Numen by Phil Keaggy and Kyle Jones

-->

Phil Keaggy has been recording albums on his own or with others for about forty years now. He has something like 70 albums in his catalog. So how do you make that much music and keep it fresh and creative? Phil does it by looking for new collaborators. Just over the past few years he has worked with Randy Stonehill, Jack Giering and John Sferra (known as the Phil Keaggy Trio), Jeff Johnson, Mike Pachelli, and Glass Harp in addition to a steady stream of solo albums. These collaborations have paid off. His album with Jeff Johnson, Frio Suite, is one of my favorites and is still in heavy rotation on my playlist. His Phil Keaggy Trio album, Interdimensional Traveller, is a lot of fun. Both of these albums stand out as being something quite different from the stuff Phil does on his own and have encouraged him to stretch out in new ways.

His latest album, Numen, is a duet album with percussionist Kyle Jones. Jones is a percussionist who uses lots of non-Western instruments and techniques. He brings these world-music sensibilities to this instrumental album giving it an Indian feel that is a welcome addition to Keaggy’s sound.

The album starts out with the sound of the tabla and acoustic guitar in “Ebullince,” a fine opening to the album (and one of my favorite tracks) that sounds different than anything Phil has produced before. The Indian percussion that Jones brings to the sound of this album has inspired Keaggy to go to places he usually doesn’t go on his own. There are some moments where it is obvious that you’re listening to a Phil Keaggy album – the tapping in “Ruach,” the electric riff in “Ziggarat” or the acoustic opening to “Dia Logos” for example – but then there are moments just a few minutes later where it is hard to give examples of similar playing in any of his other albums.

Clocking in at nearly an hour, this album might be a little too long, especially the nine-minute track “Kahawa” that appears near the end of the album and, generally speaking, I like the tracks that sound more composed as opposed to improvised but that may only be my interpretation of how they came about. It sounds to me like many of these tracks happened because Keaggy and Jones sat in a room together, played what they felt and then created fully produced tracks after the fact (something that Phil did to good effect on his Roundabout album.) This gives a sense of adventure to the album – you can hear the fun that they had at times as they found new things - and Keaggy’s innate sense of melody makes even improvised things interesting. The addition of electric guitar and even violin on some tracks makes for good variety.

Numen is a fun album and it is great to see Phil Keaggy still exploring and finding new things to play even after all these years. This album has not seen wide distribution (I don’t think it is on iTunes or Amazon, for example) so look for it at PhilKeaggy.com.

Memorable McCartney Solo Songs

Earlier this week I stumbled across this article about Paul McCartney’s 12 Most Memorable Solo Songs and thought the list was interesting. There were a number of things on the list that I would not have included. The deal is to pick

McCartney’s best recordings without the Beatles or Wings or the Fireman. Granted, this is a bit artificial since Paul’s input on the Wings stuff is so strong that it could be thought of as solo work but, whatever … this puts the emphasis on his work credited to just “McCartney.” So that means his first two albums (McCartney and Ram) and then everything from McCartney II on except the Fireman stuff.

I thought the list on the aforementioned website was quirky and that my list would be different so I could not resist the challenge. The hard part for me is to keep it to just twelve. I will also admit that the popularity of a song tended to work against its inclusion in the list. No good reason for this except that familiarity breeds contempt. So hits tended to not get on here with a few exceptions that I just could not resist. So here are my admittedly quirky picks presented in no particular order, along with my list of honorable mentions.

• Maybe I'm Amazed (McCartney) – perhaps is best ever solo song is from his first solo album. The album itself is quirky and uneven but it has a couple of fabulous songs on it – three of them made my list!
• Pipes of Peace (Pipes of Peace) – McCartney is not only a very good writer but the man knows how to make records. The arrangement of this song is just spectacular.
• Every Night (McCartney) – the second song on my from the first solo album is another prime example of a great tune and a fine recording.
• Tug of War (Tug of War) – This was McCartney’s return to making a fully produced album with George Martin after Wings ended and his McCartney II experiment. At the time Rolling Stone called it his masterpiece. It’s one of his great albums and the title song is just great.
• Through Our Love (Pipes of Peace) – I am a sucker for the big ballads that McCartney often puts at the end of his albums. This is one of my favorites.
• Junk (McCartney) – another wonderful song from his first solo album – this one comes in two flavors, with or without vocals.
• Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey (Ram) – A song made up of lots of snippets that somehow hangs together and works. A big hit besides.
• Waterfalls (McCartney II) – This is a wonderful song which needs a better recording. McCartney even mentions that in the book that comes with the new deluxe edition of the remastered version of the album. But even without a nicely orchestrated version this song is very good.
• Wanderlust (Tug of War) – This is a pretty obscure song which features one of McCartney’s favorite gimmicks – countermelodies that are introduced separately and then combined near the end of the song. (See “With a Little Luck” for another example.)
• Beautiful Night (Flaming Pie) – another great piano ballad. This one sat in his archive for a while until he rerecorded it for Flaming Pie. The earlier version (available as the b-side of one of the Flaming Pie singles) is not nearly as good – apparently he knew there was a good song in there and that the first recording didn’t quite get there.
• Back Seat of My Car (Ram) – an early version of the big piano ballad – this one from Ram.
• Once Upon a Long Ago (All the Best) – this one was a single in the UK and we in the US only got it when All the Best came out but it’s a great song and worth finding if you don’t have it.

