Category Archives: Music

2008, Music, Popular Culture, Resources, Review, The List, Worship, Wrestling With Scripture

What I’m Listening To (10.27.08)

51e5yel1vwl_ss500_.jpgGossip in the Grain
Ray LaMontagne

I had the opportunity to see Ray LaMontagne live and in person over the weekend. It was a rare treat for me to sit during an entire concert and to just allow myself to marinade in the sounds and lyrics. By himself, Ray is an incredible talent but the backing band really completed the picture. I really enjoyed hearing some of these new tracks live. All in all he played about 9 songs from the new album. It was a great concert and I would definitely pay to see him again.

Ray LaMontagne has quickly become one of my favorite voices out there due to his deeply touching lyrics and scruffy vocal delivery. This new album, which at first listen felt a little over-produced, has after subsequent hearings crept into my subconscious. There really is very little difference between this album and Ray’s other two, Trouble and Til the Sun Turns Black. My initial reaction to cry, “Over-produced!” to the new album was due in part to the fairly charismatic first track, You Are The Best Thing which finds Ray and a horn section gushing with exuberant praise for his beloved. Two other tracks, Meg White (yes, of the White Stripes) and Hey Me, Hey Mama seem out of place on a Ray LaMontagne album but are nonetheless good tracks. The great tracks though are forged from the same stuff that make Ray such a great voice and talent. Songs like Winter Birds, Let It Be Me, and I Still Care For You showcase great lyrics, haunting vocals, and amazing instrumentals. Rather than existing outside of the catalog, this group of tracks seek to push the catalog forward into new and familiar territories. No small feat indeed.

You owe it to yourself to at least check this album out. Now that the days are shorter and the temperatures are lower, this album would make a great soundtrack to curling up on the couch with a good book or playing in the background as you shared a nice romantic dinner with your significant other. 4 out of 5 stars.

61csdred-al_ss500_.jpg Limbs and Branches
Jon Foreman

It takes a unique artist to take Isaiah 1:10-20 or Amos 5:21-24 and turn the harsh words of these prophets into a worship song. Yet here is Jon Foreman, the voice of Switchfoot, doing that and much more. In this one song Foreman puts our focus exactly were it should be- off of the programs and on to the Savior.

I hate all your show and pretense/ The hypocrisy of your praise/ The hypocrisy of your festivals/ I hate all your show/ Away with your noisy worship/ Away with your noisy hymns/ I stomp on my ears when you’re singing ‘em/ I hate all your show/ Instead let there be a flood of justice/ An endless procession of righteous living, living/ Instead let there be a flood of justice/ Instead of a show

No this isn’t a Derek Webb album. This, in my opinion, does Derek one better.

Throughout 2008, Foreman released 4 EPs- Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter- each filled with mostly acoustic ballads driven by a sense of discovering God in the midst of our lives. The lyrics are challenging, the music is challenging, and the format seemed challenging. So Foreman asked fans to pick their favorite tracks from the EPs and that he would release a long play “album” with their picks pluse 2 new tracks. The result is Limbs and Branches a not-quite-perfect collection. Instead of a Show is here. So is The Cure for Pain and In My Arms. Unfortunately you’re missing out on some real gems (Baptize My Mind, My Love Goes Free). I would forgo this collection and plunk down the extra money for the individual EPs. You won’t be sorry. Limbs and Branches: 3 out of 5 stars; Jon Foreman’s EP collection (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter): 5 out of 5 stars

Conferences, Discipleship, Experience, Faith in Action, Giving Thanks, Hope, Leadership, Life, Ministry, Music, Worship

Catalyst Day 2

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Another Catalyst is in the books.

Today was great. The highlight?

Dave Ramsey’s talk on practical leadership for your organization? Maybe.

Matt Chadler’s challenge to live and teach in such a way as to leave a lasting legacy? Could be.

Certainly the highlight must have been Tim Sanders plea to bring our Christian values of love, sacrifice, and service into the workplaces of America? Missed it by that much.

None of these come close. The absolute highlight of my day was when the Daraja Children’s Choir of Africa skipped on stage (literally skipped) and broke my heart singing God of Wonders. Then three of the children took to the mic and whipped out some incredible scripture references. To say I cried would be an understatement.

