Posts from — September 2000

hey everybody.

sorry my blogger has been so slow lately. the very last thing i ever want it to be is boring, so if i don’t have something interesting to write about, i’m not gonna waste time and talk about nothing.

i wanted to go ahead and finish up that tooth and nail bit, even though it isn’t tooth and nail anymore. it’s about bands. bands that are supposed to be christian, and yet some one that isn’t a christian can listen to them and not even realize they’re a christian band. that’s the worse case. i also think it’s pretty sad that a nonchristian can listen to a christian band and not be convicted of their sin, although i think that probably has more to do with the listener than the artist.
i think jars of clay is actually a pretty good band to aim this rant at.
when i first became a christian, in the fall of 1995, i didn’t know there was such a thing as good christian music. so the christian music that i would listen to (because the secular music i liked wasn’t encouraging at all, and was mostly flat out blasphemous) was the ccm garbage. i joined some christian cd club. the one through bmg. and i got a ton of cds from there. i’m stinkin’ embarassed to own some of them, but even more ashamed of that fact that i thought they were good at one point. i actually went to a clay crosse concert. *sigh*
so anyhow… then i got jars of clay’s cd. i hadn’t heard them when i go it, but i thought it looked cool, and i it was supposed to be a ‘modern’ band. and i loved it. i thought it was great. i even picked out calvinistic lyrics and stuff in it. but my roomate, who wasn’t a christian, also loved it. at the time that didn’t bother me. i thought it was a good thing. i was like ‘hey! he’s listening to christian music!’. these days my thought would be ‘hey, he’s listening to christian music and doesn’t even know it.’ their second album came out, and i was a little bit more mature as a christian, and i realized how fluff it was. there was no clear message in it. and, again, it got pretty good reviews and succeess from the secular world. not that it’s bad for the secular world to recognize good music, but a band that sticks to it’s guns just isn’t going to be a huge band. (unless the post millenialists are right, and the world becomes christian)
i love toad the wet sprocket. and i’ve visited alot of fan pages. one girl has a list of all her cds. she had the first and second jars cd in her list, and said that she loved the music but the words just didn’t make any sense to her. now… we could blame her for this, saying she isn’t a believer so she can’t understand what the band is saying. but i think that’s a copout. if the message isn’t clearly understood by the listeners, then it just doesn’t benefit the kingdom of god.
jars of clay’s second album was a bunch of ambiguous nothing. and that truly irritates me, because they claim to be a christian band ministering to believers and non believers. they simply aren’t ministering at all. they’re just singing about love without anything more than that, which basically amounts to nothing. they’re singing about nothing.

oh… and i figured out why i feel like caedmon’s is becoming more and more like big bands… their concerts are a whole lot more intimate than ccm bands like dc talk or scc or even.. clay crosse, but compared to some of the folks like andrew peterson and mark williams… they just aren’t. they’re a big production compared to those guys, and so i’ve sort of lost my bearings. i haven’t been to a ‘big’ concert in years. the biggest was caedmon’s call at king’s dominion for some baptist youth convention. so that’s my theory.

by the way… i saw mark and christina the other night in greensboro, nc. and it was a very good time. i won’t say it was a great time, because megan wasn’t there with me, but it was a very good time. and we talked about megan alot. but i was gonna say, mark is such a great performer. he really is. he had clay robinson with him, playing the violin (clay played on ‘forgiving eyes‘ from journals…). it was great stuff. i think mark williams’ next cd is #1 on my most anticipated release list. his new songs are incredible. i mean.. INCREDIBLE. i think they rock. i can’t wait for another opportunity to see him and christina again.

now dang what was that blog topic i thought of the other day while driving home from my fiancee’s house? shoot shoot shoot shoot…..

i got an im the other day concerning my blog. first time that’s ever happened. a very nice and respectful guy named tommy (dark phonzarelli on aim)

he said he found my blogger on the updated blogger list. he had a comment about music and christian music. apparently he is not a christian. he said he’d give me a link to his homepage, except it has nudity on it and he didn’t want to offend me. (thanks for the forsight, tommy) so anyhow… he said he listened to alot of bands on tooth & nail records. he said “Anyway, fact is that I agreed to your comment about Christian music and being ambiguous”.

i’m not entirely sure where he was going with it, because he had to go shortly after getting into the conversation. maybe some day soon i’ll be able to talk to him some more.

i’ve always assumed tooth and nail were a christian deal. i just looked up their website and they make no mention of christ or their faith on there. so who knows if they are or not. if you know, email me. thanks.

i will refrain from further comments until i learn a little more about the label.

peace-

by the way… if you’re a regular reader, and are wondering why this is under 9.10.00 and just showed up today… it’s because i wrote it on sunday evening, but didn’t want to publish it up until after my other post had been up for a while.

[UPDATE] i got some info on tooth and nail, and they seem pretty straight forward about their goals and whatnot. i’m not sure i totally agree with it, but i think they’re doing a good job of what they set out to do. my beef is more with the bands than the label. muchas gracias to nicole for the info. you can read it all here.

i have such a fun and crazy life. god is good.

this is megan. i truly love her.

that was taken while i was sitting in my car, gettin ready to leave.

this is how i looked…

and this is the important part.

thank you, and have a good day.

hello.

last night my attention was drawn to a great song:

you can’t hide, by don chaffer

think about those lyrics for awhile. i’ll get back to you.

today’s post to danger blog is not a fun one.

many of you probably frequent the andrew peterson messageboard, so you’re probably at least familiar with the name herb. a load of laughs, right? or not. i’m kind of sick of it. i’m sick of how it’s become deceitful, and elitist. people may think it’s fun, but i think it’s rude.

so i will kill herb.

who is herb?

at least i haven’t posted it on andy’s board…. yet.