Why Do You Sing?

“Why do you sing?” Allison Adam asked us that last night and a seminar that she led at the Calvin Seminary Chapel. Answers varied from “to build community” and “to celebrate something” to “it helps us remember” and “to express how we feel.” Allison pointed out that all of those reasons (and a few I forgot) are also reasons we sing in worship and she led us through a few songs in each category, songs that were mostly new to most of us in the seminar. The group sang well (often singing a capella but sometimes ably accompanied by Rachel Klompmaker on piano and a quartet of percussionists) and we learned the new songs quickly due in no small part to Allison’s skill as a song leader and teacher.

Along the way we picked up tips for teaching songs to our congregations and learned some songs that could be very well used in worship. Many of the songs came from the Iona Community, where Allison worked for a number of years. I especially liked the John Bell songs and singing them always reminds me of when I hung out with him and Ron Rienstra for a few days when I played electric guitar for the Hymn Society in Minnesota. (Not many people can say that they did that - this is a group that doesn't use the electric guitar often.) Allison's delightful manner, her wonderful gift for songleading and her Scottish accent made for an evening that went by quickly. Laura and I also got to see a couple of friends that we don’t see very often which made the evening even better. Thanks to the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship for sponsoring this event. I wish some of my Fourteenth Street Church friends had come. While there was a fine crowd there was plenty of room for more people and our church would have benefited from more of us learning from Allison

Bono at NAACP awards

I've seen good speeches before but Bono's speech at the NAACP awards is truly remarkable. It almost seems like a scene out of West Wing where Bartlett brings people to their feet but this is a real response to a truly great speech. Make sure you watch all the way to the end (it's about 7 minutes.) The last sixty seconds is really something.

The Heather Mills dancing saga continues

A big day here on my blog with three posts! But I couldn't resist this one either.

I have been following the Paul McCartney/Heather Mills story and haven't commented on it because I thought that they deserve to go through their personal pain without me adding to the ton of things being written about them. (Although the evidence that they check my blog daily is spotty at best.)

But now that Heather is going to be on Dancing with the Stars things just get stranger and stranger. This headline, though, is probably the strangest one yet: Heather Mills Says Her Leg Probably Won't Fly Off. In the original interview with her that this quote comes from she addresses the issue of her doing competitive dance with an artificial leg in a reasonable and lighthearted manner and I'm sure she said lots of other things in the interview but this, of course, is what gets pulled out.

It is really fascinating to see how some Beatles fans are calling for a boycott of the show and how the press is focusing their attention on Mills' unique situation - both physical and personal. Even though calling Mills a star is stretching it a bit - I'm not sure what she's done to put her in that category - the producers of the show struck gold when they hired her. They've had more publicity than I would have ever imagined. The cult of celebrity is alive and well.

Nitpicking the 6PM news...

I'm breaking my one-post-a-day rule to nitpick the news.

Here was the opening sentence on the 6 PM news tonight, reporting on a downtown building that burned down last night: "Until last night it was a former Grand Rapids factory."

Now, I know that the developers were trying to turn it into condos or apartments or something but, even after it burned down isn't it STILL a former Grand Rapids factory?

The Beatles on Ready Steady Go - 1964

Here is a great video clip from March of 1964 when the Beatles appeared on the British TV show Ready Steady Go. It shows them happily lipsyncing to two of their songs and also includes a delightfully trite George Harrison interview. I love the beehive hairstyles on the fans.

'Studio 60' getting the ax?

This article suggests that Studio 60 is getting put on hiatus after tonight's episode and perhaps being put out to pasture for good. My favorite line from the article is "Death would not come without mourning, but the grief would be more for the promise represented by Sorkin and a stellar cast led by Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford than for anything they produced." Aaron Sorkin knocked it out of the park twice - with Sports Night and then with West Wing. But with Studio 60 it just seemed like he was too full of himself and too intent on making writers look really bright and conflicted.

The good news is that now I won't have the Monday night do-I-watch-it-or-don't-I issues that I've had lately. The other good news is that the Gilmore Girls, a show that I usually only watch with my youngest daughter Lynnae, has been on target this season and Lost has been great so there is plenty to keep me busy!

Oh! Gravity – Switchfoot

I never really got Switchfoot, as least not until just recently. Bethany bought their second album (New Way to Be Human) way back when it came out (1999 or so) and I think I might have listened to it once or twice. They were certainly on my radar screen back then as one of the few artists signed to Charlie Peacock’s ReThink label. I was (and still am) a fan of Peacock’s smart and thoughtful music and his work as a producer. In fact I’ve had two chances to talk with him at length at Calvin – once in my office, just the two of us for about an hour which was wonderful – and my appreciation for him has grown through those encounters. So when he signed this trio (now up to five members) from San Diego I at least perked up. For some reason though I didn’t really grab onto New Way to Be Human but I at least kept my eye on Switchfoot because I trusted Charlie.

A couple of years ago they played a free concert in Grand Rapids just after their stock took off big-time because of getting their stuff on some Mandy Moore movie (A Walk to Remember maybe?). I took my kids to see them (they were, at the time, Meredith’s favorite band) and, while I didn’t really know their music at the time, they were fun to listen to. I stood in the back because I didn’t want to get slammed in the pit with all the high school kids but I remember listening to The Beautiful Letdown once or twice and thinking that it was OK.

I also remember the debacle around the release of Nothing is Sound, in which Sony put out their album with a copy protection thing on it that meant that you couldn’t play it on itunes or rip it to your computer without using their special software. Yeah, it was a pain and so I didn’t listen to Meredith’s copy much. I was more interested in the fallout as a business and technological issue than the music. All in all, Switchfoot was firmly in the "I won't turn them off but I probably won't buy them" category for quite some time.

So, for some reason, when their latest album, Oh! Gravity, came out and I saw it on sale right after Christmas, I bought it. I really don't know why. I think I figured that most of my kids would want to hear it and I knew I had more money then they did so I did it to be a nice dad. I also like to support Christians who are working effectively the in the mainstream so I just bought it on a whim. And you know what? It has stayed in my CD player almost continuously ever since.

When I get a new album I won’t listen much if the music doesn’t move me so there is sometimes a pretty short window for an album to get seriously listened to. In this case, the music did move me. I found the melodies and the arrangements on Oh! Gravity to be interesting and compelling. They players aren’t virtuosi but they do well enough for the genre and the dorky piano break about a minute into the first song oozes fun and creativity.

