Hey, check out this video of John Mark McMillan leading worship at The Call Nashville. He goes into some detail about where the song “How He Loves Us” came from. Pretty powerful stuff. The first few minutes are the best. The rest is just the same great song.
I realized I haven’t put up a mix CD in a while (an Easter mix I made never made it to the blog…), so here is the first of two summer mixes. This first one is “Ain’t No Cure for the Summertime Blahs - A Soundtrack for Your Summer.” You should probably play it non-stop until September.
I tried to capture the fun of summer with a lot of upbeat, hope-filled songs, from the past to the present, from the obscure to the well-known. The next summer mix CD, which should be out soon, has more searching, road trip-styled songs.
Anyway, hope you enjoy the mix, and give me your comments.
1. Five Iron Frenzy - A Flowery Song (Download or Stream)
2. Hello Kelly - 10 Good Reasons (Download or Stream)
3. Christafari - Triumphal Entry (Download or Stream)
4. John Davis - Nothing Gets Me Down (Download or Stream)
5. Value Pac - Don’t Look Back (Download or Stream)
6. U2 - Beautiful Day (Download or Stream)
7. Dave Thompson - Time to Fly (Download or Stream)
8. Aradhna - Jaago Logo (Download or Stream)
9. Ponoka - See You Around (Download or Stream)
10. The Innocence Mission - Beautiful Change (Download or Stream)
11. Andrew Osenga - The Ball Game (Download or Stream)
12. Switchfoot - Meant to Live (Download or Stream)
13. Rock and Roll Worship Circus - New Wave Revolution (Download or Stream)
14. Bodies of Water - I Guess I’ll Foget the Sound I Guess I Guess (Download or Stream)
15. Solomon Jabby - Rootsman (Download or Stream)
16. Relient K - The Best Thing (Download or Stream)
17. Jesse Sprinkle - First Summer on Earth (Download or Stream)
18. Geology - Arkansas (Download or Stream)
Hope you all enjoy the CD! To download the album art, just save the image above.
Since I posted about Jon Abel a few days ago, I thought it was only fitting to do another worship group today, but a group that’s doing things completely differently.
Meet Aradhna.
They’re from India.
And they’re completely awesome.
Aradhna is one of my favorite bands that I’ve learned of from Brent over at Colossians Three Sixteen. Not only do they seem to love God and really be worshiping Him, but they do it without using Western-leaning music or classic Western worship songs or hymns redone Hindu style.
I finally thought up a tagline for The Blah Blah, in case you didn’t notice it on the title bar: “Indie Music that Could Change Your Life.” What do ya’ll think?
I wanted something that was non-religious but still conveyed the idea that most of the music here is trying to accomplish more than just giving you filler for your ears. It’s like a convergence of art and faith, Keith Green playing The Prodigal Son Suite at the Bla Bla Cafe back in the 70s.
It really leaves the blog open to have either Christian or non-Christian stuff, so I’m happy with that. I don’t want to be boxed in too much.
Indie Music that Could Change Your Life…
I know I put non-indie stuff up here too, so it’s technically not accurate, but I aim to have mostly indie music.
And, if you wanna be technical, will all the music here change your life? Probably not. But I hope most of it does in one way or another.
When it comes to music, most people think I have weird taste. Well, maybe not you nice guys and gals who read my blog. People have described my musical tastes as “bizarre,” “eccentric,” “eclectic,” “weird,” “crazy,” “boring,” and “dumb.”
Contrary to what they may think, though, I do like some “normal” music once in a while too. I really do enjoy quite a few songs by Delirous?, Shane and Shane, Lifehouse, and even Newsboys. I try not to be a total music snob, though I fear I’m becoming somewhat of one, and I try to come to all music I hear with an open mind.
Jon Abel is one of those “normal” guys I’m starting to like. He sounds a lot like Matt Redman, Chris Tomlin, Tim Hughes, and other worship leader guys (this despite his incredibly cool suitcase). His lyrics are a little cliched, the music is a little boring, and the themes are a little over-used, but for those times that you really do just want some simple good Chris Tomlin-styled worship music, he’s perfect.
OK, so I’ve been getting so many free downloads from e-music recently that I’ve run out of ideas of who to download next. Well, I have a few albums lined up that I kinda’ want to get, and I’m sure I could find more, but rather than risk scraping the bottom of the barrel, I figured I’d get you all to lend me a hand.
Who should I download off of e-music now? Who’s your favorite? Who do you think I would like?
I don’t care what style of music it is, but I’m not hugely into rap, R&B, or CCM. I’d like to find more good music by Christians but I’ll take any good suggestions for non-Christian indie stuff too.
