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onethousand & 1 albums

As much as I love music, I’m ashamed to say that I am a very uneducated music lover. I’ve kind of found that niche thing that I really like, and now try to find other artists that fit into that niche. It’s a very closed minded way to experience music. As a result, I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve never actually listened to a Doors, Ray Charles, or Stevie Wonder album the whole way through from start to finish. Yeah… sad isn’t it?

I’m going to venture to change that over the next year. I’m blessed, so to speak, with a job that involves sitting at a desk for 8+ hours per day, which is a perfect opportunity to expand my musical horizons and deepen my education. As any good student I will have a textbook. 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die by Robert Dimery will be my text. I will study perhaps 2-3 albums, every work day, until I have completed. I will study chronologically, beginning in the 1950’s with Frank Sinatra’s “In The Wee Small Hours”. I will end with the 2005 release of The White Stripes album “Get Behind Me Satan”.

Most of this music I probably won’t like…. Somehow I’ll suffer through the 80’s and get through Cyndi Lauper and ABBA. But I’m looking forward to a lot of it… hey, a list with 4 U2 records and 5 Bruce Springsteen records can’t be that bad.

In the meantime, enjoy the new Kings Of Leon record. I’m a fan…. (by the way, these song recommendations that I give are free, full length previews through Rhapsody – you should check it out).


Today you should listen to…
Kings Of Leon “On Call”

why relevant magazine really bothers me sometimes

1. The magazine and, especially, the website have turned into a barrage of advertisements for A). any Christian artist with a new album coming out, or B). every worship conference under the sun

2. The tone of most of the editorials consist of a snobbish, too-good-for-the-church, post-liberal, “check out the new Shins record” theology that is grating and irritating

3. There is an apparent identity crisis within the publication… they’re not really sure what being relevant means. Ben Folds as the cover story? What purpose does that serve? So he throws a couple punches at mainstream Christianity and displays our shortcomings… fine, but why use a blatant non-Christian to do this? Why hasn’t John Piper ever been on the cover of Relevant? How about Mohler or Driscoll… or other leaders that are really shaping what it means to think theologically in the 21st Century?

I have always appreciated the intent of Relevant, but it often seems disconnected. Relevant is a great setting for modern thinkers and theologians to propel real thought forward, but it seems like most of the time modern-thought has been reduced to a little rant about the modern church with a couple of expletives thrown in to cast the illusion of “relevancy” within culture.

end of a glorious era

In 2001 I aquired a well-worn, much-loved light blue 1987 Toyota Celica. Quintessential 80’s car. I got it as a generous gift from our good family friends Neal & Lisa Blackwood who knew I was a broke college student in need of transportation. Prior to getting the car from the Blackwoods, the aptly named Neal-Mobile travelled some 100,000-ish miles, spent 10 hot years in Texas, and endured several sub-arctic Minnesota winters. But I was grateful to have her when she finally arrived in my care.

The Neal-Mobile was a fine piece of machinery – Japanese made, reliable, quick, had to hold the handles up as you shut the doors in order to lock it. In the six years I had the Neal-Mobile I only had one engine related malfunction, which required the replacement of the distributor… all in all, not that big of deal. Like any car it had it’s share of wear-and-tear, bumps, and rust, but was quite the trustworthy little thing.

I took that car everywhere. Made the trip from Nashville to Minneapolis at least 25 times. Drove it to Nebraska and back another 8 times. Drove to Coloroado twice. Took it to Ohio, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, Kansas and probably a dozen other states. I drove it up and down every mountain road outside of Colorado Springs. Drove it as far as cars can go down the Mississippi River delta south of New Orleans, and I’ve got the picture to prove it. One time on one of my trips out west an Interstate bridge got washed out, so I had to go on this 80 mile off-the-beaten path detour. The traffic on the detour was so bad that I hauled out the old road atlas and forged my own road over cow fields, farm roads, and dirt paths all the way down to Colorado. The front struts going out was probably a result of that trip; my fault, not the car.

But all good things must come to end, so they say. One day the uber-reliable Toyota just kind of gave out. It wasn’t one of those big dramatic things with the smoke and fire and all that… rather, after 20 years of faithful service, the Neal-Mobile conveniently rolled to a stop, in it’s parking space in front of our house, and didn’t start up again.

After such a career, and in honor of the Blackwoods fulfilling my need, thought I would carry on the gesture with my little car. Called up a place that does car-donations and uses the parts sales to give to children’s charities. Filled out the form, the tow truck came, and she was gone.

Final Odometer Reading: 195,461.8

…yes, that was 95,000 miles in six years….

this post only to fill space

I haven’t felt like blogging much lately. Sorry to all faithful readers and blog-wanderers for leaving you hanging. All is well, I’m still alive. Check out this band I just discovered… pretty awesome:

Today you should listen to…
Four Day Hombre Three Years

many of these trees were my friends…

Yesterday EMI Music, the company I work for, restructured and layed off 20% of it’s North American workforce. Crap. There’s no good way to say that. In Nashville we lost almost 30 people in our company of 200.

I feel like Treebeard, one of the Ents from Lord Of The Rings, when he stumbles out of the forest into a clearing and sees all of his young trees chopped up and lying on the ground, and says, “…many of these trees were my friends….” So sad. Work was just not the same today without them.