The lyrical themes on this album follow the same lines as previous Switchfoot albums in that they tend to be somewhat dark, focusing on a sense of emptiness. You get the feeling that Foreman is trying to tap into the malaise that his generation feels without feeling the need to point to Christ as the answer in every song. In fact, there is no explicitly Christian content – at least that I have found so far. Of course, it is not always clear what Jon Foreman is referring to in his lyrics but most of the time I’m just bopping my head and enjoying the groove. Occasionally, though, the lyrics jump out at me, as in the opening to “American Dream”:

When success is equated with excess
The ambition for excess wrecks us
As top of the mind becomes the bottom line
When success is equated with excess.

There is some fun wordplay here and it’s hard to miss his point. Other songs aren’t quite so clear. For example, in “Amateur Lovers,” when he sings

We don't know what we're doing
We do it again
We're just amateur lovers
With amateur friends

we aren’t really sure whether this is a good thing or not. I don’t want to complain too much, though, because I have really enjoyed this album. I also really appreciate that Foreman and the rest of the band let their Christian perspective show through in their music, even if it’s not explicit. Oh! Gravity is not Great Art but it is a pretty cool album that I continue to enjoy.

Midnight Riders: The story of the Allman Brothers Band by Scott Freeman

In reading a recent book about Layla, the author mentioned that Scott Freeman’s book, Midnight Riders: The story of the Allman Brothers Band was probably the best on the subject so, since I know little about the story of the Allmans (although I know their music well) I figured I’d give it a look. I’ve written before about Duane Allman and how the band’s Fillmore East album was practically the soundtrack to my freshman year of college but I was surprised at how little I knew of the story of the band, particularly after Duane died.

Freeman tells the story well but it is such a convoluted tale of drugs, fame and wasted opportunity that it’s a bit depressing. This is a band that had the world by the tail and blew it mostly because of immature behavior, drugs and alcohol. (Haven’t there been enough bands now who have had this happen to them that the young ones might say “hey, that’s a trap – I better be careful!” Books like this ought to be required reading at the school of rock.)

I have to say that I was quite turned off to the band (especially Gregg Allman and Dickie Betts) after reading about their story. I wasn’t surprised at the excesses because the band Stillwater in the film Almost Famous was based them to some extent so I had a bit of warning. It is interesting when I read books about bands because if I’m already predisposed to like the people I usually find myself focusing on their more recent good behavior (Clapton, McCartney) but if I don’t have a real fondness for them going in then I often have the other reaction. In the case of Phil Lesh I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt because I think he’s cleaned up a lot lately and saw the error of his drug ways so when I read Searching for the Sound (his autobiography) and I reviewed it in this blog I wasn’t critical of his drug use but rather the way he seemed so casual about relationships – something that he now ought to know better about.

So it might not have been a good idea for me to read Midnight Riders. It gave me a more accurate but much less flattering view of the band than I had before and, since the book was written before the current incarnation of the band, I have no way of knowing if the members have gotten their lives together or not. I hope so because they can sure play!

(By the way, the hardcover edition has a lot more subtle cover than the one I'm showing on this post - I'm not a big fan of the one shown here.)

Remembering the Beatles on Ed Sullivan

Even when I was young I had a strong connection to music. I have a clear memory of having a portable record player that I used all the time. In fact, I had a 45 with the William Tell Overture on it and I would play it and run around the house in a particular way hiding behind certain chairs at certain times in the music. I think the Lone Ranger TV show caused me to think that that music required action. I don't even know how we got the record - it just appeared. I was maybe four or five years old at the time. It’s one of my earliest memories. Apparently I did music all the time as a child - once someone asked my mom when I started doing music and she said something like "when he was born."

My musical memory gets another jumpstart in early 1964 when “I Want to Hold Your Hand” hit the airwaves. I had never heard anything like it and was immediately taken by how cool this music was. I remember talking about it with friends on the playground and I remember my classmate Greg who said "I don't like the Beatles because they always sing about love." Somehow, even as a fourth grade boy that didn't bother me. I managed to convince my parents to let me buy a Beatles record - and then another one. I got the “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You” singles and, when I manged to save big bucks, I got an album - The Beatles Second Album, one of those early US-only releases. Looking back I forgot what a rocker this album was. “Roll Over Beethoven,” "Money," "You Can't Do That" and other great songs got me going as a 9 year old. I wore it out.

When I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, 43 years ago today, (which probably pre-dates my record purchases) I got to see for myself what these guys from England looked like when they played. (Remember, back then we had four or five channels on TV - and that was in the largest market in the country, NYC - and there was no other source of home video. If you didn't watch it when it was broadcast you didn't see it at all. So I stayed home from church (!) on Sunday night and stared in amazement at the television. When I saw John Lennon play the guitar that was it – I was hooked. My brother had a guitar which I started to learn on (despite his desire that I not touch it) and then I found an old four-string banjo in our basement that I tuned like the four highest strings on a guitar. I started playing on that until I finally got my own – a very cheap Harmony guitar that we got from saving trading stamps that they gave out at the grocery store. The guitar arrived on the last day of fourth grade, only a few months after that Sunday night when the Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan Show. I've played ever since. For my last show with the Lazy Blue Tunas in December when it was time to pick an encore we chose a Beatles song - "I Feel Fine." Beatles music has been a constant companion to me for 43 years.

Follow the Leader

I’ve mentioned before that Laura and I write church school curriculum for the Walk With Me series and it seems like only a month ago (and it was) that Faith Alive published the Easter Unit that we wrote called He’s Alive. Today our significantly bigger summer unit, Follow the Leader, arrived in the mail. It was less than a year ago that Manger King, our Christmas play came out and I think our Christmas unit Just Like Me came out in 2006 too. We’ve been busy! But it’s always fun to see our work in print and this one is THICK, 223 pages – no wonder it was such a relief to have it finished!

Go to Faith Alive Resources to see these and other cool things for your church.

Searching for God Knows What – Donald Miller

I usually have a number of books that I’m working through depending on what’s going on in my life and which books I happened to get excited about this very minute. My shelf of books-I’m-about-to-read has grown to ridiculous proportions and I accumulate new books at a faster rate than I actually read the ones I’ve got and I have bookmarks in a half dozen of them. It’s a sickness.

But I did manage to actually finish a book on the plane home from Philadelphia this week: Donald Miller’s Searching for God Knows What. Having read and enjoyed Blue Like Jazz, I was really looking forward to seeing if the quirkiness of that book could be carried over to another. The answer is a qualified ‘yes.’

