As I have been counting down to U2's approaching album release (currently rumored to be a Feb drop...we'll see) by highlighting some of the lesser known songs in the collection, I have come to a realization. Observers might think I have deified Bono. For the record...Bono is not Jesus. And sometimes U2 release bad songs. Really bad songs, even. So to prove my objectivity, may I present for your listening torture...Paint it Black.



Man, the Stones have to be pissed. This is horrible. The original is so great. The pounding downbeat. The constant feeling that the song is getting as close as possible to completely spinning out of control without actually doing so. Nice clean guitar parts. Strong vocals.

Yeah, so U2 decided to do an inverse Black and put it on the B-side of one of their singles. What an unmitigated disaster. I'm trying to decide which is worse. The U2 version, or Bruce Willis absolutely butchering the vocals in a live performance and thinking he's the shizz. It's close, but the U2 version probably takes the cake.

To exacerbate matters, this failed experiment opened U2 up to the curse of "What Goes Around, Comes Around". You butcher a great song? Bam. Right back at ya' with a horrible cover of one of your own songs.

Except this ain't no simple measure for measure. This is your own sin being revisited on your head exponentially. I'll warn you. The following link isn't for the faint of heart. It's pretty ugly almost vulgar.

It looks as though The Wiggles did a cover of Angel of Harlem.

The Wiggles have been good to our family. We Tivo them every day on the Disney Channel so that Elli has fresh episodes to watch. But dang. This is almost enough for me to start an all out boycott. Angel of Harlem is a wonderful song when done by U2. But Captain Feathersword rocking the falsetto part? Nothing good can come of this.

I hope you've learned your lesson, U2. You are not infallible.

Renew and Restore

I have very firm standards when it comes to Christmas music. I only start listening to the celebratory tunes on Thanksgiving, and then I cut myself off at 11:59pm on December the 25th. Some years provide a longer listening season than others. It just depends on how the calendar shakes out.

It has come to a point where it takes substantial effort to keep my sacred practice. There seems to be some kind of twisted competition between radio stations in Kansas City to see who can be the first to start playing. I wouldn't be surprised if next year one of them begins on the 4th of July. Without regard to the cultural trend of perpetual Christmas (which I'm convinced is a cagey effort to make us spend more money) I throw absolute fits if anyone plays Christmas music in my presence before Thanksgiving. I'm that serious about protecting the yuletide chastity of my ears.

But once turkey day finally rolls around, it's on. Rockin' the Christmas casbah. I currently have three favorites in my Christmas Playlist.

• Jewel's Joy: A Holiday Collection - Jewel is an interesting cat. She's done dance/pop. She's done acoustic. Now she's getting ready to drop a country album. I guess that's what happens when you are married to a rodeo stud. This album is about as eclectic as her career. Very creative in her use of vocals and instruments. Classy takes on classic carols. Her Rudolf is fantastic. Her Ave Maria will melt your face off. My favorite Christmas album.
• Mowtown Christmas - I've never found the actual Mowtown Christmas album cd. My dad had one that spanned two records (actual big black records), that he had then copied onto a cassette tape. One Christmas he, my sister and I sat on the dining room floor and listened to the entire thing. So there is some nostalgia wrapped up in this selection, but I think the music can stand on it's own without the warm memories. The Jackson 5 sing Santa Claus is Coming to Town and I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. There was a version of We Three Kings that was used in A Claymation Christmas. Very snazzy.
• A Christmas Festival with The Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler - No voices. Just really good instrumentals. A nice mix of power and grace. Could use a little more Cowbell.

That's pretty much my playlist. We have a Mariah Carey Christmas album, but I can only take one or two songs at a time. The lady just doesn't do subtle. Everything is loud and intense. There is one Mannheim Steamroller song that I always enjoy. Carol of the bells with special guest Metallica, I believe.

Do you have any favorites? I'm always open to suggestions. And aren't we all a little surprised there is no Guitar Hero: Christmas ? I know I sure am.

Renew and Restore.

My understanding is that U2 didn't write this song. It was penned by a Irish folk singer, and they picked it up. I'm glad they did.

Honestly, this has been my favorite U2 song for the past couple of years. I think there is something to the understatedness of the live version. There is nothing about it that is over the top. Just powerful words of a r conciliatory dream over the backdrop of a simple piano loop and an almost tribal drum beat.

