I flick across the Christian channels on Sky regularly and the past weekend God TV has been broadcasting live coverage of a Christian music festival in Ballymena called Fuel. I didn’t know any of the bands or speakers, but was amazed at how, in such a short space of time, events like this with exclusively American acts can now be staged in Northern Ireland. Even more significant is how this style of music and event has mainstreamed into Evangelical church culture here.
Anyone remember this?
It took place way back in August 1998, and as a Baptist teenager I was risking my YF good standing by going to it. Tony Campolo was the speaker, and there was a mix of American and local musical talent. At the time it seemed like a really huge event, but compared to 2009’s Fuel - pretty small scale.
To me the biggest contrast between the two events was that Awake felt like a genuinely subversive happening – from having Campolo as a speaker, bringing over All Star United (a new and then unknown American band) as the headline act, holding it in a prominent public space (Laganside), and the preceding public parade starting out from City Hall. Fuel 09 in contrast, tucked away in Ballymena, looked like something you could go to with your parents!
Filed under: God TV, Music, Spirituality
I was there, and I remember it well. It came a couple of years after the Desert Festival in the Waterfront, which if I remember correctly featured Halcyon Days and a wee man now famous as Duke Special back when he still went by The Booley House. (Speaking of which, I’ve revisited the Booley EP, “Bathroom Floor”, a few times recently. He could write songs, even then.)
I had been introduced to All Star United earlier in the summer of 1998, by the leader of the Summerserve team I was on. I enjoyed their first album a great deal that summer. For what were (I believe) a ‘manufactured’ band, they were pretty good at walking the line between knowing where they cam from and who they were singing to, and subverting that CCM subculture just a little.
I only ever really listened to that first album, though.
Yeah the desert festival I remember that! And Bathroom floor too, it seemed like that song was everywhere
Don’t forget The Maroons
I think i ‘gigged’ twice that day. After flying into town with the All Star boys from greenbelt that morning. ahhhhhhhh c-c-m-rock-n-roll
I have 3 Miles on my iPod. You lot had the crowd fairly rockin that day! Much better than Emmaus.
Tonieeeeite you’re a (C-C-M) rock’n'roll starrrrr!
to be fair… I remember that Awake event being about the least cheesy and more subversively relevant Christian event I attended. well remembered, it had slipped my mind.
[...] Last week, in a roundabout way, Jonny reminded me of a little EP called Bathroom Floor. [...]