by Karen Marie Platt, et al.
THIS IS THE SAGA OF Daniel Amos and the long journey in search of a record. Once, this story was mostly oral tradition, and few, if any, had heard it in its entirety. Until one day, a harried young Scribe stumbled, unawares, into its conclusion, and instructed by the Publisher and called upon by God, having all the best of intentions, the Scribe received the unlovely task of recording here the slowly revolving maelstrom of Horrendous Disc.
For the benefit of the uninitiated, our protagonist is not one, but six. Daniel Amos began as a band of souther California Christians (Steve Baxter, Jerry Chamberlain, Marty Dieckmeyer and Terry Taylor), who sat in folding chairs, played acoustic guitars, sang country music and make it's audience laugh.
Beginning its no-so-renowned career touring the Calvary Chapel circuit, the band signed with Maranatha! Music in 1975. Between 1975 and 1978, Daniel Amos (hereafter also called D.A.) recorded two albums - Daniel Amos (1975) and Shotgun Angel (1977) - gaining a small but chosen following throughout this country. During this time its music changed from country to county-rock, from country-rock to rock, from rock to new wave. Baxter departed for Colorado, Ed McTaggart joined up, followed by Mark Cook and Al MacDougall.
Maranatha! Music treated D.A. well. Being one of the few non-profit record companies in Christian music, it tender its artists greater financial compassion and personal attention than most. In early 1978, the company signed a distribution pact with Word and engaged in its pursuit of the praise album series that subsequently gained the label great repute in the international Christian community. D.A., on the other hand, continued to become increasingly rock oriented. On March 16, 1978, the band working on its third album in what was then known as Marantatha Studios (now Whitefield Studios) in Santa Ana. The project was quickly finished, and one bright summer day not long after, the Publisher sat in that very same studio and actually heard the Horrendous Disc in its entirety. The music was hip, almost avantgarde. The message was there, although no aggressively present and sometimes difficult to hear over the music.
Since few bands were signed with Maranatha! Music at the time and none were rockers, the vision shared by D.A. band members was anomolous in the organization. They wanted to reach the secular music audiences. They believed in themselves. They believed they could be the first contemporary Christian band to successfully break into the secular music business. (Musically speaking, they may have been right. The Publisher, also, felt enthusiastic about the new tracks)
Feeling unsettled at Maranatha!, D.A. signed a management contract with Street level Productions (not to be confused with Street Level Artists Agency, but more about that later) and asked its founder, the famed Larry Norman, to build them a secular career as Christian artists. Warner-Curb displayed interest in signing the band to a record deal so D.A. notified Maranatha! of its intent to break with the company. Of course, the tapes that provided the basis for the band's precious third album were suddenly locked deep in the recesses of Marantatha!'s vaults, to be retrieved only upon payment of monies that company already had spent on the project.
Warner-curb offered a contract - according to band members, "a good contract, but not the kind of thing we wanted." They prayed about it and decided to change or put it off. Besides, ransom for the horrendous hostage was not offered.
Unfortunately, like most classical heroes Daniel Amos was more confident than careful. The Publisher received a photograph, along with an announcement of the upcoming release of the Horrendous Disc, pending negotiations. And having already heard the album, he passed the information along to his readers. That was in August 1978.
In December, Daniel Amos finally turned down the Warner-Curb offer. Mike Curb had decided to run for lieutenant governor of California and some rather disconcerting news had surfaced hat led all concerned to believe that close association with the Warner-Curb label might not be the thing to do at the time. Besides, says drummer and band bookkeeper Ed McTaggart, "...it wasn't a very good contract for us artist-wise."
Undaunted, the band decided to stay within the fellowship of Christian artistry, at least for the time being, and signed a recording and publishing contract with Solid Rock Records. unfortunately, having been educated in business at maranatha! Music, D.A. apparently did not fully recognize the meaning of a written contract. Norman, however, was hip to the fact that since Maranatha! was considering selling the Horrendous Disc to Myrrh, paperwork was absolutely necessary. The selling price according to Norman, was $35 thousand dollars, repayable, according to usual industry practice, from artist's royalties received through sale of the album.
"We were signing under the spirit of the agreement rather than the letter of the law," says McTaggart. "We (Norman and D.A.) even talked about it the night before. If we felt like there needed to be a parting of the ways, that we would shake hands and go, and the contract wouldn't be a binding thing to us."
