Song Assassins, 2008

The following are my "song assassins" of 2008. I don't claim that these are great songs.

Most of them are not even new.

What these do represent are tunes that just "killed" me. They made me stop what I was doing, and just listen. They made me go find the CD in my collection and play it, repeatedly, for a few days straight. They inspired me, spurred me on to (ideally) better art.

They made me believe.

As the 2008 went on, I jotted these down as they revealed themselves. Here they are:

February - Always in Love (Wilco)
February - For All the Right Reasons (Jayhawks, Rainy Day Music)
March - Stolen Car (Bruce Springsteen, The River)
April - Midnight Man (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dig, Lazarus Dig!!!)
April - In the Morning (Norah Jones)
May - Dixie Chicken (Little Feat, Dixie Chicken)
June - La Cienega Just Smiled (Ryan Adams, Gold)
July - Mercy (Duffy, Rockferry)
August - The Sun Also Sets (Ryan Adams, Easy Tiger)
August - The Step and The Walk (The Duke Spirit)
October - Two Silver Trees (Calexico, Carried to Dust)

What's Happened to Wonder?

I can tell you...

Wonder has been mistaken for glam, for ever-increasing budgets and light shows.

The wonder of the smallness of life has been subsumed with the 50 inch plasmas, hyper-reality, and multi-tasking screen culture.

The wonder of peace and silence; the pregnant God-reality of a moment has been washed away by overly triumphant, ticketed celebrations and a parade of charades.

... I think that's what happened to wonder.

We killed it.

Going Back to Babylon

100 miles from Babylon, i felt the tremble of the earth
my shoulders began to shudder, and my cough started to get worse

the earth had lost its center, i heard the voices in my head
but everything sounded different, and nothing made any sense

la la la la la la hey

we raised our bricks and mortar, built a superhighway to the sky
said, “to hell with the infidels”, turned our backs and waved goodbye

turned up the music on our stereos, feasted in the middle of the storm
thought we’d stay so happy and contented, i’m not so sure anymore

Take me back … goin back to babylon

hang all of the martyrs, hang all of the dead
hang the one’s who misunderstood and chose to sleep in instead

hang the poor and stinking, the sick and the blind
break me off a turkey leg, and pass me that bottle of wine …

Adventures in incredulity, v1.0

A few months back, a leader in our faith community got up and made this cool announcement about how iTunes had lent its support to one of our CDs and we had made the charts there.

A few days later, he received an e-mail from someone who had attended the church that day, expressing their “disappointment” that he was endorsing a band that was not explicitly Christian.

Come again?

This is nothing new, believe me. I’ve heard rumors of it, but being on the direct end of it is something differently entirely. You want to scream, shake their shoulders, sit down with them, reason, but in the end all you can do is silently shake your head and keep on doing what you’re doing.

Frankly, it also hurt. I don’t quite know when faith became something you lived out and struggled with only on Sunday mornings, but it’s obviously shifted. I don’t know what this person expected to find when they listened to Maida Vale’s music: “Jesus is a friend of mine?” (either you know, or you don’t)

Somehow the expression of full-humanity, of longing and fulfillment, of love and rejection, of sin and redemption failed to connect with her. If we have to turn our backs on being fully human in order to be a Christian band, then perhaps we don’t want to be a Christian band.

Maybe we weren’t ever a “Christian band”.

But maybe if struggle, transcendence, fun, desire, and doubt can be part of faith, then, well, we’ll let you put two and two together.

The CD is Dead, Long Live the CD

I firmly agree, with most current commentators, that the CD is dead. Electronic delivery of music is now the overwhelming choice of consumers. Old news, I know.

However, there are two aspects of the current (and future) state of music retailing that intrigues me.

First, there’s the aspect of musical quality, which I blogged about a few weeks ago. There are simply things in the compression of sound that get lost. I firmly believe it. As Buddy Miller put it in No Depression, when you listen to a great CD, it can “make your heart hurt”; a similarly great mp3 often just lacks that certain something, the certain center, warm mid-range that Neil Young would love. T-Bone Burnett, producer of the amazing (and amazing sounding) Raising Sand, similarly grouses against the sound quality of iPod music. (BTW, I own a iPod and LOVE being able to take my music anywhere.) He and some colleagues are brainstorming new e-delivery formats that will enhance the quality of music, but there’s nothing in production yet.

Second, there’s the idea of the CD as “artifact”, as a piece of visual art, a piece of cultural “swag”. Frankly, I think there’s still life here. Granted it is not “mainstream market” life. It becomes “niched” life, where it will be purchased by audiophiles, artists and musicians who want to read liner notes, see who played on what, and engage the visual artistic direction of the CD’s author.

So I think we are at a very interesting time in the life of music commerce. I believe in the “economics of free”, that electronic music (content) will be increasingly freely accessible to people, who will pass the good stuff around, and delete the bad stuff. iTunes will continue to dominate the retail business, and CDs will continue to shrink as a percentage of music sales.

