Steve Taylor News

This needs to happen.

This NEEDS to happen.

Yes, fans of obscure music, a new Steve Taylor album -- the first in twenty years. And it's up to us. Pledge by Christmas Eve.

Let's make this happen.

(For the curious... concert footage here.)

Novel Update - Day 23

That's right. I'm still in the game even with a college workload (mind you, all of my big assignments went in the last week of September) and having to do my own housekeeping (washing dishes continues to be my least favourite chore).

So... I guess I have to start at the beginning since I haven't actually posted one of these yet.

It's 1985, and the book opens on this nine-year-old kid named Lucien. He's dancing in a cordoned off and weed-infested parking lot to an audience of decrepit buildings and abandoned sidewalks. We learn that he lives with his dad in a motel room in a seedy district in SoCal (not that I know if there are actually seedy districts in SoCal, but research is what December is for), working in the motel bar in exchange for living there.

One day, a band (who may or may not be Crumbächer under assumed names) comes in and plays the motel bar. Lucien is captivated and the members of the band become his friends -- his only real contacts in the world aside from his father. He convinces the motel manager to bring the band in several more times and each time, his friendship with the band grows.

Then one morning, he and his dad wake up to find that someone staying in their motel has been murdered. Lucien's father is visibly shaken and tells Lucien to pack -- they're moving.

As he's packing, Lucien accidentally knocks over a box of his father's that he is not supposed to touch. As he's putting the contents back into the box, he realises that some of the papers are newspaper clippings -- clippings talking about the unsolved murder of his mother. Lucien is stunned. His father had always told him that his mother had died of an illness. In addition, he finds a contract for a Russian ballet company, signed by his father, and a handwritten letter. It's in the Russian alphabet, which Lucien doesn't know very well, but he gets the drift that it's a threatening letter, though he doesn't know why.

But he says nothing about all of this, only puts the contents back in the box and continues to pack.

The band, by chance, plays their new home motel several weeks later and they reconnect with Lucien. Shortly after that, Lucien is doing his favourite thing -- dancing in an abandoned parking lot -- when he is grabbed from behind, drugged, and taken away.

Lucien's father is left a nervous wreck. Having suffered through the murder of his wife and now reduced to living in motel rooms, living day-to-day, losing Lucien is the final straw. He slowly begins to go mad with grief.

The band, while playing the motel a few weeks later, recognises Lucien's father and asks him where Lucien is. It takes some doing, but they finally get it out of him that Lucien has been kidnapped.

Two of the band members, Daniel and a character known only as Flip, take it upon themselves to start checking in on Lucien's father, making sure he's doing okay, helping where they can.

Meanwhile Lucien awakens and over the course of a few weeks finds himself taking dance classes full time in a studio in Russia. He befriends one of the senior dancers (Mikhail), who tells him that he is being trained to ultimately join the dancing master's company sometime within the next ten years or so. As the gravity of his situation sinks in, Lucien realises that the only way he will ever see his father again is if he can work his way up to be in the main touring company before they next tour America.

In the meantime though, he misses his father. He gets Mikhail to track down a copy of the band's record and sends a letter to their booking agent, telling the band where he is and to tell his father that he's okay.

Upon reading the letter, Lucien father's snaps and goes literally mad with a mixture of grief and rage (the readers don't know it yet, but he recognises the name of the man who Lucien is studying under as the man who murdered his wife nine years before).

The band is now going to attempt to tour Communist Europe all in a harebrained scheme to re-kidnap Lucien back from the ballet company. This will be difficult, as Lucien is not allowed off the property, and if he's going to attend the concert in the nearby town, Mikhail will have to smuggle him out. Plus, of course, there's the issue of getting Lucien out of the country and back to America after that...

As for the actual writing process, it was odd -- I had this very well planned out, but when it came to write it, I had a really hard time getting into the swing of things this time around. I'm blaming it on college -- my brain is so fragmented. At home I could just focus on one thing all day if I had to. Here I focus on music theory for an hour and fifteen minutes, then I focus on getting to and eating lunch fast enough to make my next class, in which I think about theology for an hour and fifteen minutes, and so on... I can never dwell on anything as long as I need to in order for it to sink in, I only have a certain amount of time to think about it before I have to shift into a completely different headspace. It's draining, and the first 25k of the novel (among other things) really suffered because of that. I love this novel and the plot idea, but I just haven't had enough time to really have fun with it. I can never really get into the zone of it because there's always something else that also needs to get done so this is on an hour/minute timeline now rather than just the thirty-day one. It's got a lot of potential, though, and I'm getting a decent framework for it laid down, at least. I was hoping I would be able to have more fun with this one during the actual writing process though.

