Very cool. Yeah, I like Liaison and such as well. Those guys could really play and had a great sound and message in their music. We sure need that type of stuff now...gman wrote:Liaison! Now you're singing my tune. Their stuff runs circles around so much of CCM. Incredible writing. I was in a band way back that did exactly what you want to do, minus the secular stuff. We had a couple Liaison tunes in the set. A few Whiteheart and Petra songs, a couple from Michael W., two from Amy off of Heart in Motion, Russ Taff's Wind of Change, a bunch of Maggie B and Rachel Rachel, a lot of early Newsboys from when they were more of a rock band. There are probably others I'm leaving out. We did some Mylon & Broken Heart. They were good songs, but I never cared much for the Mylon sound. We had some JAG songs in there as well. Great stuff. We considered many a D&K song, but sadly they never made the cut. I always wanted to do Let's Get Upset. Though it wasn't there heaviest work, I really liked the stuff on Go To the Top. I watched the VHS countless times.
I pretty much learned to play drum set in that band. We often made our own gigs. Sponsoring roller skating nights or putting on outdoor events. Our bass player was our band leader. He was older and well off, and found it enjoyable to acquire gear on the used market and build a large, quality sound system. At one point he had one of the big Ampeg cabinets for himself he found it used, could afford it, and didn't mind hauling it around.
Our early PA system was mounted in this tall wooden rack he built himself. We'd load all the speakers in the back of the guitar player's pick up, and slide the rack into the back of the bass players old Toyota wagon. Good times!
If you can pull it off, go for it!
I will say for me personally, learning the drum parts for the songs, and also hammering out chord charts and bringing songs to the table was invaluable training for me.
I didn't know a lick of music theory when I got to college, but I could play piano to a degree, I knew chrods, and I had developed my ear pretty well.
What I did with the secular music, when I could was rewrite some of the lyrics or do songs that spoke of an issue or something and used it. I have taken a few songs from Journey (another favorite of mine) and simply changed a few words and boom! I had a Christian song. The same with America. They had a few as well, that when you change a couple of words - boom! you got a Christian song.
I would prefer to play Christian music only but I have a hard time finding music like Stratovarius and Sonata Arctica in a Christian representation. I really like these bands because of their technical abilities and such. In fact, the words seem to be more of an afterthought because the music is so good. They are monsters on their instruments. The same with Dream Theater and such.
I've been praying for a very long time to just have a Christian Rock cover band. That's what I would like to play keys in. I've toured so many places with secular music...... I'm done with that now and just really want to concentrate on the Christian music. So much of it is great and it needs to be heard. I even have a set list in mind for the band...
Grace,
Harry