Miller’s very engaging writing style is still present in no small measure but Searching is, I believe, trying much harder to make a point than Blue Like Jazz. And while that point is a perfectly good one and Miller does a nice job of tying things together to get there I found it a bit more tedious. What I liked about Jazz what that you literally never knew what you were going to get. The book was filled with Miller’s weird friends and unique situations where they are more like occasional guests in Searching.

Miller’s point is well taken and some of his analogies along the way caused me to think about human relationships and about our relationship to God in new ways and I'm glad I read it. But I was spoiled by the freewheeling fun of Blue Like Jazz and, if asked to recommend a Miller book to someone, will go with that rightfully more popular book.

Snow day

When I was back teaching real school the snow day was one of the highlights of the year. I usually lived very close to the school where I taught so I didn’t really mind “near snow days” because driving was never a problem and actual snow days were like a free gift of time. It was cool.

Now that I teach college I never have that and, since so much of my work is outside the classroom anyway, even if I had a snow day it wouldn’t amount to much. Plus, I have a 45 minute drive every day and when it snows I don’t like it at all.

But today, a Sunday, is different. Church was cancelled as well as Church School – two things that Laura and I are in charge of so it really does come as a free day. I can take the day and shovel my driveway, do some writing, catch up on some resting because I have had a couple of intense weekends in a row and just chill out (literally) in general.

The bad news is that we got hammered by the “Blizzard of 2007” so I have a fair amount of digging out to do. Hopefully the roads will all be cleared by tomorrow morning when I begin the commute again.

Back home from APCE in Philadelphia

After three days at the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators conference it is good to be back home again. I actually wasn’t supposed to come in until later today but the blizzard warnings that were posted for the lakeshore of Michigan got me worried and I pushed my flight up a day and came home last night. Even though I beat the bad storm the drive from the airport to Holland was a bit difficult and I'm glad I don't have to face that today, especially since the news just reported a multi-car pileup and a closed highway AND the flight that I was scheduled to take was canceled. Hooray for good decisions!

Of the two APCE conferences I attended (last year and this) this was the better. The plenary speaker and preacher were both really good. Bill Carter preached for us and I enjoyed all three of the sermons of his that I heard. But the highlight for me was Frances Taylor Gench, the keynote speaker. Her talks were informative, enjoyable and thought-provoking. I even bought one of her books, Back to the Well, Women’s Encounters with Jesus in the Gospels.

Aside from that I spoke about my three-dimensional faith notion (which makes up the bulk of my forthcoming book from Baker Books,) went to three sectionals and had a great time hanging out with the group from Faith Alive Christian Resources, who publish the curricula and the plays that Laura and I write. All in all, it was a great time. I’m glad that next year’s conference is a few weeks later, giving me time to recover between Calvin’s Worship Symposium and APCE!

Symposium ‘07

Another Calvin Symposium on Worship has come and gone and I had a great time. I didn't speak or play guitar until after it was all done this year so it was more relaxing that other Symposia of late. The presenters are very good, of course and the worship services are spectacular but perhaps the most fun is reconnecting with old friends and making new ones. Laura and I met and had lunch with Steve Burger from the Evangelical Covenant Church. Steve gave two talks on ministry to children and covers a lot of the same territory that I do in my talks. It was fun getting to know him and hear him speak.

I also got to know Keith and Kristyn Getty and played guitar for their concert Sunday night. Keith is an intense guy and our rehearsals were long and arduous but the concert went well and we had a good time.

I’m now in the very brief time between Sympo and the APCE conference in Philadelphia that I’ll leave for on Wednesday morning. Barely time to catch my breath!

Playing guitar with Keith and Kristyn Getty

This weekend is the annual Calvin Symposium on Worship and it once again promises to be a wonderful couple of days. I was most excited about Keith Getty, who is a modern hymn writer form Ireland. Getty composed "In Christ Alone" and a number of other great songs. I first heard of Getty when his album New Irish Hymns was released in the US under the name In Christ Alone. It was billed as a Margaret Becker, Maire Brennen and Joanne Hogg album, which is true, but they were only the singers. It was pretty clear that this was a Keith Getty album and it was wonderful.

Since then Getty has released three more albums of New Irish Hymns, (Vols 2 - 4) replacing Maire Brennan with Kristyn Lennox who later changed her name with Kristyn Getty when she and Keith married. The albums are only available as an import. I recently got all four of them and they're really good - what a fabulous collection of thoughtful and beautiful worship songs. He and Kristyn have most recently released an album called In Christ Alone. Some of the songs from this album appeared on New Irish Hymns but some are new. It's a great collection of songs for worship.

The most exciting part of this is that I got a call two weeks ago from Greg Scheer asking if I wanted to be in the band for the concert the Gettys are putting on on Sunday evening. Well, let me think about it for half a second - YES! So, on Sunday, Jan 28 I'll be in a small band playing guitar with Keith and Kristyn Getty. I'm pretty excited about it!

Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, a book by Jan Reid

I was a freshman in college and, even though I had bought the single for “Sunshine of Your Love”, the Blind Faith album and Clapton’s first solo album I somehow missed Layla. (Curiously, I didn’t own any Cream albums until later, because I usually listened to a friend’s copy of Disraeli Gears and Wheels of Fire.) Maybe it was the name of the band, Derek and the Dominoes, or maybe it was the cover which somehow didn’t grab my attention but somehow I completely missed it. Fortunately, that year my good friend and band-mate Pete introduced me to both Layla and the Allman Brothers Band Live at the Fillmore East, two albums which featured Duane Allman. These two albums were the soundtrack to much of that year for me and Pete kept them in my room. I had a stereo and he didn’t. (Hey, it was 1972!) As I got home for the summer and no longer had Pete's copies I went out and bought both albums because they were essential to my listening life.

Many many years later I'm still a big fan of both Eric Clapton and his album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. I’m surprised at how little I’ve read about Clapton, since I tend to do a fair amount of rock much reading but I just haven't read much about him. So when I saw that this new book by Jan Reid had come out I checked my local library and I was able to get it from one of their cooperating libraries. Along the way looking for this book (and while I waited for it to come in) I picked up Eric Clapton; Edge of Darkness by Christopher Sandford. I’ve written in this blog before about my dislike of Sandford’s book on Paul McCartney so I picked up Edge of Darkness warily. My misgivings were indeed true and I didn’t get very far in Sandford’s book before I put it down in disgust. Sandford seemed to dwell on the drugs, the drinking and the sex. Reid’s book mentions these things – it’s an essential part of the story – but Sandford seems to go out of his way to wallow in it, much like he did in the McCartney book. And I don't like the way he writes.

