Sunday, August 31, 2008

Phil Keaggy – Phantasmagorical


Phil Keaggy has had a wide variety of releases in his long career. Some instrumental, some vocal. Some electric, some acoustic. And, of course, some that are really good and some that are not as good. In almost any artist’s career there are high points and low points and there are also albums that really stand out. Phil Keaggy has had a couple that have really stood out over the years. One of those was The Master and the Musician, his first instrumental album. Phil recently toured to support the 30th Anniversary of that album so as he prepared his latest album he had M&M on his mind and in saw some similarities between Master and Musician and his latest album, Phantasmagorical. He mentioned those similarities when talking about the album before it’s release creating some buzz among his fans. In fact, it even has, as it’s subtitle, Master and Musician 2.

It has finally arrived (you can order it on his website) and I've now had a couple of weeks to digest it. While it is clearly not the sequel to M&M (and I don't know if Phil ever really intended it to be - decisions about titles like this are sometimes driven more by management than by the artist) it is also a very good album. As I mentioned in a recent review of The Song Within, Phil seems to be in a great creative space right now and has released a couple of very strong albums in a row. One of the things that strikes me about Phantasmagorical is how often a song will begin and I’ll find myself wondering who it is – not realizing it is Phil because he is experimenting with some new sounds – slide guitar, for example in the first track, “Like Snow Before the Sun” or the horns at the beginning of "Cascading." There is a lot of variety in this album and, of course, stellar playing throughout. But one of Phil's strengths is as a composer and arranger and he does that well on Phantasmagorical. Yes, there are times when it sounds like parts of it could have been on M&M but there are also parts that sound more like the sequel to Beyond Nature, (perhaps my favorite of Phil's instrumental albums) and there are parts that I'm hard-pressed to say if they'd fit on any of his previous albums.

Perhaps the best track on the album is the one that Phil previewed for us on the M&M tour, “Forever to Joy,” one of the songs that actually most sounds like the Master and Musician album with its strong melody and the delicate use of flute. It’s a great end to a great album. Phantasmagorical is one of the better PK albums of the last decade and it ranks nicely up there with his best ever.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

George Harrison playlist

Here is another of my playlists. This one features the solo music of George Harrison. Once again, my rules are that it had to fit on a CD and that I wanted it to give both a good general intro to George's music and also include some of my own quirky choices.

Name / Artist / Album
01 My Sweet Lord / George Harrison / All Things Must Pass
02 Don't Let Me Wait Too Long / George Harrison / Living In The Material World
03 What Is Life / George Harrison / All Things Must Pass
04 Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth) / George Harrison / Living In The Material World
05 Crackerbox Palace / George Harrison / Thirty Three & 1/3
06 Love Comes To Everyone / George Harrison / George Harrison
07 Wake Up My Love / George Harrison / Gone Troppo
08 Got My Mind Set on You / George Harrison / Cloud 9
09 Cheer Down / George Harrison / Best Of Dark Horse 1976-1989
10 Any Road / George Harrison / Brainwashed
11 Horse To The Water (with George Harrison) / Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra / Small World Big Band, Vol. 1
12 When We Was Fab / George Harrison / Cloud 9
13 All Those Years Ago / George Harrison / Somewhere In England
14 Blow Away / George Harrison / George Harrison
15 This Song / George Harrison / Thirty Three & 1/3
16 Baby Don't Run Away / George Harrison / Gone Troppo
17 Never Get Over You / George Harrison / Brainwashed
18 Living In The Material World / George Harrison / Living In The Material World
19 All Things Must Pass / George Harrison / All Things Must Pass

Notice that I included the Jools Holland cut which is basically a George cut - it was released only a few months before his death and was, apparently, the last thing he recorded. (By the way, feel free to let me know if you like this format for showing the playlist more or less than the tables I had before. I have a new computer and it isn't as easy to do the tables.)

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Why I like my new mac

I recently wrote about my new apple macbook and I really don’t want to be that guy who jabbers on about how cool his mac is and how relatively uncool PCs are but, basically – it's true. Now, granted, there are a few things that that mac doesn’t do as well – for example, the MS Word version for mac doesn’t post directly to my blog like the windows version does. It also won’t do mail merge to email (which I actually used occasionally.) It doesn’t sync my palm to my groupwise and groupwise isn’t as nice on a mac as it is on a PC.

BUT I’m really glad I switched. Here is a short list why.

  • Size and weight – I like the size of the macbook and also how light it is. It is really a much more portable computer than either the IBM or the Dell that I had – certainly a lot more portable than the recent Dell I got from work.
  • Style – let’s face it, these folks at apple know how to design stuff. They just look so cool!
  • Ports and connections – all the ports are on the side so when I tip it back I don’t bend the power cord connection. Speaking of which, it’s magnetic so it just comes off without breaking (not that I ever had any problem with my old one, but this design just makes it less of a possibility.)
  • Speed – there are two ways the mac is faster. It starts up and shuts down faster. A lot faster. But it also opens up programs faster. Not that I’m impatient or anything but, well, let’s move on.
  • Searching for things – finding files is a lot easier and faster – you type into the little search window in the finder and you get results instantly instead of the five minute wait for windows search to do it’s thing. I used windows search only when I had to because it was such a pain – I search for things on the mac all the time.
  • Preview – thanks for Bryan for pointing this one out to me. If you think you have the right file but you’re not sure you highlight the file and click the spacebar – it shows you the file instantly so you can see if it’s the one you want. It also works as a great way to view photos.
  • Video chatting – with the camera above the screen I can chat with people and see them. I don’t use it much but I get to chat with Bethany face to face occasionallyy in Georgia and I finally got to see Father Ron Hatton, an internet friend who’d voice I had heard and who’s pictures I had seen. I feel like we’ve actually met now. Yeah, I know you can buy a camera for a PC and do the same thing – this is built in, easy and seamless. Oh, and the camera let me quickly take this picture showing my new t-shirt.

