Thoughts and Musings

Love you! Learn stuff!

Every weekday morning, depending on my wife's substitute teaching schedule, I engage in one of my favorite morning rituals: dropping the boys off at school.  My ten year-old son goes to one school, and he's long past the days of his Dad walking him in.  So we pull up in the circle; he opens the door and steps out, and I tell him the same thing every single morning: Love you! Learn stuff!

I take my eight year-old son to school next because his is closer to the church. Thankfully, he still enjoys his Dad walking him in.  So I park the car and we get out, and he grabs my hand before I reach for his.  I know this will change some day, but you can bet I'm enjoying it now.  I walk him into the lobby area - we used to go all the way to the classroom, but that was years ago.  For this second grader, the lobby is the established point of departure.  The handshake transforms into a brief hug and I say what I've always said to him since his very first day of preschool: Love you! Learn stuff!

A slight change-up this morning.  As we get to the lobby, I ask if I can take him all the way to his class.  Without hesitation he says yes.  But he lets go of my hand - an unspoken compromise, I'm guessing, for my special request.  That is fine.  We walk down the hallway and I playfully grab for his head, and he jukes me in the same way he's accustomed to doing with me on the basketball court at home.  When we get to his classroom, I give him a quick hug, I say my thing, and watch him take his seat before turning and heading to the parking lot.

Maybe he knows the reason I asked to walk him to his class was because somewhere in Boston today, there is a father who wasn't able to do the same thing with his eight year-old son.  Maybe he doesn't.  If I had to guess, I imagine he's aware at some level; because kids are much more perceptive than we give them credit for, and because my wife and I made the decision after Newtown that our boys were old enough to know, that trying to shield them from stuff like what happened in Boston yesterday was futile in an age when our kids are almost as electronically-plugged in as we are.  As long as they know we can talk about our fears and concerns as a family, and that we're all in this together.

God, I'm tired of the sick, numbing ritual our society seems to be engaging in more and more these days: the sudden, out-of-nowhere "breaking news," the multi-tasking of watching cable news and scanning Facebook and Twitter feeds, trying to piece together a puzzle whose final picture we already know we won't want to see; the increasing injury and death counts, the names and pictures and faces and personal stories of ended lives, and the inevitable movie/music star benefit concert televised live on a Friday night with the 888 number scrolling at the bottom of the screen.  I'm tired of the ritual of having one more location stripped of its innocence, a mental checklist we keep and remember: elementary schools, movie theaters, houses of worship, college campuses, summer youth camps, and now marathon finish lines.  I'm tired of the thought that runs circles in my head after the initial shock wears off, when I can momentarily pull my thoughts away from the television screen and the website: Here we go again.  It's a ritual that I hate and despise; and sadly, one that is feeling more and more familiar.

Which is why I so desperately need the other rituals.  The ritual of going to work, of dinner with my family, of running three miles in the morning, of listening to and performing music, of checking in on a homebound church member, of writing a sermon, of a lunch date with my wife, of gathering with the body of Christ on Sunday mornings, of dropping my sons off at school and saying Love you! Learn stuff!  These rituals are the important ones, if for no other reason than they're the very ones those who planted the bombs in Boston want most to disrupt.  They want me to be afraid of going to schools and movie theaters and houses of worship and college campuses and summer youth camps and marathon finish lines and the next unknown place where some unspeakable tragedy will happen.  They want me to live in fear.

I'm not going to give them that pleasure.  It's nerve-racking dropping my boys off at school where they will be somewhere I am not, but I am going to refuse to cave in to the fear they so desperately want me to drown in.  I'm just not going to do it.  I'm going to refuse for me and my family, for my church and community, for a father in Boston who will never be able to drop his son off at school again.  I'm going to keep doing what I do, and I'm going to do it out of love. Which is always greater than fear. Always.

And you better believe I'm going to hold his hand as long as he'll let me.

What I'm listening to in the new year

 Back on January 1 I fired up the DVR to watch some of the New Years Eve specials that I missed when I was out the night before making music of my own.  Ugh. I couldn't decide if these "musical acts" were intended to be a nod to all that was supposedly good in 2012, or some sort of exorcism of the worst of the last twelve months in order to begin 2013 with a clean slate. I think it was meant to be the former, but it sure felt like the latter.

