When you think of Christian music, the type of music coming to your mind is usually contemporary worship and praise music, usually with a softer guitar sound. When you turn on the Christian radio station, bands you will likely hear are MercyMe, Casting Crowns, Stephen Curtis Chapman, the Newsboys, and Phil Wickam to name a few. But there is a group of artists you have likely not heard on the Christian radio. In fact, they sound more like the songs commonly played in secular circles. The songs you love to hear and prefer to listen to more than most Christian music, but you know you shouldn’t listen to. In fact, this band bridges the gap between secular music and Christian music. Actually, they write their own parodies of these secular songs. Making the songs you love to hear on the radio and replacing those ungodly lyrics with wholesome and God honoring lyrics. They have done parodies of artists from every genre of music, from country to classic rock, from heavy metal to pop, and from the oldies to today’s tunes. The ApologetiX is their name. The band comprises of J. Jackson as the lead singer, Wayne Bartley and Tom Tincha both on the guitar, Keith Hayne on bass guitar, Jimmy Vegas Tanner on the drums, and Rich Mannion on the keyboard. The band started in 1992 and are celebrating their 31st anniversary this year.
The band is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and originally consisted of J. Jackson on lead, still is today, Karl Messner on lead guitar, Jerry Hayostek on bass, Jeff Pakula on bass, and Andy Sparks as rhythm guitarist. They started their career at the now closed and demolished Paradise Club in Irwin, Pennsylvania. Hence, their parody of the Styx song AD 1928/Rockin’ the Paradise they called AD 1992/Rockin’ the Paradise Club, which is on the Rare Not Well Done Volume 2 download. It was originally on their Get Your Wigs cassette, which sadly has never been released on CD or on any streaming service, or even their own USB drive, which is the case for two other cassettes they released, Parable Guy and Want It Dead or Alive. You can’t even purchase the cassette from a used online store. Fortunately, they did release the song mentioned from that cassette along with 6 others including their humorous parody of Old Time Rock n Roll called Not Named Job. 3 songs came from their Want It Dead or Alive cassette, but sadly none from their Parable Guy cassette, even though they eventually redid the Parable Guy song, a parody of Don McLean’s American Pie, 6 years later on their Jesus Christ Morningstar CD and they have redone many of the songs which were on the Parable Guy cassette and on many of their albums which were on cassette, which were from 1992–1997.
My brother and I grew up listening to their parodies of these rock n roll songs and often hearing their parodies of these songs before I heard the original. I may have heard about the original because the ApologetiX did a parody on that song. I think in many ways, this was the way rock n roll music is even played inside our house. My family and I had the privilege of seeing the ApologetiX on both of our trips to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, once in 2013 at the Calvary Church in Irwin, not far from the former Paradise Club and their 25th Anniversary at the New Community Church in Wexford, Pennsylvania, which were both a fun experience attending. And I still love listening to them today. In fact, I am probably listening to ApologetiX as I am writing this. If I am not I may be listening to Petra, the other Christian rock n roll band, which is surprisingly much more famous. But not nearly as unique because they created their own songs and didn’t parody rock n roll songs.
You can buy most of their music from after 1992, except for their live cassette recordings in 1995 and 1996, on their website, whether through their CD copies (some of them you might have to buy on Ebay or Amazon because they stopped selling their albums prior to 2007 on their website, which is a bummer because these are some of their best albums. You can still buy the downloads of those albums fortunately), or if you don’t listen to CDs anymore you can download their albums onto your computer. If you want all their music, they created a USB drive with all of their music on it on the albums they display on their website. Here is their website for more information about the band if you want to buy an album from them or you are first learning about them: http://apologetix.com/index.php.
Before I leave, I would like to pay tribute to one of my favorite music albums from them. This year is actually the 30th anniversary of the release of their first mass produced album, Isn’t Wasn’t Ain’t. If you haven’t heard it before, it is a fun cassette quality rendition of many of your favorite rock n roll songs (ApologetiX’s parodies are in parentheses). Livin Loving Maid by Led Zepplin (Isn’t Wasn’t Ain’t) , Signs by Tesla (Lions) , Help Me Rhonda by the Beach Boys (Help Me Rhoda), and Listen to the Music by the Doobie Brothers (Christians Doin Music) are some of the songs they parodied on this album. This wasn’t the first album I bought from the ApologetiX. In fact, buying that CD was one of the takeaways from attending the Irwin concert, which was an experience of itself. That concert only had ten people show up and the only reason they held that concert was because they had devoted fans from California show up that really wanted to hear them sing. And the grace and intervention of God. Which is how they still manage to sing to this day, despite many hiccups on the road and I hope they can continue to serve God through this ministry of singing for years to come.
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