But I didn’t come here today to complain about Edge of Darkness, I came to say that Jan Reid's Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek and the Dominoes is a pretty good book. It is nice that Reid really focuses on the time period in which Clapton and the Dominoes recorded Layla. He does some background stuff but all of it is necessary to the put the album and the life of the band in context. He also writes about all five members of the band, although he covers Clapton in the most depth. His primary source for the book was keyboard player and singer Bobby Whitlock who seems to remember pretty well what happened and actually lived to tell about it. He and Clapton are the only survivors of the Dominoes - drummer Jim Gordon is in jail for murder and suffering from schizophrenia, and both guitarist Duane Allman and bassist Carl Radle are dead.

The book is readable and does a nice job of covering the story of the people involved in the book both before and after the band’s short life. I especially enjoyed the chapter in which Reid actually writes about the songs on the album and does a lengthy review, song by song. It’s also nice that he has a chapter on what happened to the band members after the band broke up. That gives nice closure to the story. It seems that both Clapton and Whitlock are happy and well although Clapton has clearly had much more success. The book is not long, reads quickly and, if you’re interested in Clapton or in this incredible album, not only one of Clapton’s best but one of the all-time best rock albums, this book is a valuable resource.

The Search for Better Sounding Beatles

The buzz about remastered Beatles coming to a computer near you is getting louder and louder. It seems that the most persistent rumor is that the long-awaited remasters of the Beatles albums will be available on Valentine’s Day on iTunes and then on CD three months later. The exact format of the albums and the timing of the releases are unknown although one intriguing rumor puts the release of Sgt Pepper on the 40^th Anniversary of its original release. Of course, with rumors it’s ALL unknown until someone actually makes an announcement. The rumor mill heated up when Steve Jobs featured Beatles music prominently on his announcement of the new iPhone.

I, for one, will wait the three months to buy the CDs but I have been searching for Better Sounding Beatles (BSB) for decades. I, of course, bought the American releases as they came out. I still have my original singles of “She Loves You” (on the Swan label) and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” As a high schooler I sold my Beatles singles to my brother only to get them back years later in trade for a guitar. He no longer has the guitar and I still have the singles. It was actually hard for me as a kid to keep up with all the releases since I would often find out that a new album was coming out by actually seeing it in the record store. But I have a clear memory of picking up my pre-ordered-and-held-behind-the-counter copies of the White Album and Abbey Road so I’m pretty sure I got them on the first day of release. I know that I got Sgt Pepper from my brother for my 13^th birthday which was, like, one of the coolest birthday presents EVER. I remember getting Yesterday and Today with the cover that everyone knows – I didn’t get one of those ultra-rare butcher covers. I do, however, still have my copy of the Hey Jude album which was originally called The Beatles Again and my copy actually says The Beatles Again on the disc. (That album was a U.S. only release with a number of otherwise unavailable singles – the only way to get “Hey Jude”, “Revolution”, “The Ballad of John and Yoko”, “Don’t Let Me Down” and others on an album.)

While I lived in Denver I discovered the joy of Japanese imports. Japanese imports sounded better than the US versions and followed the UK order so, for the first time, I heard the albums the way the Beatles put them together instead of their inferior US counterparts. (This is why Capital recently released the two volumes of The Capital Albums, so people could hear the albums the way they remember them.) So, I sold many of my original albums and replaced them with Japanese imports so that I had better sounding albums. Then when the CDs came out I was right there to buy them – literally. I lived a block away from Denver’s largest record store (Peaches, which later changed its name to Sound Warehouse) and was at the door when they opened the day the first batch of CDs went on sale. That year I got one “personal day” at school – a day when you could just take off for no good reason. I chose the day the Beatles albums went on sale. So I sold all my Japanese pressings and picked up CDs which sounded great. Those CDs have been in my collection now for a long time but I can now hear how amazing the Love sounds and I’m geeked about hearing the whole Beatles catalog that way. I hope the rumors are true and that remastered albums will be here by summer!

Owning the Groove, indeed

Thanks to my good friend Ron Rienstra from over at RONdezvous there is now video proof of our awesome New Years Eve drum circle. Ron and Deb and their kids came over on New Years Eve and celebrate the new year together in a magical land called "Trevonia," which is located somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Why there, you ask? Because midnight in Trevonia is about three of four hours earlier than it is where we live and that allows us to bring in the new year at a time more appropriate for the younger Rienstra children. So this has been our second or third visit to Trevonia and each time it gets better and better.

This year, thanks to Ron's tireless research, we discovered that Trevoians celebrate the New Year with a Drum Circle. By some wild coincidence, Ron and I both got djembes this year (Ron got his for Christmas) and Meredith's friend Calvin had one and we insisted that he bring it. We also had some smaller hand percussion for so others (not cool enough to have their own drum) could participate so we were all set to own the groove on New Years eve. Here is a short clip showing just a little bit of the fun we had. By all means, check out Ron's description of our festivities too! By the way, our families rock at the Bible version of Apples to Apples.

In praise of good cliffhangers

Another show that I’ve started watching lately is 24. Actually, that’s not true – I started 24 at episode 1, Season 1 but there is something about watching shows with a lot of tension when they’re broadcast that gets to me so I stopped after about five episodes or so. Since that time Meredith has gotten into it big time and lulled me back through DVDs. It helped a lot that Meijer, Target and Best Buy have all offered very cheap prices on complete seasons over the last few months. So I’m all stocked up on 24 DVDs and watching them at a reasonable pace – no more than one episode in a sitting.

Last summer I watched Season 1, in the fall it was Season 2 and since Christmas I’ve been watching Season 3 and they’ve all been great – I’m up to episode 14 now (it’s about 3 in the morning show-time) and, in what is becoming typical fashion, the threat has played out the way they expected it to and, surprise, things aren’t what they thought. So while a threat is still there, they get to focus on a different set of problems. Very clever because some things you just can’t keep going for 24 episodes. For example, Kim and her mom getting rescued half-way through Season 1 was great – I was getting sick of them being held and the change really helped the pace of the season.

Here’s the thing that I have noticed especially about Season 3, though, and it occurs to me that this has been true all along. 24 does not feature stupid cliffhangers. By stupid cliffhangers I mean things like situations where Jack is hanging from a cliff. We all know he’s going to get saved and, sure enough, at the beginning of the next episode it turns out that someone reaches over and pulls him up. Big deal. That sort of thing always makes me feel like I’ve been cheated – like if the camera had pulled back just a little bit I would have seen the other person there and it would have been obvious what was going to happen.