The Honorable mentions

• Too Many People (Ram)
• Only Love Remains (Press to Play)
• Motor of Love (Flowers in the Dirt)
• Coming Up (McCartney II – although I prefer the live version that is on the US release of All the Best)
• C'mon People (Off the Ground)
• The Song We Were Singing (Flaming Pie)
• Calico Skies (Flaming Pie)
• Your Loving Flame (Driving Rain)
• English Tea (Chaos and Creation in the Backyard)
• Average Person (Pipes of Peace)

Country Music

This spring I’ve flirted with listening to country music. This is something that is a bit of a surprise to me since I’ve been a pretty serious non-country music guy for a while. The vocal style got to me and I had a prejudice against the music that made me resist it. But I had a long appreciation for 70’s country rock (early Eagles, Poco, Flying Burrito Brothers) and I’ve reacquainted myself with Poco lately so I was in a mood to appreciate it. I actually owned a couple of actual authentic country recordings – one Dixie Chicks album (Home), one Little Big Town album and a couple of Allison Krauss albums. But I considered them anomalies – ones that, for some reason I could enjoy despite my dislike for the genre as a whole.

But then last spring I stopped in Nashville for a couple of hours on a spring break trip and had a great time. I enjoyed touring the Ryman Auditorium, visited Gruhn Guitars and walked up and down Broadway where I heard six or seven bands each of which impressed me. I’d go there again in a minute.

So that left me thinking about why I don’t listen to this stuff – the players are great and there are some cool songs there. Meredith had sent me the latest Carrie Underwood album (Play On) so I listened to that and I realized that she is a wonderful singer – really good. So I decided to dig in a little bit more. Our local library is part of the “Freegal” system allowing me to download songs legally from the Sony catalog so I did some research and discovered a couple of albums that were highly reviewed. I then started listening to country music.

I started with Revolution by Miranda Lambert, the album of the year for many in the country genre. I also got albums by Sara Evans (Stronger), Allison Krauss (Paper Airplane), Taylor Swift (Speak Now), Brad Paisley (This is Country Music), Court Yard Hounds and Carrie Underwood (Carnival Ride.) Here is what I learned.

1. I still have some issues with some of the vocal styles. The ones I like best are the ones that are least “twangy.” I am a huge fan, though, of Carrie Underwood’s singing. She appeared alongside Steven Tyler at they ACM Awards and and sang “Undo it” and “Walk This Way” and they brought down the house. Watch it here .

2. There are amazing musicians who play on these albums. And Brad Paisley is a great guitar player.

3. The themes in country music still surprise me – lots of good ole’ boy talk with drinkin’ and hard livin’ right next to sappy songs about home and Jesus.

4. Novelty songs appear more often on country albums than they do on rock albums; “Camouflage” by Brad Paisley, “White Trash Wedding” by the Dixie Chicks, “Only Prettier” by Miranda Lambert to name three off the top of my head.

5. There are some really good writers in Nashville.

6. Sometimes country music is basically pop music with fiddles. That’s OK with me.

So my time of country listening might be diminishing as I get back to the stuff I listen to most of the time (I still listen to the Beatles and U2 a lot) but I’m a lot more open minded now and I’ve enjoyed listening to this stuff a lot more than I expected.

Favorite albums of the year

I’ve not updated this blog very much this year – my job has kept me especially busy lately. But I have been listening to a lot of music (I still have my 45 min commute) and, as I have done for the past few years, I have compiled a list of my favorite music for the year. So here they are, in no particular order - the albums that especially got me excited this year.

Robert Plant / Band of Joy – This album surprised me. I listened to Raising Sand, Plant’s duet album with Allison Krauss and, while I liked it, I didn’t spend much time with it. Band of Joy, though, is a bit moodier and the production is airy and interesting. Plant’s singing is, of course, great. I was a fan of Led Zeppelin in the 70s but haven’t listened to much of his solo work. Plus it is fun to hear Plant singing in his lower register.

