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Thursday. The following week, we took a meeting with the Hein brothers and their team at Enigma Records.
    Enigma was diverse in their signings. They had everyone from Motley Crue (early on) to Poison, but they had never signed a Christian band.
    We later found out that the logo for Enigma records is an illustration of a woman’s breast and “junk,” for lack of a better term, and we became even more hesitant about the road we were traveling down.
    What’s strange about that time in our career, now looking back on it, was that we weren’t really into Christian rock music, nor did we even consider the thought of soliciting Christian labels. It wasn’t as if we were against the idea, we just didn’t have the idea. We were surrounded by bands getting signed to LA labels, and well, that’s just what you’re supposed to do when you’re a rock band from Hollywood— get signed to a rock label like everyone else. We knew two kinds of music at the time. It was either Rock or Metal (read: Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Van Halen, and Black Sabbath).
    In 1983 the only semi-notable Christian rock acts were Petra, The Rez Band, Phil Keaggy, Mylon LeFevre, and Larry Norman, and we certainly weren’t listening to any of them. Nothing against those acts personally. I know most of those guys and I respect and admire them immensely. It just wasn’t our kind of music, so signing with a label who signed those bands never even crossed our minds. We sounded nothing like them, so it wasn’t even in our consciousness to consider looking at labels that had signed Christian bands.
    So, we met with Enigma and they were all incredibly nice. They liked what we were doing, but they didn’t like it enough. They asked for a private showcase as the next step.
    Our friend (and brief former guitarist), Odie, had a warehouse in Whittier where his new band was rehearsing and he agreed to let us use the space for an evening.
    We set up a showcase for Enigma Records to take place a few weeks later at the warehouse.
    Showcases, particularly private ones, are odd affairs. You’re essentially playing a live show, but your audience is made up of only a few people from the record label with the sole purpose of deciding your fate as an artist within their record label world. They are there to judge you, plain and simple. “Are you a big enough rock star with big enough rock hooks to make our label millions and millions of dollars?” And this all takes place on a Tuesday at 7:00 in the evening.
    So we decided to make it a little less awkward, and unbeknownst to Enigma, we invited a bunch of friends so we could have people (fans) who knew the music and who would stand up near the stage, giving us the energy that only a live audience can give.
    So half-a-dozen people from the label show up to this warehouse and we’ve got 30 or so friends there just hanging around. One of the label staff asks, “When are you planning to clear the room and get the showcase started?”
    “We’re a rock band,” I said. “And a rock band has fans. Fans are part of our show and we feel they should stay.”
    They seemed to agree.
    We were blaringly loud that day in our tin-roof showcase warehouse. You could hardly distinguish the vocals over the din of the instruments. It sounded horrible to me, but apparently not to Enigma, because they got really excited and shortly thereafter offered us a recording contract.
    Not long after that showcase, we went to Enigma’s offices in Torrance and filed into their boardroom to sign the deal. Enigma was THE hot independent label at the time. They were a driving force in the market and although they weren’t Capital or Warner Brothers, we felt good about our decision. Turns out, Enigma was one of the best career decisions we ever made as a band. To this day, I have incredible respect for what Bill and Wes Hein did for this band.
    We had such magical camaraderie with Enigma, a rare experience even at that time. We worked together on