Go Show shakes Show Me Center

Southeast Missourian

There are differences between a Christian rock concert and the generic kind:

Christian rock concerts start earlier.

People don't wear lewd T-shirts. The strongest T-shirt at Tuesday night's Go Show proclaimed "Satan is a nerd."

There are few extended guitar solos and no freaky costumes on stage.

Preaching during and between numbers is encouraged.

But the concert at the Show Me Center demonstrated one similarity dramatically: Great rock 'n' roll is heartfelt, passionate and life-changing no matter who makes it.

Though the crowd of 3,251 at the three-hour concert showed a fondness for all four bands, the deserved star was Audio Adrenaline, a slashing four-piece band whose musicianship after 10 years together rivals anybody's in rock 'n' roll.

If he weren't making Christian music, lead singer Mark Stuart would be known as one of the best rock singers in existence. Sometimes he sounds like Rod Stewart without the gravel, other times like Bono without the posturing. He also has the kind of appealing stage presence that can't be manufactured.

Stuart went into the audience, brought some lively audience members on stage to dance and invited drummer Ben Cissell's grandmother, Virginia Seabaugh, out to help sing the chorus on one song. Cissell has three grandparents living in Cape Girardeau.

High points in a set full of them were "Ocean Floor" and "Big House."

Audio Adrenaline proves that Christian and hip go well together.

MercyMe, which shared the bill with Audio Adrenaline, is the kind of Christian band parents love, too. Lead singer Bart Millard preached between songs and had plenty of help from the audience singing "I Can Only Imagine," the band's No. 1 hit on multiformat radio stations.

MercyMe expertly used appealing video images to put themselves and their songs across.

Two other unadvertised bands performed briefly during the early part of the concert. The Swift led off with bouncy songs that included "Moshing Machine." Cutlass, a far edgier Portland, Ore., band that dresses in black, sounded and looked like a Christian version of the Stone Temple Pilots. Metalheads love Jesus, too.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182