Translating my thoughts into words.
From
Smithsonian Magazine Ed Cook put me on to SS and I love his work. He is rightly recognized as a unique and important artist in this month’s Smithsonian (itself a much under-rated magazine).
One Man Band
The next Bob Dylan? Maybe. Sufjan Stevens’ honest sound and stark lyrics speak volumes to a new generation. And he plays all the instrumentsBy Nic Harcourt
Smithsonian magazine, October 2007
Two of my favorite musicians were performing at Biola. Fred Sanders has a report. Two Lost Dogs Bark in Berkeley | Scriptorium Daily
Last Thursday (June 7, 2007), Terry Taylor and Mike Roe, two members of the Lost Dogs, played an intimate acoustic concert for a group of Biola students studying in the Torrey Berkeley program.
Taylor and Roe are both accomplished singer-songwriters in their own rights, and over their years of touring and recording together, their collaboration has morphed into a symbiosis. Sometimes that’s a beautiful thing, as when they take turns singing lead vocals or easily pass the guitar work back and forth with a “why don’t you play this part” nod of the head. Other times, their symbiosis is some kind of eerie mutual parasitism: they bicker “like old married people” who have already had every possible argument but can’t help having this one in front of you for comic effect.
Be sure to read it all. The chance to see them on a semi-regular basis is about the only reason I can think of to move to CA.
(Via Scriptorium Daily .)
If ever someone deserved this honor he does. (Although clearly not everyone agrees. According to the Good Dr. West Bono has replaced Chris Tilling as the devil.) And their music is good too.
U2′s Bono awarded British knighthood on Yahoo! News
Irish rock star and global humanitarian Bono became a knight of the British empire Thursday %u2014 and joked that his youngest son thought he was about to become a Jedi instead.Bono, 46, was named a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in an informal, laugh-filled ceremony in the Dublin home of British Ambassador David Reddaway.
“You have permission to call me anything you want %u2014 except sir, all right? Lord of lords, your demigodness, that’ll do,” he told reporters afterward.
The following is from the very interesting and engaging blog Middlebrow. The entry is specifically from Dr. Fred Sanders, professor of theology and “is widely recognized as the world’s greatest systematic theologian cartoonist.” MBD is an outstanding album from a great songwriter and band. I have reviewed it somewhere on Targuman, but I cannot find it now. So, enjoy this far more thoughtful post.
Since at least the time of Nietzsche, a major objection to Christian faith has been that it is bad for the human spirit generally, and the imagination in particular. It produces people with tiny souls, content to monger prooftexts, take everything on authority, stay on the surface of life, and investigate nothing. Pat answers satisfy our lethargic minds and trite nostrums guide our moral lives, while “Christian art” (if the term itself is not indeed oxymoronic) is considered wildly successful if it rises to the level of bare mediocrity.
So goes the critique, and it’s got some bite. But Daniel Amos’ 2001 CD, Mr. Buechner’s Dream, is a standing refutation of the notion that faith kills art. This sprawling CD (actually a double-CD set) doesn’t refute the Nietzschean suspicion simply by being swell art and therefore a bit of evidence to the contrary –though as the mature product of an accomplished group of Christian musicians it is certainly that. No single CD will turn that tide; in fact a generation or two of Rembrandts and Bachs would barely suffice to that end.
Instead, what Terry Taylor and his band offer here is the fruit of a quarter-century’s personal struggle with questions of art and faith. In the unpromising arena of Contemporary Christian Music, the band Daniel Amos has been fighting this battle across a career that spans more than two dozen major releases (if you count all the solo projects, side bands, and whatnot). Taylor has been turning this problem over and over in his head, asking himself and his listeners about the way Christian faith shapes art.
Be sure to read it all at Middlebrow.
King’s X Redux