Elvis Costello / National Ransom – Momofuku, Costello’s album two albums ago was great. I thought it was up there with his very best. But I was disappointed with the follow-up, Secret, Profane and Sugarcane. I found the melodies on SP&S to be not as intriguing and the sound of the album didn’t move me. National Ransom is like an extension of Secret except Costello branched out a lot more in style so, where SP&S was somewhat one style throughout, Ransom is quite varied. Every once in a while, when I’m listening to Costello, I realize what an amazing writer he is – his songs have interesting chord progressions and his melodies, which are catchy, are not obvious. I’ve noticed that on many of the songs on National Ransom. It ranks up there among my favorite Costello albums.

Sufan Stevens / All Delighted People / The Age of Adz – This year, Sufjan Stevens put out both and EP and a full album, although the EP was nearly an hour long so calling it an EP was a bit strange. Both of them are among my favorite albums of the year. All Delighted People features a lot of what we’ve come to expect from recent Sufjan albums, twittering flutes, interesting arrangements and heartfelt (if not a bit obscure) lyrics. It is great. Some of the eight tracks are long but the arrangements are complex enough to hold my attention throughout. This album (OK, he calls it an EP so that we realized it wasn’t meant to be his BIG STATEMENT) is great - maybe the lowered expectations helped me see as just a nice collection of songs. Then a few months later he delivered The Age of Adz, a big electronic serious album about schizophrenia and identity. When I heard it I realized that, indeed, All Delighted People was just the warm up. The album is complex and fascinating in it’s combination of quirky Sufjan flutes and other wind instruments mixed with the beeps and blurps of electronica.

Fistful of Mercy / As I Call You Down – Fistful of Mercy is Dhani Harrison, Beh Harpur and Joseph Arthur, all three interesting indie artists who have their own projects. I became aware of them because of Dhani Harrison, George’s son, and because I liked his album of last year with his band thenewno2. In fact, I named their album one of my favorites of the year. Their new project, Fistful of Mercy, is quite different – part Crosby Stills and Nash, part Traveling Wilburys. Not the most elegant or serious album in my collection but it features fine (although a little quirky) three part harmonies most of the time and a nice acoustic vibe throughout.

Eric Clapton / Clapton – Releasing a self-titled album more than 45 years into your career says something. In this case it says that this is a very personal album. While not as emotionally raw as Pilgrim, as radio-friendly as Slowhand, or as guitar heavy as Journeyman, Clapton is a warm relaxed tour through much of the music that Eric Clapton has found himself drawn to over the last few years. There are few songs with drums playing flat-out, for example. Most of them feature brushes or at least drums that are gently played or pushed to the background. But this isn’t an earthy acoustic album – this is a jazzy album that is a combination of blues and standards featuring Clapton the singer as much as Clapton the player. Some of the songs would be at home on an album from the 1940s while others would sit nicely on Clapton’s duet album with J J Cale and still others would be on a slightly softer version of one of Clapton’s blues albums like From the Cradle or Me and Mr Johnson. Don’t come to this album expecting to have your socks rocked off. Clapton apparently isn’t interested in that right now. But for a mature album by a veteran musician, this one is great.

Peter Gabriel / Scratch My Back – The reviews of this album are all over the map from “best ever” to “what was he thinking?” so I hesitated before getting it but when I did I quickly joined the “best ever” camp. Gabriel, who famously instituted a “no cymbals” rule for one of his early solo albums put in a “no guitars or drums” rule on this album and gave us a lushly orchestrated album of cover versions of songs by other artists. The arrangements are hauntingly beautiful and a few of the songs are slowed down to the point where you hear them in a whole new way. His cover of Arcade Fire's "My Body is a Cage" is gripping and Lou Reed's "The Power of the Heart" is just beautiful.

Phil Keaggy and Jeff Johnson / Frio Suite – Phil Keaggy has released a number of albums over the years but lately he’s been doing some interesting work with other artists. He’s released albums with Randy Stonehill, with Jack Giering and John Sferra and soon he’ll be releasing an album with percussionist Kyle Jones. (He gave me a copy of that album, called Numen, which may well end up on my next year’s list – it doesn’t seem fair to put an album on here that isn’t out yet so I'll wait on that one.) Frio Suite, with keyboardist Jeff Johnson is a beautiful, new-age-type album that is subtle and moving. The two of them recorded this at a distance, each adding their own parts in their own studio, but you'd never know it by listening. It sounds like a wonderful journey down a metaphorical river.

Finally, two albums that I really haven’t taken the time to dig into yet but I want to add to this list because I think they belong here:

Arcade Fire / The Suburbs – Another great Arcade Fire album – they’re three for three now. I like how they manage to tackle big issues while at the same time being not uber-artsy and inaccessible. I find their music often takes me a while to really understand and this one is no exception.

The Rescues / Let Loose the Horses – The Rescues was my big discovery last year and Let Loose the Horses is their first major label release. I don’t like it quite as well as their earlier stuff – yet, at least – but I’m a fan of their harmonies and their sound. Also of note, their cover of Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” (unfortunately, not on this album – but available as a single on iTunes) is awesome.

