Sing, Sing, Sing

My fondness for music goes back to my earliest days. I recall riding along in the car as a child, listening transfixed to Piano Man by Billy Joel. I also remember my father grading papers with the radio tuned to NPR, listening to classical music in all of its thunderous glory. I drank deeply of contemporary Christian music throughout high school. Steve Taylor, Phil Keaggy, Rich Mullins, as well as Amy Grant, Randy Stonehill, and Michael Card played the soundtrack of my life. Hip Hop and Country were two genres I could never embrace, even rappers and cowboys filtered through the Christian subculture which targeted sanitized versions of their music towards me and my friends.

I’m unsure when the change happened, sometime around my early twenties. I think one motivating force was a new movie. When Harry Met Sally was a tremendous film of course, but the music that gave the movie life introduced me to a whole new world that I have never successfully escaped. Big Band and swing music have been a part of my life ever since.

Glen Miller, Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Connick, Frank Sinatra, and Louis Armstrong have all made a substantial impression on me. The sheer joy and fun that these musicians are able to convey through their music has always downloaded directly into my soul. One of my absolute favorite songs is Sing, Sing, Sing. When done well, it is an instrumental performance that dares you to sit still while you experience it.

In this version by Benny Goodman’s band, watch the sheer exuberance of the drummer, the great Gene Krupa. Such music is, simply, inspired. I suspect that when we get to heaven, there will be as many songs performed from the Cotton Club as there are from the Baptist Hymnal.

Kilkelly

Sorry for the delay. The end of the semester approaches with the force of an oncoming tide. Making time an even scarcer commodity is my foolish decision to take on a thespian role in this year’s children’s choir Christmas musical. So as is often the case, a lack of blogging is due not to the fact that too little is going on, but rather to the fact that too much is going on.

Longtime readers (both of you) will recall that I’m a sucker for good narrative. One of the better stories I’ve heard in awhile was in a recent song. While listening to the Irish and Celtic podcast a few months ago, I had to slow my run to a walk and listened transfixed to a song called Kilkelly, Ireland. The song was written by Peter Jones, an American who discovered a series of letters that belonged to his great grandfather, an immigrant from Kilkelly, Ireland. His ancestor had left his childhood home of Kilkelly to travel across to the United States. Peter wrote the lines directly from his great grandfather's letters and composed a tune for them.

It is a haunting song, one that reminds the listener of the tremendous sacrifices that emigrants form every generation must undergo. Of course, as Believers, the notion of the immigrant is one of the most common themes in all of Scripture, ranging from Moses’ description of himself as a stranger in a strange land to (a different) Peter’s description of the church as strangers and aliens. It reminds us that our faith has made us landless and looking ahead to the far country, to the one place we can truly call Home.

But it also makes you want to hug your family a little tighter at Christmas.

Here’s the requisite Youtube embed of the song. I suggest you minimize the video and just listen to the music. The song is grand and tender. The video is neither.

Politics

Courtesy of Derek Webb, this pretty much summarizes my view of the current election cycle. It's called "Savior on Capitol Hill." My favorite line "You can always trust the Devil or a politician, to be the Devil or a politician..." Enjoy!

Larry Norman, Requiem in Pacem

Larry Norman, the dean of Contemporary Christian music passed away last week. Although never a huge Norman fan, I appreciate his ground breaking work. His influence would be hard to overestimate. You can draw a line of apostolic succession from Norman to the contemporary singers and songwriters whose artistic works fill our churches on most Sundays.

(I also learned from Norman that Christians don't always get along. He and Randy Stonehill had a tumultuous relationship. That fact is reflected in Stonehill's own eulogy for Norman here.)

There was a time in high school when I believed that his duet with Steve Camp “Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music” represented the zenith on Christian rock. (And the zenith of Big Hair).

But for now, I’ll pass along two You Tubes. First, his haunting “I wish We’d All Been Ready” performed by DC Talk






Second, his acoustic version of WSTDHATGM





HT: Dave Samples

12 Days of Christmas--Straight Up

Since we're around twelve days from Christmas, I thought you'd enjoy this...

New Fangled Technology

Kadie and I recently procured separate cell phones. We’ve had one line for the last few years and only now have felt the need, and the possession of sufficient finances, to get a second line. Plus our old phone died.

New phones, however, brings new features. Our old phone was incapable of connecting to the internet machine, but our new phones can. But we’ve been unwilling to pay the extra $16.95 a month that will allow us to do so. They both also take crummy pictures, but without an internet connection…what can you do with that?

I’ve also been familiarized with the process of the “ring tone” that allows you to purchase a song and have that installed as your own distinctive ring. Furthermore, you can designate a particular tone for a particular person. With that in mind, I made two new ring “downloads” off the internet machine.

For my all-purpose ring I selected my favorite song by the late great Rich Mullins entitled “Calling Out Your Name”. Call my new number and that’s what I’ll hear.

Then I downloaded a distinctive ring for Kadie, something I’ll hear only when she calls. I decided to go with the (not late, but still definately great) Norah Jones' “Come Away With Me” a song by that singer and inspired by that book. It goes off only when Kadie calls.

It always makes me smile when I hear her call…

The Ringing Bell

Just a note from the deluge of finals week, the last round of term paper grading, and faculty evaluations. I entered the 20th century yesterday and downloaded my first album off iTunes. It was Derek Webb’s subversive new album, The Ringing Bell. It is a fine album and you can listen to it (though not download it, alas) for free here.

The two best tunes are "I Wanna Marry You All Over Again" (on marriage) and "A Love That's Stronger Than Our Fear" (on Torture).


Not that those topics are in ANY way related...