music
- “Modern Man” - Arcade Fire
- “Beautiful Day” - U2
- “Brighter Day” - Gungor
- “City With No Children” - Arcade Fire
- Someone Else’s Arms - Mae
- “After The Garden” - Andrew Osenga
- “Month of May” - Arcade Fire
- “Hometown Glory” - Adele
- “Just As I Am” - Andrew Peterson, from Love and Thunder
- “Saturday Sun” - Nick Drake, from Five Leaves left
- “Winter Winds” - Mumford and Sons, from Sign No More
- “Springtime Indiana” - Sandra McCracken, from Gypsy Flat Road
- “Walkin' Home” - Billy Crockett, from In These Days
- “Nobody’s Fool” - Avril Lavigne, from Let Go
- “Four Horses” - Andrew Osenga, from Letters to the Editor, Vol. 2
- “Heaven Can Wait” - Charlotte Gainsbourg, from IRM
- “Sad” - Eisley, from The Valley
- “Please Be My Strength” - Gungor, from Beautiful Things
- “Furr” - Blitzen Trapper, from Furr
- “Blue Bayou” - Norah Jones and M. Ward, from …Featuring
- “Alien Conspiracy, Or, The Cheese Song” - Andrew Peterson, from Appendix A
- Singability. The purpose of a national anthem is to be sung, right? ‘O Canada’ has a nice, singable melody, and a total range of just one octave, suitable to most voices. ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, on the other hand, has a range of an octave and a fifth, which is a range typically only well-handled by professional singers. Live performances should be opportunities for national pride, however, when the US anthem is involved, they are more often adventures in vocal torture.
- Inspiring Language. ‘The True North strong and free.’ What a marvelous turn of phrase. And who can fail to be moved when singing “God keep our land glorious and free”? The Star Spangled Banner is just about a flag, with the bit about the country being sort of tacked on at the end.
- Using words that people actually are familiar with. With exception, perhaps, of the old English “thy” and “thee”, “O Canada” is composed entirely of words that one might use in everyday writing or conversation. “The Star Spangled Banner”, by comparison? Spangled. Perilous. Ramparts. Gallantly. Ugh.
- Actually mentioning the name of the country. “O Canada”: 4 mentions, not counting the title. “The Star Spangled Banner”: 0.
- Not beginning and ending with a question. Questions typically belong in plaintive, whiny songs, not broad anthems. Starting off “O say can you see?” and ending with “O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave?”, while presumably intended as rhetorical flourishes, doesn’t impart the same sort of solidarity as “O Canada, we stand on guard for Thee”.
Be careful what you ask for...
So, that guy who complained earlier this week that he was getting a little bored or stale playing keys?
Well, he went to worship band practice this morning and found out that the drummer had called in sick. And while there are drum tracks that can be enabled for most of the songs, there’s one that conspicuously needs a live drummer.
Guess who’s going to be heading in to church extra-early in the morning to practice?
Here’s hoping he doesn’t end up sounding awful. The band deserves better.
My running record for this year...
…I think it’s gonna by Battle Born by The Killers.
Forget the violent sounding name. The album is chock full of easygoing rock that sometimes feels like Springsteen, other times like U2, and occasionally like old school Bon Jovi.
Here’s the track that’s been stuck in my head all week.
On Playing and Variety
My primary instrument has always been (and likely always will be) keys of some sort. I started piano lessons when I was 7. I started playing for church at age 14. I first started playing with a church worship band in college at age 19. I’ve led worship while playing the piano hundreds of times. Those fingers on the keys at the top of my blog are my fingers, playing piano at my sister’s wedding.
Back in high school I taught myself to play guitar, and I’m a reasonable hack there, though my fingerings are never very clean. From there I did a lot of playing bass lines on the guitar, though I’ve only played bass as part of a band a handful of times. Keys are where it’s at for me. And that’s worked to fill the need where I’ve been. After college there haven’t been an abundance of other keyboardists.
