He later died on Novemwhich was sadly, the same day Freddie Mercury of Queen had died and that overshadowed his death. Shortly thereafter, Carr suffered an aneurysm then a brain hemorrhage and never regained consciousness. Eric Carr made his last public appearance with the band shortly after the video at the MTV Musis Awards in September 1991. He had become so ill, he was no longer able to play, so the drum work on the song was handled by Eric Singer, who also did the drum work on the band’s next album, ‘Revenge’. Eric was extremely ill as he had been diagnosed with heart cancer. And luckily he was healthy enough to be in the video. Eric wasn’t healthy enough to do the drums at the time, but he is featured in the background vocals. He was actually mocking false prophets and going for a Jim Morrison vibe with that cover, for what it’s worth.What was special about this song and release is that is the last Kiss single to feature Eric Carr. Which was too bad, as it’s a great album too. That whole album is strong, from the title song to “ Hero” to “Sin for a Season.” “ On the Fritz” from that album is also a sneaky beast of a song, as is “I Just Wanna Know.” His I Predict 1990 album cover got him accused of dabbling in Tarot because that’s the kind of thing we argued about in Baptist churches in 1989. I’ll go with “We Don’t Need No Color Code” from Meltdown (1984) because it tackled a huge issue, racism, from the Christian perspective decades ago and with a moral fire that few can match. “You save the whales, you save the seals, you save whatever’s cute and squeals, but you kill that thing that’s in the womb, would not want no baby boom.” “ Bad Rap” was in fact a bad rap that skillfully skewered the green pro-whale/anti-baby left. “ I Want to Be a Clone” tackled being a maverick in the face of conformist culture. He has put out so many songs across so many decades in so many different sounds - and under different bands, such as Sixpence None the Richer (he wrote and produced their massive hit “ Kiss Me“) and Newsboys, not to mention Chagall Guevara and Steve Taylor and the Perfect Foil - that his best is very hard to pin down (so is his worst, for whatever that’s worth). He had a knack for making words that shouldn’t rhyme live together and pretty soon he was stealing the show at Christian music festivals and being written up in Rolling Stone. Steve Taylor was a youth minister who started writing songs for his church youth group. They’re back to sporting the yellow and black and still flying with the harmonic riffs. Here’s “Do Unto Others,” which they released in 2020. Stryper, for one, broke through in that era and they’re still going strong. Some of them wrote about issues years or decades ahead of their time, some went all the way from Eagles-style country to experimental, some faded away, and some covered Led Zeppelin covering Blind Willie Johnson and are still cranking out good stuff. Some we’ve long forgotten, and nature has reclaimed them like undergrowth on a jungle temple. Some of them were interesting and creative trails that are not yet finished. Even One Bad Pig.įrom the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, a whole bunch of bands followed after the 60s Jesus Music phenomenon led by the late Larry Norman and blazed some trails. What heavy stuff, you probably didn’t ask? Well, Steve Taylor for one. Actually, for those days I was something of a rebel, a Baptist bad boy, because I eschewed the likes of Steve Green and Sandi Patty for the heavy stuff. But it was Texas just south of Dallas in the 1980s and it was our culture. Whether I was born or born again that way we’ll never know.
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