You Again?: The Call, "The Lost Tapes"

Here's to the babies of a brand new world
Here's to the beauty of the stars
Here's to the travelers on the open road
Here's to the dreamers in the bars
Here's to the teachers in the crowded rooms
Here's to the workers in the fields
Here's to the preachers of the sacred word
Here's to the drivers at the wheel

Every moment has its perfect song. In late 1989, as we awaited the first rays of a dawning decade while bearing witness to the fall of the Berlin Wall and political changes that were being gladly spun as the triumph of Western democracy over godless communism, that song might have been the Call's "Let the Day Begin."

Here's to you my little love
With blessings from above
Now let the day begin
Here's to you my little love
With blessings from above
Now let the day begin
Let the day begin

The band's previous albums hadn't exactly been absent of anthems — their first brush with chart success, 1983's "The Walls Came Down," rode a naggingly insistent riff and na-na chanting into the AOR Top 20 — but they weren't exactly known for songs that asked the listener "Boy, ain't it great to be alive?" They were nominally a Christian band, although not in the same sense as, say, Amy Grant or Kathy Troccoli or Jars of Clay; instead of glorying in God's goodness, frontman and creative spearhead Michael Been was much more likely to grapple with the distance between man and maker.

Of course, none of this was known to me when I caught a few fleeting moments of "Let the Day Begin" on MTV. I just knew it was something I wanted to hear again, so I went out and bought the band's latest album — also helpfully titled Let the Day Begin — and eagerly dug in.