Why Would Anyone Want to Interview You?

Question asked to Fred Caban (lead singer and songwriter of gospel hard rock band Agape) by Dr. John Hamilton.

[Q:]Why would anyone want to interview you?

[A:]Ha, that's a good question. Why would anyone want to pay $150 for one of my albums. Why would they bootleg my music in Spain and make 2,000 copies to distribute? How did Agape survive six years of playing Gospel Rock music to thousands of your people all across America, in the early '70s, without making any money?

[Q:]What was the 'Jesus Movement' and where did it move to?

[A:]How is it that at age 18, during 1969, while travelling and searching for the meaning of life, Jesus Christ came to me on a beach at 2 a.m. and radically changed my life? Sounds crazy doesn't it? Why is it that as I began to search out for other believers in the church, I was physically thrown out?

Why is it that when I went back to my friends and told them about my experiences with Christ, they sincerely felt I had flipped out on LSD? But when they saw, week after week, my life changing and my experiences with Christ staying consistent and deepening and Christ's words making sense for the first time. My long-haired, blue jeans, drug-taking, love-in friends began to believe and thirst to hear more?

First one, then another, then as if a dam broke there were hundreds of us. What church did we go to? We didn't! We met in homes. Why? Because there was no quote 'Jesus Movement' until 1971 when the news media discovered the phenomena before the church did.

There was a 'revival' going on in California, across the country, in fact all over the world! Why? No one had control over it. No one was cashing in on it. No one even understood it.

My friends and I formed a rock band which came to be known as 'AGAPE' (Greek word for God's love). We played the music we understood and infused it with the message that burned in our souls.

We played in parks, on the beach, schools, on a flat bed truck in front of popular hang outs, we did not discriminate, we played anywhere. But why, when asked to play at churches, the adults would cover their ears, call it the devil's music, and throw us out? As the 'movement' grew leaders began to spring forth. Some good, some bad, and some real nasty and ugly. There were many sheep and very few qualified leaders. And yes, many were lead to the slaughter. Church leaders began to see the hunger, the need and finally got involved. Twenty years later (sounds like the Sergeant Pepper tune), the 'Jesus freaks' that survived have been assimilated into every occupation and life style on earth.

[Q:]Why would anyone want to interview me?

[A:]Well, yes. I was in the thick of it. I was there before it was a 'movement.' I was there in the midst of 'movement.' I saw the 'movement' move on into nostalgia. The depth of my encounter with Jesus Christ 20 years ago has kept me through it all. And to my amazement, my music is in greater demand today than it was then.