But 24 doesn’t do that – they would show Jack getting pulled up, have Jack say to the person who pulled him up “where’s Nina – did she get away?” and the person would answer “Jack, we lost her – and she has the virus!” See how that’s different? In the better scenario the cliffhanger sets up a whole episode worth of stuff rather than only the first two seconds of the episode. So among other things I like about 24, near the top of my list is the way they end each of the episodes.

Dream Again – Phil Keaggy

I’ve reviewed two other Phil Keaggy CDs since June (Jammed! and Roundabout) and that’s because Phil has been putting them out at a prodigious rate! Phil always seemed to have a lot of music in him and, when I was a frequenter of the Keaggy Fan email list we would occasionally hear about the things that he was working on which we might never see or hear because of record company things. Phil was really hampered by the CCM machine and when he went independent the hope was that he could get out from under their rules and some of their desire for Christian-Radio-friendly songs, that is, songs that say Jesus enough to please the programmers. I always suspected that there was more to Phil than we were seeing. One advantage, though, to the record company rules was that it restricted the number of things Phil could put out and, perhaps, kept the overall quality higher. Dream Again, Phil’s first vocal album in a few years, has its moments but overall doesn’t quite measure up to what he has shown himself to be capable of in the past.

The playing is, of course, spectacular – this is Phil Keaggy we’re talking about after all. But the songs are mostly uninspired. In fact, a lack of inspiration is one of the themes of this album. Two of the songs, “Dream Again” and “Revive Me” travel a similar lyrical path – after years of playing and singing and hassles with record companies and others, Phil felt dry and needed to “dream again” about his career and his music. These two songs, ironically, are the two strongest songs on the album and I really enjoy them. In fact, I caught the chorus from “Dream Again” running around in my head this morning in the shower. I find myself in a bit of a dry place right now and the song spoke to me.

The others, though, mostly fall flat. Some of them, like the songs about and directed to two of Phil’s sisters, are just too autobiographical. They are too much about him and his sister, even referencing where they live and a certain reunion where they got together. When songs get so specific they lose universality. If I’m going to listen to a song about sibling love I want to be able to put myself in the song (as I did in “Dream Again”) and think about my brother. In these songs you can’t do that. The rhyme scheme also comes across as contrived and there isn’t the sort of depth in the lyric that I look for these days. In listening to the text you get the sense that Phil used certain words just because they rhymed. And once you start listening for that on an album, it’s all over. Now lyrical depth was never Phil’s strong suit but in this album he seems to have set the bar lower than normal. Bono once said something like it is the task of the artist to help us feel things. If that's true (and I kind of like that idea) then most of the songs on Dream Again don't accomplish that.

So, there are moments on Dream Again when I cringe at some of the lyrics and there are other moments when I think “yeah, that’s the Phil I was waiting to hear” but those moments don’t occur with the frequency that I was used to in the glory days of Crimson and Blue, Find Me in These Fields and Beyond Nature.

Endless Wire – the Who

Something is up with Pete Townshend but I’m not sure what it is. Actually, based on Endless Wire, the first new Who album in nearly a quarter century, I’m not sure if Townshend knows. The Who is down to only two members now after the deaths of drummer Keith Moon and bassist John Entwhistle. But Who reunions are pretty common – they’ve had a lot of them over the years since they said farewell. But this is the first time they’ve released new music so the interest level was pretty high – at least on my part.

I actually bought the album the week it was released last October but I thought I’d wait until I had it more figured out before I wrote about it. So here it is more than two months later and, while a few things have surfaced for me, there is still much here that I don’t get. One thing seems clear, though – there is something going on between Pete Townshend and God. Religion is taken on outright in “The Man in the Purple Dress” a non-too-subtle slam at organized religion. Townshend tries to put a little “I’m a hypocrite too” line in to soften the tirade but it comes across as forced an insincere. He’s clearly got a problem with anyone who purports to tell anyone else what to believe. But after that diatribe early in the album there are other much more subtle hints that spiritual things are happening on Planet Townshend. In “Two Thousand Years” he says that he’s been waiting that long. Waiting for what? “To ask if I have loved you / To know if I have served you / To find if I've obeyed you / To know if I've betrayed you.” So what’s THAT about? Can you think of anyone famous who lived 2000 years ago? Having this song on the same album as “The Man in the Purple Dress” just makes me confused.

But the God-talk doesn’t end there. In “God Speaks of Marty Robbins” we hear

And when the world began
I'd been asleep forever
I opened one eye
'Twas then it was I
Got the whim to wake

And when the weight of space
Rolled like it was an ocean
One became one
Father and son
Watched the sunrise break

Again, I’m not really clear on what we’re hearing but, as I said, Townshend is playing with the ideas of eternity and God. This is certainly not a new topic for him, having dedicated his first solo album, Who Came First to his spiritual leader Meher Baba, whose major book is titled God Speaks (so that might be a pretty big clue). So Townshend continues to think about God and also continues to think in grand pieces rather than just three-minute pop songs – the last half of this CD is a mini-opera called “Wire and Glass” about an old rock band who’s members have died leaving only two. At least that’s what I think. The story is incomplete without (apparently) reading things from Pete’s website which I haven’t had the patience to do yet – and I really don’t even know if that stuff is still there. Lyrically, this album mostly comes out as a jumble, which is too bad because I get the feeling that underneath all this stuff is an idea or two that Townshend is trying to get across.

Musically, it sounds like the Who but an older, crankier and softer version of the Who. The “Baba O’Reilly” inspired album opener “Fragments” is clearly meant to tell us that the Who – the Who we remember and loved – is back. The rest of the album seems mostly to confound that notion. Not that it’s all bad. Zak Starkey (Ringo’s son!) almost channels the late Keith Moon on the few tracks in which he is present (he certainly does in the included live tracks) and in a few places (“We got a Hit”) it sounds just like what we were expecting. Roger Daltrey’s voice is clearly much older and that shows in a few places. And what was he trying to prove by singing “In the Ether” with that low growly voice?

Overall, the album is a mixed bag. There are enough moments that catch my attention and pull me back but they almost always leave me scratching my head and wondering what’s really going on. That said, the album is still in medium rotation in my CD player – it seems that I keep going back to it because I think there is more there and I just can’t put my finger on it.

My all-time favorite Beatles Book!

An internet friend asked me for some music-related book recommendations and I started with books about U2 and the Beatles because, well, because that’s what I read. As I was sitting at lunch today I realized that I missed one of the absolute best Beatle books of them all, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Story of the Abbey Road Years 1962-1970 by Mark Lewisohn.

