Skanking In The Light Of God
Massive energy at Caversham Baptist Church last night: Sounds Of Salvation were the final course in our Easter Saturday celebration. I'm told they play "third-wave 90's ska". To me it sounded like 2 Tone OD'ed on Red Bull. School holidays are a bit weird this spring. Normally Caversham Baptist run a holiday club for local kids in the week before Easter, but this year they were all still at school. So instead there was a long day yesterday: under-fives activities in the morning, primary age in the afternoon, and Sounds Of Salvation ska-ing away in the evening. BlackMatt was a star - he was there all day in spite of feeling stuffed full of cold. And BlackSar is wrecked this morning: she was helping in the afternoon and dancing (sorry, skanking) all evening.
Sounds of Salvation played a mixture of well-known worship songs (and some even better know old hymns) in a fast ska style, plus some of their own compositions. The worship songs were fun and very danceable, but I preferred their own songs. "I am not a guinea pig" was fast punk with audience participation, whilst "Anthem for a broken world" is more thoughtful (you can hear the latter on MySpace).
All in all, a fun evening, if exhausting (and I was only watching). If SoS play in your area, they are well worth a visit.
I'm not familiar with the group but I'll have to give them a listen.
As is common with British explicitly-Christian music, the production is a
bit rough and doesn't capture the sheer energy of their live show. Still,
that's better than the horrible blandness of far too much of the 'product'
coming out of the US CCM factory.
I'd like to be on a Praise Team that played off-the-wall stuff like that.
We'd probably have a much larger, more enthusiastic congregation!
If my church is anything ot go by, you'd mostly get lots of complaints
doing anything like that in a main service :-(