For the last year or so, though, while I love playing keys in the worship band, the instruments that are in my head all the time, the ones I dream about playing, are bass and drums. I’m not sure why. Maybe because so much of the music I listen to is guitar/bass/drums driven instead of piano-driven? Maybe I’m just getting bored with piano right now?
In reality, I’m a passable bass player. I can keep tempo on the drums, but one listen to a real drummer (of which we have several at church) quickly reminds me that I’m just a hack. (Of course, I have no practice… maybe I’d pick it up quickly?)
I don’t know where this leaves me or even really what my conclusion is. It’s just odd to observe that after having piano ingrained in my brain for almost 30 years, I’m now doing a lot of my primary thinking in terms of other instruments. (It’s suppose it’s also entirely possible that piano is just so ingrained that I don’t notice it any more.)
Carols for Christmas
For at least twenty years my mother has been requesting that I record some of my piano stylings. For one reason and another I’ve never gotten to it, until now. My mom got her copy last weekend when we celebrated Christmas with my side of the family, so now I’m free and clear to share it with you all. I’m calling it Carols for Christmas.
It’s just over 30 minutes worth of music, all piano versions of traditional Christmas carols. There’s not a lot in the way of production - I recorded them using my Casio midi controller keyboard in single takes in GarageBand and did a minimal amount of editing to remove the clunky notes. The perfectionist part of me wishes I had another 80 hours to really refine and polish the arrangements and recordings; the engineer in me has declared “good enough”. The engineer won the debate this time.
So please enjoy Carols for Christmas as my gift to you this season. This download link will let you listen and/or download MP3s from Dropbox.
Merry Christmas!
Andrew Peterson - Light for the Lost Boy
Andrew Peterson’s new record, Light for the Lost Boy, came out last week, but a business trip and a busy weekend conspired against me. So, my first listen to the record didn’t come until this morning. There is so much I could say about this record that I don’t even really know where to begin.
Great records seem to come out of pain. Much as I love Peterson’s earlier records, they’ve succeeded due to their beautiful melodies and tightly-crafted lyrics. The truth is present in his word-art, but it hasn’t as often fully resonated with the deep soul ache of a man wrestling with the fallenness of the world and the goodness of God.
Light for the Lost Boy, though, changes all that. From the opening line of the record (“I remember the day of the Tennessee flood…"), Peterson examines the fallen beauty of the world, the joy of childhood, and the loss of innocence that comes as we grow up. (I’d highly recommend Jonathan Rogers' piece on this record over on The Rabbit Room. Jonathan says it way better than I can.)
In “The Cornerstone”, he examines the experience of colliding with Jesus in a life-changing way. “The Voice of Jesus” sits in contrast as a lullaby to a child, recognizing how God speaks to her through “the ache in your bones”. The final track, “Don’t You Want to Thank Someone?” is epic in length (9 minutes 57 seconds!) and in scope, tracing the course of human history from the goodness of creation through the fall and finally to the ultimate reckoning.
Sonically this record breaks some new ground for Peterson. While some tracks (including the official pre-release, “Rest Easy”) will sound familiar to the ears of long-time Peterson fans, at least half of the record builds energy with electric guitars and electronic beats. While the record was produced by Ben Shive and Cason Cooley, the opening track had me thinking that my friend Andy Osenga had a hand in it. (The song “Carry the Fire” is AP’s nearly exact corollary to Andy O’s “Hold The Light”. This is a good thing.)
If it isn’t clear enough from my review already, Light for the Lost Boy is highly, highly recommended. It would be presumptuous of me to declare it my new favorite Andrew Peterson record after only one listen. However, given that after one listen I can remember every song and a particular way that it stuck with me, I think that future listens (of which there will be many) will only cement this record as a long-time favorite from Peterson.
You can buy the record from The Rabbit Room, or on iTunes.