One of the things I have always appreciated about U2 is that there is a balance to their library. Ireland has seen a lot in terms of intra-country strife. So you have a lot of songs in the library that address the pain of that infighting. Then you have another collection of songs that zoom out and address other injustices/conflicts on a more global level.

But then you have another collection of songs that mirror the first two. They are hopeful songs of wholeness that keep you from getting completely incapacitated by the level of brokenness in the world. You have your '40' and your 'Beautiful Day' and your "North and South' that prophetically constructive and stand in contrast to the prophetic damnation of 'Bloody Sunday' and 'Bullet the Blue Sky'.

A bonus of the performance I found of the song is the joy of people watching. Seriously. Can you ever imagine U2 going on a show like this when their album drops next year. No way.



Renew and Restore

Last minute change. I had a serious post all lined up for today. But then I got on facebook this morning, and a high school classmate of mine posted a video that everyone needs to see. Thank you, Amita. You are added to my list of heroes.

Back in 1992, the Blazers were the bomb. One of the best teams in the NBA bomb. Portland was gaga over their favorite team, and it seemed like every radio station was issuing their own Blazers-themed songs. I remember 1190 KEX had a different song for each round of the playoffs. It was musical mayhem.

But the thing about 1190 KEX is that they weren't all that hip to the jive. It was more of a station for middle aged adults, and thus I mostly listened to it because it's what my parents had on in the car. It was fine. I liked the songs. The hosts were funny. Paul Harvey was interesting. And they did broadcast all Blazers games, so they always had the hype machine going. Plus, sports radio hadn't really hit the big time yet, so there weren't a ton of other appealing options on the AM dial.

But on the FM? Back in 1992, everyone at Jackson Middle School knew that all the cool kids listened to Z100. 100.3 on the FM. Pop candy to the max. And being both the barometer and dictator of pop culture, they took the art of the Blazers song to a whole new level.

Mix the early 90's, pop music and athletes and what do you get? Magic. That's what you get.

Z100 concocted a song that is forever burned into my memory. Bust a Bucket celebrated everything great about the Blazers. It was catchy. It was so profound that I taped it off the radio one night, and then used my cassette tape dubber to make a 90-minute mixtape consisting entirely of a single song. Not much of a mixtape, actually. But fantastic, nonetheless.

Thankfully for all of us, Z100 also issued a music video for this song. I'd love to quote my favorite moments and point you toward particularly memorable timestamps in the video, but it's impossible. It's all great. So great that I cannot think of any description that would constitute hyperbole. I watched it three times in a row, and was literally pumping my fists and laughing in fits of joy and nostalgia.

Without further delay, I now present for your viewing and listening enjoyment...

Bust A Bucket. You're welcome.



Renew and Restore

As we await the drop of the next U2 album, we continue to look at some of the lesser known songs in the U2 library. Today's selection isn't so uplifting. Sorry. But there are a number of lines in the song that just resonate with me. Just really vivid images that I've wrestled with lately. So when the song came up in my itunes shuffle, it got the five stars, because I couldn't stop playing it.

Nobody else here baby
No one here to blame
No one to point the finger
Its just you and me and the rain

Nobody made you do it
No one put words in your mouth
Nobody here taking orders
When love took a train heading south

Broadly speaking, the theme of "God Fix Everything" is pretty pertinent. Because that's how we are, right? If God would just fix it, it would be easier to believe. Nevermind the fact that the brokenness around us just so happens to be a sign of our own habit of not relying on God, now we're like, "prove it".

Its the blind leading the blond

This is going to be a post sometime next week or the week after. But I just have to figure out how to say it without offending people who are very dear to me, and who I have really good relationship with. But one of my big struggles lately is what my place is in the community of believers. Like, how do you balance being a voice for justice while not getting completely embittered by how people are unknowingly contributing to paradigms of injustice? In a city where the rich and poor don't touch all that often, how do you give your all to what you are called to do, while at the same time not completely quitting on people who love Jesus but are blind to their own blindness at the moment? And maybe I'm not even saying it correctly in the moment. That's why it's a post for next week.

