ApologetiX/What is a Christian Parody Band?

The following are some reviews I've prepared of ApologetiX' material. To date, they have produced six CDs. In chronological order (of release date) they are:

• Ticked
• Jesus Christ Morningstar
• Radical History Tour
• Biblical Graffiti
• Spoofernatural
• Keep the Change

Note that "Radical History Tour" is a re-release of material previously available on cassette tape, so the actual material predates "Ticked."

Back in the days of vinyl records, it was possible to get about 10-12 good quality (fair dynamic range) songs on a single record. The length (in minutes) of a record was mainly determined by how deep the grooves were in the vinyl. The deeper the grooves, the better the dynamic range, quality, and sturdiness of the LP. Unfortunately, the deeper the grooves, the less recording time you could get on the typical LP. It turns out that with reasonable quality, one could expect to get about 10-12 average length songs on a typical LP.

When CDs arrived, quality was no longer related to the manufacture of the disk. Digital ("CD") quality was always the same and you could get up to 74 minutes of recording time per disk. There is no real (production) cost savings nor any quality benefits to recording any less material on a CD. For a while, vinyl records and CDs coexisted and most material was released in both formats. Therefore, the recording capacity of the vinyl album continued to limit the amount of material one could record on a CD (since the record companies didn't want to have to ship two records in each package to provide up to 74 minutes recording time). Within a few years after the introduction of CDs, vinyl recordings became obsolete in the U.S. (records were still popular in Japan for a while, though I suspect they've died away except in specialty markets by now). However, the concept of "ten songs equals one release" is still pervasive in the music industry. Artists have the ability to put nearly twice as much material on a single CD as they got on records (at the equivalent quality level) yet they continue to leave a fair portion of the disk blank. The reason should be obvious, it takes effort to write and record those additional songs; furthermore, if you take the material from two full CDs and split it across three CDs, you're going to increase the amount of money you take in. Of course, the fact that CDs cost about 40% more than records did isn't lost on those of us who've been around since the days of vinyl records.

ApologetiX' offerings are a refreshing change from many other bands with respect to value. They choose their song mix by the number of tracks they can fit into 74 minutes, not by how much work it is to write so many songs. ApologetiX offers one of the highest values based on songs per CD of most bands I've seen (Mark Bradford, who also does Christian parodies of secular songs for example, sticks to the old rule of 10-12 songs per CD). A typical ApologetiX CD will contain 18-22 tracks; the actual number controlled by the length of the songs and the available recording time, not by some artificial rule along the lines of "this is a sufficient number of songs for the money."

Now on nearly every CD you buy, you're probably going to find some songs you really love, some songs you like, some songs you think are okay, and some songs that stink. The thing that makes an album great is a greater incidence of songs you love than songs you think stink. Now ApologetiX does covers of existing songs, so you would think that their material should all be good since they can pick all the popular tunes and skip the losers. Of course, keep in mind that ApologetiX picks from a rather wide selection of material, and you can't please everyone all the time, so ApologetiX will produce some songs you love and some songs you hate. Furthermore, even if they pick some secular song you love, there is no guarantee that the lyrics they write for that song will do anything for you. The bottom line is that ApologetiX will produce some songs you love, some songs you like, some songs you think are okay, and some songs that stink. Perhaps the percentage of the mixture will be closer to the "songs you love" end of this list (because their albums are, effectively, of the "greatest hits" variety), but there will be songs you feel are losers on nearly every album. However, don't get caught in the trap of "I only really liked about 50% of the songs on this CD." Even if this is true, this means that you like a greater number of songs on this CD than you would on a typical CD that has only 10-12 tracks.

I've gone through the exposition above because I want to make one thing clear: there are many ApololgetiX songs that just don't work for me. Either I don't like the original music, I don't like the production, I don't like the lyrics, or I don't like the performance. When I review these songs I'm not going to pull any punches; if I don't like it, I'm going to say so. Unfortunately, one negative review often needs about 10 positive reviews to strike an even balance. I do want to make one thing very clear with my reviews, however, if the number of negative reviews is less than half the tracks on the CD, then you're still getting more great songs on a single CD than you would from most other artists. So don't let a few honest reviews overly distract you with respect to the quality of ApologetiX offerings.