I just wanna be Andy Gullahorn
I’ve gone through a lot of wanna-be stages in my life as a musician. My mother listened with horror while as a teenager I tried to imitate Michael W. Smith’s raspy pop voice. Then I fell in love with Rich Mullins and worked out all of his piano riffs. I’ve dreamed about playing electric guitar with U2 (I know, they already have a guy), saxophone in Harry Connick’s band, and replacing another guy named Chris who fronts for Coldplay.
I think I’ve finally settled on a wanna-be now, though. I just wanna be Andy Gullahorn.
You may not be familiar with Andy, so let me introduce you.
Andy Gullahorn is a tall, quiet, guitar-playing Texan who writes songs and plays guitars for lots of folks. I’ve most often seen him on stage adding a second guitar for Andrew Peterson.
Andy is a man of few words. Seemingly every time he takes the mic to sing he stares awkwardly at the crowd, finally saying simply “hello”, and then launching in to a song. His songs are clever, insightful, and funny. He has you laughing right up until the point where you feel the blade twist and realize he’s got you good. Here’s an example:
Andy has a website which he recently updated. Part of me is glad he updated it, because it looks really nice and might help impress people who don’t know him. The other part of me is sad, because his old website was this mess of homebrewed awesomeness that captured Andy’s je ne sais quoi. At least his new site still has some of his haiku reviews, which are fantastic.
(A recent haiku, just as an example: “Summer night plus woods / Plus Kentucky plus stage lights / Equals moths in face”. Boom.)
When I was in Nashville back in May to hear NT Wright, a bunch of the Square Peg types sang songs before the good bishop spoke. And darn near every song, there was Andy in the background, playing the second guitar part, adding just the right amount of background vocal. After every song he’d back off, sit down, only to hear the next song that was being played and jump right back in.
Here’s gets me most about Andy: he’s not a star. He’s the consummate backup man. He knows everybody’s songs, the right keys to play them in, the guitar riffs, and all the harmonies.
You don’t necessarily recognize that Andy’s there, but you sure as heck would notice if he was missing. He adds the complementary touch that makes each song better but he never hogs the spotlight. When the spotlight is thrust upon him, he speaks truth in a way that sneaks up on you.
Yep, that’s the guy I want to be.
One of the dangers of a standing desk...
…is that when I’ve got my headphones on and I’m grooving to some music, I’m not just in danger of air drumming, but now it’s possible to be working on my white boy dance moves as well.
Now that can be a little bit hard to explain when the boss walks in.
Today, though, the boss is out on travel, and I have Bruce Hornsby to blame for my grooving.
N. T. Wright sings
Monday night I had the privilege of meeting Bishop N. T. Wright and hearing him speak in Nashville, TN. I’ve written about it for 800 words over at the BHT, so I won’t repeat that here.
After his talk and some Q&A he was pressed to pick up a guitar, and the second song he sang was this one. The story is that he was bored during a conference and so wrote these lyrics about Genesis to the tune of “Yesterday”. Francis Collins (brilliant scientist, Christian, and currently director of the National Institutes of Health) made some tweaks to them and (as the story goes) they sang this song at a BioLogos conference in New York.
Sorry for the lousy video quality; the sound is good, though.
Leonard the Lonely Astronaut
My friend Andy Osenga has a new record available to purchase (download or physical CD) today over on the Rabbit Room store.
Leonard the Lonely Astronaut is quite a concept. Leonard is off on a solo intergalactic space flight, and while he’s traversing the galaxy he’s writing songs. We build a rocket ship set for Andy to record this thing in. It was awesome. The record has turned out awesome as well.
Ten bucks gets you the mp3 downloads today. Don’t wait long, though, because in a few days it’s going back into the AO vault until its official release in the fall.
Leonard the Lonely Astronaut is rated A for AWESOME. No space rocks were harmed in the making of this blog post. This author did not receive any compensation for writing this post other than the satisfaction of plugging a friend’s record. In fact, this author is still waiting for the t-shirt that is coming with the Kickstarter pledge. Pictures to follow.