Buy Bethany's Book

You should all buy The Book of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. It is based on her popular blog and is now available though amazon and other fine booksellers.

Worship Songs

Recently on a friend’s facebook wall I engaged in a discussion about the lyrics to a song for worship. I argued that we need to choose songs well – that with the thousands of worship songs available we can only use a few and it is good for us to choose ones that work well and avoid the ones with questionable lyrics.

With that in mind when a song from Michael W. Smith’s recent worship album, A New Hallelujah, came on my iPod I started this discussion in my head all over again. The song is “When I Think of You” and I love to sing along with it. It has a great beat, the arrangement is very cool (it is sung with an African Children’s Chorus) and it’s really catchy. The problem is that I’m not really sure what it means. Here are the lyrics:

When I think of you, I see you dancing, You’re dancing.
When I think of you, I hear you singing to me
When I think of you, I see You praying
You’re Praying
When I think of you, I hear you calling for me

Yahweh, there is no one like You, Lord
Yahweh, Hallelujah, we sing
Yahweh, there is no one like You, Lord
Yahweh, Your banner for me
Your banner for me is Love

There is no one like,
There is no one like my Yahweh, my Yahweh

This all gets repeated multiple times. As I said, it’s real catchy and by the second time through I’m usually singing along. Here’s my question, though: what is it about? Who is “you” in this song? Who is thinking about whom? In the chorus, "you" is clearly the Lord - but what about in the verses? After thinking about it for a bit I’m beginning to think that this is just another example of a worship song in which the composer strings together a bunch of nice sounding spiritual words, which really don’t go anywhere. This was reinforced when, before the next song MWS sings “faith is rising tonight” a couple of times – I’m not sure what that means either. Now I like Smith a lot – I have almost all of his albums over all these many years and when he records a worship song it often becomes the definitive version. So, tell me what you think about this one.

Glass Harp’s best album

Recently Glass Harp released a 2008 concert CD that, initially I was less than excited about. That was before I heard it. You see, I figured I’d heard all these songs before. I have the original three albums. I have Hourglass, their reunion CD. I have the Carnegie Hall Live CD, the With Strings Attached set and also the massive Stark Raving Jams and they’re OK. But none of them (with the possible exception of Carnegie Hall, recorded in the early 70s) really caught the excitement and the improvisational power of these three guys. I finally got to see them about five or 6 years ago and I was thrilled – they rarely tour together anymore. But Strings Attached was just too calm and too scripted. Stark Raving Jams was too unfocussed and the recording quality wasn’t great.

So when I saw that Live at the Beachland Ballroom was being released I thought that this was just another live Glass Harp album with the same songs (they mostly still play the stuff from their three original studio albums) and that it was totally redundant. I was wrong.

Live at the Beachland Ballroom is the one Glass Harp CD that you need to have. I haven’t heard Phil Keaggy playing with this sort of abandon and fire on a recording in years. And Glass Harp is not just Phil and a rhythm section – Dan Peccio and John Sferra are totally on target here too and the connection between these guys while they play is amazing. They’re totally in sync and the band turns on a dime. This is clear in a number of places on the album but no more so than in the nearly 16-minute “Beachland Jam.” The band jumps in and out of multiple jams, mostly started by Phil on guitar but within seconds Dan and John jump in and join him. Vocally, they’ve never been better and instrumentally they’re at the top of their game. This is probably the best Glass Harp album yet. Buy it here.

Thinking about U2’s Zooropa – exile and restoration

I found myself awake a lot last night so I popped in my earbuds, hit play on my iPod and listened to Zooropa, perhaps the U2 album I have had the least affinity to. That may have changed after my careful listen last night.

I realized that you can view this album as being two halves – the first half about the shallowness of the world and the second half about restoration, a theme that shows up in scripture as exile and restoration in the overarching story of Israel and in smaller stories like the Prodigal Son.

Let's take a quick walk through the album and see what's there. (You can find all the lyrics here.) In “Zooropa” we hear “And I have no compass and I have no map / And I have no reasons, no reasons to get back / And I have no religion and I don't know what's what / And I don't know the limit, the limit of what we got” which indicate that the singer has no direction.

“Babyface” reduces the woman that Bono sings about to little more than tinfoil and lace. Perhaps the most obvious example is “Numb” with its litany of excesses in the current age. “Lemon” is a reflection on how the image is preferable to the actual person. Building the car itself becomes the destination – we’re really going nowhere. “Stay” tells the story of yet another aimless person: “Red light, grey morning / You stumble out of a hole in the ground / A vampire or a victim / It depends on who's around.”

This brings us through the first half of the album – a half that’s frankly, pretty depressing. It is an unflinching look at a world that has little going for it except an onslaught of excess.