God put Africa on my heart a few years ago now. My heart breaks for the people of that continent. I have had a desire to go and do something there but that desire battles with perceived reality and usually ends up in the “good intentions” pile. Today was different.

Today I heard God say to me, “You are going to Africa.” This wasn’t communicated to me in a “someday” voice but in a “Get Ready!!!” voice. How will I get there? When am I going? I don’t know but if that really was God’s voice then I can’t wait to find out the answers to the When, Where, and How.

2008, Awesomenessness, Collecting Experiences, Music, Taking Vacations

ACL Friday and Saturday Pictures

I had such a great time at Austin City Limits this year! All in all I saw about 20 full sets from bands that ran the musical gambit from screamo to folk. Here are some pics from Friday and Saturday.

This is the first view of the park I saw as I arrived on the scene Friday afternoon. So much music, so little time.
Endless Possibilities

I left ACL last year as Bob Dylan played on the AT&T stage. The first artist I saw at this year’s ACL was his son, Jakob Dylan, playing on the AT&T stage. “ingonyama bagithi Baba, ingonyama bagithi Baba- It’s the Circle of Life…”
Jakob Dylan

Next up was Jamie Lidell. He closed his set with his hit “Multiply.” Very Motown, very hip.
Jamie Lidell

M. Ward put on a great show. The tent was packed so this was the best shot I could get.
M.Ward

The Jenny Lewis show was my favorite part of Friday. I play her song “Rise Up With Fists!!!” all the time. My wife hates that song. I love it. Like M. Ward, the tent was full and she put on a very entertaining show that had her playing guitar and piano. The set reminded me of last year’s favorite Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.
Jenny Lewis & her guitar

I'm Tired

Scottish Rock
The Fratellis on the blue room stage

CSS is a band from Brazil. They had a song featured on the iPod Touch commercial. Music is my (Not So) Hot, Hot Unitard
CSS

Robert Earl Keen’s road went on for just an hour and the party ended right before John Fogerty.
Robert Earl Keen

I almost missed John Fogerty. He played a ton of CCR songs and had the entire audience singing along. Great set and the man’s still got it.
John Fogerty2

Giant Bunny

Robert Plant and Allison Krauss was the show to see on Saturday night. Some guy named Beck was on the other side of the park but who cares. Allison Krauss has the voice of an angel and Robert Plant kept his shirt on. They sang an awesome reinterpretation of Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” that I absolutely loved. Great seats. Great songs. Great Night.
Krauss & Plant On Stage

Robert Plant1

Perfect Duet

Krauss & Plant Mysterious

Music, The List

The List: 10 Albums For A Desert Island

I don’t like playing the “desert island” game. It is fair and it certainly it isn’t nice to play favorites especially in the case of choosing the absolute, definitive list of albums that would accompany me to a secluded island never to be heard from again. Thankfully my iPod (assuming that I could rig it for solar power) has all these albums and then-some already in a pre-selected-ready-for-the-plane-to-crash desert island mix. Like always, there is no particular order to this list. The only real criteria is that I like 90% or more of each album and that I can listen to each of these albums from start to finish. Enjoy and feel free to leave your desert island mix in the comments section.

1) August and Everything After, Counting Crows
2) Fumbling Toward Ecstasy, Sarah McLachlan
3) Blonde on Blonde, Bob Dylan
4) Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd
5) In Between Dreams, Jack Johnson
6) Live at Luther/Live at Radio City, Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds
7) O, Damien Rice
8) Offerings, Third Day
9) The Blue Album, Weezer
10) All That You Can’t Leave behind, U2

Bonus:
Jars of Clay, Jars of Clay
Unearthed Box Set, Johnny Cash
Achtung Baby, U2
Boy, U2
S&M, Metallica
Garden State Soundtrack, Various
Trouble, Ray LaMontagne

Music, The List

The List: 10 Songs by Coldplay

This week the List brings you 10 songs by Coldplay. I have really enjoyed 30 days of Coldplay on XM. The 30 days ended this week so I felt like paying tribute. Coldplay visits the Metroplex this November and you better believe I’ll be there. Enjoy the List & see you next week.