My 5K Playlist for Hog Wild Days
It’s been a while since I’ve reworked my 5K playlist. This latest incarnation may be a little heavy on Arcade Fire, but I’ve been listening to them a lot while I’ve been running this spring, and the tempos of the songs work really well. Anyway, here’s what I’ve got:
If I finish in the time I’m hoping for, I’ll be somewhere in the middle of “Month of May” when I cross the finish line. The Adele song is a fantastic cooldown song.
Here’s hoping for good weather in the morning and a good race time!
Awesome morning music mix
My music playlist is full of awesome this morning. (Thanks as usual to Geof for the playlist algorithms.) Here’s the proof:
Within the next 15 upcoming, I’ve got Simon & Garfunkel, Derek Webb, Fleet Foxes, Leigh Nash, Ryan Adams, Coldplay, Adele, and Harry Connick. So good.
Sometimes it takes me some time
This seems to be the story of my music-listening life: catching up with albums years after they are released, and only eventually having them resonate with me . Sure, there are a few records that have immediately grabbed me and then stayed at the top of my favorites list for years. But often it takes time for the music or the particular sound to grow on me. For instance:
Coldplay
My brother Ryan was first trying to get me to listen to Coldplay’s A Rush Of Blood to the Head within the first year after it was released. He’s always been the Brit Rock guy, after all, and I’ve been the slow-to-adopt older brother. I remember giving it a first listen and thinking that I wasn’t fond of it at all. A couple of years later, though, they started to make sense. And without diving into the argument of whether Coldplay’s older stuff is better or the newer stuff is better, let me just sum up their popularity in my household now by saying that whenever Laura requests a song while we’re driving, it’s “Shiver” (from Parachutes), but that if Addie requests a song, it’s “Strawberry Swing” (from Viva la Vida). I guess we’ve covered the full spectrum.
Radiohead
I never did get Radiohead. I remember downloading In Rainbows when the band first offered it for free, listening to it once, and not getting it at all. Then one day a couple of years ago I turned it back on, and BAM!, it made sense. Now I’ve gone back and gained appreciation for Kid A, The Bends, and OK Computer, too. (I’m working on Hail to the Thief… maybe someday I’ll figure it out.)
Jazz
Sure, that’s a big topic. Didn’t listen to a lot of jazz growing up, but in high school somebody gave me a copy of Harry Connick Jr.’s When Harry Met Sally soundtrack. (That was one of those albums that immediately grabbed me and never let go.) So sure, I liked Harry’s big band. But more modern jazz still left me cold. Then one day I picked up Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. (Come to think of it, I think Ryan pointed me to that one, too.) Classic jazz album. Had me hooked.
Then one day somebody mentioned that if I liked Harry Connick, I might like Thelonious Monk. I’d never heard any Monk before, but listening to some album previews… the guy was amazing! And yeah, it was obvious that Harry had picked up some things from him. And Monk led to Coltrane. Coltrane led to Charlie Parker. I think I’ve sort of hit my limit with Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come. I sort of get it, but it doesn’t grab me or leave me wanting more. Maybe someday it’ll click, too, and I’ll move on to the more modern jazz.
Let us now return to where we started this post:
Stravinsky
I vaguely remember trying to listen to Stravinsky back 10 years ago, and thinking that his stuff was a cacophonous mess. Didn’t get it at all. But for some reason I picked up a CD at the library last week of Stravinsky symphonies, and, lo and behold, it’s brilliant! I think it took me progressing through Philip Glass and Steve Reich and Sufjan Stevens' The BQE to get me ready for it.
Have you had a similar experience with a band or type of music?
A first look at Amazon Cloud Drive and Amazon Cloud Player
Amazon is offering two new services this morning: Amazon Cloud Drive and Amazon Cloud Player. Time to take a quick look at what they’re offering. The front page on Amazon.com gives the basic details:
Cloud Player comes in two varieties: Web and Android. All you need is a computer with a web browser and you can listen to your music with Cloud Player for Web - no software to install - just a web browser. The Android version is an app that lets you do the same thing from your Android phone or tablet.
