Category: Longform
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10 Albums, 10 Days: The Suburbs
I got tagged on Facebook to do this project – share ten albums that greatly influenced my taste in music. One album per day for ten consecutive days. In theory for the Facebook version this is supposed to be without explanation… but I want to explain! So I’m going to blog the explanations here.
Once again, another band that I jumped in to mid-stream and then backfilled. I don’t remember how Arcade Fire jumped onto my radar, but once I started listening to The Suburbs it was a long time before I stopped. It became my running soundtrack the year I trained for (and ran) a half marathon, and those repeated listens let it soak deeply into my brain.
Win Butler, lead singer and key songwriter for Arcade Fire, grew up Mormon in Texas before moving to Montreal, Canada as an adult. Maybe I’m reading too much into his upbringing, but when I listen to his songs I hear a kindred spirit wrestling with a fundamentalist upbringing, a disenchantment with the brokenness of the world, and a desire for something more.
The Suburbs was a record that seemed to grow out of nowhere to then get substantial recognition. It won the Grammy for Best Album of the Year for 2010, but even as the host announced the award, they seemed unsure of whether the band name was “Arcade Fire” or “The Suburbs”. But wow, it landed for me.
I still kick myself a bit that I passed up an opportunity to stand in line and see Arcade Fire play in a little bitty discotheque in Montreal when I was up there for work several years ago. I did see them finally in an arena show on the Reflektor tour, and they were fantastic live.
Once I got hooked on Arcade Fire, I went back and got familiar with the rest of their discography and gained a deep appreciation for those, too. While my favorite AF song and favorite AF lyric may neither show up on The Suburbs, it remains my favorite front-to-back album of theirs, and deserves a spot on my 10 albums list.
Recommended daily reading: Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American
In these turbulent days the news can quickly become overwhelming, and the social media noise can quickly drown out the worthwhile signal. One bit of regular news writing I’ve found very helpful, though is a daily email newsletter from historian Heather Cox Richardson. Dr. Richardson has a Ph.D. from Harvard and is currently a professor of history at Boston College.
Dr. Richardson’s email newsletter, titled “Letters from an American”, comes out nightly and usually summarizes the day’s key events. She provides an historian’s perspective on what she believes is long-term important out of the day’s news rather than what just made the most noise. I particularly appreciate that she provides sources for her story at the bottom of every post. Some days she’ll take a longer view and help set this day’s events in context. In that vein I’d particularly recommend her May 3 post tracing the history of the 20th century American rhetoric of patriotic individualism.
If you’re looking for some daily summary reading, I’d recommend giving Letters from an American a try. It’s a free newsletter, and easy to sign up!
10 Albums, 10 Days: Silly Songs with Larry
I got tagged on Facebook to do this project – share ten albums that greatly influenced my taste in music. One album per day for ten consecutive days. In theory for the Facebook version this is supposed to be without explanation… but I want to explain! So I’m going to blog the explanations here.
I started writing today’s post thinking I was going to write about a classic jazz album. One that everybody would recognize, and that is a favorite of mine for the same reason it’s a favorite of many, many people. But then I got to thinking - was it really formative for me? Probably not. And then this album sprang to mind and insisted that it be added to the list. Bear with me.
And now it’s time for Silly Songs with Larry, the part of the show where Larry comes out and sings a silly song. So, without further ado, Silly Songs with Larry.
Veggie Tales were just becoming a thing in my late high school years, and I didn’t have any familiarity with them until I hit college. Then one night I was with a church group at someone’s home and they had a Veggie Tales video on for the kids and I heard a (non-silly-song) rhyme that stopped me in my tracks. The king’s advisers are trying to figure out how to get rid of Daniel, and they include these lines:
We could use him as a footstool or a table to play Scrabble on
Then tie him up and beat him up and throw him out of Babylon
Wait, what’s that? Somebody with the nerve to rhyme “Scrabble on” with “Babylon” without blatantly winking at the camera while doing so? This is someone I needed to pay more attention to. So then I bought the Silly Songs with Larry CD, and it was all downhill from there.
This CD got dozens of plays at our house before we had kids old enough to listen to it. Heck, before we even had kids. I am a sucker for wordplay. This love would take me later to Weird Al Yankovic, and then to quickly embrace Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. But before that was Phil Vischer and his silly songs.