Its been a while since we saw that child
Hanging round this neighbourhood
You see his mother dealing in a doorway

I saw that play out a couple of months ago. It wrecked me. Bad. It was one of those moments where I asked myself "What the heck have we gotten ourselves into? And what are we really doing to make sure this does not happen in our society?"

So where is the hope and where is the faith
And the love...whats that you say to me
Does love...light up your christmas tree

This could stand to be in everyone's thanksgiving liturgy.

Jesus never let me down
You know jesus used to show me the score
Then they put jesus in show business
Now its hard to get in the door

'nuff said.

Every once in a while I flip over to MTV to take the pulse of pop culture. Gotta see what them kids are looking at these days. Guess what I learned? Britney Spears has a new video out. Culturally relevant again, I see.

The song itself is pretty catchy. It's called "Womanizer". A scathing critique of some dude who has a bunch of girl friends and uses women. Britney stands up to him. Lets him know he's not getting any attention from her. Really, it might be her best song in a long time. I mean, it's obviously a sliding scale, but still.

Things take a turn for the dumb with the video, however. This lady who is singing out against womanizers spends half the video...naked. I know I'm prone to hyperbole, but I'm serious. I would post the video, but it's essentially porn. She is laying completely naked in a sauna, covering only the most private of parts. Even for MTV it is pushing the envelope. The rest of the video finds Britney dancing around in her underwear.

Ok. Stop. This song could have stood on its own. But Britney's handlers come in and under the guise of creativity womanize her. In the process, they talk her into being complicit in her own objectification.

Now the video is on MTV. We all know that pop music is both a reflection and influence on pop culture. So now we are communicating to girls that they should liberate themselves from promiscuous men by cutting them out of the process. Why let someone else objectify you if you can just sell yourself and keep all of the profits?

But then I guess it isn't that different from what has happened in mainstream hip-hop and the black community. I mean, Robert Johnson (the founder of BET) is about as helpful to the black community as a plantation owner.

This is crazy.

Renew and Restore

A set of list for you today. The best of Music.

My Favorite Bluegrass(ish) Songs. A list inspired by my recent weekend at Winfield. Admittedly, not all of these songs are true bluegrass, but they are all inspired and all of the heez.

L. Vertigo (stripped banjo mix) - Bono and The Edge
K. Idlewild Blue - Outkast...Any hip-hop group that can use bluegrass is getting it done creatively.
J. I Want to be Ready - Ben Harper and the Blind Boys from Alabama
I. Landslide - The Dixie Chicks...Apologies to Stevie Nicks, but this version is better.
H. The One that Got Away - Pink...Oh man, I can't wait for her new album to drop.
G. I Saw The Light (Live) - David Crowder Band
F. The Fox - Nickel Creek
E. The Long Way Around - The Dixie Chicks
D. Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven - David Crowder Band...The line that best sums up American Evangelical Christianity. "Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die"
C. Black Horse and the Cherry Tree - KT Tunstall
B. The Lighthouse's Tale - Nickel Creek...They might not play it live anymore, but it's still da Bomb
A. Callin' Baton Rouge - New Grass Revival

Favorite Songs to Play on Guitar Hero III

• Miss Murder - AFI
• My Name is Jonas - Weezer
• Barracuda - Heart...Have you ever seen this video? Hilarious.
  
• When You Were Young - The Killers
• Cliffs of Dover - Eric Johnson
• La Grange - ZZ Top
• The Metal - Tenacious D
• Sabatoge - Beastie Boys
• Welcome to the Jungle - GNR
• The Devil Went Down to Georgia - Charlie Daniels Band...Perhaps the greatest moment in video game history. To beat the game you have to out-duel the Devil (who you have sold your soul to). From this point on, nothing that Guitar Hero or Rock Band do will live up to that storyline.
  

Songs I Want James Taylor to Cover - James Taylor just released an album of covers. Good move, considering he can sing songs better than 90% of the people who originally made them famous. However, the set list did not live up to my expectations. Some glaring omissions include...

~Christmas in Hollis - Run DMC
~Cows With Guns - Dana Lyons
~Comfort Eagle - Cake
~Boom - POD
~Biochemical Equation - Wu Tang Clan
~Man in the Mirrio - Michael Jackson
~Rompe - Daddy Yankee
~technologic - Daft Punk
~The Anthem -Good Charlotte

Renew and Restore

What a weekend. We packed up the jeep, headed south and busted out to Winfield, Kansas. The trip of the month was the 37th Annual Walnut Valley Festival, which is one of the finest Bluegrass music festivals in all the land. The Dixie Chicks and Nickel Creek made their way through Winfield back in the day, so it's historcially legit. Stacy's family has been going since the 3rd festival, though she and I have not been for five years. Funny. That's the same time grad school started in our family.