Why sign a contract then? "That's what we wanted. We wanted to be with Solid Rock ...the image, yeah, and our initial attraction was thatLarry had some contacts with secular companies who had expressed interest in signing D.A. so that was another reason..."
Aha!!! thinks Scribe. The heroes raise the banner and enter the fray.
Word ransomed the horrendous Disc (originally, to release it on Myrrh, but that didn't fit too well into D.A.'s vision), and Solid Rock, in turn, leased the Disc from Word. Larry began working on the he final stages of the LP, and everyone was pleased.
Norman believed, however, that the album needed to be refined in expression and clarified in light of the group's artistic direction. Daniel Amos agreed that considerable time had elapsed since the tracks were first laid and that several songs on the album were no longer truly representative of the band's current material. So, two cuts were dropped, two were added; one called, "I Love You," and another (released a littleoverr a year later on the Word promo EP for the album) Called "Hound of heaven," (based on the poem of the same name by 19th century poet Francis Thompson.)
Then Daniel Amos and Norman agreed on a specific song order and on the general concept for the cover art. The latter - loosely based on a mixture of flying saucers, horror movies and the band's anti-cult skit about preachers from outer space - was a tall order, and perhaps a bit confused theologically.Accordingg toNormann, the cover art cost him considerable effort, time and financial investment; it appeared the pieces of the puzzle seemed mechanically related but stubbornly defied attempts to be integrated into an organic whole consistent with the musical and thematic content of the album. In Norman's opinion, at least, the concept lacked focus.
About the same time, Larry took Daniel Amos into the studio to cut a demo of five songs (including a country tune called, "Happily Married Man"), to press into an EP for underground sales and to show to secular record companies. The project was funded by Solid Rock with Larry's personal money. Not much resulted from this endeavor however because D.A. decided they didn't want to release an EP after all so the band kept the masters.
By now our cast of characters had worked their way, slowly but surely, into September 1979. All appeared ready for general distribution of the now already famous LP. Word delivered a 12-inch "test pressing" to the Publisher, and , based upon information released by the group and the label, he announced to his readers that the product would be available in October. Presuming the album's imminent release, and already engaged in printing the covers and pressing the vinyl, Word placed a full page, black and white advertisement in the November issue of Publisher's magazine. Then...
Nod a.
Somewhere in the night, violins played the refrain of "As Time Goes By."
It's now late '79 and the Publisher, being a good sort and assuming the Word Ads were a sign of imminent release, ran a cover story in January entitled, "Daniel Amos: Christian Music's Angry Young Men." The issue drew fire from anti-rock crusaderthroughoutt Christendom and it didn't sell very well either. And still, you guessed it, no Horrendous Disc.
That's when the Publisher - unable to get anyone on the telephone at Street Level Artists Agency (more yet to come) who knew anything precise, and, later still, unable to get a firm commitment from Word - decided he needed someone to do some in-depth sleuthing. So, Publisher hired Scribe, who completed prior commitments and began work for Publisher in May.
After wearing the deerstalker hat for only a short time, Scribe uncovered a remarkable treasure - actual proof of the habeus corpus!
Scribe stumbled onto a whole load of cassette tapes of the invisible Disc, sitting in the Word warehouse in Waco, Texas. A little more detective work uncovered 15,000 (or so) printed album jackets and some rejected discs mouldering in the Los Angeles warehouse of the Capitol pressing plant, Word's official record presser. Why these platters were pressed without the official test pressing approval of Solid Rock, says Norman, no one seems to remember.
Further sleuthing, however brought the events of the mysterious Saga into a more observable pattern.
Retracing Publisher's steps, Scribe found that on March 20, 1980, Daniel Amos, engaged in a brief national tour, paid a visit to Waco and a company representative played a test pressing of the horrendous Disc for the band which was surprised, delighted, and then dismayed. The songs seemed to be in a different order, one seemed missing altogether, and there was a flaw in the vinyl on side two. But D.A. didn't say anything to Word vice-president Stan Moser or to the A&R rep, Buddy Huey. Instead, the band returned to California for a meeting with Norman who agreed that he'd do something about it.
Back on tour, Daniel Amos expected all would be well on their return. But when they arrived back in southern California in mid-May, they found waiting for them a letter from Norman saying that he had decided to release them from their management contract and from any further management payments beyond the $15,000 they had already accrued but had yet not paid. He would manage them for free, he said, give them any kind of support or direction they desired, but would not accept financial remuneration.