Over the years the phrases have become engrained in our family’s vocabulary. “Oh where is my hairbrush?” “Where’s my water buffalo? Why don’t I have a water buffalo? Are you prepared to deal with that? I don’t think so!” “Now the moral of the story, (it’s the point we hope we’ve made): if you go a little loopy, better keep your nurse well paid.” I led a sing-along of The Cheeseburger Song at the end of a church hymn sing one time. It was awesome.
I am overly proud of the fact that my children now display the same predilection to altering lyrics to songs. My oldest once sang original funny lyrics to Rewrite The Stars from The Greatest Showman at a karaoke night. (All my kids sang Weird Al at karaoke night.) I am always quick to make up a funny lyric when I can. And one of these days I’m gonna memorize all the Spanish so I can sing Larry’s part in Dance of the Cucumber.
10 Albums, 10 Days: Behold the Lamb of God
I got tagged on Facebook to do this project – share ten albums that greatly influenced my taste in music. One album per day for ten consecutive days. In theory for the Facebook version this is supposed to be without explanation… but I want to explain! So I’m going to blog the explanations here.
Yesterday I left off by saying that my Caedmon’s Call fandom led me to Andrew Osenga, who in turn led me to Andrew Peterson. Today it’s time to tell a little more of that story.
Andrew Osenga wasn’t an original member of Caedmon’s Call. He had a band called The Normals which opened for Caedmon’s on occasion. At some point after The Normals stopped making records, Andy was invited to join Caedmon’s. Once I became familiar with Andy as a member of Caedmon’s, I quickly picked up his two available solo CDs - an EP called Souvenirs and Postcards, and a full-length CD called Photographs. They quickly became favorites.
In late 2005 I caught wind (maybe on the Caedmon’s fan forum?) that Andy Osenga was coming to Iowa to play a show with Andrew Peterson at a little start-up Christian music festival on the side of a hill in Clermont, Iowa. So, my wife and I bundled up our one-year-old daughter and drove the 90 minutes up to hear them (along with Ben Shive) play a two-hour concert from a flatbed trailer on the side of the hill. It was, in retrospect, a really weird gig for them. As Peterson said at the time, “it’s the first time I’ve ever played a concert with somebody riding a cow in the background”. No joke. I was thrilled to meet them that day and a little extra happy when AO said he recognized me from the fan forum. (Did I mention I was a big fanboy?)
Andy Osenga on the left, me on the right. October 2005. We both still had hair.
But I’m telling a lot of stories and not getting to my album for today. Anyway, at that show I ran into a co-worker who was there to see Andrew Peterson play, and we visited a bit. Fast-forward a year or so and that co-worker emailed me. She was bringing Andrew Peterson and friends to town to play a concert. Would I be interested in helping out with it for the day? Well, that was a no-brainer. And that gave me my first opportunity to hear the Christmas record and tour that would become a tradition: Andrew Peterson’s Behold the Lamb of God.
What can I even say about this record? It’s a concept album that tells the story of Jesus from both the Old Testament and the New, with creative songwriting, smart lyrics, beautiful melodies, amazing musicianship, and a sense of humor. Every year for 20 years now Andrew Peterson and his friends have taken this record on the road for a series of concerts between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I think I’ve been 5 times? But nothing will compare to that first time I saw it in a high school auditorium in Cedar Rapids. I’d never heard the record before I hear them play it live that night.
This record is influential to me not just for the brilliant songs, but also because of how it represents Peterson’s commitment to artistic community. He toured with the same musicians for almost all of those 20 years. They were not just co-workers but friends. Peterson would later expand the vision of that community into The Rabbit Room. But none of that would’ve happened without him nurturing those relationships on tours built around this one amazing album.
10 Albums, 10 Days: Long Line of Leavers
I got tagged on Facebook to do this project – share ten albums that greatly influenced my taste in music. One album per day for ten consecutive days. In theory for the Facebook version this is supposed to be without explanation… but I want to explain! So I’m going to blog the explanations here.
One pattern that shows up in this list is my propensity to discover an artist not at their first album and then work forward, but to discover a later album and then work my way back through their discography. As I did with Michael W. Smith in my teens, and as I would in my 30s with Arcade Fire, U2, and Radiohead, in my late 20s I did with a little band called Caedmon’s Call.
I know my brother had a copy of their self-titled album back when I was in college, and I’m sure I listened to it a time or two but it just didn’t click for me. In retrospect, this really irks me because Caedmon’s was playing great shows and doing fan community events in the Houston area when I was in college in East Texas… road trips would not have been out of the question. But I digress.