It seems odd that, in an era when music of all genres and quality levels can be readily accessed via technological means (my favorite method of new discovery being Spotify), mainstream culture continues to stubbornly gravitate toward the lower end of the musical spectrum.  For the life of me, I can't figure out why this "sells." 

Still, though, there is hope.  When The Colbert Report has music, for instance, you can pretty much guarantee it's legit.  Case in point:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer & Chris Thile
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

I know, it was just the interview and not the music.  For some reason Colbert's website took it down. I guess in a sense that kind of negates my whole point. Dangit.

Anyway, the thing is that over the years I've been in the habit of sharing, for what it's worth, some of the music that's currently occupying my sonic airspace. As always, a short disclaimer: if you're looking for in-depth musical and lyrical analysis, you're probably not going to get it here.  I paint with broad strokes, so let it simply whet your appetite.  I welcome not only your thoughts on the bands and artists I highlight, but your own recommendations as well.

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MERCYLAND: HYMNS FOR THE REST OF US - Admit it: the title alone piques your interest.  It should.  I'm not typically a fan of compilations, but this one made a pretty quick jump from my free Spotify playlist to the iTunes catalog.  Think cutting edge artists of the day making music that is spiritual but not steeped in doctrine; opening the pearly gates wide rather than standing a big huge bouncer at the door.  Musically, you simply can't go wrong with the likes of The Civil Wars, Shawn Mullins, Carolina Chocolate Drops, and Emmylou Harris.  Lyrically, you can't go wrong with songs like Mullins' "Give God The Blues:" God don't hate the Muslim / God don't hate the Jew / God don't hate the Christian / But we all give God the blues. Indeed we do, Shawn.  Maybe "the rest of us" needs to be "all of us."

 

CHRISTOPHER SMITH, EARNING KEEP - Man, those Canadiens can make some music.  Although this guy doesn't hail from the prolific Toronto scene (read: Arcade Fire, Barenaked Ladies, Broken Social Scene, The Most Serene Republic, etc) - he's a Vancouver boy that's vying to give the West Coast some props.  In a word - mellow.  For some reason I stumbled on his latest album I had a good friend mention his latest album, Earning Keep, while working on a sermon this past week at a New Years Eve dinner party.  Turns out its good sermonizing music. Usually I can't write and listen to someone singing, but this album is an exception.  Subtle vocals and ambient guitars that at times hint at Radiohead.  But again: mellow. Be advised. And I mean that in a good way.

THE LUMINEERS - The challenge for any new acoustic folk band breaking into the scene is to ride the wave created by the likes of Avett Brothers and Mumford & Sons without sounding too much like Avett and Mumford.  It's not easy, but this trio from Denver does a pretty good job of it. Your foot will be tapping and you'll be singing along, but it won't be to "Little Lion Man" or "The Perfect Space."  Instead it will be to songs like "Submarine" or the catchy "Ho Hey."  This is one of those albums that I'll listen to in one sitting and immediately play it again, because the good vibe it left me with the first time is something I want to feel again.

 

THE GOAT RODEO SESSIONS - I could've easily gone with the more recent Punch Brothers album, but I decided to stick with this one since I already teased you a bit.  Forget that it's nearly nine months old - it's got Chris Thile in it, and anything that has Chris is timeless (in case you hadn't noticed, I'm a bit of a fan).  But here's the difference: for the first time in his young but already legendary career, and with all apologies to Punch Brothers and Nickel Creek, I think that with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, bassist Edgar Meyer and violinist Stuart Duncan, Thile is finally among equals. He's that good, the others are that good, and this album is that good.  Call it bluegrass, call it folk americana, call it jazz, call it classical, call it whatever.  It's all of it, and it's delightful. All I need now is for Thile to release that Bach/Radiohead mandolin cover album he promised me when I met him back in 2010.

