Flashback Friday: 30 Years of Power

More Power To Ya, when you're standing on His Word, when You're trusting with your whole heard in the message you have heard

More Power To Ya, when we're all in one accord. They that wait upon The Lord, they shall renew, they shall renew their strength

The music world is a fickle world. It makes no difference whether the music is mainstream or Christian, longevity is not the norm. Ten years from now most of the hot music of today will be on the "where are they now" pile. By 2042? It takes an exceptional band to defy current trends and actually create a following. To paraphrase the great Steve Jobs "people don't know what to listen to until we play it."

Petra is THE BAND that shattered the mold. On July 3 Star Song Records released the 30th Anniversary of More Power To Ya. More astounding than that, the band is still active and touring, in two different configurations. There is Petra a four piece outfit consisting of Bob Hartman, John Schlitt, Greg Bailey and Cristian Borneo, who is listen as guest drummer on the Band Website. There is also Classic Petra, which is a five piece outfit which consists of Bob Hartman, Mark Kelly, John Lawry, Greg X. Volz and Louie Weaver. For more information on the band in all their various lineups, I would encourage you to read my original Flashback Friday post on the band.

What is more amazing than the fact that the band has a 30th Anniversary Album out this year, is that isn't its first album. Come and Join Us is the bands Sophomore release, and it is quietly celebrating 35 YEARS. In 2014 the eponymous debut will celebrate 40 YEARS. I fully expect Petra to be around to support it.

More Power To Ya was the midway point of Volz's first tenure with Petra, and it set the bands final "sound" as the Christian answer to Journey or Foreigner. For a Christian Teen in Public High School in 1982, the words of the album put spiritual steel in me, and a lot of other teens. The album was released at the height of the "Backward Masking" crusade, where hidden messages from Satan could be found by playing the vinyl record backward on the turntable. The advent of the Cassette Tape, CD, and iPod frustrated the demonic horde, as the messages can only be discovered on vinyl. The most famous of these messages was "Turn Me On Dead Man", which could be found by playing The Beatles "Number Nine" backward. Petra decided to have fun with the crusade by putting a 3 second gibberish at the beginning of Judas Kiss. When played backward on vinyl it said "What are you looking for the Devil for, when you ought to be looking for the Lord?"

Never afraid to turn their songwriting on a complacent and at times hypocritical church, Petra followed that song with Rose Colored Stained Glass Windows. From the opening bars of Mercy Drops, it was obvious that the organized church would be scandalized.

V1. Another sleepy Sunday, safe within the walls. Outside a dying world in desperation calls. But now one hears their cries, or knows what they're about. The doors are locked within, or is it from without.

C. Looking through rose colored stained glass windows. Never allowing the world to come in. Seeing no evil and feeling no pain. Making the Light as it comes from within so dim...So Dim.

V2. Out on your doorstep lay masses in decay. Ignore them long enough maybe they'll go away. When you have so much you think you have so much to lose. You think you have no lack, but you're really destitute.

(Words and Music my Bob Hartman)

CCM Magazine wrote that "no group before or since could put a Bible study to music like Petra." I agree with the sentiment, but not with their ranking of it as #98 out of the 100 Greatest Albums in Christian Music. I would put it at around #65 for impact.

Spiritually insightful lyrics, tight harmonies, and guitars and keyboards par excellence. More Power To Ya is an album that spans the generation gap. Based on its personal impact I would love to give it 5 Emeralds, but more objectively, a rating of 4.5 Emeralds is more on target both for the original and the 30th Anniversary Edition.

Finally, since this is a re-issue and not an original recording, I am unsure whether to include it in the Platinum Vinyl Award pool with the new releases. It would be an interesting experiment to see how it fares against bands whose members weren't even born yet when this album came out. What do you think? I am Awaiting Your Reply.

An Apple A Day

Will set you back nearly a million dollars if it's a 17 inch MacBook Pro, and Apple Shareholders will be forever grateful. Of course you should still get a small plaque for as little as $18K (a shuffle a day). What?, that's talking about fruit? My Bad.


I have recently been reading Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. It is a book which I would highly recommend to everyone, especially if you are among the Apple Haters (You know who you are).


By way of full disclosure, I would be considered among the Apple "Faithful". The first time I ever touched a PC (I'm not including the mainframe DEC VOX2000), it was a Mac SE, and though I spent a long time using pen paper and typewriter after college, my first computer, which has served me very well, is my bondi blue clamshell iBook. My only regret with that computer is that I never understood Apple's release schedule before I bought it, and so soon after I did, a new model came out. Other than that...No Complaints.



