FACE TO FACE (New Wave Band)
Face to Face was a new wave quintet from Boston, Massachusetts. Guitarist Stuart Kimball formed the band in New Hampshire during the late 1970’s with a close group of friends. The band consisted of Laurie Sargent on vocals, Kimball on guitars & keyboards, Angelo Petraglia on guitars & keyboards (identified on their albums as simply ‘Angelo’), John Ryder on bass, and Billy Beard on drums. Their highest reaching single was “10-9-8” from their self-titled first album, which peaked at No. 38 on the Billboard Hot 100. (More from Wikipedia)
The band that comes to mind when I think of Wild Blue is a long-time favorite of mine called Face to Face (not the punk rock band of the early 1990’s called Face to Face), which released several albums in the 1980’s and had a minor hit with “10-9-8”. While not part of the Christian contemporary music scene, they were instead a mainstream rock band that soft-pedaled their Christianity. Their eponymous first album, Face to Face (released in 1984) features a song called “Under the Gun” that – like Blondie’s early foray into hip-hop, “Rapture” (from 1980) – includes a long verse that is spoken rather than sung. I can’t prove it, but from what I can tell, this qualifies as the first Christian rap song. After many years of hunting, I found two later albums by Face to Face, plus a 12” single for 10-9-8.
(June 2012)
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Vanilla Ice was inaccurately called the first white rapper by many in that time period, but this was not at all the case. For one thing, future superstar Eminem was already rapping in high school by the age of 14 (in about 1986). For another, past UARB Ja Ja Ja released “Katz Rap” (“Cat Rap”) in Germany in 1982 as the first female rap song in Europe. As a third example, “Under the Gun” (1984) by a long-time favorite New Wave band called Face to Face features a Christian rap passage.
(September 2016)
