Beth:

I strongly second the idea of trying to get some media coverage (or heck -- someone with a HandyCam would make me happy).  This lineup *is*, for want of a better term, historical.

-Sonny

currently humming "Tame the Volcano" much to the annoyance of my office mates

On the Undercover mailing list, Ojo responded to a question about Broken Records and 1985.  Some cool history of the Southern California music scene here.  I left out the first part, written to one specific person:

ok -  here's the Broken story, from my perspective...

Anyway.. first there was Maranatha Music, formed as a ministry of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa and located on the grounds there too.  This was before my time.  Maranatha owned a studio just up the street from Calvary called Whitefield.  It is the stuff of legend, as a glimpse through any of those early landmark maranatha albums (and some later ones too, including the Broken releases) will show.  It is the first 24-track studio I was ever in, invited to tag along with John Wimber one night, who was doing a recording there.  That night I knew it was my calling and that I must learn everything I could about production.

Maranatha's then-president, Chuck Fromm had decided to form a Marantha Music offshoot more focused on ministry and on those minstrels who wanted a vehicle to allow them to fulfill their calling without having to pursue a record deal with Maranatha or any other label.  This was called the Ministry Resource Center, or MRC.  There were many resources made available, training, study, prayer, materials, networking, showcases.  It was a kind of lower-budget, grass roots farm label too. There were only a handful of groups working with MRC that I remember and the only one that really comes to mind now is a group called Tamarack which had Rob Watson on keyboards (he has appeared on too many records to list, including Broken Christmas, and of course he is also one of the Swirling Eddies) and John Patitucci, the renowned bass player.  They were kind of a jazz/fusion thing. I honestly don't remember who else was working with MRC at that time.

There was also another label Maranatha had started called Asaph & Sons, or A&S records.  This was formed for artists with more edge than would have been allowable on a Maranatha release.  The one artist I remember of course, is Leslie Phillips (later to go by Sam Phillips, wife of T-Bone Burnett).  They also had some compilations called Back to the Rock, and I think we appeared on one of those, or we were at least supposed to have.  But I get ahead of myself...

Gym and I played in one of the new band showcases at Calvary in one of the bands we were in before Undercover.  We were then asked to meet with Chuck Fromm and we were so excited we couldn't see straight.  We blew the meeting though because our then-drummer (remember this is before Undercover) had no interest in ministry as a main focus and I'm sure that's what they were looking for.  Some time later, after Undercover started, we were called up and asked if we would like to record a track for a Back to the Rock record and of course we said we would.  We went in and recorded Look It Up at Whitefield, engineered and produced by Dan Willard.  Around this time things were moving very fast.  The Lifesavers, Undercover, and The Lifters were playing all over the place and the local fever was spreading quickly.  Someone at Maranatha got the idea that maybe Undercover should have its own MRC release and of course we agreed to that as well, and used the Look It Up track we had recorded earlier on that first album (not sure if anyone knew that or not, that Look It Up was recorded separately from and some time before the rest of our first album).  The Lifesavers also recorded their first album and they were both released around the same time. That just made things more nuts locally, and I think the decision was then made to do a full national release, which we did - God Rules, on A&S records, distributed by Word.  The Lifesavers moved on to another label, and somewhere in there The Lifters recorded their first album on MRC.   They worked very hard and deserve much more credit than they ever received.

After God Rules, and the rapidly changing musical environment in So Cal, it became obvious that the future was going to be more along these new music lines and A&S was somewhat abandoned and the ideas for Broken Records born, again, with Chuck Fromm as the main visionary, but with Chuck Smith's advice and consent.  This was actually preceded by the MRC release What's Shakin' with a whole lineup of new groups.  The whole Maranatha staff was excited about all this, and the first Broken release was Boys & Girls in 1984.  Somewhere around this time Youth Choir also released a record, I think on Broken, and then Crumbacher's first record also.  Altar Boys released their first record on MRC too. The Lifters did another too.  Well, new bands were popping up all over the place, some really good, others not so good.