Fast forward to 2000 and I’m a young guy wandering the Christian book store (remember when those existed?) listening to demo CDs (or those?). On a whim I gave this CD a spin, and the acoustic guitar loop and B3 organ kicking off the title track sucked me in. And then there were little trumpet accents the second time through the intro riff, and I was completely hooked. (I would find out later that long-time Caedmon’s fans hated those trumpets, but what did I know? And again I digress.)
Long Line of Leavers sucked me in and never let me go. I don’t know that it’s Caedmon’s best record - but it’s also hard to classify best. Their self-titled record and follow-up 40 Acres have their classic acoustic sound, with some twisty Derek Webb lyrics thrown in for good measure. Later on, Share The Well (a concept album written and partially recorded in India) would bring a new level of maturity to their songwriting and production and set that record apart. But Long Line of Leavers was my gateway drug.
Finding this record and this band had more long-term impact on my life than probably any other record I’ll have on this list, save maybe for the one I’ll close with. Because after finding Caedmon’s and doing some internet searches to find out more about them, I stumbled upon a discussion forum run by and for Caedmon’s fans. I lurked there for a while. In 2004 I joined, picked an unintentionally hilarious username, and started posting. The other forum stalwarts became my friends. Through the years I have met many of them in person and deepened those friendships in meaningful ways. Their friends have become my friends. 16 years later they form a community I still interact with every day.
As a musician, I joke now that I learned everything I know about playing a B3 organ from listening to Caedmon’s Call. (There might in reality be a little bit of gospel music influence in there, too, but it’s mostly Caedmon’s.) Then Caedmon’s picked up a new guitar player named Andrew Osenga and I became a massive fanboy of his stuff for several years. And then Caedmon’s community pointed me to Andrew Peterson… but I’ll leave that story for tomorrow.
10 Albums, 10 Days: When Harry Met Sally
I got tagged on Facebook to do this project – share ten albums that greatly influenced my taste in music. One album per day for ten consecutive days. In theory for the Facebook version this is supposed to be without explanation… but I want to explain! So I’m going to blog the explanations here.
So far I’ve shared my entry into classical and then my entry into Christian pop music. Now it’s time to get to my other musical love: jazz. I don’t remember which friend introduced me to this record, but it take me long to get hooked. I wouldn’t see When Harry Met Sally, the movie, for another decade, but this soundtrack hit my sweet spot. Full of jazz standards (It Had to be You, Don’t Get Around Much Any More, Stompin’ At the Savoy, Where or When), arranged by a 22-year-old up and coming jazz pianist named Harry Connick, Jr., with a rollicking stride piano version of Winter Wonderland in the middle… could you design an album more perfectly to appeal to teenaged me?
This is one of the records I know every note of. Each hit of each arrangement, every bend in the sax solo on It Had To Be You, and every one of Connick’s New Orleans-inspired alterations to Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off (“I say urster, you say oyster… I’m not gonna stop eating ursters just ‘cause you say oyster… let’s call the whole thing off.”), this record is traced indelibly across my brain.
Eventually I listened to more Connick, and then expanded my jazz horizons with Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Thelonious Monk, but this was where it started for me.
10 Albums, 10 Days: Go West Young Man
I got tagged on Facebook to do this project – share ten albums that greatly influenced my taste in music. One album per day for ten consecutive days. In theory for the Facebook version this is supposed to be without explanation… but I want to explain! So I’m going to blog the explanations here.
This one’s kind of embarrassing so I’ll get it out of the way early in my series. As I noted yesterday, my early music was mostly classical. But 1990 was a significant year for me. I turned 13. My family moved from Nebraska to Texas. And somewhere along the way, I bought my first Christian pop album - Michael W. Smith’s Go West Young Man.
Listening back to it now, it’s not great. Definitely not MWS’ best record, and not my favorite of his as I look back on his discography now. But for 13-year-old me, it was groundbreaking to get into pop music. Electric guitars. Power ballads. An inadvisable rap verse to Love Crusade. I learned the ballads on the piano. My mother despaired for a while that I would just try to sound like MWS instead of finding my natural singing voice.
Sooner or later I’d get past the singing voice, but 30 years later I’m still singing at the piano. And if for some reason I stumble across the unmistakable first two chords from Place In This World, I’m suddenly back in 1990.