Courtesy Amazon

 All that is in introduction to this. I have been reading Steve Jobs the biography by Walter Isaacson. It is an eye opening read to be sure, and I highly recommend it to everyone, especially to the legions of "Apple Haters" out there. Now before I got a hold of a copy I had heard that It wasn't a rah-rah book and that there a lot of things in the book that may shock the average apple fan, and that was true in some respects, but in a good way. The biggest revelation of all to some could be that Steve Jobs was human. To most people today he would be called an abusive employer unconcerned about his employees feelings, but he also wound up being a great motivator. Those who learned to push back and were not easily cowered wound up staying with him and created "Insanely Great" products such as the Macintosh, the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

It was interesting to read about how the Macintosh came about, about the ill fated Lisa (which I found out was named after his "illegitimate" daughter Lisa Brennan-Jobs.  As much as I think I follow apple events, I never knew he had a child (he had three others in addition to Lisa) or a family (he was married to Laurene Powell) until after this book came out. For a public figure he was able to retain a personal level of privacy even the average Joe has a problem maintaining.

I also learned that corporate history rarely moves in a straight line. Everybody knows Apple's release history. Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad. Wrong. Actually, based on R&D, it's Mac, iPod, iPad, iPhone. Jobs and crew started out with the concept for the iPad at first, but due to the opportunity in the Cell Phone market, decided to test the idea with the iPhone first, so those statements about "Apple is not considering the tablet market", pure jobsian spin.

The story of his cancer treatment was a big downer (no big surprise), but that doesn't kick in until the end. The Real (Toy) Story of Pixar and the NeXT misfire are real revelations if all you think of with Steve Jobs is Apple.

As a Biography I would give Steve Jobs 5 Emeralds. Even the haters might be convinced. Support the Night Beat buy buying a copy at Amazon. You can get it in Hardcover, Kindle, or even Audio CD. I will return Monday with more music, and until then I am Awaiting Your Reply.

Y2J: 10/05/11

We at The Night Beat are a little more somber today. Last Night I was about to check one of my email accounts when I noticed a news story announcing the death of Steve Jobs. Now without revealing too much let me say that while I am younger than Steve Jobs, I am not that much younger than him to not be affected. He Was 56. That's too young for anyone to die.

Back just before the turn of the millennium (that's 1999 for most people), everybody with a Windows based computer was fretting about this thing called Y2K. Seems that Bill Gates never anticipated past the year 1999, so the computer clock would roll back to 0000. They issued fixes an nothing happened anyway, so we will never know what might have happened. Anyway, back at Cupertino, Jobs announced that the clocks in Macintosh Computers were set all the way, I think, until some ridiculous time in the future like 2245 or something.

I say that because, to the Apple Faithful, yesterday will be a day we remember always, sort of like people remember where they were when they heard JFK was shot. Our hearts are a little saddened, but we know that Apple is in good hands. From all appearances, handpicked CEO Tim Cook will always be asking that important question: WWSD (What Would Steve Do?). I would say things are going to stay on an even and maybe still upward course.

Apple has been a big part of this bloggers life. Back when I was in college I started out on computers on a DEC/VAX mainframe. Using Basic line commands you typed forever and when you issued the print command, it printed.....One Paragraph. Then during my junior year things changed and we got a new computer room. Actually it was two rooms. In one room there were some large PC Computers running DOS. All I needed to know was that it revolved around the same line commands that the mainframe used. In the other room were these tiny things with one hard floppy slot and maybe a 6 inch screen. They were Macintosh SE's. Anybody who was an early convert to Macintosh remembers constantly swapping floppies between software and saving, and doing it happily, because, even though that took time, the revolutionary concept of WYSIWYG computing and GUI's made computing intuitive. And I credit the Mac and Jobs for, while not exactly paying for my college education, at least giving me a good amount of walking around money, because, Using Macwrite, I set myself up typing other students term papers. If I had to use DOS or the old mainframe, I think I would still be typing that first term paper.

I said all that to say this. Steve Jobs will be missed by many, and my ancient iBook seemed to take little longer than usual last night to reboot (perhaps it was mourning?). I have realized that the iBook (coming to the end of its useful life) would need to be replaced, and because of no other reason than money, I had briefly considered purchasing a windows machine. I have repented. You get what you pay for, and I would rather have a computer that "Just Works".

One final note. To the "Church" of J***A**** called Westboro Baptist Church. You gave up on Jesus a long time ago. If Steve Jobs went to hell, I have a feeling a lot of you will find out personally one of these days. If you were truly convinced that Apple and Jobs were evil, you should have used an Android Phone. I now apologize both to my readers and those of the Donkey Community. You are wonderful beasts of burden and I should not have compared you to the WBC.

I shall return soon with more music posts. Until next time, I am Awaiting Your Reply.