As I wrote the other day, Sim joined undercover around this time - just after Boys & Girls was produced.  We had met him the day the God Rules album shipped to retail, in May of 1983.  He was singing in a band called Martus, along with Gene Eugene, Gene's wife Riki Michele, Greg Lawless and Paul Valadez.  You can see where this is heading... Sim left a year later to join Undercover and shortly after, Gene formed Adam Again.  The more kids, or more marginal people these new bands were reaching, the demographic makeup of the church started changing a bit, and still more new bands were forming, but now, really hard-core bands with the full-blown hair and makeup and everything.  I distinctly remember being at Calvary Chapel on a Saturday night with 2 punk bands playing including my brother's band, the precursor to Nobody Special. They were called Immortal Youth.

Well, around this time, the middle of 1985, Chuck Smith was starting to get uncomfortable with things.  I don't know why exactly, but it was becoming (this is only my best guess) a fashion show and culture fiesta.  I know the bands had their hearts in the right place, but I think it was too much too soon, even for So Cal.   Undercover travelled to Europe in the summer of 1985 for 6 weeks and when we got back, I heard the decision had been made to put Broken on ice and the Saturday concerts too.  This was a shock, but there was lots of stuff going on in other arenas too.  My personal life was falling apart.   Up until this time, I had been a staff producer for MRC and Broken Records and had become a sort of figure head for the movement (see the Broken Pieces newspaper, the only issue of it, on our web site under photos, with Brigandi of The Lifters on the cover), and my life was falling apart.  We were playing like crazy and I had written much of Branded already.  In fact, we started recording that album for our next Broken release, on Tim Pinch's mobile truck in Gym's garage that had been converted into our practice studio.  In the middle of that recording is when everything blew up.  So now, mid to late 1985, no Broken, no concerts at Calvary, no personal life.  But up until this point, it had all been Maranatha-owned and managed and Gene had not yet been involved.

Sometime after that, I got a call from Gene, who by this time had replaced Uncle Dave as our sound man and also our road manager, who told me about his guy named Harry Barnes who had this little label set up with distribution.  Gene said Adam Again was going to do a record for them (they had no record yet) as well as this other band, 441.  He wanted to know if Undercover would be interested.  We had been talking to Sparrow about a recording deal, but that had fallen through because I was getting a divorce and they had just dealt with that with another of their artists and did not have the appetite for it.  I agreed, and we re-recorded Branded at Pakaderm for Blue Collar Records.

I got a call from Chuck Fromm after that who wanted to know what we were doing and we told him, and it became a very tense meeting.  He said he wanted rights to Branded, but I told him we had been let go, and after some words and fur flying,  we agreed to amicably part ways. Blue Collar didn't last long because (as happens so often) they were not paid by their distribution company and poor Harry was up a creek. Too bad, because of his three releases, all three went on to become significant at various levels.   This was 1986 and into 1987 because we had planned to release 3-28-87 on Blue Collar, and when Blue Collar went under, we were going to release it to whoever purchased Blue Collar.  So it was that in 1987 Gene and I met and Gene had this idea to start our own label.  He had been talking with Barry Hill, the sound man for The Level Heads in Canada, who we had met at a festival there after we returned from Europe in 1985.  Barry had some savings and was interested, and so the three of us formed Brainstorm Artists International.

We approached Chuck Fromm again (this was a while later, at least a year or so, after cooler heads had prevailed) and asked if Maranatha was willing to distribute us.  He said that not only would they distribute us through Word, but if we were interested, they'd sell us Broken Records too, and let us pay it off from royalties.  We jumped on it and for the first year or so, all of our releases were on Broken Records, which was now owned by Brainstorm Artists International. About a year later, I got another call from Chuck asking Gene and I to go down to talk, and he told us that because of some technicality with Maranatha's agreement with Calvary (Calvary had also spun Maranatha off to Chuck Fromm), that they could not complete the sale of Broken to us while they still owed Calvary money. We said that was fine, and we just gave them back everything (the original Broken masters, but not those produced under Brainstorm, logo and other stuff).  Chuck was nice and generous enough to set us up with Word directly, even though we had to prove ourselves at a sales conference in Texas, which we did with flying colors.  We then just started releasing everything under the Brainstorm name and logo, which was our corporation name from the very beginning.  From there, Jimmy Kempner made an unsuccessful attempt to buy Broken from Maranatha, and formed Broken Songs instead, the publishing company for Frontline.  Many people got confused because of this, but Broken Records never had anything to do with Frontline.  Most of the original Broken and MRC bands ended up there, and we were asked to,  but decided to stick with Brainstorm.  Glad I did too.  I still own all my own masters and copyrights.