First, about the pricing: Amazon Cloud Drive is a freemium service - free for the first 5 GB of storage, with paid plans above that. The pricing structure is straightforward: $1 / GB / year, with plans at 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, and 1000 GB. The pricing chart tells us that each plan “holds up to” not only X number of songs but also X number of photos or X minutes of HD video, so Amazon is pitching this service as a real Cloud Drive (backup service?), good for storing more than just music. In addition, any purchases from AmazonMP3 don’t count against your storage space, and if you purchase from the AmazonMP3 store in any time in 2011 they’ll give you the 20GB plan for free for one year.
Setting up the Cloud Drive couldn’t be easier; I purchased a $5 album from the MP3 store (Eisley’s The Valley) and then I had the option to either download via the Amazon MP3 downloader or to store to the cloud drive. With one click it had kicked my tracks over into the Cloud Drive and opened up the player.
Cloud Player (web version) is a fairly basic music player design; there’s an Album view where you can select a full album to play; you can also create playlists, download, or delete the tracks. Playback starts quickly and there’s a QR code right on the player that you can scan with your phone to download the Android app.
OK, so next you want to upload some music from your existing collection. Click on the “Upload to your Cloud Drive” button and a prompt comes up telling you that you need to download the Amazon MP3 Uploader application (why include MP3 in the title?), which is a (platform neutral) Adobe Air app. Install the app and point it to your music library and it will scan for all the supported types that you could upload.
Yes, there are some unsupported music types. At the moment, it’ll only support MP3 and M4A files, and (obviously) won’t support anything you bought from iTMS that’s wrapped with DRM. It defaults to assuming you want to upload everything in your library, and it gives you an estimated time to upload. (For my 74 GB of music library, it estimates 42 hours and change.)
Minor gripe with the uploader: rather than just showing you the entire directory tree and allowing you to select the pieces you want to upload, it flattens it and shows you an alphabetized list of lowest-level folders. This is a major pain. Now if I want to upload my entire, say, Sufjan Stevens collection, I can’t just click on the Sufjan top-level folder; I have to scroll through the list and select The Age of Adz, The BQE, Illinois, Seven Swans, etc. Amazon, fix this in the next version, please?
Otherwise, the uploader seems to do its thing well enough. It tells you how much storage you’re going to use with your uploads, how much you have left available on your Cloud Drive, and there’s the ever-present link to Buy Additional Storage.
Once the upload was going I fired up my Samsung Galaxy phone, scanned that QR code, and downloaded the Amazon Cloud Player app. No big surprise here: Amazon is going for integration. The Android Cloud Player app is an update to the existing Amazon MP3 store app. This brings it awfully close to being to Android what the iTunes Music Store is to the iPhone; you can browse the store, make a purchase, start listening immediately. But Amazon does one better and lets you access your stuff in the cloud.
I’m looking forward to playing with the Amazon Cloud Player some more; it looks pretty slick at first glance. The first screen gives you the option of browsing the Amazon MP3 store, browsing/playing on-device music, or browsing/playing/downloading music from your Cloud Drive. It recognized all of the music I already had loaded on my phone just fine. You’re able to browse the stuff that you have on the Cloud Drive and either stream it for immediate play or download it to your phone for playback later. The download will run in the background while you do other things. (Wonder when they’re gonna have the Amazon App Store do that? It can’t be long now.) There are settings so you can restrict downloads to wifi-only if you want to conserve your phone’s data plan.
Actual music playback is pretty straightforward, and the player part of the app looks nice and is easy to use. (Dang, I wish there was an easy way to take screenshots on my Android phone. The “hold down back and press home” thing that Google turns up doesn’t seem to work for me.) Don’t know if the player will replace DoubleTwist as my go-to music player; guess we’ll have to see.
