** The Secret Of Time**, 1990, Sparrow records.

Four years had passed since Charlie Peacock had a commercially-
available release in the stores. And with the rep that he had
created through his live shows, there were a lot of high expectations
about the release which ended the drought.

Needless to say, many people were let down when they heard *The
Secret Of Time*. It had few of the soulfully-strutting concert
rockers they had expected. Some of the songs had lyrics which were
incomprehendable except to already-believing evangelical Christians;
'alternative-music' Christians such as Charlie's pride themselves to
the point of puffery on their avoidance of such talk. The term they
used was 'sell-out'. Fundamentalists never liked Peacock, what with
all that stuff about listening, and ideas spun off of AA's Twelve
Steps; this album didn't change that opinion. And let's face it :
several of the songs ('My Friend', 'Heaven Is A Real Place') just
didn't have the 'stuff' which made Peacock such a joy to listen to;
they were tepid fare typical of commercial CCM.

But a large degree of acceptance came as people realized that on most
of the songs, Charlie was still very much Charlie, and he ain't no
company man. The zing was still there; the heartstrings were still
being touched.

Highlights of **The Secret Of Time** :

(1) 'Big Man's Hat' and (2) 'The Way of Love' : the full-band studio
workup of two concert favorites. See the West Coast Diaries CDs for
early versions of the songs. A comparison shows how Peacock
utilized the live shows to find ways of improving his material.

(3) 'One Thing' : an old song Peacock had sung since '86. Oddly
enough, this is one of the songs that was roundly blasted as being a
'sell-out', even though he had always done it in a mellow mode.

(4) 'Put The Love Back Into Love': The tune is not much good, but
Peacock's lyrics show an interest in cosmology and an attempt to
describe what love is. He even commits the rock-and-roll sacrilege
of taking on John Lennon : "Lennon said 'Imagine'/ I say imagine
this/ what if we actually lived like heaven exists/ and having so
believed / put every thought, word, and deed / under the heading of
heavenly things." There's a trace of perfectionism, to be sure, but
the idea is that all the world is God's, and all that exists and all
that we do are to be handled with the respect due toward God's
handiwork and are to be directed toward bearing the Kingdom in this
world.

(5) 'Almost Threw It All Away' : classy adult-contemp/Top 40. But
with the super sound comes a lyric that's the other end of WCD #1's
'My Mind Played A Trick On Me'. This song looks back on his
bottoming-out experience with utter amazement that he did not plunge
lower, that his wife refused to simply abandon him, that God kept on
loving him even at his worst, and that he himself held together
enough not to kill himself. As is so common for him, Peacock
touches on the character of love : "Doesn't renegotiate/ what it
knows is true/ doesn't give up, give in, throw away."

(6) 'the Secret Of Time' : "Time is a gift of love and grace/ without
time there'd be no time to change/ time to be tried, humbled, and
broken/ time to hear words of love spoken..." What a kickoff to a
song !!! The vocal work of Annie Stocking and Vince Ebo shines.
The song is two-part; the first part is slow and tense, stating what
amounts to the Peacock philosophy : "whether I decrease/ or whether I
increase / is not my concern." Then, the second part kicks in :
sharply rhythmic and urban : "Let me sing just ten true words / than
a hundred words that in the end/ amount to nothing."

(10) 'Experience' : Peacock is an evangelical moderate, and as such,
herein he tries to explain how he finds the faith commitment to
arise. That explanation may not suit mainliners, although it must
be pointed out that this viewpoint is a long-standing part of the
Christian (and even mainline-church!!) tradition. And, Peacock's
not a theologian, just a musician and a believer who's trying very
hard to come to grips with his (and others') experience of faith. I
know of many theologians who haven't done that.

Robert Longman