I boo-booed; the Michael Card concert is next week. We got a nice drive on a warm early-fall evening and a stop at Dairy Queen from our abortive trip.
One thing that struck me is that the CCM scene I remember from the late 80s was much more diverse than it is today. I don't recall Card getting any airplay to speak of since his Joy in the Journey greatest-hits album in 1994. It might be that Card doesn't play the CCM game; his Wikipedia states that "He has at times distanced himself from the CCM industry by criticizing the promotion of personalities over musical content and the shifting emphasis away from God in order to sell more albums."
The music played on most Christian channels, K-LOVE in particular, tend to be less diverse and less theological than it was twenty years ago. I don't recall hearing Nicole C. Mullen for most of the 00s, but she has been active recording in a more "urban contemporary" vein that might not get heard on K-LOVE and its clones. Other than Mandisa, I can't think of a black artist that gets regular airplay, but back in the late 80s, you saw the Winans (both BeBe and CeCe and the Winans gospel act), Larnell Harris and Earth, Wind and Fire falsetto Phillip Bailey (who put out two good CCM albums in the late 80s while EWF was on hiatus) get regular airplay.
It might be that the Christian music universe has grown larger and has room to splinter; even K-LOVE does a slightly rockier Air One channel aimed at a pre-boomer crowd. Cities with a large black population will have a seperate black-flavored channel and Christian radio will often have a edgy channel, a K-LOVE clone and an old-school channel. Sometimes the old-schooller will be really old-school and play white southern Gospel but others will play classic CCM that the K-LOVEs have ignored.
Coming back from shopping the other day, said old-school Lexington station played Steve Camp's Whatever You Ask. Circa 1987 per this page. Maybe I'm an oldtimer, less than two years removed from being AARP eligable, but I miss a lot of '80s stuff and the ecclective nature of early CCM that had room for Twila Paris and Petra and the Winans.

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