Christian Contemporary Music has long been thought of as a ghetto for artists. They may rise to great heights within their realm, but it is not the same as the exposure that they can achieve in the larger world of music. However, leaving the ghetto is hard. You carry the look, the sound, and the stigma with you.
In the 70s and 80s, the ghetto was much smaller and much harder to get out of than today. Christian music broadly speaking sounded as boilerplate as it tends to sound now, but offered even less access to bands and artists who were interested in following their own vision of what it meant to write and perform songs.
They did exist, and the band Daniel Amos was one that delved into new wave and synth-rock throughout the mid-eighties with a series of albums that were musically edgy, thematically linked, and, at times, intellectually challenging. None of these attributes won them any awards with the burgeoning CCM crowd at large.
But since they carried the Christian music stigma, the secular music world looked askance at them as well. They inhabited, essentially, a ghetto within a ghetto.
Today this is par for the course. We just call it indie. But at the time, indie for bands like Daniel Amos meant going from church to church (those few that would have you or, having had you once, would have you back), playing your tunes, and passing a few clean KFC buckets for donations just before the encore.
They didn’t get rich off this kind of thing.
But they did build an obsessive and very protective fan base. Throughout the 80s and 90s, Daniel Amos (who for a time went by Da) remained active in both recording and touring and laid down a lot of fantastic material, songs that challenged legalism, prosperity gospel gurus, and the broadly accepted norms of American Christianity.
These songs, whose lyrics were written by frontman Terry Taylor, refused to be cowed by culture war politics and American Christian cliches. They went deep and hit hard but carried a perspective on faith that was oddly traditional. It was as if Daniel Amos really believed that they could express the old truths of the faith in new ways.
One of the high-water marks of their career is Darn Floor - Big Bite. Released in 1987, the album at once embodies their new wave roots and says goodbye to them. It expands beyond the walls of the genre just as it punches through the confines of the Christian rock ghetto.
It is edgy and uncompromising in one instant and soft and yielding in the other. Greg Flesch’s guitar work and Tim Chandler’s bass are astounding and Ed McTaggart’s sure hand at the kit drives the band forward.
But above all, the music here is not crowded with accouterments, and the band’s confident expression is not dependent on any single member. The odd thing is that in isolation, they are sensitive and curious players. But they somehow create a space for those traits to be heard while marshaling them into a brash single-mindedness on behalf of the unit.
According to a 1985 story in the Washington Post, Koko, a Gorilla who knew sign language, described an earthquake with the statement: “Darn darn floor bad bite. Trouble trouble.” The statement was both accurate and inadequate.
That is the theme for the Darn Floor - Big Bite, which was inspired by the quote. Man’s attempts to describe God can be accurate but will still fall short of a reality he cannot fully comprehend. The title track is a restless examination of the ways in which people claim to see God, but none of them seem to be exactly right.
God seems to take up the ubiquitous “you” on the album, receiving Taylor’s questions and frustrations. Sometimes the songs have striking clarity, as in the beautiful rumination of death in “The Earth Household” where Taylor sings: “I drink you endlessly toward my hollow heart/ And wake at night repeating ‘How strange, how strange!”/ All is touch and vision in a passionate kiss/ And life’s drab curtain ready to be raised.”
At other times Taylor expresses a sense of futility, especially in relation to what other people seem to know. In “Half Light, Epoch and Phase” he sings: “Everyone seems to know just what you are/ But I never seem to break through/ Forgive me please if I can’t see that far/ Life’s dulling the point of my view.”
Although the attempt of understanding has a degree of futility, Taylor refuses to give it up. In “Unattainable Earth” he sings: “In the unattainable earth/ Language is weak but I keep on speaking.” In his view, it seems to be that very measure of futility that drives him to the final verse: “My questions right now don’t need all the answers/ Just please don’t ever let go of me/ No, don’t ever stop loving me.”
It’s this emotional vulnerability that makes these songs so approachable. You may not believe him when he sings: “Yes we found ourselves there/ Felt enduring desire/ In that divine instant/ we heard eternity whisper.” But you’ll likely be convinced that he believes it.
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With so much polished ardor and pristine praise, Christian music can often come off as sounding phony. If faith is all about having a picture-perfect smile while you surrender blissfully to the presence of God, then faith sounds more like fantasy.
By contrast, on Darn Floor - Big Bite a man grapples with questions that have real-life interactions. In the sharp imagery and gritty music, you get a different impression of what being a Christian might involve.
Ultimately, it is a deeply personal album, less concerned with polemic than it is with dialogue. And unlike the sometimes maddening confidence and trance-like acceptance of many Christian artists, Taylor seems perfectly willing to admit that the person he is in conversation with is often reluctant to speak.
Source:
https://www.danielamos.com/da/darnfloorbigbite/
https://popdose.com/dw-dunphy-on-darn-floor-big-bite/
https://ccms500bestalbums.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/77-darn-floor-big-bite-daniel-amos-da/