Music Day - One More Time

Three deaths in three months. I don't even know what to think anymore.

Title: One More Time
Artist: Terry Scott Taylor
Album: Knowledge & Innocence
Year: 1986
iTunes here; YouTube here.
(Typical iTunes: the song is mislabeled. The song labeled A Briefing For An Ascent is actually this one. The song labeled One More Time is actually A Briefing... Both are good though.)

Music Day - Ba Ba Ba Ba

This song is catchy as heck. Do not listen to it if you're not prepared to be singing it all darn week. That said, it is a fun to sing along with. It could be worse. You could have Funkytown or something stuck in your head.

Despite the inane title, this song is quite deep. It opens with a cutting observation of how society (including a lot of us in the 'Christian' subculture) operates as Michael Roe purrs:
Welcome to truth custom-made
Come in and have some lemonade
Reality will re-adjust while we evade...

The rest of the song's lyrics develop the theme against a verse structure of smooth keyboard and a throbbing staccato synth before launching into a chorus backed by guitar work that still gives me chills a full year after I first heard it.

Title: Ba Ba Ba Ba
Artist: 77s
Album: All Fall Down
Year: 1984
Label: Lo-Fidelity Records
Listen and purchase from the artist here.

Music Day, Part II - Today Is The Day

There was a different song by this artist that I wanted to feature today... alas, the iTunes Store fails me yet again.

The '80s are strong with this one, but as we all know, it's not necessarily a bad thing on this blog... The lyrics are timeless and joyful though, and on Easter Sunday, it's the timeless and joyful that we focus on anyway.

Title: Today Is The Day
Artist: David Meece
Album: Count The Cost
Year: 1983
iTunes here; YouTube here.

Today is the day
Today is the day
He is risen
Today is the day
Today is the day
He is living
Go and tell everybody you see
That He is living indeed...


He is risen!
He is risen indeed!

Music Day, Part I - Beautiful Scandalous Night

I love The Choir's lyrics. The music is sometimes (often) too slow for me, but the poetic lyrics usually win me over in the end. Here the band explores the paradox of Jesus' death bringing us life.

Title: Beautiful Scandalous Night

Artist: The Choir

Album: Flap Your Wings

Year: 2001

iTunes here; YouTube here.

Buy directly from The Choir here.

It was a horrible night for those who loved Jesus -- He was arrested without a real warrant, pushed through trial under dishonest judges with their own agendas, beaten, mocked, and eventually sentenced to death, which was carried out the next morning. And it was scandalous -- not only was the entire thing a sham trial by a coalition of corrupt religious and political leaders, Jesus, up until a week prior, had been something of a celebrity throughout the region. For Him to have been sentenced to death literally overnight would certainly have been tabloid material.

But for those who have loved Him since that time, it was beautiful. For a more in-depth explanation of the reasoning behind it, read this. But in a nutshell, it was because of Jesus' death that humans even have the opportunity to be reconciled with God. Whether we take it or not is another matter, but at least now we have that opportunity.

Kneel down by the shore
Be thirsty no more
Go under and be purified...

Music Day - Brutal Planet

It was in this song that I heard -- really heard -- guitars for the first time.

Title: Brutal Planet
Artist: Alice Cooper
Album: Brutal Planet
Year: 2000
iTunes here; YouTube here (warning: fan-made lyric video -- contains language in some slides).
Chill-inducing live version (with theatrical intro) on YouTube here.

You all know of my fascination with keyboards/synthesizers ('80s in general), vocals (Rick Florian, Loyd Boldman), piano (David Meece, Keith Green), and bass guitar (Tim Chandler et al). But the guitar has never done anything for me. I tend to find the guitar overused and boring. I've never understood people who have a favourite guitar solo -- after a while they just all become a way to kill time and make the concert longer without necessarily making it better.

But the guitar work in this song blew me away. I literally got chills when I first heard this, and it was the guitar licks that did it. I've heard about Cooper's stage shows, but never seen one until I clicked the link to the live version on a lark. This set is so lavish. It's fantastic. And the lyrics are so spot-on. I'm willing to make the argument that it's harder to pick out (and find the point of) the words to a 'Christian' song (they're so mumbled and vague) than it was to pick out (and find the point of) the words at a bona-fide rock concert by a seasoned rock vocalist like Alice Cooper. It's food for thought, anyway.