The reason that I almost missed it is that I’ve had it for so long. This book (at least, the first edition, which I own) came out in 1988 and I got it soon after that. I think I perhaps got it for Christmas 1989 because I seem to remember living in Michigan when I got the book and we moved here in the summer of ’89. This book chronicles every Beatles recording session from the beginning in 1962 to the end in 1970, lists when they happened, what happened there and other interesting facts and tidbits. Since it first came out , things like the Anthology recordings have made them even more valuable.

This is, simply, a must-own book for serious Beatles fans. It accomplishes everything it set out to do. Since then a few new things have come to light thanks to McCartney’s authorized Biography and other recent excellent Beatles books which I have noted here before but the sheer amount of data in this book makes it well worth the effort. You’ll want to read it with your CD collection close at hand!

Another new publication

Laura and I received our latest publication in the mail this week. We have written curriculum units for the Walk With Me series from Faith Alive Christian Resources. Our first one, a Christmas Unit called Just Like Me came out last year. Our Easter unit, He’s Alive! Just came in the mail. In addition to these two units we will have a larger summer unit that we expect to be published a bit later this spring. In addition to these, Laura has written two units for their small-church curriculum, Kid Connection – well, one is still in the final stages of being written and should be turned in sometime this week.

So it’s always fun to have final copies of things arrive at your door and this was no exception.

Is Justice really gone this time?

The Fox show Justice seems to have evaporated from the Fox website and doesn't show up on the schedule anymore. I haven't seen any notices anywhere that it was really gone like I did when I wrote this post but I think we may have seen the last of it. That's too bad. I liked it.

Good Beatles Podcasts

There are two excellent Beatles podcasts that you should check out. One is the official one at Beatles.com - you can find the podcast info here.

In addition, I always enjoy the Beatles minute with Andre Gardner. It really is just a minute and gives you an update on what is new in Beatles fandom. Good stuff.

A wonderful Katherine Patterson quote

I was looking at the blog of someone I don't know, one of Bethany's web-friends, and discovered this fabulous quote from Katherine Patterson:

I think it was Lewis who said something like: "The book cannot be what the writer is not." What you are will shape your book whether you want it to or not. I am Christian, so that conviction will pervade the book even when I make no conscious effort to teach or preach. Grace and hope will inform everything I write... Self-consciously Christian (or Jewish or Muslim) writing will be sectarian and tend to propaganda and therefore have very little to say to persons outside that particular faith community. The challenge for those of us who care about our faith and about a hurting world is to tell stories which will carry the words of grace and hope in their bones and sinews and not wear them like fancy dress.

I think this quote is absolutely fabulous and helps explain why I like U2, Over the Rhine and others so much. Thanks to blogger Katherine (who also has some good music postings!) for posting it. She writes "I think Katherine Paterson's stories will make me a better preacher and a better writer." I'm pretty sure we have a copy of Patterson's Bridge to Terabithia downstairs because Laura has a fine collection of older children's literature. I think I'll have to read that.

Still loving Alias

I have been working my way through the Alias DVDs. I bought the fifth and final season when it came out but for some weird reason I wanted to ramp up to it by watching the previous four seasons. I started watching season one again sometime last May I think and have been going through each episode in order. Yeah, it’s a little obsessive but it sure is fun. (I have watched other things in between Alias episodes – after each disc I watch a disc of something else so it’s not quite as obsessive as it sounds.)

So, anyway, last week I finished Season Three, widely considered to be the worst of the five seasons. (In fact, early in season four Vaughn says “last year sucked.” Many fans consider that a shout out to them and a promise to make the fourth season better.) Let me say that while Season Three is clearly the weakest season I almost always enjoy things on DVD more than on broadcast television. For one thing, I can stop any time I want and the picture is really clear. I usually watch a bit just before bedtime on a portable DVD player and I can watch part of an episode if I’m tired or just don’t feel like committing to a whole episode so it’s pretty cool. And because of that I did really enjoy this season and I’m looking forward to diving into season four soon. (I have one more episode on disc three of Lost Season One to watch before I start Alias Season Four.)

Some thoughts about Alias Season Three:

• I wonder if the producers had it in mind right from the start that Lauren was evil – I was looking for evidence that she was evil in the first episodes and it just isn’t there. It plays like they changed their minds.
• The CIA is remarkably understaffed. They need agents so badly that they send Vaughn directly from the hospital to a field assignment.
• Sloan can’t be trusted. Oh wait, maybe he can. Oh no he can’t, I should have seen it all along. Both the strength and the weakness of this show is that you never know if Sloan is for you or against you. Sometimes I’m not sure if the producers knew either.
• What happened to Lauren’s mother? She just disappeared, never to be seen again.
• Jack Bristow rocks.
• I like the way they tried to mirror Jack and Irina with Vaughn and Lauren - unfortunately it didn't work out as well as they'd hoped.
• Best lines of the season - both belong to Vaughn. After he finds out that Lauren is a traitor Jack tells him he has to pretend that nothing is wrong. Vaughn: "OK, what's plan B because that's not going to happen." Then, when Vaughn jumps out and clobbers Lauren in either the last or second to last episode he looks down and says "Hi, Honey."
• Marshall playing the drums and singing about Carrie and sushi to Vaughn is not just a Season Three highlight but a series highlight.
  

So, there it is. All in all, not a bad way to spend 940 minutes, especially spread out over 3 months or so.

[EDIT: I've started Season Four and the first ten or fifteen minutes of the first episode are really outstanding - it really does seem like they decided they needed to get back on track and pulled out all the stops to make it clear to fans that they were back.]

Notes on the Beatles' Love album

Go here for a track by track discussion of the Love album by the Beatles by the producers, George and Giles Martin. If you have the album you should read this. If you don't have the album you need to go get it and then read this.

Really.

