Carman was one of the few remnants of Evangelical pop culture that I would revisit every year or so and smile without fail. He was more my dad's generation than mine, but the inherited nostalgia was strong. He passed in 2021 after complications during surgery and I just found out today.
This was basically my version of Ghostbusters:
Fallacy of false continuum. // bookworm Any cupcake can be made holy through being baptized in the name of the Butter, the Vanilla and the Powdered Sugar. // Kait
carman was easily the most unique artist in the 90s ccm landscape. i'm sure he's begging the good lord to give him a special mission to go down to heck and kick satan's butt.
I only know very few of Carman's works, but this became my favorite as soon as I saw it. Anything with a Western aesthetic immediately has my attention.
I was sad when I heard on the radio that he passed. Even scored his Mission 3:16 cd at the thrift store just a few days later. I enjoy listening to his Christmas album every December as it's radically different than the same old christmas songs that play on loop for two months.
"Patterson! You're alive!" "No, I'm not Patterson. I'm his uh... brother, uh... Shmatterson!"
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Yeah as an 80's kid I heard a lot of Carman growing up. By the time RIOT came around I had moved on but there was a lot of older stuff I liked a lot, many mentioned here already. I think he was my introduction to DC Talk since he had them on a song back in the day before they made it big.