10 Songs by Coldplay
1) Careful Where You Stand
2) The Scientist
3) Lost?
4)The Hardest Part
5) Lovers In Japan / Reign Of Love
6) The World Turned Upside Down
7) One I Love
8) Warning Sign
9) Yes
10) Politik

Next Week:
The List brings you 10 books on leadership

Music, The List

The List: 10 Songs With the Word “Love” in the Title

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This weekend I’m starting a new weekly feature at Kicking at the Darkness. It’s called The List. Every weekend (Friday afternoon or Saturday morning) a new list of 10 things will be posted. These aren’t necessarily “Top 10” lists but rather listings of 10 things within a specific category. In the coming weeks look for lists such as: 10 Songs by Coldplay, 10 Movies Based on Novels, 10 Animals That Are Not Bears, and 10 Albums by Members of The Beatles.

This week we kick of The List with a musical entry. He is 10 Songs With the Word “Love” in the Title. Enjoy.

1) Bold As Love // Jimi Hendrix
2) Whole Lotta Love // Led Zeppelin
3) You Will Be My Ain True Love // Alison Krauss with Sting
4) Sunshine of Your Love // Cream
5) Never My Love // The Association
6) Friday I’m in Love // The Cure
7) Heart of the City (Ain’t No Love) // Jay-Z
8) Everybody Needs Somebody to Love // The Blues Brothers
9) Made to Love // TobyMac
10) Love Me // The Willies

BONUS:
11) Let My Love Open the Door // Pete Townsend
12) You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told) // The White Stripes
13) Higher Love // Steve Winwood

Got any suggestions for The List? Leave me a comment and tell me what you want to see.

Books, Discipleship, Ethos, Music, Thanksgiving, Worship

Hallelujah Time

Whew! I am so tired. We had an incredible adventure to Kentucky for our annual mission trip. We spent 8 days serving people of Leslie and Clay counties and then 8 (long) nights sleeping on the hard floors of an elementary school nestled in the hollar of the Kentucky mountains. It was an awesome trip. My teens experienced people, ideas, and situations that they would have never seen here in the Dallas/Ft Worth area. I have received a ton of positive feedback from parents and teens. It was a great trip.

Since I’ve returned I have been unable to shake this feeling of exhaustion though. If I could just take a month off and just sleep maybe I could get over this feeling. That ain’t gonna happen though. I’ll just have to make the most of my nights and and relish in my down time. My wife had to force me to take a day off this week and she chided me for wanting to read some books about small group ministry on my said day off. I relented and picked up a book that I have wanted to read for the last few years.

I started reading Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley by Timothy White. What a fascinating book. It begins with the history of the Rastafarian religion and lifestyle which is supremely bizarre and eye opening. I am more interested in Bob but this backstory of the worldview in which he lived, breathed, and, in some way, helped craft has added a new layer of dimension to this enigmatic purveyor of sweet soul music.

Like most Americans who say that they are fans of Bob Marley I’ve really only listened to Legend, the 1984 compilation released posthumously to capitalize on Marley’s, well, legend. I have another set that is a primer on Bob and his career but like everyone else, Legend is just about it for me.

To supplement my reading I purchased Burnin’, the last Wailers album. The book has already alluded to the cultural and philosophical significance of songs like Small Axe, Duppy Conqueror, and Burnin and Lootin.

After listening to the album this morning I have some new Bob Marley favorites to add to the mix. I am totally grooving to One Foundation, Rasta Man Chant, Reincarnated Souls, and Hallelujah Time.

The lyrics to Hallelujah Time really struck me this morning. I am so tired and stretched thin yet I can’t help but praise my Father. We are all living and breathing because of His grace and by his power. How can we not sing praises to Him?

For those of us who believe in and have been changed by Almighty God and his one and only Son, anytime is Hallelujah time.

Hear the children cryin’,
but I know they cry not in vain.
Now the times are changin’;
love has come to bloom again.

Smelling the air when spring comes by raindrops
reminds us of youthful days.
But now it’s not rain that water the cane crops,
but the sweat from man’s brow;
the substance from our spine.
We gotta keep on living, living on borrowed time:
Hallelujah time!

Yes, you can hear the children singing: Hallelujah time!
As they go singing by and by: Hallelujah time!
Oh, “hallelujah” singing in the morning.
Hallelujah time! Let them sing; don’t let them cry.

