Music life is so, so sweet right now.
Petra's recording a new single.
John Schlitt (the legendary Petra singer) has got a Kickstarter campaign going for a Christmas album. There's still a month left on this one, but they're getting pretty discouraged about where the support level is. If you can, definitely go help them out. (Check out John's official YouTube channel here and a great Petra channel on YouTube here. Anything done by Petra after 1985 features John as the lead singer.)
Also, here's Daniel Amos' Kickstarter page for their new album (if you want in on this one, get on it quickly because I think they're almost done...). This one's already funded and in progress, but they're still taking donations for covering travel costs and publicity and generally making the album the best it can be.
And now... Carman (of The Champion and Satan Bite The Dust fame) just put out a Kickstarter campaign for a new album and a music video project.
There we go, ladies and gentlemen. We just went from one end of the Christian music spectrum to the other in two tab-returns. Because I'm just that talented. (And please don't sue me for putting Daniel Amos and Carman in the same post.)
Showing posts with label links. Show all posts
Showing posts with label links. Show all posts
29 April 2013
20 April 2013
Music And Dance And Art And Nuance
This.
This is why I hate the current CCM movement. This is why 95% of the music I own is pre-1995. This is why I wind up liking all the bands that had pretty much quit before I was even born. This is why I will love Daniel Amos, White Heart, and Prodigal to my dying day. Because each musician (and vocalist) in those bands takes his job seriously and does it well. The producer and the mixer take their jobs seriously. Their music isn't just the same screaming-loud recording-software-default mix with every instrument track at exactly the same volume that assaults your eardrums until you start taking out your rage on the traffic around you, because you know however innately that music life has got to be better than the tripe that spews out of your radio.
I open up my eyes and scream
It's not the way it's s'posed to be...
(Prodigal, 1985)
Music -- real, actual music -- is supposed to be nuanced and textured and beautiful and sweeping and imaginative and you should be able to listen to the same song for twenty years and still find new, breathtaking things hidden in the mix. Modern music (especially modern Christian music) is anything but.
Figure without shape
Shadow without nuance
Impotent power, the empty men
Movement without action...
(Daniel Amos, 1983)
And this is why I love how the dances for songs like Climb The Hill, Unchain, The Double, Early In The Morning, and Speechless turned out. Because the music had nuances and motifs and therefore so did the choreography. I could exploit the very distinct rhythms and moods of the bass guitar and the drums and the keyboards and the strings and so on with the quality of the movements of the dancers themselves. With songs like that, the music itself is a sonic dance, a carefully choreographed symphony created by skilled and creative people all working together for one goal -- a wonderful song.
This is why I hate the current CCM movement. This is why 95% of the music I own is pre-1995. This is why I wind up liking all the bands that had pretty much quit before I was even born. This is why I will love Daniel Amos, White Heart, and Prodigal to my dying day. Because each musician (and vocalist) in those bands takes his job seriously and does it well. The producer and the mixer take their jobs seriously. Their music isn't just the same screaming-loud recording-software-default mix with every instrument track at exactly the same volume that assaults your eardrums until you start taking out your rage on the traffic around you, because you know however innately that music life has got to be better than the tripe that spews out of your radio.
I open up my eyes and scream
It's not the way it's s'posed to be...
(Prodigal, 1985)
Music -- real, actual music -- is supposed to be nuanced and textured and beautiful and sweeping and imaginative and you should be able to listen to the same song for twenty years and still find new, breathtaking things hidden in the mix. Modern music (especially modern Christian music) is anything but.
Figure without shape
Shadow without nuance
Impotent power, the empty men
Movement without action...
(Daniel Amos, 1983)
And this is why I love how the dances for songs like Climb The Hill, Unchain, The Double, Early In The Morning, and Speechless turned out. Because the music had nuances and motifs and therefore so did the choreography. I could exploit the very distinct rhythms and moods of the bass guitar and the drums and the keyboards and the strings and so on with the quality of the movements of the dancers themselves. With songs like that, the music itself is a sonic dance, a carefully choreographed symphony created by skilled and creative people all working together for one goal -- a wonderful song.
15 February 2013
Music Day
Just when I'm starting to run out of music to buy on my wish list, I find this:
Pretty sure my iTunes wish list alone has doubled in the past twenty-four hours. Music Day is about to become insanely awesome (pending another iTunes card).
Today's is kind of thrown together (I type this at 10.48 pm and have yet to pick a song), so said awesomeness will probably be starting next Friday.
So... *scrolls through iTunes madly* ... how have you all been? Any cool stuff going on in life? Any moments that just made your day? Any life-altering realisations?
Okay, found a song.
This is, I think, one of this man's finest vocals, both solo and with Petra. It's one of my favourite performances from him, at any rate. (The guitar work is pretty good too.)