In the second half things start to look up. We begin, surprisingly enough, with a song about a crashed car. Who “Daddy” is is never explicit but it must be a song about grace. We crash the car and God pays for it. When I first heard “some days are better than others” I thought about the bad days that are referred to. Now I think that it’s a song about the good ones. “Some days you hear a voice taking you to another place / Some days are better than others.”

“The First Time” is a song with the Trinity built into it, the Holy Spirit in verse one, the Son in the second verse and then the Father in the third. I was puzzled by the throwing away of the keys in the third verse for a while, thinking that Bono was talking about leaving the church. Now I don’t think that’s the case. The key in question is not the key to church – in all three verses we see that God has reached out and the singer has not been able to fully grasp what’s being offered – in the third verse it’s the keys to the coming kingdom but the singer is too caught up in the stuff from the first half of the album to accept them. But he still recognizes that he feels loved.

I wonder if the voice of “Dirty Day” is the voice of Jesus. Here’s why: the father to son talk, the talk about “kissin’ time” and this verse: "Get it right
/ There's no blood thicker than ink
/ Hear what I say
/ Nothing's a simple as you think
/ Wake up
/ Somethings you can't get around
/ I'm in you 
/ More so when they put me in the ground."

If, in “Dirty Day,” redemption is made explicit, then it’s made personal in the “The Wanderer.” This album is a journey – a journey from the crassness and excesses of society to the redemption offered by Christ and accepted by flawed people. It’s a story of grace. I like this album a lot better now!

Peter Gabriel's Scratch My Back

Music is pretty important to me. I have it on most of the time and I listen pretty intently quite often. Every once in a while an album comes along that just stops me in my tracks. The latest one to do that – and the first one in a while – is Peter Gabriel’s gorgeous Scratch My Back. Scratch My Back is a covers album but it is unlike any other covers album I’ve ever come across. Gabriel likes to make rules for an album – the rule for his third solo album (Melt) was “no cymbals.” OK – that sounds weird but what happened was the drummers and producers came up with the gated drum sound that went on to define Phil Collins’ drum sound on his first few solo albums. The rule for Scratch My Back was “no guitars and no drums.”

The result, and apparently Gabriel did not necessarily start out looking at it this way, is an album of voice, piano and orchestra. These are not flimsy pop orchestrations. These are some of the most robust and exciting string arrangements I’ve heard lately. Of all the songs that Gabriel covers there are only a few that I was familiar with before the album. The album starts out with David Bowie’s “Heroes” and right off the bat you hear the strings announce that this is an album that you don’t want to listen to in a hurry. Not every song sends chills up my spine but an awful lot of them do. Elbow’s “Mirrorball” is amazingly haunting and Lou Reed’s “The Power of the Heart” is breathtaking. Gabriel’s slow take on Paul Simon’s “The Boy in the Bubble” allows us to hear the lyrics in a new light – “the way the camera follows us in slo-mo” indeed. Neil Young’s “Philadelphia” is actually not much of a departure from the original but Gabriel’s voice gives it a different feel and gives it a new interpretation.

I looked at the reviews on Amazon and I find that people either love this album, giving it 4 or 5 stars or hate it, giving it 1 or 2. I totally get that – this album is going to either make you think Gabriel is a genius or it will bore you. I am firmly in the first category.

Fun with Garageband

I've been having fun with Garageband lately - here is my latest recording, a cover of Phil Keaggy's "Days Like You." If you download it (it is an itunes file) and listen to it let me know how much you like it. If you don't just pretend you didn't hear it. :-)

Paul McCartney: Good Evening New York City

When I heard that McCartney was releasing a CD/DVD of his NYC run of shows last summer I thought that this was probably one too many live releases. After all, Paul’s pattern lately has been tour after releasing a studio album (or, as he’s started doing lately, do a mini-tour) and then release a DVD of the show. He has been using the same band since the 2001 tour to support Driving Rain, his first album after his wife Linda passed away and he’s released four DVDs with this band (not even counting the shorter things like the Memory Almost Full Deluxe Edition or the third disc of the McCartney Years.) So I did not rush right out to buy this one. However, a friend told me that Meijer had Good Evening New York City for $10.99 – that’s for 2 CDs and a DVD – and I couldn’t resist it so I asked Laura to get it for me for Christmas and that’s what happened – it sat waiting for me for as a present along with other DVDs this Christmas.