But whatever your beliefs, this is darn good rock. Enjoy!

Missing

I just realised that I will never again not be missing someone. Whether it's people in another province or people in another world entirely... I will be missing somebody or someplace for the rest of my life.

When I'm in Alberta, I'll miss the people I worked with at college. When I'm here at college, I miss the people in Alberta. And no matter where I go I will always miss Brittney and Deb.

How do you live fully even though your soul is divided between joy in where you are and longing for where you aren't? How do you live to the fullest when there's always someone missing? I can spend the rest of my life being happy that I'm with 'this' group of people right now, even though others are missing, or I can spend the rest of my life unhappy because no matter who I'm with, somebody's missing.

College has expanded my heart and broken it. Perhaps it's a good thing. But sometimes this world seems unbearably sad.

Music Day - Angel Falls

Named a novel after this one. I had been plotting the story and this song came on the Cephas Hour at the same time. (And your college English prof told you authors agonise over the meaning of any word, phrase, or title associated with their material. It's lies, I promise. Trust me… I'm an author. But I digress...)

When I first heard this song, I actually thought it was from the eighties (it's from 2013). The production totally does not sound overly loud, flat and generally obnoxious like most of today's songs -- and that, in my opinion, is a very good thing. Plus, that bassline (not necessarily eighties, just generally awesome).

The performer in me appreciates the loose theme -- a story of a girl being the star, the princess, all her dreams have come true… and the harsh reality in her quest for love, her loss of innocence. Thematically, it's ABBA's Thank You For The Music mini-musical meets Crumbächer's Jamie.

But ultimately the song is about a fall from grace. I think we can all relate to that.

Title: Angel Falls
Artist: Veil Of Ashes
Album: Eternal Teenage Angst
Year: 2013
Listen to and buy the song on Bandcamp here.

I needed this song tonight. I make my theatrical debut one week from today, as Mary Lennox (the main character) in The Secret Garden. This is the first official theatre production I've even been in, never mind in a lead role. It's a part I never honestly expected that I would get. I didn't think I was lead role material, especially since I didn't really have any acting experience at all. It's still surreal, and it's almost over.

We've been rehearsing this thing for a month and a half. Every night I fall farther behind on my homework, but I barely even notice or care because every night I've been surrounded by the magic of the stage. It's hard to describe to someone who's never experienced it. It's a totally different world on stage. We can get so totally wrapped up in that world that we forget reality (which is why I haven't been freaking out over the four papers I have to write this month). I especially identify with the subject of the song -- you get the sense that this is a previously unknown girl catapulted to fame, into a lead role. Sound familiar...? And then she falls -- in love? from grace? -- harder than she could have imagined. It's a little terrifying listening to these lyrics tonight even as I consider what I'm going to do with this newfound love of performing after I graduate next month.

Music Day - Time

So this is a Swedish metal band which sang about Jesus. I ask you, does it get any better than this?

Swedish bands appeal to me (it's the former ABBA fangirl in me), and I love a good head-banging song every now and then (and by 'now and then' I mean 'like an hour every day'). This song in particular is overflowing with passion. Jerusalem was direct, lyrically, and that's always something I appreciate, both in music and in real life -- even if I don't agree with you, I would much rather you be honest with me.

Title: Time
Artist: Jerusalem
Album: In His Majesty's Service (Live In The USA)
Year: 1985
Label: Refuge Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.

I want to give you your freedom...

That line, right there. Chills, every time. One of my favourite screams in music, ever (Larry Norman's Messiah scream and Rick Florian's Babylon scream is right up there though).

Lift up your eyes
Your time has come
Lift up your hands
Accept what I've done
Accept what Jesus has done...

There's enough raw passion in the vocal to make these lines awe-inspiring rather than merely cliché. It's a song of pleading encouragement. I liken it to Undercover's Come Away With Me, only with more punch (especially in quantity -- the song runs well over six minutes).

Could it be that someone gave you the wrong impression of Me
For you are not condemned, you are loved
Loved by Me
I gave My life for you...