Help me out and tell me who I need to download!
P.S. For the uninformed, you seriously need to sign up for e-music. I’ve lost track of the number of free downloads I’ve gotten in the past month, but it’s well into the hundreds. When you sign up for a free trial, you get 50 free downloads. You can download your 50 and then cancel, or you can keep a subscription going at about 30 cents a song. If you keep a subscription going, I get 50 free downloads and you can go on to recruit people to sign up under you to get 50 free downloads too. They don’t have everything, but they have almost all the indie stuff you could ever want. It’s seriously a great deal, and if nothing else, just get your 50 free MP3s and then cancel.
If Stevie Wonder and Jack Johnson had a baby, not only would it be a completely disturbing set of circumstances, but that baby would probably sound a lot like Trevor Davis.
Who is this Trevor Davis? Read on, my wayward son. (Dumb song reference I know…)
I get music sent to me all the time at The Blah Blah, and while I like some of it, others I don’t care for. I get really awful music sent my way once in a while, but it’s pretty rare. Usually if I don’t like it, I can find someone who does.
Anyway, I recently received Trevor Davis’s new album Nothing Ringing True in the mail, and while it took me a while to like it, I think I’m won over now.
I’ve been getting into instrumental groups for a while now, and I’ve got a handful that I come back to over and over. I listen to them while praying, reading my Bible, working at the computer, driving the car, water skiing, parachuting, delousing mattresses…
About a month ago, my wife and I went to go see Explosions in the Sky in Milwaukee. You can see a review here, but the show was incredible. There were times when I wanted to cry, times when I wanted to get up and start dancing, times when I wanted to shout out in tongues as loud as I could (I am Spirit-filled after all)… For the next 75 minutes, I was lost in a land where nothing mattered but me, my wife, God, and the music of EITS. It was like through their music I was able to get away and ignore everything but what mattered.
Had it been a band with a vocalist singing about cars, girls, the death of a friend, or the guns of Brixton, I would have been taken into the world of the singer but not my own world. That’s one reason I like instrumental music - it lets you escape like nothing else.
Here are nine of my favorite instrumentalists you need to check out:
Explosions in the Sky - My favorite of the post-rock neo-classical instrumentalists.
Mogwai - You kinda’ have to include these kings of post-rock.
Foxhole - Get some horns involved and lots of loud guitar.
Sixty-five Days of Static - Speaking of loud guitar… and some sampling fun too. These guys can rock.
As the Poets Affirm - Trippy and a little dark and mysterious, with folk overtones. Great while praying.
Below the Sea - Moody, trippy, melodic, and awesome. Another good one to throw on while praying.
Unwed Sailor - Nice reverby guitar. Very pretty stuff.
Lightning Splits the Bark - Funky, synthy, and full of electronic samples and digital add-ons.
Don Peris - Folky, reverby, and pretty. Great chill music.
So, who are your favorite instrumental groups out there? I’m always on a quest to find great new music, so who should I look into?
After a long time of not being able to post MP3s to The Blah Blah, I’ve finally got my own hosting service at www.theblahblah.net set up to at least let me upload MP3s for your downloading pleasure.
Sometime, I’ll transfer the whole blog over there, but for now, just to have files hosted somewhere stable is a good thing.
But enough of that. You want to hear about John Mark McMillan. I know you do. I can tell.
John Mark McMillan, who has a name every Catholic grandmother in the world should fall in love with, is one of the new artists I found recently on emusic. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - sign up for emusic. It’s the smartest thing you can do for downloading cool music. Not only can you get 50 free downloads for just trying, but if you sign up for a monthly subscription, I get 50 free downloads and you get downloads at 30 cents a piece. Beat that, iTunes. And when you have a subscription, you can get your friends to sign up under you and earn you 50 downloads too. In the past month, I’ve probably gotten 300 free MP3s from people signing up under me. Don’t be dumb. Just sign up for emusic so I can stop talking about it.
Yeah, I know - the post title is dumb. Let’s just all agree on that so we can move on from there to other things.
Other things like the new album from Eugene Francis Jnr.
I know I’ve had a lot about Eugene on here lately, but that’s just because I really dig his music, and his publicity peeps keep sending me great new stuff. So… I’ve become a servant of The Man now I guess, putting up whatever comes my way. But at least I get to score free stuff.
Well, now that I’ve confessed that I’m a sellout, let me move on to the album itself. I scored a pre-release copy of The Golden Beatle last week from the nice folks at Legion Presents, and it’s almost everything I hoped it would be.
