DeGarmo & Key
Destined to Win: The Classic Rock Collection
Reviewed by Arsenio Orteza
In keeping with the anti-anti-DeGarmo and Key backlash begun in these very pages with that very respectful cover story back in '91, allow me to point out that I, too, feel it's about time these two pros got the credit they deserve from Christian rock's "alternative" fringe. The 12 songs collected here demonstrate that while worshipers of, I don't know, the Swirling Eddies or some such were whining that D & K had gone soft in their post-thirties, the D & K in question were relentlessly pursuing both high songwriting and production standards and a ministry to Christian teens that, who knows, just might help breed a godly generation some day.
Some of these songs even rock. Defanged blues-metal power riffs drive "Color Me Gone," one of the two new songs tacked on to make sure that even diehard D & K-heads plunk for this, and less defanged ones drive "Rock Solid" and "Boycott Hell" (although the new Newsboys version of the latter makes more of a racket).
The mellow stuff's not bad, either, especially the affectionate melancholy of the other new one, "I'll Come Out Fighting For You." Key's husky voice rides each buoyant hook so well we can once and for all quit comparing him to Michael McDonald. And who can forget that "Six Six Six," digitally remixed on track six here, appropriately enough, once accompanied a video that MTV, at the height of its mid-80s metal fixation, deemed too violent?
But ultimately the anti-anti-D & K backlash is more about respect than enthusiasm, and that's simply because, if you're not a Christian teen, music aimed at Christian teens will pass you by as quickly as lesbian folk/pop bypasses rocking heterosexuals. Here's what I mean: When I received this pre-release cassette, I scanned the titles and thought, "Geez, they left off 'Seen and Not Heard,' which at least boasted a meaty Kiss riff." Then I realized that it was that other rock band that aims at Christian teens to the exclusion of nearly everyone else, Petra, and not DeGarmo and Key that did that one. And then I realized that while there are at least a dozen (no pun intended) key differences between D & K and Bob Hartman's band, those differences are only so many split hairs to those of us who are so demographically removed from this genre that we think Sophie B. Hawkins' inclusion of the Lord's Prayer in "California Here I Come" makes that song the best Jesus rock song of '92.
4/5