So I’ve been watching it over the past few days about a half hour at a time and I’ve come to believe that this is perhaps the best live McCartney DVD yet. Here are my reasons:

• Paul’s in great form – he and the band are playing and singing great. (There has been some Internet complaining about his use of auto-tune but, frankly, I don’t hear it.) They’ve been playing together for nearly a decade and it shows. They’re tight and playful in their playing. I’ve never noticed that Brian Ray is a fine bassist before – a nice bonus for when Paul plays guitar or piano.
• He does excellent versions of songs he’s done before with some nice twists like jams at the end of “I’ve Got a Feeling” and in the middle of “Paperback Writer.” The version of “Something” is like the one on the Concert for George, where Paul starts with the ukulele but then the band comes in part way through – very nicely done.
• The set list is very good. Lot so Beatles, of course – nearly the entire second half of the concert is Beatles – but also a very nice selection of solo stuff taken from a large number of his albums. Band on the Run is, of course, well represented with four selections but one of those is the seldom-played “Mrs Vanderbilt.” There are also a few songs from McCartney’s recent Fireman album Electric Arguments as well as Memory Almost Full. Even the Beatles songs have some surprises like “I’m Down” and “A Day in the Life” ended with Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance.” (Credited just to Lennon, by the way, even though the original was officially listed as a Lennon/McCartney song.)
• This is one of the first DVDs of Paul’s shows that actually just shows the concert rather than having lots of intercut interviews, etc. And this time the focus is on the band rather than showing how much the fans are loving it, unlike some of his other videos. Another annoyance in some of the early videos is the frenetic editing – you never get more than a few seconds on any one band member. This time the pace is about right.

In nearly every way this video is superior to others that he has released lately. Even if, like me, you have many of his videos in your collection, this one is worth getting and if you don’t have any then this is the one you should consider getting, especially considering the price.

2009 - albums of the year.

This has been a strange year of listening for me – not many new albums have really grabbed my attention. Plus, for a couple of reasons, I spent time rediscovering old albums. The Beatles remasters of course were released in September and, while I’m getting the stereo remasters for Christmas, the mono remasters have been in my rotation for a couple of months and they’re spectacular. I can’t wait for the stereo ones. U2 came out with a remastered Unforgettable Fire which was a great thing to listen to. Between old U2 and the Beatles there isn't a whole lot of room for new music to creep in.

On top of that I spent part of the summer deliberately going back and listening to old classic albums that I had somehow missed the first time around, albums like Blue by Joni Mitchell and Electric Ladyland by Jimi Hendrix. They are clearly on my best listening of the year list. I also continue to enjoy Electric Arguments by the Fireman (Paul McCartney) which was on my list last year.

But none of those are new albums – there actually are only a handful of new ones that got me excited, two of the are live albums of bands playing old stuff. One that surprised me is Over the Rhine’s Live from Nowhere, Vol. 4. I had low expectations for this album since it was all songs from my least favorite OtR period, their earliest days. But the playing and singing on LfN4 is just wonderful – it’s a reunion concert of the early band and Ric Hordinski’s playing is great. Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood (who made up half of Blind Faith in the 60's) released Live from Madison Square Garden which is a very good live album with both Clapton and Winwood at the top of their game. I got to see their tour last summer and Clapton was clearly playing very very well. I never dreamed that I'd actually ever see the two of them playing Blind Faith songs together live. It was great (although they were playing even better when I saw them than they did on the album!)

Three new bands caught my ear this year. Owl City’s album Ocean Eyes is a lot of fun. The song “Fireflies” grabbed me right away and the rest of the album followed suit. It might sound too much alike over all but I'm not sick of it yet. I discovered another new band, the Rescues – I think they’re great and their album Crazy Ever After got a lot of play last summer too. The Rescues is a collection of four solo artists who together have catchy tunes, lush harmonies and interesting arrangements. Dhani Harrison’s band thenewno2 (the new number 2) released You Are Here, an album that has glimpses of his father George’s melodic style but cast in a fresh way. This is not just a son cashing in on his father’s name – I think Dhani might have a real future ahead of him. Even though I got it early in the year I keep going back to it.

Finally, my number one album of the year has to be U2’s No Line on the Horizon. This album is adventurous and risky but there are moments of sheer brilliance like “Magnificent” and “White as Snow.” I even like the lead single “Get on Your Boots.” Whenever I don’t hear the album for a few weeks and listen again I get excited because it’s just so good. I remember when I first got it I listened with my ipod in a hotel in Troy, MI and was just blown away. That was when I realized what a very special record this was. I got to see U2 in Chicago this fall and I will again in East Lansing next summer. The clear high point to my musical year!

Thoughts on "River" and Christmas

I haven't blogged for a very long time and it seems trivial to make this my first post in a while but I've been listening to a fair amount of Christmas music lately - no big surprise, seeing it's December 14 - but I've noticed more and more artists including Joni Mitchell's beautiful song "River."

Here's the thing - what does that song have to do with Christmas? The first couplet references Christmas:

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace.

That's it - it's a song about a broken relationship that happens to reference the idea that it's getting close to Christmas when Mitchell is writing the song. It's not a Christmas song! Just because a song has the word Christmas in it doesn't mean it should be included on ALL new Christmas CDs. OK, that's an overstatement but it's being treated like a Christmas standard and it should not be - it's not even a Holiday song (like "White Christmas") or a seasonal song (like "Winter Wonderland.")

