Pages

Friday, February 28, 2014

The infamous Derek Webb interview: faith, music and innovation

Below: the infamous Seth Howard Hurd interview of Derek Webb which lead to this book .
Hurd said of this interview:  "..after 10 years in media (and interviewing everyone from Gerard Butler to Barack Obama)……I think this is the most important interview of my career." Amazon book description:

"Last time I checked, no matter what kind of band you are, no matter how you're gifted, no matter what your calling is, if you don't have a worship song...you will not get played on the radio. So, these bands who have no business writing or recording worship music, because it's not how they are called or gifted, are doing it because they have to have a radio single. 

I never thought I would long for a day when Christian music was just bad and kind of irrelevant. Now it's all that, and offensive too." 

--Derek Webb, 12/21/12

Seth Tower Hurd spent a decade in Christian radio. The final three were pure misery, as the "Christian hits" format, which was originally designed to offer relevant music outside of the typical "soccer mom" stereotype, slowly died. 

After Hurd lost his job for "not appealing to 38 year old women," he released a book entitled "What Becky Didn't Want (Or: A Short Account of the Brief Life of Christian Hit Radio." 

This in turn led to a 90 minute long Google Hangout conversation with renowned singer-songwriter Derek Webb, centering around the tension between faith and commerce in the "Christian" music industry. 

The video took on a life of it's own, and is transcribed as the first section of this book. The remaining sections were submitted by as response essays by a variety of artists, writers and independent thinkers.

"I hope Seth Tower Hurd gets over his bitterness." 
-Christian radio manager 

Christian radio DJ: "Would you have written this book if you were still in the industry?" 

Seth Tower Hurd: "Well, no. I would have been fired. Because, in the industry, you're pressured to keep secrets. Which is pretty much why I wrote the book."  link

No comments:

Post a Comment

Hey, thanks for engaging the conversation!