 

COLDPLAY: LIVE 2012 - Coldplay flirts dangerously close with being one of those bands I mentioned earlier, but the fact is that I still like them.  I think that, for a pop band, they come up with clever hooks and decent songwriting (that song with Rihanna being an exception).  This live album, which is also a full concert DVD, does a good job of capturing the band's live sound, which is when I personally think they're at their best.  It also represents a nice cross-section of their body of work over the past twelve years. I still prefer 2009's LeftRightLeftRightLeft (which apparently isn't available anymore, bummer), but you can't go wrong with this one. One note: there's an explicit edition where Chris Martin uncharacteristically drops the "F" bomb (why...?).  Get the other one - all the songs are still on there and you won't know that you've missed a thing.

 

GODSPEED YOU, BLACK EMPEROR!: ALLELUJAH! DON'T BEND! ASCEND! - Alright, this one's a bit of a curve ball, so get ready.  We're heading back up to Canada again; Montreal specifically.  It's a nine-piece (yep, you heard me) comprised of three guitars, two basses, two percussionists, and a violin.  No vocals.  The songs are anywhere between six and twenty minutes long and weave in and out of a dreamlike state.  Some songs are barely songs at all, at least in the classic sense: "Their Helicopters Sing" begins with some a high-pitched buzzing that morphs into a bagpipe-ish drone that lasts for a good five minutes.  There's a level of patience that's involved with listening to GYBE's music.  It's not for everyone, but that's the fun of music - listening and checking out to see if it is.

And a bonus:

DOUG DAVIS AND THE SOLID CITIZENS: A PAGEANT OF GOLD - I wrote what turned out to be the very first Amazon.com review for my good friend and former Mediocre Bad Guy bandmate's second album, and here's what I said:

If you're looking for cut-and-paste music with zero passion and production quality that sounds like it was created by your nephew in GarageBand....go somewhere else.

If you're looking for music that comes from the heart, vocals that exude soul, well-written and well-crafted songs, impeccable performance and production that is so spot-on that adding anything else or taking anything away would make the songs less than what they are, you've found the source of your next six bucks. And the beauty is that you'll wind up getting something worth much more than that.

I gave him five out of five stars, cause I'm that kinda guy.

******************

So, there you have it.  Give 'em a listen and let me know your thoughts.  And tell me what kind of music you're into these days.

And a quick heads-up: U2's apparently got a new album coming out in 2013. The new year is looking up already.

 

At least the iPod didn't get a hand cut off

Indeed, the truth can be oh so hard to hear...

The method of making music matters

Sometimes I get depressed listening to the radio. And yes, I fully realize the "musical snob" label this kind of statement leads to.  I'm pretty sure that's not the case, of course.  It's just that, as someone who has been part of the process of making a song from the ground up, I'm well aware of the time, patience and skill that goes into making a truly great song - and the cookie-cutter nature of a lot of what's on the airwaves these days.

But every once in a while something comes along and surprises me.  Gotye is an artist that falls into that category.  I don't know that his style of music is the kind of thing I'd normally listen to, but it's the songwriting and layers and textures of what he does that attracts me.  It's obvious that a lot of thought and creativity goes into his stuff - and that means something. 

The fact that "Somebody That I Used To Know" is getting heavy airplay these days is less a validation of Gotye as an artist, and more a sign that there is perhaps hope for radio and the "what's-popular-today" nature of the music industry.

Here are a few videos you should check out, courtesy of my friend Chad.  I'm just intrigued by musicians who take the time to find a unique assembly of sounds - and, in some cases, totally new ones.  This is what music should be about, in my humble opinion.  Not quickly stringing together a beat and a catchy hook aiming for the next big hit, but using your musical creativity, God'-given smarts and patience with the process to assemble something truly beautiful.

Check out what he does with the autoharp on this video:

 

Who would ever think of sampling a fence sound and making it an integral part of a song? 

"Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along..."

Much has been said about the death of Apple's former CEO Steve Jobs yesterday.  Even President Obama chimed in with a pretty cool - and probably accurate - insight: "There may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented."