It’ll take some time to see if the cloud storage thing is a big enough deal for me to want to pay to store my entire collection, but for now, at first look, it’s clear that Amazon got a lot of things right on the first try.
Christ Liveth In Me
As lives the flower within the seed, As in the cone the tree, So, praise the God of truth and grace, His Spirit dwelleth in me.
Christ liveth in me, Christ liveth in me, Oh! what a salvation this, That Christ liveth in me.
-- Christ Liveth in Me, Daniel Webster Whittle, 1891
I’d never heard this hymn before this weekend, but it’s a good one. Such a beautiful picture of what God does in the life of a believer.
The hazards of church music...
…aren’t necessarily what you think. My left ankle and leg has been very sore for the last two days. Why? Because I had an hour of music practice on Saturday, followed by an hour of practice and then two church services on Sunday morning. And because I play the keyboard while standing up, and I pedal with the right foot, which means I end up doing a lot of standing and flexing on my left leg.
Do they have special workouts so I can prepare better for this type of strain? This is not the way I thought a commitment to playing in the worship band would wear me down.
Whom then shall I fear?
I could tell you exactly the point I was going to choke up even the day before. I had been hanging out at worship team practice, saw that this song was on the roster for Sunday, and knew that when we hit the middle of the second verse I was going to have tears on my face and a lump in my throat. Here are the words:
And I can see a light that is coming for the heart that holds on
A glorious light beyond all compare
And there will be an end to these troubles
But until that day comes We’ll live to know You here on the earth
And I will fear no evil
For my God is with me
And if my God is with me
Whom then shall I fear?
Whom then shall I fear?
-- “You Never Let Go”, by Matt Redman
Now, when we do that song and I’m playing keys in the worship band, I can hold it together. But when I’m in the congregation, and I see the faces of my brothers and sisters singing and playing, and know the stories behind those faces, I just about can’t take it. There’s the woman who’s wrestled with difficult family issues for her whole life and who is just finding freedom. There’s the man who is dealing with layoffs at work. There’s the woman who has chosen to stay married to a man who will be in prison for the next decade. There’s the guy who’s dealing with children with substance abuse issues. When we sing with hope about the “end of these troubles”, these people know something about troubles. And yet they sing with a hope and joy that is unquenchable. That’s not natural. That comes from God.
As soon as I get past that, the pre-chorus comes and smacks me in the face - precisely because I am so often a fearful man. And I’m not even sure that I’m so afraid of “evil” - probably because I don’t encounter it so much. But too often I have either this unnecessary fear of other people, of what they will think and whether or not I’ll look stupid in front of them. And too often I have fears about the future, about my family and providing for them, fears that display my need to trust more fully in God and to turn my worries and fears over to Him. So when I sing the words “If my God is with me, whom then shall I fear?”, the Holy Spirit is preaching right into my heart in the way I need it most.
Jared Wilson had a tweet months ago that stuck with me - wish I could find it to link to it directly, but I’ll have to paraphrase. He asked: Why are we so afraid? Jesus is comfortable and confident walking on the streets of the town, because He’s the king. As representatives of the king, we should walk with that same confidence. Dear God, let it be so.
Imagining a different narrator for a favorite song
A couple of nights ago I had the classic Veggie Tales' Silly Song Dance of the Cucumber pop into my head. (Don’t even bother asking why.)
And after reciting a few lines, I had a wild idea pop into my head. Imagine if Dance of the Cucumber, instead of being interpreted by Bob the Tomato, were interpreted by…
… William Shatner.
Imagine his trademark delivery of the classic lines:
“Watch the cucumber… oh, how smooth his motion… like butter… on a bald… …monkey.”
“Listen to the cucumber… hear his strong voice… like a lion.. …about to eat.”
And the closing line of the verses: “dancing cucumber… dancing cucumber… dancing cucumber… dance, dance… YEAH.”