So Broken stayed with Maranatha, and they did try to revive it again for a while under the direction of someone named Elisa Elder, whom I never met.  But it was not the same at all, and I couldn't tell you one artist released under that version of Broken.  So there's the Broken story in a nutshell... I will only add this:

My time with Maranatha and Calvary were some of the best of my life and I have nothing bad to say about any of the people we used to work with there.  Of course there were rough edges and tempers and egos.  But we were all creating something that we all believed in, something we all thought was the coolest thing we had been involved with, and even though we all had our moments, we made it work.  Chuck Fromm and Chuck Smith were mentors and supporters in every way, often beyond what other would consider reasonable.  The staff at Maranatha are still my family.  I had dinner a week or so ago with Chris Brigandi, Brian Ray, Bugs Giglio, Stan Endicott and Joe Mitchell, and am also in touch with others too.  So there you go... let me know if I missed anything.

Peace...

Your right about that!! That is how I'm trying to push the entire event. Sure would help with coverage if some of those bands that have "made it" and were influenced by these boys would come to the show.

I will be trying to get some coverage on this possibly from VH1 when the promo/website is ready. I still have a few connections in Hollywood that I haven't exploited yet, BUT, they are always hesitant to even mention Christian Music unless it involves a scandal, preferably a sexual one. Even Switchfoot has lost some music placement due to their winning 5 Dove awards recently. Apparently it's OK to place their songs as long as you don't KNOW the band is Christian. I will also be contacting Matt Crouch at TBN We will try our best but Mighty is unfortunately right on this one.

As far as getting this on film. It has been taken care of. We actually have people contacting US who want to document it, we already have a crew lined up. Five HD cameras OK? Trust me there will be plenty of footage and a great DVD at the end of this, if all the bands are OK with that. OOPS. I haven't talked to the bands about it yet. I'll put that on my to do list.

That's AWESOME, TOTALLY AWESOME! I completely understand where Mighty is comin' from. It's just that it doesn't matter if it registers with mainstream secular media or not - IF the Father chooses not to send the Son for another 100 years (unlikely but possible) - this event will be incredibly important as music history for tons of aspiring artists.

 Sorry, I was a history major and had a year of music history and as insignificant as this seems to most right now (most won't even know this event has occurred) this is the sort of thing that Historians often times find themselves frustrated with because no one had the foresight to record the event in ANY way. I'm just trying to do my little part to see that if we haven't been taken home in fifty years there isn't some weird little 15 y/o kid getting picked on in high school because he listens to an eclectic set of archaic Christian music wondering, "What was the connection all these guys had - where did they come from - and why didn't somebody document this information?" I know, the irony is that this is the information age and the fact that we are having this conversation is probably going to be enough to preserve the information for decades if not till the end of time.

jb's contribution will be huge, indeed. Thanks for that article jb!

Last bit, Beth, if you are looking for opening acts for the show I know of a great band out of San Diego called the Dance Floor Prophets. They aren't an 80's act. More of the Dave Matthews, Jack Johnson vein, BUT they are not rip off artists and there may be a major label connection to one of the members. If you are interested e-mail me and I'll tell ya what I know about the band. As far as the "made it" bands and Switchfoot go I could get you in touch with the lead singers dad and you'd have to take it from there. Let me know.

Any chance The Choir will do "Render Love"?

jessie, where you from? 4 hours puts ya somewhere 'round San Luis Obispo (unless ya drive real slow) thems my old stompin' grounds.