I was driving Poor Old Lu's Aaron Sprinkle to a gig in Desoto, Kansas in the late spring of 2000. He was performing a solo set, opening for Michael Knott at some tiny little Christian coffeehouse in this tiny little town. I asked him about his relationship with Knott, because I knew the two had crossed paths at least a couple of times in the past several years on projects like Browbeats (a great compilation of original acoustic material from CCM's early underground alternative acts). Aaron told me that he liked Mike a lot, but said that he didn't know him very well. I thought that was funny. Then he looked at me and asked, "Do you know what the best album ever released to the Christian market is?" I shrugged and said it had to be his own recent release, Moontraveler. He laughed; he knew as well as I did that, although Moontraveler was a very good record, it was probably not a contender for that title. He said, "Rocket & a Bomb". It would be hard to argue with this assessment. RAAB is such a good album that I often forget that it was released in the Christian market. There's not a trace on this album of the evangelical propaganda that permeates so many of the records that come from the world of CCM. Instead, about half of the album deals with the condition of being lonely and insecure and sometimes a little hopeless. That's the good half. The other half, which is the popular half (very accessible, humorous, and catchy), features stories about the freaky people living in Knott's L.A. apartment building. The music is stripped down electro-acoustic stuff and it feels very crisp and clean, especially compared to the rawness of some of Knott's other projects. There's no reason that this album didn't make Knott a superstar, except that it was released into the ghetto of the Christian music industry where it has been one of the best, but most overlooked, records in musical history, on par with anything ever released by Dylan, Cash, Waits, etc. This record is now out of print, but I think Mr. Knott is selling CD-R burns of it on his website (www.michaelknott.com). If you don't have this one, your CD collection is suffering.

~ Larry Duane