Simultaneously, however, I think CD sales will increasingly become appealing to the niche of people who want to hear the highest quality (note: I am not debating the quality of vinyl versus CDs here; they are different media with different tonal qualities and characteristics) they can get, AND can also possess the “artifact”.

In short, I think the most successful selling CDs in the near-term are going to be (a) really great sounding, and (b) really great looking. Iconic. Compelling. Something that makes that certain group of people true fans, maybe?) say, “I’ll buy the music on iTunes, but I want to OWN that THING, that piece of physical, visual art.”

The CD as music retail is dead; long live the CD as art.

Tick-Tock
August 2008


My mind is going
Buried under Tokyo lights
I feel it changing
Strobes flashing off in time

I want information
In my hands with no delay
Staccato thoughts
won’t stay, won’t stop
can’t seem to read a book these days

Feel your mind going tick-tock, tick-tock
Think you’re right, but you’re so wrong, so wrong
And though you try, you can’t understand it
And you never really planned it at all

Midvale does his counting
Motion measured, locked in time
Life’s mechanical choreography
Say when to eat, work, sleep, and rise



Hyper stimulation
Give me information
Transister moonlight
Subatomic spotligh
Electric perception
Divine misconception
Evolved cognition
Chrome and efficient

This resonated with me...

"We got our recent custom of using individual glasses at Communion from Scotch (sic) Presbyterians and others who, in order to recover the meal at the Lord's Supper, gave a communicant a glass of wine and a small bun, seated the congregations at tables, and had a meal which looked and tasted like a meal. The custom of using individual pressed white tasteless wafers is an extension of medieval preoccupations with the bread as a holy, untouched, spotless portion of Christ's body. Over the years both the glasses and the wafers got smaller until the church seemed to have a make-belief meal without food...

I finally said, 'enough is enough; a couple of years ago when I read of a man in the West, who, believing that the Lord's Supper is time consuming and cumbersome because of the individual cups involved, has begun marketing a product for those in a hurry. He produces airtight packets which contain a crackerlike pellet in once compartment and two grams of grape juice in another compartment -- a disposable, self-contained, eat-on-the-run Lord's Supper -- sort of "This my body packaged for you." There you have it. The last hindrance to totally self-contained, self-centered religion is removed.... Now thanks to this unit packaging, we need never come into contact with or be touched by another human being again. Just when you thought modern life had depersonalized the gospel to the uttermost, we have another breakthrough--Communion without communion!" Bishop Bill Willimon, in Making a Meal of It: Rethinking the Theology of the Lord's Supper, by Ben Witherington

Excerpted from Rock On, by Dan Kennedy .... Read it, and then substitute all the rock references with church, lead pastor, and worship lead/band references...

"Okay, look up at the huge screen at the end of the conference room. A ten-years-too-late Eddie Vedder look-alike stealing Jim Morrison's moves. And a bassist and guitarist who move in a way that seems to be saying, 'Yes, you learned lead singer moves in our local college's night class on how to be a rock star, but never forget that while you were doing that, we were studying how to posture ourselves properly as well, and we have jst as important a role as you. See we indicate that we're passionate about the guitar playing in the band.' There's daning, pouting, and these bored and angry mood swings that seem to say, ' We're angry. No, we're sexy. No, we're bored. Wait, we're angry again. How now we're longing! We are, in face, feeling everything you could posssibly want us to feel -- But no matter what we're feeling, we're rocking.'

I have a hunch that everyone here knows that this band's biggest problem is that they're not so much authentic as they're trying to indicate to you that they are authentic. We sit there smiling politely and watching."

Make you think a little? It did me.

We deserved it.

First this...

This has been rocking my world for a few days now, and a lot of my friends as well. For some reason, it has struck a chord; it's almost worse than some kind of sexual scandal (for what reason, I'm not sure - still processing through that).

But I quickly landed on an interesting position:

we deserved it.

"We" meaning the church. Full disclosure: I'm a church worker (surprise); furthermore, I'm a church worker who stands on a stage each week, mostly with a guitar in hand, and tries to get people to remember the saving acts of Yahweh, their God. I've worked at one of the largest churches in the world, and at some of the smallest ones.

For years, church "worship culture" (does this sound like insane vocabulary to anyone out there besides me?) has been in ascendancy. Vineyard, Hosanna, and Maranatha laid the groundwork in the 1980s, and then Passion, SonicFlood, and Hillsong blew the doors off in the 1990s, making the worship of God pretty big business.

I'm not questioning motives. I've had the privilege of meeting some of the "names" in worship leading, and most of them are really great guys. But in the meantime, we -- the Christian, "Big C" church -- created a machine. This machine feeds good music to a lot of churches across the world, but unfortunately there are by-products to this that I believe are utterly unavoidable and mostly negative.

It's just this: should worship be based on the particular remembrance of a particular community of people of God's activity in their midst? Should worship be localized and intimate? Or should it be broadcast as a mirror image of pop culture, fed from the far off lands of Nashville, Australia, and Orange County?

