God
Vibrations!

By the time I started seriously looking for records in Sydney in the late 1990s, I was at least 10 years too late to really be able to find the 'good stuff'.

The kind of things I might have been drawn to like garage 45s, rare jazz, and psych records had already been hoovered up by previous generations of collectors from both here and overseas.

So for someone drawn to the less obvious (and more interesting) side of things, what was left amongst those sorry dregs?

Well, aside from the previously featured Moog and funky Lounge-style records, the kind of thing that seemed really interesting to me was the religious records I would find in Op-shops.

They might have psychedelic-styled covers, be on obscure privately pressed labels, or have song titles referring to the devil, drugs, or the apocalypse. Despite not being religious, I found them intriguing.

Fuzz guitar, funky drums, wild effects, with excellent, creative production.

Now, the mid-1960s through to the early 1970s was obviously an incredible time for music in general, and the Christian music of this era is no exception. Fuzz guitar, funky drums, wild effects, with excellent, creative production. They dealt with subjects like drugs, war or the end-times. All the elements that made 'regular' music of the time so good are present here, albeit in an often quirkier form.

And to over-generalise, there is a kind of innocence and earnestness that is rarely present in secular music.

The mix...

Beyond the expected vocal harmony pop, quite a few genres are presented here. To highlight a few in particular, there is the idiosyncratic, farfisa-heavy, garage-pop of John Ylvisaker (I really struggled to limit it to just two of his tracks - so much of his stuff is terrific); a Sly Stone-ish fuzz-funk track from Andraé Crouch; some wild, lo-fi, psychedelic guitar from Danny and Linda; the genuinely lovely, gentle, folk music from Linda Rich (who is lovingly featured here); as well as a lot of excellent pop-psych.

Of course i'm certainly not the first to compile a bunch of great Christian tracks. The terrific 'Resurrection' comp from Trunk records is worth checking out. I've only replicated one of the tracks here - the classic drum-heavy 'Addict's Psalm'.

Almost all of the tracks i've included are from releases on specifically Christian labels, and hail from the USA. This is mainly because they had prolific labels like Word and Light, and had a solid distribution network in Australia (which is where I found most of these).

Those big name labels also had excellent musicians and production - easily as good as anything else at the time. It wouldn't surprise me if the (unnamed) session musicians on these records also played on the mainstream hits of the day.

It's quite a long mix, but it was tough to keep it even this short!