Personally, I think it’d be awesome. The more I think about it, I wonder if Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki didn’t have Shatner in mind when they did the song… but I may just be humoring myself with that thought.
What do you think?
15 Records
I’m sure I got tagged on this meme somewhere along the way, and then my buddy Dan did it last week, so I figured it’d be an interesting exploration into my music library. 15 records that were influential in my listening history. More or less in chronological order as to when I found them.
1. Harry Connick, Jr , When Harry Met Sally (soundtrack)
This was my introduction to big band. At the time I was a teenager who loved playing the piano, and here was a twenty-something artist who was ripping up the jazz piano and putting together some awesome big band arrangements. I fell in love with it, and I can sing all of the arrangements to this day.
2. Rich Mullins, A Liturgy, A Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band
I had been a Rich Mullins fan before this record came out, but this is a classic, a nearly perfect record from beginning to end. Rich taught me that Christian music doesn’t have to be low-quality, uninspired drivel, and my piano-playing style has been more influenced by his than by anyone else.
3. Jennifer Knapp, Kansas
Jen continued the “Christian music doesn’t have to suck” campaign with her signature record. This one pushed me to pick up a guitar and sing. I’ll never forget the morning that three of us from my worship team in college did “Martyrs & Thieves” as a special… it was perfect.
4. USSR Ministry of Culture Chamber Choir, Rachmaninoff: Vespers
I remember first hearing bits of Vespers on NPR as a pre-teen. As I recall, the program was comparing two recordings of this a capella choral work, one by the Robert Shaw Chorale and one by a Russian choir. The Robert Shaw group was technically perfect, but the Russian choir was so much more alive. When I finally bought a recording, I made sure to get a Russian choir. I own three recordings of Vespers, but this one is the best of the three.
5. Sergei Rachmaninoff, The Ampico Piano Recordings
I first heard this in high school, and I was amazed both from the technical and musical perspectives. Rachmaninoff himself made these piano roll-type recordings back in the 1920’s. Then in 1990 some engineers resurrected the rolls and the piano mechanism and made a modern recording on a good piano. The result is a clean, crisp recording of a master playing his own works. The highlight for me is the final track: Rachmaninoff’s own arrangement of Fritz Kreisler’s Liebesfreud.
6. Caedmon’s Call, Long Line of Leavers
My brother Ryan had been into Caedmon’s for a long time but they never made sense to me. Then I popped this CD in at a Christian bookstore and was hooked within the first 10 seconds. Yeah, it’s those horns on the first track that all true Caedmon’s fans hate with a passion. But I loved them. From there on out I filled out my Caedmon’s catalog. More significantly, I joined an online community of Caedmon’s fans, which has over the past 6 years joined me up with some people who have become dear friends.
7. Coldplay, A Rush of Blood to the Head
Ryan tried again with this one. It took a couple of years before it finally made sense, but once it clicked, it was amazing. I’m not sure I’d count it as my favorite Coldplay record, and not sure that it contains my favorite Coldplay song, but it’s a classic from beginning to end, and was my first Coldplay record.
8. Andrew Osenga, The Morning
I found Andy’s stuff after he joined up with Caedmon’s. When he recorded The Morning I found a record with which I resonated in a way I never had before. Here was the heart of a man my own age, wrestling with the same life situations I was, pouring his heart out in a way I never could. Also: fantastic production, and a great concept from beginning to end.
9. Miles Davis, Kind of Blue
I’d been into big band since high school, but had never made the progression further on into jazz until I found this record at the library. From the opening of “So What” I was hooked. Bebop is pretty much my sweet spot for jazz. Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane… they are where it’s at.
10. Jamie Cullum, twentysomething
Along with the jazz kick, here is a young guy who could rip up the jazz piano, swing over to piano-based pop for a song or two, and then come back to the jazz trio without missing a beat. And he does a jazz cover of Radiohead’s “High and Dry” that kicks some serious butt.
