Wednesday October 23 - Centennial Hall

Looking at the screaming audience, I could see that this was a subculture all its own. The capacity of the sold-out crowd of tense, clean-cut youths at Centennial Hall busied themselves with auditorium-wide rounds of swimming-pool diversion "Marco Polo" while waiting anxiously for the opening act.

Plankeye of Los Angeles opened up. Musically, the analogy of a Christian Green Day would not be inaccurate.

The typical slacker-punk mentality prevalent within that genre clashes with the ever-present harmony of the typical Christian rock group. They just didn't seem to care about it a whole lot. Creative points for the name - Catch the reference to the proverb about splinters in one's neighbor's eye? They certainly did ...

Next up was Geoff Moore & The Distance. The use of a soloist's name was about the only display of ego I witnessed during the entire show. For the opening number, Mr. Moore wailed about the stage ... the effect was rather like a white-bread Jim Morrison. O ne of their songs sounded so much like the BoDeans that I could not accept it as mere coincidence. Not entirely satisfying.

Before describing the Newsboys' gargantuan set, a few words about the message which prevailed: I once read an interview with a well-known musician who started off in the Christian music scene before moving on to secular fame. He said that since his father wouldn't allow anything but Christian music in the house, his first attempts at rebellion were Rush and Yes albums. The reason for this was their perfect harmonies, indistinguishable from the Christian rockers. I fear that this sweeping generalization st ill holds true 15 years later. The kids there had an enthusiasm reminiscent of Beatlemaniacs 30 years ago. They were all that fresh-faced. Obedient, too. When Newsboys singer John James exhorted the crowd to raise their hands, I was conspicuously the only dissenter.

Forced to sum up the Newsboys' part of the show in one sentence, I might say "High production values." Their act is billed as "alterna-pop" but their set is redolent of the late 1980s - somewhere in between Van Halen and Motley Crue. They played on a mult i-level stage with video screens, lighting to tax the wits of the Centennial tech staff, and flew a blimp over the audience during the last number. Musically, it seemed like vintage hard rock, with a few notable deviations. The aforementioned lack of ego left those waiting for a thundering guitar solo disappointed. Instrumental parts of any kind were rare. The harmony was again disconcerting. I think it comes with the territory - even Jars of Clay (aargghh) couldn't escape it during their 15 minutes of fa me. The musicianship was excellent - the evangelism, however, was unending. The Newsboys hail (mostly) from Australia - this influence was seen in the singer's (exaggerated?) accent, and in the tribal-sounding percussion.

In their own words, "The Take Me to Your Leader Tour is a 90 city journey with a purpose to communicate the necessity of 'taking' people to Jesus." With that statement in mind, it all makes sense. Judging from the size of the audience, Virgin Records also made a sensible move in signing them.

As a rock concert, it seemed vaguely incongruous; as "a mission from God" it made perfect, albeit cloying, sense, at least from a less than zealous perspective such as mine.

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