Reviewed by Tony Cummings

The chance of this happening, a privately recorded album arriving the very last day of deadline - long, long after I'd experienced brain death through playing and reviewing 70 plus albums - and the album ending up the Pick Of The Pile is about a million to one. If you knew my feelings about Christian comedy albums, that million becomes multiplied by ten. For I've long held the view that Christian comedy just doesn't stand up. Years ago I was asked by Word UK to compile an album of tracks from America's wealth of Christian comedy albums. They specifically imported for me 30 odd LPs from the likes of the Isaac Transit Company, Mike Warnke, and Ariel, and to my utter embarrassment I discovered that most of them raised not a single smile, let alone the expected guffaws. Was it, I asked myself, something to do with Americans little or no sense of irony? Or the fact that jokes about the minutae of American Evangelicalism just don't translate to our different church culture? Keen to see British Christians discover laughter and particularly the healthy ability to laugh at ourselves and the absurdities of our religious affectations. I awaited the British church to discover humour. In time it did. I remember working at Spring Harvest desperately trying to get disinterested chat show presenters to find a spot for Adrian Plass(it was hard going cutting through their apathy - this was two years before Mr Plass was made a personality cult by British evangelicalism). Mr Plass could be very, very funny. But by the time Adrian came to enjoy his enormous popularity with his wry books and readings I was already beginning to struggle with some of the dear chap's work. Wasn't he on occasions simply playing up to the cultural cynicism epidemic amongst us British so that everything, even holy things, becomes a source of sniggering disdain? If I was uncomfortable with some of Adrian Plass's work, I positively detested the albums of muso-satirist Mark Catley. By the time I'd got to hear the seriously unfunny albums of 'America's new Mike Warnke', Mark Lowry I'd almost come to believe that Christian comedy couldn't work. Either it laid on its spiritual points with a trowel and in the process dispense with all genuine humour. Or it became a worldly religious manifestation for immature believers.
With all this baggage, I looked forward to playing 'Jurassic Church' about as much as drinking a pint of creosote particularly when a scan of the sleeve revealed that these two expatriate Americans now living in Scotland were performing comic songs on THE serious issues of the faith - Hell, judgement, atonement nominally etc. etc. The only plus points I thought I'd be praising, as I slipped the CD into the player, was that the sleeve design was a stunning new creation from artwork maestro Rodney Matthews and the production was by Edinburgh's engineer/producer/muso Ken Smith - a man who knows a thing or five about how to squeeze a decent recording out of a 16-track and a miniscule budget. In fact 'Jurassic Church' managed the impossible, to be seriously funny and seriously serious, exuding inventiveness and even bringing in some pretty hot music along the way. Most of the tracks are in the form of raps, interspersed with one or two actual song (Rodd Christenson is a pretty good singer). The three standout tracks are 'Radio Hell FM', an ebony black humour fantasy of what a radio station would sound like in the depths of Hell. 'God's World', a hilarious parody of Wayne's Worlds which is utterly awesome, dude; and 'A Marconian Chant' which shreds nominality with wit and high Anglican voices. My one gripe is that a couple of the weakest tracks are on the front end of the CD. But that's largely irrelevant, there's so much which is clever, spiritually challenging, and funny here I defy any Cross Rhythms reader not to find something on this gob-smacking CD that doesn't hit the button. Now go buy.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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