As much as Jobs was known for his innovative gadgets, he was equally known for his marketing prowess.  You can see both in this video clip below (HERE if you don't see it) of his keynote introducing the iPhone. Watch the first ten minutes of this, if nothing else.  It's fascinating to remember all that went into this first generation product. 

What's even more fascinating is realizing that this took place just four years ago.

R.I.P., Steve Jobs. Thanks for everything.

A good week in Chicago

I’ve said it before – I love airports.  There’s something about the random humanity that fascinates me. I’m in an airport as I write this – Chicago O’Hare, to be exact – at some concourse restaurant grabbing a hot dog. Aptly titled “the Chicago.”  I like the way my waiter pronounced it when he brought it to me – “CHI-cago,” not “SHI-cago” like us non-residents are prone to say.  I gladly stand corrected.

I’ve spent the past week in the Windy City at McCormick Theological Seminary.  You know those people who have elaborate plans to tour all major league ballparks?  A few years back I decided to do the same thing with Presbyterian Church (USA) seminaries. I know, not as exciting; but as I'm proving at this very moment, you can still get a hot dog. Anyway, there are nine or ten of them, depending on how many you count in the mix; and including the three I attended for formal schooling I’ve been to six: Union (Richmond, VA), Columbia (Decatur/Atlanta), Pittsburgh, Louisville, Austin and now McCormick in Chicago.  I’m always amazed by the diversity of the schools and the people associated with them, but also all the things they share in common. Every school in their own unique way is making a difference.

I usually try to attend some specific event, like a conference, but if that’s not available I’ll spend a few days just studying and reading.  The latter was my intention when, back in the summer, I pulled up McCormick’s web site.  And then my eyes caught a little blurb about their brand new Certification in Environmental Ministries and Leadership.  Anyone who knows me can certainly understand my immediate interest.  I was getting spousal permission and plane tickets within days.

The program is spearheaded by four faculty and involved ten participants from all over the country and beyond (a gentleman from north of the border joined us).  We met for three days, two of which were seminar-style discussions and one “field trip” day to a local conservation.  Lots of incredible conversation and insight.  In many ways its getting back to some of the core Biblical and theological emphases on "creation-care" that we seem to have lost in recent years - captured quite eloquently in a comment I remember someone making in our local curbside recycling brouhaha last spring: that "God loves people, not the earth" (there's this little thing called John 3:16 you ought to check out...)  It's helping me fine-tune my perspectives and passions on the issue so I can do my part to help the faithful  reclaim an important conversation that's been sorely neglected.

Anyway, this was part one of two trips - we’ll be back in early 2012, after which we’ll have a project to complete. And as much as I enjoyed the program itself, I also fell in love with Chicago.  The seminary is located in Hyde Park, on the south side of town.  I came to love the neighborhoods and my daily walks through the University of Chicago campus to some friends who graciously opened up their guest room for me.  It was also cool to reconnect with some old Mount Airy peeps (and a former Mediocre Bad Guy band member) who moved up here a year or so ago.  Hyde Park is a fantastic place, bustling with activity amidst old-school buildings and homes, ornate trees, and two – yes, TWO – organic coffee shops.  Take that, Starbucks.

Lots to think about as I board my flight home in an hour – including my strategy on how to get to my parked car as quickly as possible so I can to book it home in time to make a Mediocre Bad Guys gig.  Enjoy the pics that follow, and pay special note to the incredible rainbow that greeted me this morning as I prepared to depart.  I'll take it as a sign that this week was time well spent.

  Downtown Chicago skyline via Grant Park on a gorgeous day

 

Chicago Harbor. Bet this looks different in January.

 

Home of a certain famous Chicago residence who currently resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington DC. About two blocks from the seminary. Pleasantly waved to the Secret Service guy parked across the street before snapping this pic.

  Went on a jog one morning and headed six blocks east to Lake Michican. Got there in time to see the sunrise. Add this to my collection of awesome sunrise running pics.

 

Our Certification group visiting Glacial Park about two hours outside Chicago

 

So I was walking to my last class Saturday morning with suitcase in tow right in the middle of a rainshower. Kind of a pain, until the sun came out and I stopped at 55th Street to see this. If it's not a sign of the promise, at the very least it's a Starbucks PR dream.

