In honor of the Stryper concert in Albuquerque tonight, I’m re-posting this from August 25th.

Twenty-five years ago, I was a 14 year-old, pimply-faced kid struggling through the pubescent journey.  I loved food (couldn’t eat enough), loved girls (I hadn’t really noticed them until that year), loved music (had a monster stereo system in my bedroom), and was struggling to follow the Lord.

My brother – who is six years older than me – introduced me to hard rock with the likes of Def Leppard, Styx, Foreigner, Journey, Boston, and Meatloaf.  Growing up, I shared a room with him, and our walls were covered with posters of rock bands, including a huge Blue Oyster Cult poster where dobermans stood in front of a ramp descending from a UFO with some freaky extraterrestrial walking down it.  The picture scared me to death and was perfectly positioned on our wall to be illuminated at night by the streetlight outside our window.

Anyway, as a young teenager, I really liked hard rock music, but knew that the messages those bands promoted were not good for me to listen to if I wanted to grow in my faith.  In the summer of 1984, I was introduced to a band of 4 girl look-a-likes (remember, that was the rock and roll style back then) who dressed in yellow and black spandex and sang about…the Lord!  I bought the 6-song EP record (remember those?) by a band named Stryper from my local Christian bookstore, raced home, dropped my diamond-tipped needle on it, cranked up my 100-watt waist-high speakers, and was blown away!  The first song called “Loud and Clear” began with a screaming crescendo that exploded into a grinding guitar intro.  In a high-pitched – but spot-on – vocal, the lead singer began singing these words…

The hair is long and the screams are loud and clear.
The clothes are tight, earrings dangling from the ears.
No matter how we look, we’ll always praise His name.
And, if you believe, you’ve got to do the same.

From that moment on, I was hooked, and after 25-years and twelve albums, I’m still a big fan.  Stryper just released a brand-new album entitled Murder By Pride, and the guitar work, vocals, melodies, and solid lyrics are still very much intact.  As a matter of fact, this album may include some of their best material to date.

Since 1984, my musical tastes have changed and expanded quite a bit, and with the addition of a wife and children, my ability to enjoy loud heavy metal music has been severely limited. But on November 11, the original 4 members of Stryper will bring their 25th anniversary tour to the Sunshine Theater in Albuquerque, and unless the Lord returns, I die, or one of the thousands of buried nuclear missiles accidentally detonates and destroys the city, I’ll be there.