irony is ironic.

I think part of the lack of motivation in various Christian music scenes is that it is so many people's second choice.  The Christian x music scene is always percieved as the homely step-sister of the mainstream scene where everybody wants to be, even if they have good reasons for not being there (need to be away from alcohol, etc.). 

Everybody looks up to artists who have crossed over, even if they criticize them for selling out. 

I was nodding my head in somewhat agreement until you said "It's not fair". It's not about being fair!

I guess it depends on what your definition of "support" is. I will gladly support Christian artists (film/music/whatever) if it's good. I will not support them to just support them. But I also won't berate them either.

It also comes down to just people being people. Personally, I'm not good at giving compliments. To anyone. And I don't know why! It's just me. So a lot of times, I might not say anything when in my head I'm thinking "Wow, that's really cool".

I don't know if it's possible to give equal attention to someone, such as myself, and to Andy Hunter. I'd like to think I have something to offer but I can't expect people to get equally excited about my next release and Andy Hunter's current release etc.

It's just not realistic. I realized awhile ago that my creative talents have to make me (and hopefully God) happy first. If people enjoy what I do, in whatever medium, that's great and it will normally give me extra incentive to keep doing it etc. but bottom line, my need to be creative is not beholden to the success that it may or may not bring me.

I'm not saying that I've never been frustrated, trust me, I've gone through what you're feeling. But once I realized that I'd rather be happy than successful (on a grand scale), it was pretty liberating. And personally, by realizing that about myself, it's allowed me to be even more creative and more open to things.

My thoughts:

1. Christian music shouldn't be allowed to be inferior to other music. As mention in posts scattered throughout the TF forums, we're to be doing music for the glory of God. If we're willing to settle for producing second-rate music, that says something about our attitude towards God. It also shouldn't be seen as a fall-back position or second chance for those that tried to make it in the secular world and failed.

2. Christian music shouldn't be assumed to be inferior to other music. I've had quite a few Christian friends who have scoffed at the idea of listening to Christian music and have turned up their noses because they feel that, if it's Christian, it can't be any good. While sometimes true (moreso in the past in my opinion), that's an unfair and inaccurate generality to make.

hmmmm... I don't get it either. Outside of the money that the BIG 5 labels funnel through their Christian CCM sublabels, I can't think of one good reason why most of the bands today are popular. When you look at groups/artists like the 77s, Phi Keaggy and so on, there isn't any other reason for them to be so "unpopular" outside of larger labels stating crap must be the standard for CCM.

oh yes, this is something Ive kept up with since I started checking the christian music scene.  it is more widely accepted too to some degree.



yes, definitely, thats something I definitely want to see, cause God only deserves our best.

Or maybe... there isn't really a scene. That's the Fusion approach. If you look at the secular scene, we keep finding more and more of our brothers and sisters there. Maybe our focus of building a purely xian scene is flat out the wrong way to go.

Isolated events are fine, but what are we REALLY trying to do with all of this? I've been TRYING to get people to think about that with the Unity series. I'm probably going to take it up a notch with the next article, but the basic theory is we don't have a common goal for us to all work toward. We don't know what to support because we have NEVER defined what it is that we are doing.

In many ways this goes beyond apathy toward the scene and goes straight to apathy toward even thinking about anything. If nobody's really interested in all of this... why are we doing it?

Or... is it that many of us are just totally burned out from being burned for so long?

What makes sense to me is this:
1) Figuring out what the HECK we are doing this for in a broad sense
2) meeting in small 10-30 ppl groups for house parties aka groove fellowships
3) where more people are interested... through a larger party
4) figure out why we're throughing parties
5) keep EVERYTHING low-cost, but high-quality. Labels should be ALL digital. DJs and producers should buy good gear, but not go into debt. promoters should focus on word of mouth and electronic promotions over spending half their budget on flyers that make their show seem better than it really will be. I could go on.

Nobody is learning from others mistakes who is complaining today. We constantly are reinventing the wheel rather than building the front axel and transmission. Until we start doing that, we'll be stuck in this rut. Look at who has "made" it. What have they done? They found a solid vision for what they were supposed to do, set goals and pushed toward them without faltering and ignoring their doubt.

Why aren't the rest of us doing the same and why don't we know what our purpose is after 14 years?