If Larry Norman was the Old Testament prophet and Randy Stonehill was the silly, sentimental one, then Mark Heard was the wry observer of the pioneering musicians in Christian music. Heard often focused on the sad human condition and the hope of renewal someday, interspersing it with Applachian and folk influences. He associated himself with [...]
Mastedon wasn’t the only band to make its one and only appearance at Cornerstone Festival in 1991. Steve Taylor (featured earlier in our video from 1984) attempting to move into more mainstream music joined the band Chagall Guevara. Chagall Guevara was a slight departure from Taylor’s sound, but still resonated roots of bands like The [...]
There’s not a lot of good footage from the 80′s from Cornerstone Festival that I can find… so we’re going to skip ahead a couple of years. By 1990, the festival had outgrown it’s original location at the Lake County Fairgrounds. The area around the grounds had grown and changed from open fields to suburban [...]
There’s been so much written about the controversial and eccentric life of Larry Norman that I don’t even think I can adequately scratch the surface here. Norman has often been described as “the father of Christian rock music” and whether or not that title is accurate I’ll leave to historians. What we do know is [...]
So, in the words of The Urban Sophisticates let’s “take it back like Cosby sweaters” and start with the very first Cornerstone Festival in 1984. A Chicago-based organization called Jesus People USA put on a music festival at the Lake County Fairgrounds in suburban Chicago. Resurrection Band (called REZ in the 80′s) was one of [...]