Now for statistics:

Current word count: 40,098
Official goal for Day 23: 38,333
Number Of Daniel Amos References: 3
Number Of Characters Killed: 0 in story; 1 in backstory
Cups Of Coffee Consumed: 0 (that's right, I'm so skilled I can do NaNoWriMo without caffeine)
Number Of Times I've Played ¡Alarma! Bonus Bonus Disc: at least 4
Currently Listening To: Eternal Teenage Angst by Veil Of Ashes (2013)

Music Day - Crack The Sky

I like this song because it's different. It does not start with a few mellow acoustic guitar chords. It starts out with a thundering drum (I'm always reminded of the sound of horses galloping) and a rocking guitar before it falls into a gritty bass line. The rest of the song is pretty normal '80s-Christian-rock fare, but the relentless drumming absolutely makes the song. (It almost goes without saying that I'm a sucker for the chorus medley on the keyboard.) Plus, the guitar solo simply soars. As I listen to this again, I'm reminded of DeGarmo & Key, circa Streetlight or D&K.

Title: Crack The Sky
Artist: Mylon LeFevre & Broken Heart
Album: Crack The Sky
Year: 1987
Label: Word Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.


COMING UP NEXT WEEK: I'll be reviewing John Schlitt's new album The Christmas Project, released this past Tuesday. Does it measure up to the standards of this Christmas music purist and that doppelgänger of hers who loves a good rock song? Find out next Friday...

Music Day - Royal Command Performance

Finally got Escape From The Fallen Planet. Man, I thought Incandescent was amazing. Holy crap.

Generally speaking, Escape isn't nearly as fast as Incandescent, but it freaking soars. You can fly on this album, and especially this specific song.

Title: Royal Command Performance
Artist: Crumbächer
Album: Escape From The Fallen Planet
Year: 1986
Label: Frontline Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.

It is majestic. It is the best of the eighties sound -- a rich, full-yet-open feel that you almost never hear from a keyboard-based band. It has a killer harmony, and vocal layering that is... indescribable. The song as a whole just swirls around you, open at the top, as if you were in one of those old European cathedrals. The double keyboards fill everything and yet it's anything but claustrophobic. It sweeps you along on a whirlwind ride through space. It soars. This is the song you would listen to while touring the solar system.

Not long ago, I had music theory tutorial and then after that was done I wandered out into the main foyer. Since there's no classes on Fridays, there was nobody in there. Anybody who did show up was just passing through, head down, on their way to somewhere more important. But even these were few and far between... thankfully.

In the week leading up to that, in my choreographic-creation-deprived state, I had been walking through that foyer from one class to another with an intense sense of longing. The space was so big and mostly wide open. And I wanted to dance in there in the worst way. But there were always classes... either my own or others, which meant that even when I was free, there were always other people in there. And choreography is not exactly something that happens in public... so when I walked into that foyer and saw it completely empty, an excitement that was perhaps unprecedented came over me. I marked out an imaginary stage before me, pulled out my iPod, and began to listen -- first to a DA song (and I choreographed the intro, the second chorus and the ending, thank you very much), but then inspiration seemed to run temporarily dry and on a lark, I started playing this song.

People -- when you're sitting on the floor, with your back against the wall, looking across a space larger than most entire neighbourhoods (at least in my part of the world) into the open doors of the (equally large) sanctuary, with no-one around to distract you, and you look up into the high valanced ceiling and listen to this song, and let the dancers in your mind carry it... it is a chilling, beautiful moment.

Crumbächer isn't generally known for deep touching lyrics, but these have been exactly what I've needed for the past few weeks.

One-night gigs are bringing me down
I'm feeling blue (why am I feeling blue?)
Fill my thoughts with the hope of serving You...