Some of them had been working at EMI for 10 to 15 years. Some for just a few months. It was like a tornado coming through… a few people here, a few people there, and then they’re gone. It was odd, awkward, and very very foreign. In the midst of it all I almost feel guilty still being here. I just happened to get hired into a division that was growing in sales two years ago, so here I am. As much as work frustrates me many days, I feel very blessed to still have my job.

The fact that the music industry is suffering, and that people are illegally downloading music, became very real yesterday. The growth in sales at services like iTunes is not countering the decline in CD sales. People are getting their music off the internet and burning it from their friends CDs.

And yesterday it cost 30 of my friends their jobs.

Today you should listen to…
Future Of Forestry “You And I

night at the alley

Ah yes… Saturday night we all piled into the car and headed down to the local bowling alley to roll a few rocks. Good times. In truth I’ve never been that great of a bowler. I always feel very accomplished when I break 100, and topping out at 125 the other night made me feel pretty good. Steph has invented a style of bowling all her own… maybe we should call it “trot, hop, drop”. It’s kinda cute actually. I worked with her a little bit to smooth the release down a bit, but then she ended up doing worse, so I let her go back to “trot, hop, drop”. Whatever works right?

Of course this all leads up to me making fun of our favorite local blogger, Uncle Tim. Do you all know that he was quite the bowler back in his day? A competitive bowler I might add… the whole family actually! He was one of those guys who had his own bowling ball, along with it’s cute little bag and polishing cloth. He always harrassed me because my trumpet in highschool was so shiny – trumpets are supposed to be shiny – but I could actually shave in the reflection of his bowling ball. Amazing.

Tim the bowler. League and everything – had the jersey, had the shoes. Was even on the highschool team (and I’ve got yearbook photos to prove it). Rumor has it he was the anchor though. Tim was actually seriously considering bowling professionally. I remember sitting in physics class with him actually reviewing his college choices based on the performance of the school’s bowling league.

Oh what’s that Tim? You wanted me to update my blog? Ok, here you go.

Go Colts!

Today you should listen to…
Damien Rice “Grey Room

eye phone

On Tuesday our favorite company whose name begins with Apple announced the debut of their highly anticpated iPhone, a “trademarked” name which has since come under fire in a lawsuit filed by Cisco yesterday… but I digress.

So the iPhone. Say what you want about Apple, Macs, and such, but this is one heck of a beautiful product they have created. It’s an iPod, a cell-phone, and internet communication device all in one. It’s widescreen. It’s wireless. It’s thin. It’s about as small as you could make it with all of the things it is capable of. A modified version of OS X is actually built into the thing. It automatically shifts from portrait to landscape mode based on the way you hold it. It automatically shuts off the buttons when you hold it to your ear so you don’t accidently hit a key while you’re talking to someone. It’s all touch-screen… I’m pretty sure there is only one actual “button” on the whole thing. It’s web-capable like no other phone before it. It will change the landscape of music devices, cell phones, and PDAs from this day forward.

A $600 price tag and two-year Cingular Wireless contract aside, you gotta just admire the sheer genius of it. Spend some time on the website (also one of the most beautiful websites I’ve ever seen) and check this thing out – if you’re a fan of iPods and electronic gadgets, the iPhone will blow your mind. Seriously.


Today you should listen to…
La Rocca “Goodnight
(while a little disjointed, this is such a good album… hard to choose one song)

if this is winter, i want a refund

This is ridiculous. It’s January 5th and 64 degrees outside. Normally I would blow it off as, “this is Nashville… it’s warm all year here.” And it generally is, and I deal with it, and whatever. But for the love of pete, I was back home in Minnesota for a week and a half over Christmas and there was NO snow at all (well, except for a couple inches on New Years Eve, which in the end was irrelevant).

I’m sick of all this warmth all the time. Nashvillians claim that they are blessed with 4 seasons in the south…I have yet to distinguish a difference between fall, winter, and spring down here. Meanwhile, I see a headline yesterday that they predict 2007 to be the warmest year on record which means another unbearable summer of ridiculously high heat and 197% humidity.

Look, I know all of you that live up north get sick of the cold too in the winter. I’m not wishing the Arctic on you. I’d just like to see a little snow a few times a year.

I’m going to move to Alaska.

Today you should listen to…
The Album Leaf “Thule

3,491

3,491: This is the number of miles driven in the last 12 days.

58: This is the number of hours driven in the last 12 days.

We do this to ourselves every year. I don’t know why we have chosen to live so far away from every stinking member of our family. From Nashville to Minnesota, to northern Minnesota, to Nebraska, to Kansas, to Nebraska, to Minnesota, and back to Nashville. The holidays become this strange caffeine-induced blur of dotted white road lines interspersed with segments of the traditional family griping about politics, religion, and why the kid working at the grocery store can’t keep his hair cut a decent length… the gall.

So, another Christmas season in the books. It was good to see all of our family and friends, and it was worth the 3,491 miles. We got my parents an iPod nano… spent several days instructing them on the intricacies of digital music. My grandparents got a couple DVDs, so we spent some time instructing them on how to use their DVD player (again). Many family board games enjoyed, much chocolate and cookies consumed, some good gifts received. And I love the Midwest – I get claustrophobic with all of these hills around me all the time. It finally snowed New Years Eve… would have enjoyed the snow a week earlier, but it will have to work for this year.

I just put new tires on the car two weeks ago. It’s time for a rotation and another oil change.

Today you should listen to…
U2 “New Year’s Day

the day has come

I just want everyone to know that this is my last day at work before Christmas vacation… woo hoo!!!

Today you should listen to…
Chris Botti “
The Christmas Song