Because if worship is going to be business, franchised out from the musical mega-centers, then the ramifications of a failure like this will spend tremors around the world. If worship music is going to be severed from relationship (unlike shepherding and discipleship, thank God), then we have to be prepared for failures.

What would I advocate in its place? Partly I'm not sure. I think in evangelical culture we've already "swallowed the pill". We assemble worship sets from iTunes "Top 10 Worship Songs" lists; from the latest release from SixSteps, most of the time without asking the deeper questions of what our community needs. Do we need this song? What about an ancient (maybe just pre 1970?) prayer?

Sometimes I fear that the "Traditional" (is that a bad word) churches may be on to something. The main line churches, who evangelicals have snickered at behind closed doors, worship in intimacy and "smallness" (some of them by necessity, as their congregations have shrunk away, stolen by the new mega church down the street). If an artist -- or even a pastor -- stumbles and falls in their community, the damage is truly no less severe, but reconciliation can occur in the way it was always intended to -- in relationship. Those who've been effected by the lack of integrity of a TV evangelist, or a youth pastor in Australia have no recourse, and God the Father takes the hit most of the time.

Years ago, we (the evangelicals) decided to dance with the devil, and decided to have our worship governed by celebrities. Most of the time, we've reaped benefits of great songwriting and new visions for musical worship. But we've also set up a system now that trades relationship for excellence, and so when one of us weak and frail individuals fall, we now shake whole systems of churches.

Can we return to smallness? Can we return to local artists struggling through "C+" songs, rather than purchasing the "A+" one from iTunes?

I really don't know. I think we like it here.

It DOES make a difference…

And now a bulletin from the ultimately useless department.

A few months ago I decided to invest some money into some CDs that I really enjoy. I’d heard rumors from some respected musicians (Buddy Miller for one) that there is a significant difference in the listening experience between CD and mp3 (or mp4 or any other type of compression-focused music). I hadn’t really believed in it: to my mind, most of the folks making this claim seemed to be portly, middle-aged men with six-figure incomes who really enjoyed spending their weekends combing record stores for obscure vinyl.

But I decided to give it a try; I picked one of my favorite CDs (Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot) that I’d purchased through iTunes (note: not downloaded illegally), and brought it home.

Wow.

There were guitar parts that weren’t “there” in the iTunes version; a richness to the vocals that had completely flown over my head.

My resolution is to now keep on this course and replace my “iTunes only” CDs that I really enjoy with CD versions (not audiophile enough for vinyl… yet). For the musos out there: try it, you’ll be blown away.

Familiar Pull

Familiar pull
Midnight needs
stronger as the hours get shorter
warnings unheeded

Implanted code
Genetic blueprints
To populate the land
(Or at least my hand)
A hundred thousand replicas of broken heart

Watch, watch
Watch me explode
With Iniquity

Okay now we're REALLY done.

To studio on Friday night. 9:30pm start time to review tracks and prepare for mastering. 4 hours later, we are still reviewing, trapped inside the rabbit trails of guitars that are too loud and drums that have no crack and pop.

We argue.

We drink a beer (or two).

We argue some more.

We sweat.

Six hours later, we are crafting and nudging our little sonic babies until we sit in rapt silence and glimpse a shot of the glory, enfolded in cascading notes and rhythms.

This is what the kingdom is. This is why we do what we do.

Only a few more days, kids.

Going back again
To the end of the beginning
Of the end

And ashes fortify
Up,
Underneath,
Beside
Twenty-five parking lots and unplanned twilights

Vacancies, vacancies
Truant children wait upon exit wounds
Pulling the chain up

Bitter green vines
Choking the illusion of new life
As a dollop of breath
Sinks into the deep brown underground.

A Poem...

Speak, the Voice

Did your
voice, calling from eternity
penetrate the pallid skin,
moving the tiny, dead bones
of the world of sound?

Did the
command, flying through reality
incise the shadow,
splitting the curtain
that divides?

“Come out,” you said – and still say,
coaxing us out of our freshly dug
graves,
that hold us gentle, faithful,
and insidious.

Will I wake?

That’s a wrap.

Friday we wrapped tracking for the record. Nathan was the honorary “last to give,” adding some light percussion to the tracks. However, we weren’t quite equipped with all the instruments and toys that we were envisioning, so we had to get inventive, and a little bit lo-fi. How lo-fi? Well, a large container of Lowry’s Seasoned Salt served as one shaker, a smaller container of sea salt was the other. Hand claps were supplied by the Case family children. It’s a family affair.

So what’s next?

First we sort through the five vocal tracks for each song, the 8 - 12 guitar takes for each song, the eight backup vocals for each song, and try to arrange and get all the “colors” into the right light. Then we’ll turn it over to a good friend for mixing, pick the final tracks and sequence them (critical) send it out for mastering, and then finish the art work.

All told, another 4 weeks of work.

But it’s worth it.

I know I’m biased, but these tracks really glisten and shine. I hope the heart, soul, and creativity that we poured into them will translate to everyone. There are new textures, new sounds, and we can’t wait for people to hear them.

See everyone soon.