Jars of Clay at age 15

Music meant a whole lot to me when I was in my mid-teens which is something most people would say. For me it was an escape, a release and sometimes an idol. It wasn't until I was 19 or so that I was convicted about how I ran to music, "Christian" music, when I was in pain or hurting and not to God. Jars of Clay's debut self-titled album was super-important to me at that tender young age.

The hit song Flood was everywhere in 1995. I hadn't fully committed to listening to only Christian music at the time so I heard it on the local pop radio stations a ton. I had been going to youthgroup at the local church for a while with my best friend and I was very excited when Melissa, our youth pastor, announced that we would be going to see Jars of Clay and the then unknown band Third Day at the state fair. I had their CD! This was going to be awesome. And it was.

We had terrible seats, worse than the nosebleed section, but I didn't care. I couldn't wait for the opening band to hurry up so that Jars of Clay and what I presumed would be a full orchestra would take the stage. I played viola in the orchestra at school, so I really identified with the strings on songs like Love Song for a Savior.


When Jars of Clay took the stage and played their first song of the evening the place went crazy. There was an honest to goodness mosh pit. A mosh pit at a soft rock show... I remember Vern Marks saying on the radio station the next night that a lot of people got hurt because there were a lot of little kids that didn't know how to mosh properly accidentally punching people and stuff.

Ultimately I was disappointed in the concert. There was no strings section! And halfway through the set they started playing what they called Coffee shop music which included an impression of a cappuccino machine and a rainmaker (I can't find any clips of a rainmaker online, hopefully that means that they've vanished into obscurity.)

After the show I made a decision to only listen to Christian music. I forced myself to listen to music I was unfamiliar with on the local christian rock station kokf 91fm (which has recently resurfaced as a streaming radio station). It took a few weeks of listening but I found favorite songs quickly. This was one of my early 91fm favorites.


Tomorrow I'll continue down this mid-90s Christian Retrospective with a look at the band Bride.