The CBA took my baby away

Listening to: My mom's Kalan Porter cd is playing downstairs, and I don't feel like drowning it out right now.

A depressing thought: Ok, as has already been established many times before, the "Christian music" industry is a ghetto for bad musicians and lyricists who compose predictable, repetitive garbage half of the time.

So what about the other half, the "Christian musicians" who actually create worthwhile art?

I've noticed a trend. One of two things will happen to these artists eventually:

1. They break mainstream, and get shunned by the CBA: For example: POD, Blindside, Zao, Sixpence, etc. These bands write good tunes, then get signed to major labels, then the CBA refuses to carry their records. (Oh, by the way, CBA=Christian Bookstores Association)

2. They get screwed by the industry, then get disgruntled: For example: Pedro the Lion, Ninety Pound Wuss, Chris Staples (twothirtyeight), Eric Campuzano (The Prayer Chain), Roger Martinez (Vengeance Rising), etc. May of these artists have grown to hate the CBA, and many have written bitter diatribes against it. In fact, Roger no longer claims to be a Christian.

Why does this happen? Because the CBA likes their artists in a little predictable bubble in which every song explicitly talks about Jesus and all the music is "Grandma" friendly.

Now, I don't want to completely diss the industry, I mean, ever once and a while I dig a Newsboys song. It's just that they would never make it outside the CBA, cause nobody would want to hear it. And I hate that people think that this is music made "for God." Hardly. It's music made for Christians by Christians, but I wouldn't say half the stuff in the CBA is actually made "for God."

It's also not a "ministry." Nobody outside of the church listens to the Newsboys. No one.

But thanks to labels like Tooth and Nail, that value good art, and have brought us many excellent musicians that are Christians, and write good songs. I mean... bands on Tooth and Nail are even responsible for inventing new genres that are popular in the mainstream right now. (Like metalcore? Ever heard of Zao's "Where Blood and Fire Bring Rest"?)

Anyway, enough ranting for now.