Customer Reviews

I Predict 1990

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This album is the anecdote to smarmy, saccharine, overly sincere, self-important Christian music. I Predict 1990 is smart, funny, satiric, deadly serious, and intelligent: qualities often lacking in the music sold at your local Christian bookstore (right next to the "Jesus it the Real Thing" t-shirts). On "I Blew Up the Clinic," he even employs that most un-holy of literary devices (or so it would seem)--satire! Who would have thought that Christian music could be layered and sophisticated. How many other CCM bands mention Carl Jung, Svengali, and Jim Morrison?

Plus it rocks. Ripping sax solos, shouting vocals, and catchy-as-hell hooks all the way through.

When most other "gospel" music only focuses on one part of the Christian experience, Taylor dares to talk about it all. "Harder to Believe Than Not To" has been the theme song of my faith since 1990.

With this album (and Meltdown, On the Fritz, and I Want to Be a Clone), Taylor takes his place among the pantheon of Christian artists--like Terry Taylor, the 77s, the Choir, Adam Again, Scaterd Few, Daniel Amos, the Swirling Eddies, and the Lost Dogs--who don't suck.

This album is partly responsible for why I am still a christian, despite having gone to college.
The song "Since I gave up hope I feel a lot better" is a very amusing song. It made me laugh while I was in high school, but it also prepared me for college.
In college, they do their best to make you lose the values your parents taught you. Especially Christianity. They are very successful at this with a lot of unprepared college freshmen. But not with me. Why not? Partly because of that song.
I love almost every song on this album. I have lost this album, I lost it years ago. But I still remember a lot of the songs.
"I blew up the clinic real good"
"It's harder to believe than not to"
"Svengali"
"Babylon"
"Since I gave up hope I feel a lot better"

I am NOT a Christian (a term I can't imagine Jesus approving); as a reverent agnostic, perhaps I delight in "I Predict 1990" because Steve Taylor's strikingly original, iconclastic faith that closely tracks Jesus's true message infuriates every phony, blowhard Christian I loan this remarkable album to. I was given this album by the Christian youth leader I worked with as a crew leader for the Youth Conservation Corps who thought (correctly) I'd be fascinated with Taylor's unique ode to Jim Morrison, and it is always at the top of my music stack. Those who are deeply dismayed by the ascent of the mammon-worshipping, warmongering Bush/Limbaugh/Ashcroft "Christians" on the right and the cynical do-nothing moralisms of the Left will find the cultural and political themes enthusiastically articulated by Taylor a true solace. Never straying one millimeter from the gospels, Taylor takes hard shots at abortion clinic bombers, wealthy CEO's, academic and psychiatric vanities, capital punishment, and the poseur coldness of this new age. Thank you Mindy, wherever you are, and Steve--surely you have something to predict about 2010?

The production quality over-all is very good on my vinyl record. The recording time is a little longer than his other 1980's albums if memory serves me. There are other music influences as well. If you are age 40-60, you will like this recording if you like Steve Taylor music influenced by Jethro Tull and or Papa John Creach with The mid-1970's Jefferson Starship.

I could have titled this review, "Ahead of its time" or something along those lines, and this CD was(even with the dated title)ahead of its time in style, the audacity of lyrics, and Taylor's willingness to push the envelope. But few collections of 80s pop music has withstood the movement from disco, its parent, through grunge and acoustic to a 2000-teens style which continues to evolve....but definitely not with loud bouncy synthesizer backgrounds.

This 1987 release has the same weakness, but the material within the electronic soup is effective, cheeky and clever. And would you expect less from someone who would form a band called "Chagall Guevera" two years later?

The two cuts on "Predict" that rise above the others, for me anyway, are "Jim Morrison's Grave" and "Since I Gave Up Hope I Feel a Lot Better"---the latter of which I think would be great if someone just stood behind a microphone and said, "Since I Gave Up Hope I Feel a Lot Better"; but which is no doubt improved by Taylor's hip-hoppy send up of a philosophy classroom in which Nietzsche has apparently successfully nudged out Kirkegaard, Jesus Christ, or anyone with a message of love, and which turns bright eyed and bushy tailed students into hardened corporate clones.

"Grave"'s subject is in its title; the video (on YouTube as I type this) shows Taylor wandering the Pére Lachaise cemetery, walking by the graffiti and handwritten notes mentioned in the song as he ponders the price of rock star success and the salvation we have learned of from "a dead man's cave" (Joseph of Arimathea's, probably, not Jim Morrison's).

Taylor was a rare breed of Christian musician who resisted simply being a plastic, safe cookie cutter replacement of bands Christian parents wouldn't let their kids listen to. Which is probably why bands like "Sixpence None the Richer" later sought him out as producer.

Also his most controversial. Read lyrics for the songs before you assume their meaning, I think this is his most misunderstood work.