Later in the song there's line in a backing vocal: It's such an honour to play for You.

And that's really what it is. Since coming to college, I've been pondering my apparent calling to choreography... how it's pretty much guaranteed that I will never be rich or famous doing it -- heck, I'm probably going to be lucky to have money for food. Realistically speaking, it's almost a given that I'll 'languish' in obscurity, if I get anywhere at all with this. (Of course, none of that takes into account the power and orchestration of God.)

So if I'm basically going to be performing it for no-one (barring an act of God that dictates otherwise), then why do I bother still doing this?

I wasn't sure myself. But sitting there, looking up at the ceiling, listening to Stephen Crumbächer's natural everyman-like voice talk to God about his life (at least in the role of the song's protagonist), and then identify himself as a servant for the King of the universe -- that put it in a different perspective. Regardless of how many people see my work, the fact is that God does. The King and Creator of the universe -- I am essentially performing for Him.

I mean, say you're a carpenter or something, and you get summoned to the grand palace of the King of the freaking universe, and He asks you to build a piece of furniture for His personal quarters. Wouldn't you use the best wood you could find and make certain there are no flaws in it before using it? Wouldn't you measure and cut it with the utmost care and precision? Wouldn't you do everything you could possibly do to make it perfect? Not a lot of people outside of the palace would see it, but you would still do your best, right? Because it's for the king. It's a royal commission.

Well, for now the King has asked me to create dance. May I give it the best that I can... and may I quit complaining that 'only' the King sees it.

Taking Risks

So it begins...

And it ended spectacularly. That photo was taken at 9.17pm, just a few minutes after I sat down and began to listen to the song. By 10.30 I had choreographed (sketched out) the entire dance, down to the individual steps, except for the entrance, exit, and the third verse. Oh yeah -- it's a six-minute song.

You may or may not have suspected as much from the album review, but this song is my favourite from this album, and it was a favourite from pretty much the first time I listened to it. This was also the song that seemed like it would be the most difficult to choreograph. In fact, I was reluctant to even attempt it -- nothing I could come up with could possibly do justice to something so lovely and nuanced. I didn't want to ruin the song by matching it with a forced (and by extension crappy) dance.

I was listening to the song that night just to listen, but this time I didn't stop the dancers in my head -- though I wasn't expecting them to do much.

Boy, was I wrong. This dropped into my lap. It was all I could do for my pencil to keep up. It felt gloriously like when The Double came to me in February. It's not so much me choreographing the dance as it was me writing down the dance. There's no effort involved, no 'what would fit best here?' the brain just takes the song and flies, grabbing my hand and dragging me in the wake of it, demanding that I write faster, still faster, lest I forget what I just saw.

You know, I think it's only with Daniel Amos/Terry Scott Taylor songs that I can do that (so far). I owe that guy a huge, huge debt for the inspiration alone (to say nothing of how much the songs themselves mean to me).

Music Day - My Frontier

I've been overdosing on this song as of late. I don't even know why... it's like when I was a kid, I would love songs to death, but people would ask me why I liked this song or that artist so much and I wouldn't be able to answer. I didn't know why I liked them, I just did. Nowadays my reasons for liking songs usually have something to do with the lyrics, the poetry, the vocal, or sometimes there's a certain instrument track or soaring climax that captivates me. But I don't actually know why I love this song so much. It captivates me and sends me through so many emotions, but I don't know what it is about the song that does that. Perhaps it's all of it as a whole -- all the instruments, the poetry, the vocal... this is DA, after all. There's a melancholy artistic feeling to the song. I think it's the feel of the whole general thing that gets me -- the sum greater than its parts, maybe?

I suppose I should talk about the specific attributes of the song here though, so you have a better idea what you're about to hear. I make no guarantees about my ability to put this into words though (trying to describe great music in writing is stinking difficult -- why do I keep doing it then? Probably because nobody listens to me when I talk out loud about music and I have to exercise my enthusiasm somewhere...).

It crashes in with a guitar... I don't know, chord? and then the jingling guitar creeps up and that wonderful solid bass line comes in -- thump thump thump. The whole song has kind of a sweeping, swirling, ethereal feel to it, and only the bass keeps it grounded. It really is timeless. It's the same sort of feeling that captured me way back when I was four and fell in love with the music of David Meece (specifically, the song This Time).