Of course, one very important thing to keep in mind when reading these reviews is that my musical tastes are probably quite different than yours. I am a big fan of what has become known as "80's hair music." Stuff like Van Halen, Blue Oyster Cult, Aerosmith, BTO (Keith, you're not alone), Sammy Hagar, UFO, Kansas, Poison, Motely Crue, Quiet Riot, and other such stuff that is quite out of date these days. Now my tastes are actual far more eclectic than this and I enjoy music from a wide variety of genres (rap/hip-hop and disco are two areas that I just can't get into, even though I own a P.O.D disc), but the bottom line is that list Rock/Hard Rock above sufficiently dates my tastes to warn you about where I'm coming from when I review this material. I should also point out that I've not listened much to modern music over the past decade or so (this isn't for philosophical or religious reasons, I've just been too busy doing other things), so I often have to evaluate ApologetiX reworks of newer songs strictly on their own merits (without being able to compare them to songs I'm familiar with).

Just before actually reviewing the individual CDs and their tracks, allow me one digression to post my all-time favorite ApologetiX songs; their "greatest hits" in my opinion. Here they are:

• 969 (Biblical Graffiti, parody of "Summer of '69"))
• Donkey Talked With Him (Biblical Graffiti, parody of "Honky Tonk Women")
• Lawful Woman in a Bad Place (Biblical Graffiti, parody of "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress")
• Revelation Man (Biblical Graffiti, parody of "Secret Agent Man")
• Bends to Low Places (Biblical Graffiti, parody of "Friends in Low Places")
• Hotel Can't Afford Ya (Jesus Christ Morningstar, parody of "Hotel California")
• Love & Kisses (Jesus Christ Morningstar, parody of "Rock and Roll All Night")
• You May be Bright (Jesus Christ Morningstar, parody of "You May be Right")
• Walk His Way (Jesus Christ Morningstar, parody of "Walk This Way")
• Jacob's Name is Israel (Radical History Tour, parody of "Takin Care of Business")
• Not Logs Lincoln (Radical History Tour, parody of "Hot Rod Lincoln")
• La Bible (Spoofernatural, parody of "La Bamba")
• I Want in That Place (Spoofernatural, parody of "I Want it That Way")
• I Love Apostle Paul (Spoofernatural, parody of "I Love Rock and Roll")
• Learn Some Deuteronomy (Spoofernatural, parody of "Pour Some Sugar on Me")
• Naomi Gonna be With Ruth (Ticked, parody of "Only Wanna Be With You")
• Christmasnite (Keep the Change, parody of "Kryptonite")
• Daniel (Keep the Change, parody of "Daniel")
• All the Stalls Stink (Keep the Change, parody of "All the Small Things")
• Mama Told Me (Keep the Change, parody of "Mama Told Me")
• You Booked Me All Along (Keep the Change, parody of "You Shook Me All Night Long")
• December 5 or 6 B .C./Oh Holy Night (Have Yourself a Parody Little Christmas, parody of "Oh What a Night:")
• Smooth Grandmama (Grace Period, parody of "Smooth Criminal")
• Good Guys, Bad Guys (Grace Period, parody of "Good Times Bad Times")

This is, by no means, the only songs I really like from ApologetiX. Just the current list of tunes that I would assemble onto a single CD if I were to create a "greatest hits" CD-R. I offer this, not as a list others should use, but as a way of listing the songs I really like so that those who are familiar with ApologetiX' work can determine how much faith to put in my reviews. If this mixture of songs doesn't include many of your favorite ApologetiX tunes (or their secular counterparts), I serious doubt that my reviews will apply to you.

Let me make one final comment about the following reviews: I've chosen to use ApologetiX' excellently produced "Keep the Change" CD as the benchmark for my reviews. ApologetiX did such an excellent job on this CD that their older releases will necessarily suffer in the review process. That is not to say that their older stuff isn't excellent; just that I need to leave some "headroom" for future reviews of their work. ApologetiX has a history of improving with each new CD and if I rate their past work as "excellent" on all accounts, how do I describe anything new that comes along as being better? I hope this explains why I've rated some songs "good" that you think of as "excellent". I just need to leave a little room for new stuff that comes along.

ApologetiX CD Reviews:

Review of "Biblical Graffiti"

Review of "Have Yourself a Parody Little Christmas"

Review of "Grace Period"

Review of "Jesus Christ Morningstar"

Review of "Keep the Change"

Review of "Radical History Tour"

Review of "Spoofernatural"

Review of "Ticked"