For once, Apple is late to the party.

For the past decade, Apple has made its name - and built its empire - on the expectation that it's permanently located on the cutting edge. Always. Way back in 2001, a whopping ten years ago, Apple introduced a little device called an iPod.  Sayonara, CDs.  In 2007 they debuted the iPhone and forever changed the smart phone market (hard to believe it's only been four years, eh?)  In 2008 the iPad came along and Apple created a market for something we didn't even know we needed yet. Now that's ingenuity.

But, sad to say, Apple missed the boat on the next big evolution: streaming music. You may have heard that iTunes Match is set to debut this fall.  What this will allow you to do is listen to all the music in your iTunes library pretty much anywhere, via the "Cloud."  Up until now, when it came to listening to music on your iPod or iPhone, you've been limited by the size of your hard drive's device.  With iTunes Match, you'll "match" songs in your database with songs in theirs to create a virtual catalog that you can access on up to five devices.  What about those independent artists or your next door neighbor's kid's band who burned a CD in their garage last spring?  You'll be able to upload the tracks to your portion of the cloud and listen to it anywhere - all for a mere $25 a year.

Here's a video about how iTunes Match will work when it comes out sometime later this fall:

No doubt, it's a great idea - for 2010. Seriously, had this come out a year ago, it would've been absolutely huge. Folks like me would've been heaping praise on Apple and raving about how, once again, they'd beaten everyone else to the punch. Instead, even Apple loyalists like me are greeting this news with a half-hearted "meh."

That's because the cloud-based music streaming boat has already pulled out of port.  Rhapsody and Grooveshark were two of the first to do it, and Google Music snuck in there for a spell.  But it got kicked into major overdrive this past summer when Spotify made it across the Atlantic and came stateside.  And it did more than just make streaming music (all music, not just what you have on your hard drive) easy and practical for the average music-lover.  It also integrated a social media component where you can see what your Facebook friends are listening to.  I can't tell you the number of bands I've discovered simply by looking at the public Spotify playlists my friends have created.  For that reason, Spotify is now the life of the party, at least when it comes to how we listen to and discover music.

While Apple's latest move may be late, the clear loser in all of this is obvious: the record labels. In fact, some have suggested that iTunes Match will encourage more music pirating.  They're probably right.  But in this day and age, with technology changing so incredibly fast, the labels have their hands tied.  And unless they want to be left totally out of the game and watch more and more artists go independent, they recognize that giving up more than they want is still better than losing it all.

I'll probably still pay the 25 bucks and get iTunes Match up and running - my loyalty to Apple dies hard, and it'd be a pain creating a gazillion Spotify playists to match my iTunes catalog.  But Apple needs to take notice - and not just because their great prophet and oracle, Steve Jobs, recently exited stage left.  Apple has made its name by being ahead of the curve and creating a product or service that didn't exist before - and then (and this is important) making us feel like we simply couldn't live without it.  When it comes to streaming music, though, they've arrived late to the party and found Spotify and others already digging into the hors d'oeuvres.

So what do you think - is Spotify going to trump even hard-core Apple enthusiasts like myself, or will iTunes Match have a solidified place in the world of streaming music?

Spotify comes Stateside

(video HERE if you don't see it)

You know me - always into the "latest" thing. Truth is that Spotify, the awesome streaming music service, isn't really all that new.  It's been in Europe for years now, much to the chagrin of those in the West who long ago saw the writing on the wall: that not only were the days of the compact disc long gone, but the days of the downloaded mp3 weren't far behind.  We'd always heard that it was only a matter of time before Spotify came stateside; just a few kinks to work out with record distributors who've reluctantly realized that times are surely a'changin'.