10 Albums, 10 Days: Rach 2
I got tagged on Facebook to do this project - share ten albums that greatly influenced my taste in music. One album per day for ten consecutive days. In theory for the Facebook version this is supposed to be without explanation… but I want to explain! So I’m going to blog the explanations here.
I will say I found it a challenge to assemble the list not as ten favorite albums but ten influential albums. Since I’m a musician myself, I really tried to pick albums that were formative for me as a musician, though a few of them slipped in that were formative for other reasons. I’m also going to try to be somewhat chronological since these are a part of my story.
I’ll start today with what formed me early - classical music. My parents’ love for classical music rubbed off on me. I still have memories of my dad (who spent several years early in life as a high school band director) standing in front of the stereo conducting along to recordings of Beethoven symphonies. I started taking piano lessons at age 7 and continued through high school. But the first bit of classical music that latched on to me in a really significant way was Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto.
I don’t remember the specific recording I listened to as a kid. I know it was on a cassette tape (remember those?) which I probably bought at Walmart. Rachmaninov hits the sweet spot on the classical to modern spectrum for me. Still strongly influenced by the late Romantic composers, tinges of the modern influences that his Russian counterparts would more fully embrace, but beautiful melodies and lush harmonies that are well suited for pianists with large hands. I hacked through a lot of this concerto in junior high and high school and while I never got very good at it I enjoyed it immensely.
The recording I’m sharing of it today is one that has become one of my favorites - Stephen Hough with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. It’s fairly fast and rowdy compared to most other versions you hear. I think Sergei might approve. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear to be on any of the streaming services. There is this YouTube video though of Hough talking about his new recording and playing a bit of it.
Podcast Listening, Social Distancing Edition
Back in the old days (say, before March 2020), my podcast listening tilted heavily toward current events. For my own mental well-being, that isn’t a good listening diet whilst being at home for weeks on end. So, in addition to my usual handful of sermon podcasts, what’s a guy to listen to? How about stories about people far worse off than ourselves?
Enter the Fall of Civilizations Podcast. Hosted by Paul M. M. Cooper, this podcast takes lengthy (90 minutes to 3 hours) looks at ancient civilizations, what drove them to flourish, and then what caused their downfall. Cooper is a British writer and archivist with a PhD focused on the cultural and literary significance of ruins. His podcast isn’t particularly fancy from a production standpoint - mostly him narrating, occasional voice actors reading historical documents, and some background music - but he delves into the history of great civilizations and brings them to life.
Over the last couple weeks I’ve listened with fascination as Cooper described the fall of the Roman Empire in Britain, the Mediterranean Bronze Age, and the Khmer Empire of medieval Cambodia. (I didn’t get that one in college history class!) There are only ten episodes in total right now, so I only have another 8 or 10 hours of listening left ahead of me, but it’s been quite enjoyable.
If you’ve got an interest in ancient history or in hours of narration by a guy with a nice British accent, it’s worth a try. You can find it on YouTube, SoundCloud, or generally wherever you listen to podcasts.
The poor you will always have with you?
I just finished up listening to Finding Fred, a short-series podcast about Fred Rogers. Podcast host Carvell Wallace does a really good job of examining the spiritual impact of and what we can learn from Mr. Rogers’ life and ministry. In episode 9, I really appreciated this take on Jesus’ words in Mark 14:
In Mark 14:7, Jesus says “the poor you will always have with you, and you can help them whenever you want, but you will not always have me.” The idea is that one day Jesus would leave His followers. Like all things, he was saying, his presence was impermanent. The only permanent thing is that people will still need help, and we must continue to help those who need it. Notice he didn’t say “I’m gonna be gone so I’m gonna need you to keep on crushing all the bad guys and making sure *they* learn their lessons.” His focus is not on fixing the bad ones, but on helping the needy ones.
I’ve heard plenty of takes on this passage over my years in church, with interpretations all over the place from prioritizing Jesus’ presence to (horribly) suggesting that it’s a fruitless task to try to end poverty because Jesus said we’d always have them. But I really appreciate this particular view of what Jesus was saying. The gospel also tells us that we have help for the “bad people”, too - and we’re all in some sense “bad people” - but when it comes to how this practically applies to living out our faith in the world, caring for the poor and needy seems to be right at the forefront of Jesus’ concern.
Oh, and the whole podcast is worth a listen if you’re into that sort of thing.