2006 in review

Last year I made a post wrapping up the year so I thought I’d do that again this year. Here are some of the things (in no particular order) that made this year memorable,

• Leading worship at the Symposium on Worship. In January I played in a band with Kent Hendricks and some other fine folks for the Calvin Symposium on Worship and it was a wonderful experience. It wasn’t the first time I’ve lead worship at these events but it stands out as a time when the band was tight, the people sang well and the spirit was in the house. (read more)
• Playing music with my kids. My kids and I played an event with author Phillip Yancey. It was a great time and it was fun to work with him. (read more) My kids and I closed out the year by playing for three consecutive church services at 14^th St CRC. It was great to get the old band together.
• Curriculum consultation. The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship sponsored a day-long event so Laura and I could present a curriculum we wrote to teachers from across North America. It was fun and exciting to have a conference like this dedicated to something we wrote. (read more)
• Eric Clapton concert. I saw Eric Clapton play at the Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids with Bryan and my colleague Ron Sjoerdsma. It was a wonderful night and Clapton was at the top of his game. (read more)
• A very intense two weeks in July. At the end of July Laura’s dad died just before I left for my trip to India. My father-in-law had been in a nursing home for a while and his death was expected but it was still difficult. To make things a little trickier I actually left on the day of the funeral, missing the memorial service, and headed out for what may be the most exotic trip I’ll ever take. Not only that but I celebrated my birthday in India - how cool is that! My journal of the trip (including a stop in Paris) is here.
• Two good conferences with Laura. Laura and I went together to the APCE conference in St Louis and the Children’s Spirituality Conference in River Forest, IL, just outside of Chicago. They were both good events made even more fun because Laura and I got to go together.
• Lynnae in Honk! My daughter Lynnae had a role in the school musical, Honk!
• The Class of 1976 reunion. My old friend Ken Winters came out for the Calvin College Class of ’76 reunion and he and Pete and I got together and played a few songs for the get-together, reuniting our old band, Blue Sky for the first time in over 30 years. (read more)
• Mono. Three of our kids got mono this year. Not fun.
• Publishing. While I do a fair amount of writing and publishing the big news is that the book that I’ve been writing for quite some time about helping children develop faith has been signed to Baker Books and will be out in about a year. This is a bigger project than any other I’ve ever done on my own (the second math book I wrote a number of years ago was bigger than this though but I had two co-authors and a math book is different.)
• The end of my involvement in the Lazy Blue Tunas. I quit the Tunas and went out with a wonderful packed-house Christmas show at the One Trick Pony. The boys in the band sent me off in a great way and the crowd was overwhelming, including presenting me with a petition not to leave the band with four pages of signatures. It was a fun night. (read more)

So there it is, 2006 in review. The real living, though, is not in the highlights. It’s in the everyday stuff and I have been richly blessed with health, a wonderful family and a job that I like a lot. Praise God.

A New Recording

My kids and I sang in church three times over the Christmas Holiday and I recorded one of the songs with them yesterday. You can find the song, called "Here With Us" here as an itunes file. (If you don't have itunes you won't be able to listen - sorry.) Just right-click on the song to download it.

We were unable to get Bethany's viola playing on the track since she left before we recorded it so I replaced her solo with a guitar solo. Too bad. But Lynnae (vocals), Bryan (guitar and vocals), Meredith (lead vocals) and I (guitar, bass and vocals) are on the track so give it a listen.

Giles Martin talks about the Beatles 'Love'

Giles Martin, producer of the Beatles' Love album, talks in this YouTube video. It's about 7 minutes long and cuts off in the middle of an answer but it is still a fascinating interview.

Happy Birthday Meredith and Bryan

Twenty Years old!

All your Christmas problems solved

Christmas time is here again which means that we’re treated to a whole bunch of music that we reserve for only this month. Or at least I reserve it for only this month. Much of the music is decidedly about, you know, Christmas – the birth of Christ, the miracle of the incarnation. That sort of stuff. Other music is about other things like snow and glitz and warm fuzzy feelings and other things that have little to do with a manger and a king.

But what about those of us who want to have it both ways? Isn’t there even one song that manages to live in both worlds? Can’t we have a song that does both? Yes! Yes we can! My good friend Pete let me in on a secret. It turns out that the little sung 3^rd and 4^th verses to the ever-popular “Here Comes Santa Claus” does exactly that! Here they are:

Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus,

Right down Santa Claus lane

He doesn't care if you're rich or poor

He loves you just the same

Santa Claus knows we're all God’s children

That makes everything right

So fill your hearts with Christmas cheer

'Cause Santa Claus comes tonight!

Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus,

Right down Santa Claus lane

He'll come around when the chimes ring out

That it's Christmas morn again

Peace on earth will come to all

It we just follow the light

So let’s give thanks to the lord above

That Santa Claus comes tonight!

So there you have it. No more worries about Christmas. No matter whether you’re serious or frivolous about Christmas this song has got you covered. This song is probably the only song you need for the entire month. What’s that? It doesn’t actually mention Jesus or his birth? That’s OK. It’s got God in it – that’s probably close enough.

U2 by U2

U2 by U2 is a big book in almost every way. It’s a “coffee table book” in size, measuring more than 12 inches in height and it is thick with lots of words and lots of pictures. Not only that, but the story that it tells is big too. It is the story of four lads from Dublin who are short on technique and musicianship but who work and work and work at being good because they love the buzz they get when they’re on stage and everything is going well.

This book reminds me a lot of the Beatles Anthology in that the sizes are quite similar (if not identical) and the concept is exactly the same, the four voices of the band telling their story in chronological order. In U2’s case, the fifth voice of manager Paul McGinnis is appropriately added since he has been a vital member of the band almost from the start. Another difference is that the U2 book is, to me, a more compelling read. Perhaps I was just SO well-versed in the Beatles story that when their Anthology came out there was little that I didn’t know but I have found the U2 book hard to put down. (The Beatles Anthology was actually more than just a book – it was also a video series and a set of albums. The book was the last of the three to be released which may have also blunted its impact. It should be noted that I’ve watched the video series on television, on VHS and on DVD multiple times and listened to the CDs countless times so this is not meant to be critical the Beatles stuff even a little bit. It’s just an obvious point of comparison.)

I actually started reading U2 by U2 by dipping into it at random places and reading a page or two. I had some other things I needed to read and didn’t let myself really commit to reading it yet. But then I got hooked somewhere around the writing and recording of War and just kept going. When I finished I went back to the beginning to read what I missed. Then, when I got to the point that I had already read I just kept going again. Now I’m nearly finished for a second time. I haven’t done that with any book in recent memory.

Part of it is that I’m still reading it in five or ten minute snatches and that sort of reading fits this book well but I also am compelled by the way they tell their story, by the insights I’ve gotten into albums that are among my all-time favorites and also by the pictures which are sometimes really cool.

If you’re a U2 fan this book is an absolute must. It is one of my three must-read U2 books, the others being Bono in Conversation with Michka Assayas and U2 at the end of the World by Bill Flanagan. (There are, of course, many books analyzing their music, especially from a Christian perspective which I think are valuable as well. My favorites are Walk On: The Spiritual Journey Of U2 by Steve Stockman and Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog by Raewynne J. Whiteley and Beth Maynard.)