Norman's letter was his reaction to some pretty heavy goings on at Street Level Artists Agency. (The site of major conflict in this Saga.) Norman, who had founded the organization, and Phillip Mangano, the man who as friend and assistant to Norman ran the show while Norman was on tour and in the studio and generally being the artist, found themselves in disagreement over a variety of topics, all of which hadeverythingg to do with thdifferencece between teh concept of music ministry and the practices of the music industry. The main topic odissension wasas how Street Level should charge for its services - in this Saga for personal services to D.A. (California Civil law states that it is illegal for the same company to receive compenstaion for booking and management of an artist.) The issue was how to keep the artists' cost for services below 15 percent and still sufficiently fund Street Level so that it could, in turn, best serve it's artists. Norman focused on ministry; Mangano on business. Discussions (some of them pretty horrendous) also revolved around the subject of fairness practices in charges to sponsors for travel expenses and lowering the cost of records to artists. Finally, Norman, in order to declare his position, generated the star-crossed letter.
Daniel Amos apparently mistook Norman's correspondence for a reaction to their request for re-working the master of horrendous Disc. It retained a lawyer who promptly wrote Norman and said that the band was terminating all its contracts and wanted its music - the Disc, the publishing rights, the secular demo - back. Norman responded, explaning that D.A was free to leave, as were all Solid Rock artists, but that they would have to honor at least part of their contract, that he couldn't give to them what was not his to give...
Stalemate.
July 1980: Word religious radio promo man Dangerous Dan hickling releases a 10-inch multicolored vinyl EP to various radio program directors and the Publisher. (The promotional device is now a collector's item not only because of the history of its father Disc, but also because one side contains two songs - "I Believe in You" and "Hound of Heaven," - playable at 33-1/3 rpm, while the other contains the now prophetic title tune, "Horrendous Disc," playable at 78 rpm only (so that almost nobody could hear it.) Hickling's mailing was well-received, and several Christian contemporary music stations still play the 33-1/3 side.
...Oh yes. And the Publisher made a humorous side comment about the elusive album and Solid Rock in the July issue of the magazine.
Meanwhile, Daniel Amos was rapidly approaching the crossroads. Two members - Mark Cook and Alex MacDougall - left the group to pursue other godly and financial supportive endeavors. The remaining four changed lawyers. During the early summer, the group had managed to play club dates around southern California and elsewhere, including the now infamous club dates at the even more infamous L.A. rock club Madame Wong's during which time the band played some of its new, new wave material. Of course, this development caused considerable consternation among some of the members of the Christian community.
In August, D.A. repeated its Madame Wong's performance. At the time, Norman and Randy Stonehill were away from Los Angeles on a duo tour booked by Street Level, and Phil Mangano, Norman's former business associate at Street Level Artists Agency (by now, Norman is out of the picture at the agency, but not at the production company) and still D.A.'s unofficial representative (he calls himself "an advisor, friend and counselor" for the group as well as others at Street Level) had already begun talking with New Benson Company about a Daniel Amos recording contract.
Meanwhile, harried Scribe was trying to find out what was going on - no easy task since hardly anyone else seemed to have an inkling. Sometimes, like the man said, the facts obscure the truth. So, in desperstion, Scribe simply set down the story upon these pages before you here, in hopes that the following might be more clear...
In December, Ed McTaggart and Terry Taylor, the songwriter of the group, confided in Scribe: "...What it has come down to is we've looked at it really prayerfully and it's been such a point of strife for us. Holding up the release of our album has hurt us financially, spirtually, mentally in many ways. We realize...we were actually sinning in the fact that we were trying to avenge ourselves, trying to get back at and fight Larry off about these songs, publishing rights and all this, trying to hold onto what's 'ours' because 'we're in the right' ...you know, because 'we're the righteous ones and we're right about this.'"
Then Scribe called Waco and asked vice president Stan Moser to clarify Word's position on the album. Moser indicated that Norman still had the legal rights and physical control of the Daniel Amos record.
"Well," he chuckled, "Here's what we've got. What we have in our warehouse right now is, I believe, 25,000 jackets with the wrong songs listed on the back. And we have 10,000 8-tracks and cassettes of finished product that have only nine songs and I think there are ten songs that are supposed to be on the final album. So we've had those in our warehouse for about 90 days. Once we reached that stage, we realized that something was wrong somewhere. And then Larry informed us that the 8-tracks and cassettes were pressed from the wrong master tape, or created from the wrong master tape, and that he would furnish us with the finished master tape which would correspond, as I understand it, with the jackets that we now have."
Confused? So was the Scribe.