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 homes and often concerts were ended early due to noise complains from neighbors. JPUSA decided to purchase farmland in western Illinois and move the festival there. In 1991, Cornerstone Festival made it’s debut in Bushnell, Illinois, which allowed the festival to expand even further. Let’s skip ahead then to 1991

Oh my goodness! So much about this video is incredible! The fashion! The cheesy synthesizers! The hair! If you listened to Christian music in 1991, you probably knew who John Elefante was. He was ubiquitous, producing scores of albums and singing background vocals on even more albums. Elefante was primarily a producer for many rock bands, but he also had his own studio band project called Mastedon (not to be confused with the current heavy metal band called Mastodon.) Mastedon did not tour, but they made a rare live appearance at Cornerstone Festival. I have no idea if the audio for this was dubbed in after the performance or whether Elefante was lip-syncing, though it does seem a little off… still the visual aspect of this video is like a virtual time capsule of Christian rock music in 1991.

The fascinating thing about this video and how much things changed in just a year or two after this. When Kurt Cobain started strumming barre chords and caterwauled, the impact sent waves even into Christian music if a little delayed, much of this style of music disappeared and guitarists with flashy guitar solos and big hair faded away.