It's a beautiful song - I like it a lot and enjoy it when it pops up in my playlist. But there is no reason why it should be on Christmas CDs but it appears on recent Christmas CDs by Rosie Thomas, Sarah McLachlan, Sixpence None the Richer and James Taylor. Enough is enough.

The Great Albums Project

This whole thing started with Eric Clapton. I was looking on Wikipedia for information about Jimi Hendrix’s album Electric Ladyland. I had never really listened to Hendrix before and since Clapton and Steve Winwood played a killer version of Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile” on their live album and tour when I saw them in Chicago this summer I thought it wise to check out the album that it came from. So I went to the library and I had Electric Ladyland reserved for me – actually they shipped it from another local library. While I was looking they had Hendrix’s Axis: Bold As Love actually in the rack so I took that home first. I listened to it and I liked it. While I was doing some reading about the album’s background I stumbled across the Rolling Stone list of greatest 500 albums, which had Electric Ladyland listed at #54. Hey, I thought, this is a cool list. Any list that has three Beatles albums in the top 5 has to be good. Then I noticed that while I had a fair number of these albums or at least I was pretty familiar with some there were others that I frankly hadn’t ever listened to. So I decided to spend part of the summer using the library to get and listen to some of these albums so I could see what I was missing.

Here is a preliminary report.
4. Highway 61 Revisited, Bob Dylan – the jury is still out on this one. I already knew most of the songs so it wasn’t like I was completely unfamiliar with it. It’s classic Dylan and you either love it or you don’t – I am a moderate Dylan fan so I get why it’s cool I just don’t know how often I’d want to listen to it.

6. What's Going On, Marvin Gaye – this is one of the first albums I tried that I did not already know and love. I really like the title track and though I’d like the whole album a lot more but I found that it all sounded too much the same for me. I, frankly, don’t see how it got so high on the list.

7. Exile on Main Street, The Rolling Stones – I’ve heard about this album for years, of course but I have never been as much a fan of the stones as I think I ought to be. While I like listening to them on occasion I usually don’t last for a whole album.

11. The Sun Sessions, Elvis Presley – this one struck me as being only of historical interest. I frankly didn’t even get all the way through it.

15. Are You Experienced?, The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Great stuff. Although I think I like Electric Ladyland better.

19. Astral Weeks, Van Morrison – very nice – I’ve only listened once so far but I’m looking forward to exploring this a bit more.

30. Blue, Joni Mitchell – another nice album that I’ve only heard once – but I like it a lot – this and the Van Morrison feel similar to me. Both delicate, recorded with limited instruments and very personal. I’m going to enjoy hearing this a few more times.

So that’s it so far – what a great summer of exploring old music!

New Book

The new book, which I wrote with Laura, Celebrating the Milestones of Faith: A Guide for Churches, arrived at our house today - here is a picture of it.


You can get it from Faith Alive Resources

Sustainable Youth Ministry

I’m just finishing Mark DeVries’ book Sustainable Youth Ministry and I like it a lot. I’ve not written as much about books here lately but I’ve been reading lots of books about faith formation in preparation for the book I’m editing this summer and fall on the topic. I hope to write a little about some of the other books I’ve read but I’m writing this today because I’m so enthusiastic about Mark’s book.

This book is an incredibly valuable resource for Youth Leaders but also for churches. It should be read by church staffs and volunteer church leaders too – anyone who connects with a church youth program would benefit from this book because Mark has seen what works and he’s seen what doesn’t work and he lays then out nicely in this book. It is written in his whimsical style (which is even better in person – he’s a great speaker) and there is a lot of practical wisdom in here that I really appreciated.

I hope to read this book with our church ministry staff and discuss it soon. I highly recommend it.

Eric Clapton - better than ever

I’ve watched Eric Clapton in three different videos so far this summer and seen him live once (with Steve Winwood – an absolutely amazing show) and I am convinced that he is playing and singing as well as he ever has. What’s more, his personal life seems to be in such good shape that he has been able to sustain this level of playing now for quite some time. In his recent Live DVD with Steve Winwood, Steve talks about how Eric is now a really fine singer and band leader – two things he did not want to do in Blind Faith. That’s been true now for about 20 years – since he got sober and straight.

It is interesting to watch the arc of Eric’s career before that point. He was always a great player but he seemed to have lots of near misses. For every album like Slowhand there was the lesser No Reason to Cry. His fans, me among them, were waiting for that killer album that would blow us all away like Layla did. We had a long time to wait because, even though Layla was recorded under “enhanced” conditions, the drugs soon took their toll on Clapton and for a while he did absolutely nothing. Then came the string of albums in the late 70’s and 80’s, which were quite uneven. He seemed to not want to do what we really wanted him to – play the guitar in a way that made us realize what all the fuss was about.