Title: Can't Get Away
Artist: John Schlitt
Album: Unfit For Swine
Year: 1996
Label: Word
iTunes here; YouTube here.
Support the artist -- CD available on his store here. (Full lyrics, production credits, and album preview also available on this page.) I personally have purchased several items from this store at different times, and the service has always been excellent. The CDs are top quality too... no namby-pamby Staples-special blank discs with a cheesy single-sheet track listing in a cheap case. These things are store-quality.
So there you go. Tune in next week (assuming I happen to remember what day it is on Friday) for music that's new and exciting in my world...
Today's is kind of thrown together (I type this at 10.48 pm and have yet to pick a song), so said awesomeness will probably be starting next Friday.
So... *scrolls through iTunes madly* ... how have you all been? Any cool stuff going on in life? Any moments that just made your day? Any life-altering realisations?
Okay, found a song.
This is, I think, one of this man's finest vocals, both solo and with Petra. It's one of my favourite performances from him, at any rate. (The guitar work is pretty good too.)
Title: Can't Get Away
Artist: John Schlitt
Album: Unfit For Swine
Year: 1996
Label: Word
iTunes here; YouTube here.
Support the artist -- CD available on his store here. (Full lyrics, production credits, and album preview also available on this page.) I personally have purchased several items from this store at different times, and the service has always been excellent. The CDs are top quality too... no namby-pamby Staples-special blank discs with a cheesy single-sheet track listing in a cheap case. These things are store-quality.
So there you go. Tune in next week (assuming I happen to remember what day it is on Friday) for music that's new and exciting in my world...
05 July 2011
Why Wikipedia Should Be Blocked After 9.30pm
I have come to a conclusion.
There should be a plugin built into every web browser on the market that blocks all access to Wikipedia after 9.30pm local time.
It's not that I'm addicted to Wikipedia. If I have a question about something, I usually go to the library and borrow a half-dozen books on the topic. If I need something right this minute I'll ask a friend who I think is likely to know the answer. Rarely do I turn to Google and by extension, Wikipedia.
However, on the rare occasion I do Google something, I tend to end up on Wikipedia, because it's the first link on the page and it generally doesn't have viruses that screw up people's computers (I'm a bit paranoid that way about Google searching).
And let's face it, it is informative... too informative. I looked up Rich Mullins once and I learned everything I could possibly have ever wanted to know and then some about microcassettes, analog generation loss, and Space Cadet Pinball for Windows 98 (plus, of course, Rich Mullins).
And that's the whole problem. If they didn't link to other interesting and informative Wikipedia pages, I wouldn't be writing this post. It wouldn't eat five irretrievable hours of my life at a time.
And I wouldn't end up terrifying the living daylights out of myself for a few days.
Have you ever looked up the Wikipedia page for Elvis Presley?
I swear you could print it out on regular paper 8.5 inches wide and lay it across Canada and it would reach from Vancouver at least to Winnipeg. It's insanely long. I'm a fast reader (the fastest I know), and it took me and hour and a half to read it. An hour and a half! And I didn't even read it all... I skimmed quite a bit (mostly the bits about his, ahem, very private life).
A quick subpoint here -- there should seriously be an adult content warning label on that page. Mostly it talked about his songs and movies and maybe a bit about his family life (especially in the earlier years), but I saw -- even though I started skimming -- far more about his, er... intimate life than anybody needs to know. I know the Internet is kind of a free-for-all, but seriously, what if it was your eight-year-old doing a report on Elvis and decided to look at the Wikipedia page? Have a little consideration here, people. No, a warning label is not going to prevent you (or your child) from continuing to read it anyway, but at least then you have a heads-up and if you've trained your kid well they'll at least come ask you if they should continue reading.
Back to Elvis.
I don't even know what possessed me to start reading the Elvis Presley Wikipedia page at eleven pm, knowing the chain reaction Wikipedia lays down for you.
I had been looking for album artwork for my iTunes library and randomly decided to check out the Imperials Wikipedia page that appeared in the list. Why, I don't know -- I could ask my dad about the Imperials and he could tell me more than the Wikipedia page did. And why I opened the link to the Elvis page from there I don't really know either.
I mean, I knew all I really cared about -- singer, started his career in 1950s sometime, acted a bit, served in the US Army, died of some kind of overdose in 1977. Sure there's more than that, but I didn't really care about any of it... except for the question 'what did he actually die of?'
From laypeople (most of them aged four or younger when he died) I'd heard it was drugs, I'd heard alcohol, I'd heard he starved himself to death trying to lose weight but I'd never heard from a slightly more reputable source. And since I apparently have some kind of morbid fascination with how famous people die (especially if they die young), I decided to check it out.
I know, I know, they have that neat little box at the top of the page that links to certain segments of the article, but as the page was loading I suddenly thought, I wonder how he even got started in the first place.