And the climax of the song gives me chills -- when the piano thunders in and Terry's voice grows higher and more earnest (he spends most of the song in a low smooth near-whisper). And for some reason I absolutely love the line Kick it apart; Kick the whole world apart... Don't know why.

Title: My Frontier
Artist: Daniel Amos
Album: MotorCycle
Year: 1993
iTunes here; YouTube here.
Lyrics here.

Kick it apart
Kick the whole world apart and the
Night will absolve us
Wipe the slate clean
Maybe not for a lifetime
For just one day
Just one more day...

Too Busy? Never...

Longtime readers may have wondered -- Is she still writing a novel in NaNoWriMo?

Heck yes! Well, planning on it anyway. For the first time in my writing life I actually had a playlist before I had the plot. (Despite the fact that I eat, sleep, and breathe music, usually the plot idea does actually come first. Barely.) This summer Daniel Amos released a 'Bonus Bonus Disc' to accompany the already double-disc ¡Alarma! re-release (because apparently the first bonus disc didn't have enough space, such is the sheer epic genius of this band), and it includes a lot of instrumental mixes (plus a heartbreaking vocal mix of As Long As I Live). Listening to all these instrumental mixes, I thought You know, this would make great writing music.

Great. So I had music, but I still didn't have a plot.

Then, while reading up on the history of ballet in Russia (I'm not this boring in real life, honest), I came upon a brief account of Nijinsky, how he had been the star of some bigshot Russian ballet company and then was dismissed while on tour in America because he (gasp!) got married. The director of the company pretty much made his life a living hell after that, and Nijinsky suffered a mental collapse before he even turned thirty.

The concept intrigued me, but I kept reading, on through the account of what happened to that company and all the others in Russia at the time. Then I set the book aside for a break, but my mind kept chewing on that idea -- of the director of a ballet company deliberately driving his former star to insanity out of sheer bitterness.

Within an hour and a half, I had a solid plot sketched out. Two days later I named the characters.

This will be interesting, as it's shaping up to be quite a dark book. I mean, I've written a book containing hallucinations and a rather violent murder (Reuben); a book that opens with a drug-overdose death and continues with the subject of drugs and drug addicts throughout the book -- to say nothing of the fact that one of the characters is, quite literally, in Hell (Chasm); and a book where a heinous plague is threatening to wipe out an entire world (Rebecca's World). Aside from the aforementioned murder, I've written at least three other death scenes in my novels over the years. But this one looks like it will not only contain murder and a stalker and one man actively trying to drive another insane, the story goes that the ex-star and his nine-year-old son live out of dingy motels, mostly working in sleazy bars just for food. It's all here, people -- drugs, murder, crime, cheap women, booze... the whole bit. Kill or be killed.

Then the kid discovers that his mother's death years before was actually murder. Not long after that, he's kidnapped and while in captivity he develops a fierce determination to avenge his mother's death -- even if it means taking out the director of a world-renowned dance company.

Let's Have a Listening Party!

Have you been dying to hear the new Daniel Amos album? (You know, the one I've been fangirling over for months...) Are you the type who's too cheap to buy an album until you know you'll love it? (Don't be ashamed -- I'm a founding member of that club.)

Well, here's your chance to see for yourself if the new DA album really is as amazing as I keep telling you it is. Hold on to your wallet. (Actually, don't. The guys could probably use the cash.)

The Cephas Hour will be broadcasting the new Daniel Amos album, Dig Here Said The Angel, in its entirety tomorrow, 27 October. The special runs at 11am Eastern Standard Time (8am Pacific) and again at 11pm EST (8pm PST). I would also assume it'll be released in podcast form (on iTunes) later this week as are the regular episodes of the Cephas Hour.

Tune in here.

Lyrics to the album can be found here (click the song titles).

Your Obscure Music Digest

Well, since there's a lull in DA and White Heart stuff, I am now featuring stuff from The Choir. Observe.

From the list linked above, I've only heard four songs -- Beautiful Scandalous Night (and that was only in part), Between Bare Trees, Midnight Sun, and That Melancholy Ghost. They're all lovely; however, those of you who know me as a rocker will be surprised -- these tracks (at least those four) are slow and the instrumentation is sparse. If it wasn't for the writing, I probably wouldn't listen to them at all.