I find the live album Just One Night to be a good example of where he was during that period. There are great moments on that album but much of the album is spent playing the songs that were OK but not the ones we really really wanted to hear. He’s got some great solos but the whole album just often leaves me cold. For one thing, he seemed intent on using a really thin sound on his guitar, one that didn’t let him take control of the band the way he did back in the 60’s and early 70’s.

Then, in 1989, I remember getting his Journeyman album – the one that, for me shows him getting back to who he really is – and realizing that this was the Clapton that I had been missing all along. The live album that followed that, 24 Nights, was, according to his autobiography, almost a throw-away because of his grief over the loss of his young son. But you can hear that he’s playing better than he has for quite a while and his song choice harks back to songs from Cream and Derek and the Dominoes as well as the great new songs on Journeyman. And to show that it wasn’t a fluke, his Unplugged album, which was released right after 24 Nights, showed him to be a fine acoustic player and highlighted his singing voice. It also featured the song “Tears in Heaven,” which won him the first of his THREE Grammy Awards for pop VOCAL.

Since then he’s released a number of really fine albums including the amazingly personal Pilgrim and what I think is his definitive live album, One More Car, One More Rider. His latest studio solo album was, frankly, the weakest one he’s released in a while, but even that one has great playing on it. I was also really impressed, both times that I’ve seen him this decade, with his professionalism and his fine playing. He’s come through the rock and roll excesses and emerged a winner. If you get the chance to see him now you’ll be seeing one of rock’s premier players and singers at the top of his game.

The Concert for George

I watched some of The Concert for George this morning again, the George Harrison tribute concert. Especially with the recent Michael Jackson tributes I was struck with how the tone of this is just about exactly right. First of all it was a year to the day after his death. His friends, primarily Eric Clapton, not just entertainment industry folks who wanted to show that they knew George, put it together. The people who appear in the concert represent many parts of George’s musical life – Paul and Ringo, Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty (from the Traveling Wilburys,) Billy Preston, Gary Booker, Ravi Shankar, Joe Brown (for whom the Beatles opened in the early 60’s) and even Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

The night did not feature any over-the-top tribute speeches proclaiming him the greatest entertainer who ever lived – OK, the Monty Python bit featured one that was SO over the top that it was hilarious but it soon morphed into “The Lumberjack Song.” It was a bunch of musical friends playing George’s music or music that George loved. Even the video was done well featuring two discs, one with the feature film “The Concert for George” with performances from the concert and the rehearsal as well as interview footage from the participants. The other disc has the entire concert.

The bottom line, though, is that the music is great. George was a good composer who was often great and this concert features the best of his work performed by Clapton’s crack band and some of his very talented friends. Highlights for me include the McCartney/Clapton version of “Something” which starts out with Paul’s ukulele version and shifts to be a full band version with Eric singing and playing – just beautiful. The version of “I Want to Tell You” is really cool. The Ravi Shankar composed “Arpan” suite performed by his daughter and an orchestra of Indian instruments is also wonderful – I listened to this a bit three years ago on my trip to India. Overall the DVD is well worth it – I truly enjoy watching it and listening to the CD.

summer report #1

I've been lax about posting here because I was asked to post over at ThinkChristian and I figured that many of the things that I had to write about I could put over there. But then I haven't put anything there for quite a while and stopped writing here too - too busy with work I guess.

But I have been doing a lot of listening and watching of DVDs as well as doing some reading and thinking and I have reported on none of it. I've been rewatching some old shows and enjoying them. I've been trying not to ram through a series - one season after another. I've taken a break between seasons. That means I'm simultaneously in the middle of many many things. So right now I'm rewatching

• The West Wing, Season 1,
  
• The Simpsons, Season 3,
  
• Alias, Season 1, (NOW I remember why I got so hooked on this show!)
• Everybody Loves Raymond Season 3

and I'm watching Burn Notice, Season 1 and Boston Legal Season 2 for the first time. Excellent. Clearly, it will take me a while to get through all of these. I don't get through them very quickly.

I'm also listening to thenewnotwo (Dhani Harrison's band), the new Elvis Costello, U2's Medium, Rare and Remastered (the CD you get if you join U2.com) and many other things. I've gone back and gotten out my old King Crimson and Rick Wakeman albums. That has been fun too.

I'm reading Book, Bath Table and Time by Fred Edie and The First Year Out by Tim Clydesdale and enjoying both of them.

I've also started working on a new book - I'm editing an as-yet-untitled book about Faith Formation. The book that Laura and I wrote on Faith Milestones should be out in about a month. Here is the page from the catalog.


So it's been a busy summer so far!

New post over at Think Christian

I've been invited to do some of my posting over at ThinkChristian.net and my first one was put up there today. It's about American Idol. Please go read it and comment!