So I read that part. But you know how it is -- as soon as you start reading something, anything, you have to continue; you can't just stop.
So I continued.
Finally, at about 12.30am I reached the part with a heading about the decline of his health.
Now put yourself in my place.
It's 12.30 in the morning.
You're fighting to keep from falling asleep over your keyboard.
It is completely silent save the very, very soft whirring of your laptop (city people may struggle with this one).
Aside from the computer's screen and one fluorescent bulb, it is completely dark.
You've just spent more than an hour with your (very vivid) imagination firmly locked, no distraction, in the world of Elvis or at least his fans.
And you have an irrational terror of music being garbled or messed up.
I'm not kidding about that last point. As far back as I can remember, the drone of a cassette tape in a faulty player would give me nightmares for weeks. I hated that sound -- the slow, painful, mournful death of music. I would hear a song droning like that in the daytime and then in the dead of night I would close my eyes and the song would suddenly be in my head, warped and moaning, almost melting slowly in a flame as the proverbial ghost was wrenched from its being. And I would be too terrified by the awful sound in my head to even consider seeking reassuring company in my parents' room at the other end of the dark house.
I still hate that sound.
And as you sit there in silence, only half-awake and barely aware of your surroundings as the darkness presses against the window just above your head; like the beginning of a horror show -- creepy music in your head and all -- it's as if the light takes on an eerie reddish cast, turning everything that isn't in tar-black shadow into an hazy, choppy scene the colour of blood.
Your eyes become stuck on a paragraph which, coupled with your very focused, very vivid, half-dreaming imagination, becomes a nightmare as your brain invents the sound... like watching a horrific accident that's too terrible to look away from... the account of one of Presley's musicians about a concert on what I gather was his last tour, describing how Elvis had to hold onto the microphone stand for support, how he was so drugged and listless he couldn't even sing the words to his own songs...
And your primed imagination pulls together a shaky, unfocused hand-held video recording of a rock star clinging to a microphone stand with the band thumping and crashing along behind him as if all's right with their world and yet it's so obvious something is very wrong... the singer tries to form the words of his own songs and he can't make them work, he can't keep up with the band, his eyes are half-closed as he channels all his strength into clinging to that microphone stand... the band continues to play along behind him but all that comes through the lead microphone is irregular mumbling... droning and patchy against a much stronger and steadier beat...
You blink and return to your bedroom thirty-five years later but only momentarily as you're suddenly thrown back in time again, a child standing in the doorway to her bedroom, swaying, the sound of a badly dragging music tape looping through her head, echoing through the pitch darkness as she tries to gather enough courage to make the sprint across the house to her parents' room through the sound of the dying cassette tape coming from all around.
There should be a plugin built into every web browser on the market that blocks all access to Wikipedia after 9.30pm local time.
It's not that I'm addicted to Wikipedia. If I have a question about something, I usually go to the library and borrow a half-dozen books on the topic. If I need something right this minute I'll ask a friend who I think is likely to know the answer. Rarely do I turn to Google and by extension, Wikipedia.
However, on the rare occasion I do Google something, I tend to end up on Wikipedia, because it's the first link on the page and it generally doesn't have viruses that screw up people's computers (I'm a bit paranoid that way about Google searching).
And let's face it, it is informative... too informative. I looked up Rich Mullins once and I learned everything I could possibly have ever wanted to know and then some about microcassettes, analog generation loss, and Space Cadet Pinball for Windows 98 (plus, of course, Rich Mullins).
And that's the whole problem. If they didn't link to other interesting and informative Wikipedia pages, I wouldn't be writing this post. It wouldn't eat five irretrievable hours of my life at a time.
And I wouldn't end up terrifying the living daylights out of myself for a few days.
Have you ever looked up the Wikipedia page for Elvis Presley?
I swear you could print it out on regular paper 8.5 inches wide and lay it across Canada and it would reach from Vancouver at least to Winnipeg. It's insanely long. I'm a fast reader (the fastest I know), and it took me and hour and a half to read it. An hour and a half! And I didn't even read it all... I skimmed quite a bit (mostly the bits about his, ahem, very private life).
A quick subpoint here -- there should seriously be an adult content warning label on that page. Mostly it talked about his songs and movies and maybe a bit about his family life (especially in the earlier years), but I saw -- even though I started skimming -- far more about his, er... intimate life than anybody needs to know. I know the Internet is kind of a free-for-all, but seriously, what if it was your eight-year-old doing a report on Elvis and decided to look at the Wikipedia page? Have a little consideration here, people. No, a warning label is not going to prevent you (or your child) from continuing to read it anyway, but at least then you have a heads-up and if you've trained your kid well they'll at least come ask you if they should continue reading.
Back to Elvis.
I don't even know what possessed me to start reading the Elvis Presley Wikipedia page at eleven pm, knowing the chain reaction Wikipedia lays down for you.