The link is included on the page linked above, but if you're too lazy to read through it, here's the link directly to their Kickstarter campaign to make a new studio album and a live album. They've already met their funding goal, but you have until the end of the month to join in.


Metalheads, take note: Bloodgood and Stryper have both got new albums going out in a few weeks (November first and fifth, respectively). Word on the street (that is, Facebook and random album reviews) says the Stryper one is worthy of the Stryper banner... haven't heard too much about the Bloodgood one yet.

Watch the official video for Stryper's No Hell To Pay here. Watch the official video for Bloodgood's Lamb Of God here.


Also, after announcing a Kickstarter campaign that was supposed to launch last week, PFR is unexpectedly calling it quits. For good? Who knows -- this is PFR. They've quit and reappeared at least twice. But it's safe to say they're out of commission for a few more years at least. They have asked for prayer for the guys -- no more information has been given.


Lecrae's dropping a mixtape, Church Clothes 2, on 7 November. The last one was released on Datpiff, so I assume CC2 will be the same. (For those of you keeping score, that's three new albums in the first week of NaNoWriMo. Can you say 'jackpot?')


Also, this. This is awesome on so many levels. I love the DA/Choir/TST/etc. fanbase so, so much, and this is a great example of why. Name me another fanbase that will even think of something like this, never mind actually give it a shot.

Time Bubbles

Moving to another province and entering a public schooling system for the first time in my life was... surreal. It felt like I was in a bubble -- that my life in Alberta was 'paused' and I had picked up a life in Saskatchewan that existed in linear time, but not on the same track my time in Alberta had been. (Believe it or not, this is the best way to explain it.)

They were so separate, so easily. In fact, so much so that when my mother and my sister came to pick me up on Thursday (to take me back to Alberta for reading week), it was very jarring to see them in that context. I'm used to my dorm mates walking around the halls and in our room, not my mother and sister. My brain was flashing 'incongruency detected' at me throughout dinner and then as we left the college campus. In fact, it didn't really start feeling normal until we stopped for fuel at Rosetown.

Saskatchewan and Alberta are so different. Saskatchewan has no trees. Even the towns are tiny and they're few and far between. I feel like the town I'm going to college in is one of the larger ones (maybe it's just because you see more people there though), and even their population doesn't reach a thousand. Once you cross the border into Alberta, the difference is almost instant. There's almost this sigh of relief -- civilization! In Saskatchewan, Subway is pretty much the only chain-anything you will see (outside of farm equipment dealers). I spent two months in Saskatchewan and I have yet to see a Wendy's. In Alberta there's one in nearly every town.

But enough about the social/geographical differences.

Coming back home after a two-month absence was kind of odd -- we parked in front of the garage, like we always do, and I grabbed some of my stuff, walked inside and dropped it all on the same spot at the table as I've always done. And as I did so, there was this sense that no time had passed. It was as if the 'Play' button had been pressed, and things were picking up where they had left off. It was like my entire time in Saskatchewan, all those classes and tests I've taken and the people I've met... it was like it had all been a dream, and this was my reality, here, now. And it was odd because I expected these once-normal things to be more foreign to me.

On one hand it was a relief... I was terrified that I would come back to Alberta and nothing would be the same, and I'm glad that wasn't the case -- nothing drastic has changed. But on the other hand it's a little frightening. Two months have gone by (almost). Two months. And it feels like nothing. This calls up the question: how much time has to pass before it feels like something? How much time can be wasted before we start to feel it? The answer scares me... two months between leaving the house and returning to it was as if maybe a couple of hours had passed. What if it's several years before you feel like time has really passed? Or several decades? You could spend decades wasting your life and not feeling it. You could conceivably spend decades inside a certain bubble of time and not realise it until it pops too late.

Seriously, it feels like I never left. Four days after leaving Saskatchewan I'm having a hard time remembering my dorm mates and all the classes as something that really happened, not just a dream I had. It feels so normal and 'right' here. I get the sense that leaving Alberta to finish the semester will be much, much harder than the first time I left...