Over rocks and mountains
the sheep are scattered all around.
Over hills and valleys,
they are everywhere to be found.
But though we bear our burdens now,
All afflictions got to end somehow:
From swinging the hammer, pulling the plough.

Why won’t you let us be, to live in harmony?
We like to be free like birds in a tree.

Hallelujah time! Yes, you can hear the children singing.
Hallelujah time! Yes, as they go singing by and by.
Hallelujah time! Oh “hallelujah” singing in the morning.
Let them sing; never let them cry.
Hallelujah time! “Hallelujah” singin’ in the morning.

Books, Music

Where I Got Hooked pt. 3

I’m out of pocket this week while we are on our mission trip in Kentucky. I thought a good idea for posting this week would be to share with you some of my favorite passages from the different books sitting on my desk. It is in these passages where I found myself being hooked by the ideas and concepts contained within their pages.

I hope that these quick takes will encourage you and connect with you in some way this week. Enjoy.

For Wednesday, I’ve chosen a longer passage from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. For anyone who loves music, I think they can instantly identify with this passage.

She sat listening to the music. It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean, and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music had escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance.

She thought: For just a few moments–while this lasts–it is all right to surrender completely–to forget everything and just permit yourself to feel. She thought: Let go–drop the controls–this is it.

Somewhere on the edge of her mind, under the music, she heard the sound of train wheels. They knocked in an even rhythm, every fourth knock accented, as if stressing a conscious purpose. She could relax, because she heard the wheels. She listened to the symphony, thinking: This is why the wheels have to be kept going, and this is where they’re going.

She had never heard that symphony before, but she knew that it was written by Richard Halley. She recognized the violence and the magnificent intensity. She recognized the style of the theme; it was a clear, complex melody–at a time when no one wrote melody any longer.

. . . She sat looking up at the ceiling of the car, but she did not see it and she had forgotten where she was. She did not know whether she was hearing a full symphony orchestra or only the theme; perhaps she was hearing the orchestration in her own mind.

She thought dimly that there had been premonitory echoes of this theme in all of Richard Halley’s work, through all the years of his long struggle, to the day, in his middle-age, when fame struck him suddenly and knocked him out. This–she thought, listening to the symphony–had been the goal of his struggle. She remembered half-hinted attempts in his music, phrases that promised it, broken bits of melody that started but never quite reached it; when Richard Halley wrote this, he . . . She sat up straight. When did Richard Halley write this?

In the same instant, she realized where she was and wondered for the first time where that music came from.

A few steps away, at the end of the car, a brakeman was adjusting the controls of the air-conditioner. He was blond and young. He was whistling the theme of the symphony. She realized that he had been whistling it for some time and that this was all she had heard.

Oooooohhhhh. Good stuff.

Experience, Music, Randomness, Stories

Great Day, Terrible Soundtrack

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I was able spend the day at the Texas Rangers home opener. They lost 8 to 1 but who cares? I don’t. In fact, I had an awesome day!!! We arrived at the Ballpark around 9am to begin tailgating with a group of area ministers. We set up the tent and started grilling. I had a blast.

As we were setting up, the group next to us was blasting some rock tunes including Where the Streets Have No Name, my personal fav!!!!

About an hour before we headed into the game a truck full of twenty-somethings pulled in near us. They got out and set up their tailgate paraphernalia, opened the truck door, and turned up their stereo. The smooth and mellow sounds of some dude’s Break-Up Mix-Tape started bringing the party atmosphere to a grinding halt.

I am all about using the right music to craft moments and experiences. These particular choices were suitable for a) sunset beach cookouts on Laguna with LC, b) late night cryfests over unrequited love, and c) the last songs played at a Junior High dance.

Don’t believe me? Check out their playlist:

Hallelujah by Rufus Wainwright
Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton
Kiss from a Rose by Seal
Open Arms by Journey
Ordinary People by John Legend
Easy Like Sunday Morning by Lionel Richie

These are all good songs (some great songs) but I’m not sure absolutely, stinkin’ positive that they are not “party before the game” songs.

Hope you had as great a day as I did. If you had a crappy day, I’ve just provided you with a healing mix of smooth pop music. Let Lionel take you away!!!