Larry Norman - Agitator: The Essential

Reviewed by Tony Cummings

When we published Dougie Adams’ groundbreaking annotated Larry Norman discography in CR62 and CR63 it must have become clear to all our readers just how mind-bogglingly complex is the recorded history of Larry Norman. The undeniable inventor of Christian rock music has treated his vast recorded output with flamboyant eccentricity forever reshuffling tracks, finding new ones in the archive and remixing and overdubbing with a seeming disregard for the sanity of that clique of LN collectors determined to assemble everything the great man has committed to tape. But now even the most hard bitten of Norman anoraks are unlikely to resent the latest batch of albums which sees some never-before-released items put out with old classics which they’ll already have (some on many, many other releases). For Larry is very, very ill and the sales of these albums will go directly towards covering the pioneer’s huge hospital bills. The three tracks the hardcore collectors will want here are “Sweet Silver Angels”, an undocumented recording; “God Part 2”, the original 1971 version; and the original recording of “People In My Past”. But it’s the 21 other tracks here which will hopefully pull in new music enthusiasts to one of the great songwriters of the 20th century. His ‘60s and ‘70s versions of “I Wish We’d All Been Ready”, “Righteous Rocker”, “Why Don’t You Look Into Jesus”, “Six Sixty Six”, “Why Should The Devil Have All The Good Music?”, “The Great American Novel” and “Reader’s Digest” are as good as Christian music gets. If you’ve yet to discover the man who pioneered the music you love, this is the album to kick you off.