If you still have time to add something to your Christmas list U2 by U2 would be a great addition.

Farewell Tunas

On Thursday I will have my final performance as a regular member of the Lazy Blue Tunas. This will be our sixth annual Christmas show at the One Trick Pony in Grand Rapids.

After thinking and worrying about what to do about the Tunas for well over six months (more like 12 months) I finally came to the realization that my schedule was just too busy to allow me to keep up the pace that being in a band required. I have truly enjoyed playing in the Tunas and these guys are more than just bandmates, they are also among my best friends so leaving the band is something that I don’t do lightly. Plus, there is a real thrill in playing music that I love with guys I like for people who enjoy it. We had our last rehearsal together this weekend and it was filled with good music and laughter, like they almost always have been.

So our show on Thursday night will be bittersweet for me. I intend to relish it and enjoy it as much as possible. The Tunas hope to carry on without me but I’m not sure exactly how their plans are shaping up yet. I know that going to hear them play without me will be tough but I’m looking forward to hearing what they will come up with.

But this week, I am still a Tuna and I’m gearing up for a show that pulls out all the stops. Expect to hear some Tuna classics like “Change the World,” “Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End” and “You Better Think Twice” as well as some Motown favorites, the theme from Zorro and a healthy does of Christmas cheer including our second attempt at the Hallelujah Chorus. A splendid time is guaranteed for all. Especially me.

Ahmet Ertegun RIP

Ahmet Ertegun was the founder of Atlantic Records. If you've seen the movie Ray then you might remember the character of Ahmet (who Ray Charles called Omlet) in the movie as a man who owned a record company but, more importantly, cared about music. From everything I have read, this was exactly who he was. When I was in high school most of my favorite music was on Atlantic (or it's subsidiary, Atco); Buffalo Springfield, Crosby Stills and Nash, Led Zeppelin, Cream (I think), Iron Butterfly, Yes, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, King Crimson... the list just keeps going. Ertegun died as the result of a fall in late October in which he hit his head. He slipped into a coma and never recovered. He was, appropriately enough, attending a Rolling Stones concert at the time.

Peter Boyle, RIP

Peter Boyle, who was fabulous as Frank Barone in Everybody Loves Raymond died today. He was one of the things that made that show so much fun. I will also never forget him for his role as the monster in Young Frankenstein. If you haven't seen that movie you should go get it this weekend - if only to see Boyle perform "Puttin' On the Ritz."

What I didn't know what that Boyle nearly became a priest and spent three years in a monastery. I didn't expect that.

Reset your rss feed

I recently switched to the beta version of blogger and discovered that none of my rss feeds pick up my blog anymore. That means that if you read my blog via bloglines or some other rss feeder you'll have to resubscribe. Of course, if you do that you might never see this note! (I also had to tell facebook how to import this new feed as a note, something I hadn't thought of previously.)

This isn't just true for my blog - as anyone switches over their feed will change as well. So check on all the blogs you read that way.

Ollabelle - Riverside Battle Songs

This fall I went a little crazy with music samplers. Facebook’s Apple Students group offered free downloads of 25 songs per week for every week from mid-August through the end of September and Paste Magazine then sent me two sample issues of the magazine to try to lure me into subscribing. (Note to editors – it worked.) Each of their issues comes with a sampler CD. So, what I do it put the sampler on itunes which I nearly always play on party shuffle (or on my ipod which is in shuffle mode most of the time) and every once in a while one of these new songs would come up. If I hated it (or if I just wasn't a big fan) I deleted it from my computer. Sometimes I'd let it pop up a couple of times before I pulled the trigger but sometimes I didn't even get through the whole song. Note: I deleted all 50 songs from the two rap/hip-hop samplers from Facebook. Hey but at least I tried them!

So here I am at home listening to my music on my computer and suddenly this song comes on which made me stop what I was doing and listen. Then, I called Laura and made her listen. She liked it too. I think I even listened a third time. The song was a rollicking blues/roots piano song called "Fall Back" with great singing and harmonies. It was a lot of fun. It was hard to say who it reminded me of – maybe The Band with it’s laid back style but the harmonies were better. Turns out it was a band named Ollabelle. I did a little research, listened to a few seconds of their other tracks online and ordered their CD, Riverside Battle Songs, from Amazon.

The CD arrived a couple of weeks ago and it’s been living in my car and on my ipod ever since. It’s exquisite. The reason that the CD reminded me of The Band is that one of the two women is Amy Helm, daughter of The Band’s Levon Helm. But this music isn’t just derivative, although it harks back to an earlier time with covers of old gospel songs. It’s a wonderful mix of roots music and tight harmonies with great instrumental backing that continues to surprise me from track to track with piano or pedal steel or guitar. This is a great album – I love listening to it when I’m driving in the dark (which is most of the time lately with the days so short.) This one is worth sampling at itunes.

(In case anyone wonders, my sampler frenzy resulted in two purchases so far, the other being Say I Am You by the Weepies.)

'Snow Angles' by Over the Rhine

I haven't had much time to write lately but my youngest daughter, Lynnae, (who has this year finally realized that I listen to a lot of cool music) and I went to Monday's Over the Rhine concert at the Knickerbocker Theater in Holland and it was fabulous. This is the third time I've seen them and it may have been my favorite. Bethany got me hooked on Over the Rhine a few years ago (and it took a little while - what was I thinking?) and I've been a fan ever since. Their new album, Snow Angels is simply wonderful. I point you to Jeffrey Overstreet's review because he says much of what I'd want to say anyway. The album is great and deserves repeated listens - which is what I've been doing this week - oh yeah - I've been teaching and grading papers and other things like that too.

A writing mistake in 'U2 by U2'

OK, I know that with all the words and pages in U2 by U2 (which I am really enjoying) a mistake was bound to crop up. Here's one I found today.

On page 181 Bono is talking about how important his friend Gavin was to the album The Joshua Tree. Here's what he said: "Gavin's involvement in The Joshua Tree can't be underestimated."

So, Bono, no matter how little I think Gavin's involvement was, it was actually even less than that. I think it's pretty same to assume that he meant overestimated.

I hope that when my book comes out late next year people aren't going to post all my mistakes on the internet!

Actually, I started reading this book in the middle, finished it, started from the beginning and now I'm well past the point where I started. it's a fun read.

YouTube - Colbert Report - Easter / U2 sings in the skies

YouTube - Colbert Report Easter

Beth brought this to my attention. The secular left is at it again.

And, while you're over at YouTube, watch U2 sing "Window in the Skies" on Japanese TV from a rooftop.