NEW YEAR BASH : CHRISTIAN ROCK BANDS FLOURISHING

In the late ‘70s, musician Kenny Samuels was making the rounds on the active Los Angeles rock club scene. But after stints in such bands as Automatic Pilot and the Pedestrians, Samuels’ life took a different road.

“In the early ‘80s, I became a Christian somehow,” Samuels said with a chuckle in an interview at his Santa Ana apartment. So he worked his new-found faith into his music but was less than successful landing a recording deal with local Christian record labels, primarily because his music was too aggressive for the tastes of company decision makers.

“They thought I was a bit far out,” recalled Samuels. “Until ’82 or ‘83, I was banned from the Christian music industry.”

But Samuels and others working the fringes of the Christian rock scene got a break a year ago when Jim Kempner, owner of a promotional agency called Christian Events, founded Costa Mesa-based Frontline Records. In its first year, the label has already released 15 albums and signed 16 Christian acts, ranging from heavy metal band Bloodgood to synthesizer pop outfit Mad at the World to straight-out rockers Common Bond, Samuels’ band.

Ten Frontline acts--including eight from Orange County--are slated to play Knott’s Berry Farm’s New Year’s Eve Christian Music Celebration, starting Wednesday at 7 p.m. and running until 2 a.m.

Frontline’s heavy representation in the event--there are 14 bands--has more than a little to do with the fact that the label’s promotional arm, Christian Events, is in charge of booking the show. But Frontline’s executive director, Brian Tong, says it is also at least partly due to the company’s growing reputation as “the rock label of the Christian market.”

Tong, in a phone interview, said the label is interested in “very ‘80s-sounding bands.” In a departure from the approach taken by most contemporary Christian music record companies, Frontline aggressively pursues the secular market by promoting its records to college radio stations and booking its bands into secular venues.

“We have proven to sell in both (Christian and secular) markets quite well,” Tong said.

Orange County rock band Idle Cure, a Frontline act, has watched the single “Breakaway” from its self-titled debut album receive air play on Pasadena alternative rock station KROQ-FM. “We hope to cross over to the secular market,” said the group’s guitarist, Chuck King, in a telephone interview. “Our goal is not just to entertain Christians, but to play to the secular world.”

Common Bond, which has also received air play on KROQ (as have Frontline’s Altar Boys), plays regularly at such secular clubs as the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, Goodies in Fullerton and Club 88 in Los Angeles. Samuels, the group’s singer, bassist and chief lyricist, said the band has had to overcome some initial resistance from club owners.

“I think they’re really scared that I’m going to stand up and yell at the crowd for drinking and smoking and stuff,” Samuels said. “I think once we’ve played there . . . they see that we’re OK, they see that we’re actually easier to work with--we don’t come in drunk and we don’t cuss up a storm and offend everyone.”

Samuels said the group has established “great rapport” with its secular crowds but admitted that television evangelists and others have given Christians a stigma that is sometimes hard to shake. “When we get up on a stage we basically have to denounce all religiosity so we can communicate,” he said. “We have to get out of the box that Christians have created for themselves. . . . We’re not evangelical madmen. We communicate well through just what we do in our music. We don’t preach from the stage; I don’t think it’s necessary.”

Common Bond’s approach is similar to that of other bands on the label, Samuels said. “We want to communicate to our generation and allow our generation to make a pure decision on Christ. I think Frontline in general wants to communicate that--the gospel in its purest form, not a series of do’s and don’ts.”