So, there it is. Why I like my Mac. I’m that guy now. And I’m OK with that.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

New music from NoiseTrade by the Allens

I downloaded this album this morning and I've listened twice already - I like it a lot. Go get it for free.

Sunday, August 03, 2008

A Beatles sampler

In another posting I posted a McCartney playlist. Here is my shot at distilling an intro to the Beatles for those who need an introduction. Again, it had to fit on one 80 min CD. I used the versions from 1 and Yellow Submarine when possible because they sound better. I also tried to make it flow well so that it was a good listening experience.

Name

Album

1

I Should Have Known Better

A Hard Day's Night

2

Back In The U.S.S.R.

The Beatles [White Album]

3

Dear Prudence

The Beatles [White Album]

4

And Your Bird Can Sing

Revolver

5

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Yellow Submarine

6

With A Little Help From My Friends

Yellow Submarine

7

Things We Said Today

A Hard Day's Night

8

Come Together

1

9

Let It Be

1

10

Can't Buy Me Love

1

11

I Feel Fine

1

12

Birthday

The Beatles [White Album]

13

Lady Madonna

1

14

All My Loving

With The Beatles

15

Penny Lane

1

16

Strawberry Fields Forever

Magical Mystery Tour

17

It Won't Be Long

With The Beatles

18

Paperback Writer

1

19

We Can Work It Out

1

20

The Inner Light

Past Masters, Vol. 2

21

Eight Days A Week

1

22

Something

1

23

Yesterday

1

24

All You Need Is Love

1

25

Hey Jude

1

26

I Want To Hold Your Hand

1

27

Across The Universe

Let It Be... Naked

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Switching to Mac

Over the past few months I’ve been more and more intrigued with macs. I think it started just about two years ago when I got my first iPod. I realized that the design was SO elegant that it was really really well made. I still think that the iPod is an incredibly well designed music listening device – just think about the controls on it – very simple but yet it does everything you want it to. And the learning curve is not steep at all. It just makes sense and it works well.
My son, Bryan, told me that this is true of the mac computers too and so I started paying attention more. Now about ten years ago when I started teaching at Calvin they had just stopped requiring PCs for everyone because macs are particularly good for certain things and they were allowing them again but I wanted nothing to do with them. The classroom in which I taught, though, had a mac so I learned quickly that the windows interface and the mac OS were really quite close. I made the transition with little problem. My anti-mac bias started to crack.

My kids’ school, Holland Christian, is now part of a program in which every student, grades 6-12, has their own laptop computer – a mac. I went to visit the school to specifically look at this project with an IT friend from Calvin and we were very impressed. Also, this sumer, when Bethany came home for vacation for a week and a half she had her new mac and I was quite impressed with the way she could just lug it around and how quickly it would start up and work. It was very very cool. That made me think that I should try a mac but one thing was stopping me – I use GroupWise for my email, calendar and to-do list all the time and I couldn’t live with just the web interface.
Lo and behold, last week I discovered that I didn’t have to – I found out that there is a GroupWise client for mac that Calvin uses. I borrowed a mac from Calvin’s A/V and tried it out. I loved it.
So, Monday I get my own mac. I’m already starting to feel a little bit like “that guy” who is always talking about how cool macs are – I’ll try to resist but they are pretty cool.

Friday, August 01, 2008

A McCartney playlist

I recently found a Beatles blog which had a George Harrison playlist by someone who used the same rules that I recently used to make a couple of setlists so I thought I'd post mine and see what people think.

So here is my Post-Beatles McCartney setlist. There aren't many rules – it just needs to be able to fit onto one CD. That's the tricky part because that forces you to trim it down quite a bit. I also wanted this to be a good introduction to McCartney's music for someone who wasn't familiar with it and I wanted it to be a good listening experience so the order took some thought. Here's what I came up with.


Name

Album

1

The Lovely Linda

Wingspan: Hits and History

2

Big Barn Bed

Red Rose Speedway

3

Jet

Wingspan: Hits and History

4

English Tea

Chaos and Creation in the Backyard

5

Pipes Of Peace

Wingspan: Hits and History

6

Live And Let Die

Wingspan: Hits and History

7

Motor Of Love

Flowers in the Dirt

8

Band On The Run

Wingspan: Hits and History

9

Ever Present Past

Memory Almost Full

10

Another Day

Wingspan: Hits and History

11

Mull Of Kintyre

Wingspan: Hits and History

12

Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey

Wingspan: Hits and History

13

Only Mama Knows

Memory Almost Full

14

Beautiful Night

Flaming Pie

15

Venus And Mars / Rockshow (Single Edit)

Wingspan: Hits and History

16

Dance Tonight

Memory Almost Full

17

Maybe I'm Amazed

Wingspan: Hits and History

18

Every Night

Wingspan: Hits and History

19

Tug Of War

Wingspan: Hits and History

20

My Brave Face

Flowers in the Dirt

21

Your Loving Flame

Driving Rain


There are three big ballads on here – McCartney often ends his album with one of these – and I like them a lot but I needed to somehow put them on here in a way that made sense. So I split the 21 songs into three parts and ended each part with one of the ballads – that helped me give the list some flow. My daughter Bethany questioned the inclusion of "English Tea." Feel free to suggest other options.

A Great Headline

Every day I check my local paper on line to see what the local news is. Today's headline really impressed me as hard-hitting journalism.


Now, in fairness, there was concern that another city's water treatment plant had been the major contributor so it really is a worthwhile story but the headline made me wonder,