I actually got to check Spotify out before I really should have.  I remember a year or so ago reading a blog post about how you could create a Spotify account by using a random UK address.  The deal was, though, that Spotify would be able to tell from your computer's URL where you were, so I had three weeks in "travel mode."  During that time, I was sold.  Here's why:

• Easy Interface - I've been using Rhapsody for almost a year, and while the iPhone app is decent, the desktop experience is very clumsy.  That, and for some reason they never created a Mac program. Spotify's computer program looks and feels like iTunes - full content on the left, current tracks playing in the large middle.  It's amazing how much our eyes are trained to engaging music in an iTunes context.  By modeling their format after them, Spotify makes the transition all the more seamless.
• Syncing and Streaming - This is the "promised land" of the future of streaming music.  I add an album (and yes, I still think in terms of albums and not individual songs) to the playlist on my computer Spotify and in seconds it pops up on my iPhone.  Works the same the other way.  Steve Jobs and Apple realized the importance of this when they announced the arrival of iCloud this fall, including not only music but documents too (thanks to Google Docs for leading the way on that, incidentally...)  Now our music can literally be wherever we are.  Even when...
• Offline mode - The crux of streaming anything, of course, is having an internet signal. Businesses like Spotify are banking on the fact (accurately so, I believe) that one day wireless internet will be pretty much wherever we are.  Until that happens, Spotify offers an "offline mode" where you can "download" the song files to your computer or mobile device to listen independent of the internet (sorry, they're encrypted, non/mp3 files, so no snagging ability). Rhapsody and other similar services offer the same functionality, incidentally.  It's good that Spotify chose to do the same as we make the eventual transition one day to all-streaming.
• Preserving the album - Pandora's all the rage, of course, but the downside of internet radio is that there's really no good way to listen to the songs you want to listen to, in the way they were meant to be listened to.  Things like Spotify help preserve the album concept for us purists.  Besides, if you click that little "thumbs-up" thing on Pandora, you can resign yourself to hearing that song played every fifth or sixth song.  Ugh.
• Facebook Integration - This is honestly not a huge deal to me, but I think it's smart for Spotify to include this. And it's less about all things Facebook (in fact, as we're seeing, alternatives such as Google+ are showing that Zuckerberg-land is not invincible) and more about the fact that music and social media go hand-in-hand. iTunes kinda blew it with that whole "Ping" thing.  Spotify is avoiding making the same mistake, going with an already-existing social media platform instead of trying to create their own.
• Song selection - Granted, this is Spotify's growing edge right now; as their music catalog, while still pretty expansive, doesn't quite equate that of Rhapsody or Amazon.  Still, it's only a matter of time before more agreements are reached with the music industry and more artists show up (on a side note, they may not have Incubus' latest album yet, but they do current have THIS ;-)

So - does this mean I'm ditching Rhapsody? Most definitely - in fact, I canceled my account this morning.  ITunes?  That's a different story.  Unless I plan on searching Spotify and indexing every one of the 8500+ songs in my iTunes catalog by hand, I'll still have a need for iTunes.  I've noticed that the Spotify desktop program has some kind of iTunes integration called "Local Files" that allows me to play iTunes songs in Spotify.  Not sure what that's about but I'll learn more as I get into it.  So I'm not sure exactly how I'll integrate Spotify and iTunes right now - maybe Spotify for albums that I'd like to listen to but not enough to buy them?  Who knows. 

The thing is, Spotify is the future of music, plain and simple.  It's only a matter of time before everyone is using some kind of streaming service to listen to their music.  Just look at what's happened so far in the past six months - three major players in the online music biz have rolled out some kind streaming service.  Amazon Cloud and Google Music rolled out this spring, and the iCloud for iTunes this fall was announced last month.  And today, Spotify comes to the US.  You can bet your Dad's awesome turntable that none of that was coincidence.  They all saw what Spotify was getting ready to do and didn't want to be late to the party.

It's weird to think that our kids will laugh at us and shake their heads when we tell them about the good ol' days of downloading mp3s, but I'm pretty sure that's in our future.  Like 2012.  As it is with so many things in the tech world, it's only a matter of time.

Sign of the Times

1989.....

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j379JbL-xM)

 

.....and 2011.....

(thanks to Jeremy Casella for sharing the pic)

"What is the Internet, anyway?"

Was 1994 really that long ago??

Favorite quote, other than the obvious: "...and it's getting bigger and bigger all the time."

(click HERE if you can't see the video clip)