I had been looking for album artwork for my iTunes library and randomly decided to check out the Imperials Wikipedia page that appeared in the list. Why, I don't know -- I could ask my dad about the Imperials and he could tell me more than the Wikipedia page did. And why I opened the link to the Elvis page from there I don't really know either.
I mean, I knew all I really cared about -- singer, started his career in 1950s sometime, acted a bit, served in the US Army, died of some kind of overdose in 1977. Sure there's more than that, but I didn't really care about any of it... except for the question 'what did he actually die of?'
From laypeople (most of them aged four or younger when he died) I'd heard it was drugs, I'd heard alcohol, I'd heard he starved himself to death trying to lose weight but I'd never heard from a slightly more reputable source. And since I apparently have some kind of morbid fascination with how famous people die (especially if they die young), I decided to check it out.
I know, I know, they have that neat little box at the top of the page that links to certain segments of the article, but as the page was loading I suddenly thought, I wonder how he even got started in the first place.
So I read that part. But you know how it is -- as soon as you start reading something, anything, you have to continue; you can't just stop.
So I continued.
Finally, at about 12.30am I reached the part with a heading about the decline of his health.
Now put yourself in my place.
It's 12.30 in the morning.
You're fighting to keep from falling asleep over your keyboard.
It is completely silent save the very, very soft whirring of your laptop (city people may struggle with this one).
Aside from the computer's screen and one fluorescent bulb, it is completely dark.
You've just spent more than an hour with your (very vivid) imagination firmly locked, no distraction, in the world of Elvis or at least his fans.
And you have an irrational terror of music being garbled or messed up.
I'm not kidding about that last point. As far back as I can remember, the drone of a cassette tape in a faulty player would give me nightmares for weeks. I hated that sound -- the slow, painful, mournful death of music. I would hear a song droning like that in the daytime and then in the dead of night I would close my eyes and the song would suddenly be in my head, warped and moaning, almost melting slowly in a flame as the proverbial ghost was wrenched from its being. And I would be too terrified by the awful sound in my head to even consider seeking reassuring company in my parents' room at the other end of the dark house.
I still hate that sound.
And as you sit there in silence, only half-awake and barely aware of your surroundings as the darkness presses against the window just above your head; like the beginning of a horror show -- creepy music in your head and all -- it's as if the light takes on an eerie reddish cast, turning everything that isn't in tar-black shadow into an hazy, choppy scene the colour of blood.
Your eyes become stuck on a paragraph which, coupled with your very focused, very vivid, half-dreaming imagination, becomes a nightmare as your brain invents the sound... like watching a horrific accident that's too terrible to look away from... the account of one of Presley's musicians about a concert on what I gather was his last tour, describing how Elvis had to hold onto the microphone stand for support, how he was so drugged and listless he couldn't even sing the words to his own songs...
And your primed imagination pulls together a shaky, unfocused hand-held video recording of a rock star clinging to a microphone stand with the band thumping and crashing along behind him as if all's right with their world and yet it's so obvious something is very wrong... the singer tries to form the words of his own songs and he can't make them work, he can't keep up with the band, his eyes are half-closed as he channels all his strength into clinging to that microphone stand... the band continues to play along behind him but all that comes through the lead microphone is irregular mumbling... droning and patchy against a much stronger and steadier beat...
You blink and return to your bedroom thirty-five years later but only momentarily as you're suddenly thrown back in time again, a child standing in the doorway to her bedroom, swaying, the sound of a badly dragging music tape looping through her head, echoing through the pitch darkness as she tries to gather enough courage to make the sprint across the house to her parents' room through the sound of the dying cassette tape coming from all around.
29 April 2011
Music Day
I loved this CD to death when I first got it only a few months after it was released. I must have listened to it almost every day for two or three straight years. David Meece is a unique artist that way -- no matter how many times you listen to his music it never ever seems to get old. I still love this album.
Title: I'll Be Waiting For You
Artist: David Meece
Album: There I Go Again
Year: 2002
Record Label: Aluminum Records
Here it is on iTunes and here it is on YouTube.
And while we're on the topic of music, it might interest you to know that I have now added YouTube links to the following Music Day posts:
Group 1 Crew -- Transcend
Petra -- I Will Celebrate/When The Spirit Of The Lord
PFR -- Pour Me Out
Rich Mullins -- My Deliverer
Title: I'll Be Waiting For You
Artist: David Meece
Album: There I Go Again
Year: 2002
Record Label: Aluminum Records
Here it is on iTunes and here it is on YouTube.
And while we're on the topic of music, it might interest you to know that I have now added YouTube links to the following Music Day posts:
Group 1 Crew -- Transcend
Petra -- I Will Celebrate/When The Spirit Of The Lord
PFR -- Pour Me Out
Rich Mullins -- My Deliverer
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