Flashback Friday: Would You Like Fries with your Mannaburger?

We're still stuck in the Seventies here at The Night Beat, though we have finished with the Jungle Music skit. The Eighties may have been CCM's Golden Age, but it's birth came in the Seventies, give or take a few years.

Part of the fun of the early CCM era came because a few of the top acts were somewhat certifiable, or at least came with a very twisted sense of humor. Now in the eighties Steve Taylor pretty much ran away with the title of Clown Prince (or is it Clone Prince), but at the start there were two, and as good fortune would have it they are united in a group of three which we will discuss in our next series of Flashback Friday posts.

Our trio happens to be CCM Legends Keith Green, Randy Stonehill, and Phil Keaggy. They all came together through one song, Love Broke Through. The song was written by Stonehill and Green, along with another person, Todd Fishkind, and was famously recorded by Keaggy. Just to make things certain, Stonehill and Green were the demented ones, and that made them all the more loved.

We are going to start with Keith Green, if only because he is the only one of the three which is no longer with us.

Keith Green (October 21, 1953 - July 28, 1982) was a musical prodigy. According to his bio on Wikipedia he had learned the Ukulele by age 3, the guitar by 5 and the piano by 7. Don't get depressed. By the age of 11 he had already written 40 Songs and was on the verge of being signed by DECCA as a teen idol. Of Jewish Heritage and raised in a Christian Science background, Green became a Christian in 1972 and he and his wife Melody soon started a music ministry soon afterward.

Keith released Seven studio albums in his brief career. Actually, only four were released when he was alive For Him Who Has Ears To Hear (1977), No Compromise (1978), So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt (1980) and Songs For The Shepherd (1982). His wife Melody released another three albums posthumously, though these were originals and not best of's. I Only Want to See You There (1983), The Prodigal Son (1983) and Jesus Commands Us To Go (1984) rounded out the list.

I am going to give you three video treats to introduce you to this great musician, who was taken from us tragically way before his time, in a plane crash in 1982, at the tender age of 29. It's hard to believe he would only be 59 this fall. I will start with the song that united Keaggy, Stonehill and Green, Love Broke Through.

We will go next to He'll Take Care of the Rest, which shows why Keith was often compared to Elton John in style.

And finally, to confirm what I said about slightly certifiable, this is So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt.

That concludes this edition of Flashback Friday. We will return next Friday with the second artist of the triad, Randy Stonehill. Until next time, I am Awaiting Your Reply.

Oh, by the way. To answer the question posed in the title. For forty years the answer would have been "what else is there? It would have been the manna burger with manna fries and a manna shake. Possibly out of the great mercy of God, nobody was allowed to super-size.