11. Andrew Peterson, Behold the Lamb of God
If there is another perfect record to go alongside Rich Mullins' Liturgy, Legacy, this is it. Andrew Peterson’s ‘true tall tale of the coming of Christ’ is an amazing concept, filled with beautiful music and tight lyrics, brought into being by an amazing community of musicians. This is the ‘Christmas album’ that I could listen to year round.
12. Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova, Once: Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack
It took me a while to get to this little Irish indie movie, but once I did, I bought the soundtrack that same day. Intense, emotional, personal stuff, and the only song I’ve heard that actually works in a 5/4 tempo.
13. Iron & Wine, The Shepherd’s Dog
This low-fi, folky thing is a beautiful piece of work. I don’t have a lot to say about it, but it keeps coming back into my listening rotation. That consistency means something.
14. The Khrusty Brothers, Jonas Is Back
This one is the oddball. This brainchild of Don Chaffer (who usually headlines Waterdeep) is essentially a collection of songs that he probably couldn’t have gotten away with recording under his own name. Good lyrics, sticky melodies, and a killer track called “Sympathy for Jesus”. Not linked because I don’t know where you can get it anymore. Here’s their Facebook page, though.
15. Radiohead, In Rainbows
For the longest time Radiohead didn’t make sense to me. I downloaded In Rainbows when it first came out (for free!), listened to it once, shook my head in confusion, and turned it off. But then a year or two later I turned it back on, heard it with fresh ears, and was transfixed. Then I proceeded to work back through the Radiohead catalog and find records like Kid A, The Bends, and OK Computer. While “Fake Plastic Trees” from The Bends has to be my favorite Radiohead song of all time, In Rainbows tops my list as a beginning-to-end record.
Another interesting thing about the Canadian anthem
A follow-on to yesterday’s post about the superiority of ‘O Canada’:
I was not surprised to read that there are official lyrics in both English and French for the anthem. I was surprised a bit, though, at the stark difference in the message of the two versions.
First, the familiar English version:
O Canada! Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide, O Canada,
We stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
But compare that with this English translation of the French lyrics:
O Canada! Land of our ancestors,
Thy brow is wreathed with a glorious garland of flowers.
As is thy arm ready to wield the sword,
So also is it ready to carry the cross.
Thy history is an epic Of the most brilliant exploits.
Thy valour steeped in faith
Will protect our homes and our rights
Will protect our homes and our rights.
A very different flavor to those, eh? An “arm ready to wield the sword”, but also “ready to carry the cross”. And rather than the English version standing on guard for the country, the French version stands in protection of “our homes and our rights”.
Fascinating how they’ve chosen to keep the tune and meter the same between both versions, and accepted the inevitable difference in lyrical content.
On the superiority of the Canadian national anthem
Watching the winter Olympics over the past two weeks, I caught at least a few of the medal ceremonies, including at least a couple (including the one after the amazing hockey game yesterday) where the Canadian anthem was played. Each time I was struck with the same thought, which I finally voiced on Twitter yesterday: that the Canadian national anthem is highly superior to ours. One friend expressed the same thought, but another quickly disagreed. So, let me offer a few thoughts in defense of my assertion.
Reasons that ‘O Canada’ is superior to ‘The Star-Spangled Banner'
Sadly, any attempt to change the US anthem at this point would only result in choosing something worse. “God Bless America” is too overtly theistic to get official sanction; “America the Beautiful” has many of the same issues as the current anthem (hard to sing, odd words). There are occasional odd choices proposed, too, similarly troublesome. For instance, Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land”: written by a communist sympathizer. And who wants to hear a folksy protest song played at the beginning of every sporting event and solemn political occasion?
Being a loyal American I will continue to honor my country by standing when the national anthem is played. But I will at the same time regret that our inferior anthem ensures that we will never have a scene like the one that played out in the Canadian hockey arena yesterday, with 18,000 victorious fans singing the anthem at the top of their lungs.