I’m one of those peo­ple that when I find a band I com­pletely fall in love with, I pretty much fol­low them regard­less of almost any­thing. I’ve found that the bands that I feel this way I find in the weird­est ways. For exam­ple, I basi­cally dis­cov­ered Sanc­tus Real at Cre­ation East 2004 after ran­domly decid­ing that they were prob­a­bly the least worst band for that day­time slot. To my com­plete amaze­ment, I was blown away by the entire per­for­mance; I remem­ber turn­ing to my friend after the con­cert and telling him that it was the best per­for­mance I had ever seen. Iron­i­cally, the next band I found through Sanc­tus Real when they opened for them later the next year. I inter­viewed a band I had never heard before. I assumed they were among the hun­dreds of true Chris­t­ian indie bands (although iron­i­cally one of the band mem­bers clearly stated that he thought the whole idea of Chris­t­ian music was stu­pid) try­ing to make it. I remem­ber I was eat­ing din­ner with the guys from Sanc­tus Real after the inter­view when Unsearch­able Riches came on. I’ll never for­get lov­ing what I heard so much I quickly left and entered the main room where the con­cert was tak­ing place. Ever since then, I’ll prob­a­bly adore any­thing that UR releases, includ­ing the new release Put Your Heart Where Your Head Is (which again, iron­i­cally reminds me in many ways of the Sanc­tus Real release The Face of Love).

I’ve been think­ing a lot about my extreme pas­sion for music and just how it came about. I look at my past and won­der if I could have made it through the bad times or enjoyed the good times with­out music… yes, I’m aware how cliché that sounds. I can’t explain the feel­ing when I see a thriv­ing band per­form live on stage, or push­ing for new ways to reach fans. I hate to sound too extreme or revolution-like (start mock­ing me now) but that’s hon­estly my mind­set; to change the music indus­try (specif­i­cally the Chris­t­ian mar­ket) dra­mat­i­cally. Some artists are already sin­gle­hand­edly tak­ing on this gen­er­al­ized ide­ol­ogy that music is more then good sounds for sale, all I want to do is pro­vide a com­mer­cial out­let to do so.

I’ve seen the most amaz­ing things hap­pen to the music indus­try hap­pen in the last cou­ple years. Bands are mak­ing it big just because of catchy, mem­o­riz­ing, frankly amaz­ing music uploaded to a MySpace or PureV­ol­ume page. The face of music mar­ket­ing has changed… and changed for the bet­ter if you ask me. Peo­ple aren’t look­ing for labels to tell them what’s good in music; they’re look­ing for good music by any­body. You no longer have to be Brit­ney Spears to release a hit, and that’s just mainstream.

Chris­t­ian music is so beyond com­plex it’s ridiculous.

“All In My Head”

What good is love if I don’t hang around
Through the heat, through the heat

What good is faith if I can’t take it down
To the street, to the street

And it’s all in my head, in my head, in my head
And I never just do all the things that you said
’Cause it’s all in my head, in my head, in my head

What good is mercy if I never feed
A hun­gry child, a hun­gry child

What good is jus­tice if I never heed
A widow’s cry, an orphan’s cry

Let me be Your hands
Let me do what You would do
And at the impulse of Your end­less love
Let me move

What good is wor­ship if it’s noth­ing more
Than just a song, just a song
And I’m no dif­fer­ent than the day before
And life goes on, life goes on

Get it out of my head, of my head, of my head
Get it down to my heart ’till the whole world is fed

Per­formed by Unsearch­able Riches
Writ­ten by Doug McK­elvey, Jeremy Sorensen, and Gar­ret Hitnze