenting on the death of Larry Norman, who left us on February 24. If not for the often-maligned Larry Norman, there would be no "contemporary Christian music", good or bad--none of the artists I loved back in the day (and still do), like Randy Stonehill, Phil Keaggy, Keith Green, Steve Taylor, all the way to current bands that you or I may never have heard of, but whom the kids in our youth groups know very well. In these times when every church has a praise band, it's hard to remember the horror with which the combination of Jesus and rock and roll was greeted in the late '60s and early '70s. My friends and I weren't horrified, we were thrilled!

This is the best video I could find of my favorite LN song, The Rock That Doesn't Roll. The video and sound quality aren't so great, but when you watch it, try to imagine how exciting this music was to young "Jesus people", so long ago.



Go dig out your old vinyl copy of Only Visiting This Planet or--even better--In Another Land. They still rock! Better than that, they still praise and glorify Jesus.

Rest in peace, brother Larry, and rock on.

1 comment:

Stratoz said...

last night I went to see a co-worker's son playing a band at her church.

did not bring back memories of this guy, but I did sit there thinking of Mark Heard who died at a young age, so when I got home I dug out some of his music.