This song in particular also utilises enough synth to offset the crunching guitars (which can get monotonous after a while -- blasphemy, I know), but not enough to drown the song in the 1980s. Another thing I really like about this song from a musical standpoint is the varied rhythms and tempo. It's a bit of a progressive piece, but while it's well-executed, it doesn't take itself too seriously. It moves fast enough and the slow sections are short enough that the song doesn't lag.

Also, for a live recording, it's really clear and well-mixed. I actually did not know it was a concert recording until well after I bought the song. It's that well done.

Of Children, Death, and Healing

A little boy died in Ontario today.

He had wandered out of his grandparents' apartment in the middle of the night into a twenty-below-Celsius night in a t-shirt and boots. They found him six hours later, still alive but not in good shape. And tonight he died. A little three-year-old boy died. It's heartbreaking to think that twenty-four hours ago, his parents and grandparents thought he had another seventy or eighty years left in his life -- his whole life stretching out before him -- and now it's gone. And he died alone, lost, probably frightened, freezing in the snow in a minus-thirty windchill. No-one to hug him and tell him they loved him and he was safe. And yet he had two loving parents and two loving grandparents. How awful this must be for them. How truly horrible. Twenty-four hours ago they were a normal family with a normal little boy.

Tonight I was at a voice recital at the college and as much as I tried to focus on the singers, my attention kept drifting to the director of my program sitting across the seating area from me, holding his little girl on his lap. He had his arms around her, rocking her in time to the music, dropping kisses on her blond head at regular intervals. She was resting her head on his shoulder and I tried to remember when I was her age and size, sitting on my own dad's lap like that and suddenly I thought, Enjoy it while you can; don't forget this moment, and I almost burst into tears right there. I could not remember specifically ever sitting on my dad's lap. I was never really a sit-on-a-lap kind of kid. I was too busy doing something -- playing a story or dancing. I don't remember being little enough for that and I don't actually remember the feel of my head on my dad's shoulder and his arms around me, rocking me. I'm sure all those things happened. I've seen it with my younger siblings. But I don't remember it for me.

They provide translations for the songs in the program. There was one, some German piece from Brahms, and the translation talked about names fading on old gravestones. The gravestones read 'we were.' So final, so dismal, so full of sadness and regret for things that could not be regained or recaptured or relived. We were, but we are no longer. It is over. It is gone. And then something poetic happened and then the gravestones read 'we were healed' and I could only think of my friend Brittney.

Grieving her death is a funny thing. I miss her. I hate knowing I will never see her or talk to her again before I myself die. But I know her breathing was tortured here -- to what extent I don't know, but I do know it was labourious -- and now for the first time she can breathe easily. She died, but it was death that finally healed her. Yet that healing came at the expense of furthering our collective relationships with her as her friends and family. I'm glad that she is healed, but I miss her so much.

Pride and Fear

The life of a ridiculously imaginative but mediocre performer is a strange place. I so easily imagine myself as the best of the best -- or at least as a dark horse, quietly sitting by for the longest time before actually getting up the courage to stun all in attendance with my awesome hidden talent. So then when I finally do get up and muscle past the apprehension and actually try something, I'm shocked to hear how thin the voice in my throat actually sounds, how heavy my dancing really feels, how stilted and unnatural my acting actually is.

Being imaginative, I tend to play two roles in my mind. I play the part of myself, but I also play the part of the critical crowd -- I watch myself dance as I dance, seeing in my mind's eye the horrendous technique from the audience's perspective. By the time I get off the stage I'm exhausted, but only half of it was from physically dancing. The other half was spent simultaneously creating and fighting the critical voice.

This scenario is almost a continuous narrative through my brain. It plays out over and over again. The pride: "I'm at least as good as them. I'm just going to sit here and look content while they have the spotlight but I know very well I can take it," and the fear: "I can't do this, they're all so much better than me. They'll all see how terrible I really am. How can I have twelve years of dance experience and still be this terrible? How can I call myself a performer?" And is either right? Is it right to depend on the love of the audience for my self-worth? Whether I succeed and feed the pride or fail and feed the fear, I lose either way. I can't get away from both at the same time.