After a few year's off, we're back. Not a moment too soon. WVF, or "Winfield" as most call it, is a fantastic event. Wall-to-wall music for a handful of days as you camp out and kick it with fun people. This year, our "people" included most of Stacy's mom's side of her family. Music, camping and 4 kids under the age of three. What could be more fun?

There are a lot of things to appreciate about Winfield. The food. Sweet mamma, the food. Smoked turkey leg, homemade ice cream, rib dinner, cherry limeade, cookie. I sampled it all. And now I'm fat.

Not as fat as I would be had I not been tapping my foot and bobbing my head all weekend, mind you. You gotta love live Bluegrass. This ain't no American Idol, that's for sure. You can't hide behind your pretty looks or you swaying hips. Nope. You gotta bring the heat. We'll all enjoy the occasional ballad or slow song. But at some point you had better unleash the beast. Rock that mother on the downbeat and set the strings on fire, and the crowd will show you love.

My favorites on the weekend? David Munnelly Band brought the noise and the funk. Really nice Celtic band, there. The Greencards were my favorite. Two Australians and an Englishman aren't your typical bluegrass pedigree, but who cares? They rocked it. Buy their stuff. I really wanted to like Mountain Heart. Everyone else did. And I liked their CD. But in all fairness, I only got to hear them live for about 30 minutes, so I'm not going to jump out there and act like they are my BFF's.

The one thing I don't get about the weekend? What in tarnation is it about banjo music that makes people think they don't have to wear bras? Seriously people. We can go to a music festival and keep our underwear on.

Renew and Restore

“Hip-Hop ain't dead ‘casue the pulse is in us/
I got the everclear flow they mimosa wit it /
We are the hope of the culture they posed to listen/
And I’m ‘posed ta pivot like I'm a forward in the league/

I’m Oden wit it.”

-Wale, from “Rising Up”

The Roots are similar to most rap groups in that they claim to change the game. But unlike the majority of their counterparts, they make good on their promise both musically and lyrically. Over the past 13 years The Roots have been one of the few truly prophetic voices in the mainstream hip hop community, and Rising Down lives up to the expectation that your ears and mind will be challenged when you take in the album.

There are moments when the album is vintage Roots. Snares and cymbals drive a number of the tracks, and many of the flows embody the cadence and attitude of classic rappers from the early ‘80’s. “I Will not Apologize” and “Unwritten” speak clearly to The Roots hometown of Philadelphia. They even bring in what at times appears to be their entire crew of close friends (including Mos Def and Common), and incorporate up and coming rappers from the Philadelphia area.

But the album is far from a myopic project that speaks only to insiders. A trend in The Roots ideology that continues in Rising Down is the expansion of their message. Not content to stay confined in a small philosophical box, the album’s title track opens with commentary on pharmaceutical drug corporations, the state of the environment and government surveillance.

Perhaps the most ambitions track on the entire album, the unsettling “Singing Man”, poetically tells the story of the campus shooter, the child soldier and the suicide bomber. To give voice to these characters without glorifying them is a delicate procedure, but The Roots manage to tackle it with surgical precision. By pulling the beat from the final verse and adding slight voice distortion, the group is able to convince the listener that they have truly delved into the mind of the suicide bomber.

If you do pick up Rising Down, please be aware that it is not a single-sensory experience. Like any prophetic voice, ?uestlove understood that sometimes the poetry needs to be explained for it to truly have maximum impact. The fruits of this understanding are concise but informative liner notes that fill in some of the gaps for the listeners and help them to see the methodology behind the raw emotion of the album.

Rising Down’s biggest weakness is that it focuses so intensely on describing social ills that it fails to offer much in the way of prescription. The Roots are talented and perceptive enough to be a more constructive force if their critiques were interlaced with moments of hopefulness. I’ll be the first to admit that life in the inner city can seem unconscionably bleak at times, but in the midst of all that is wrong there are still moments of joy and happiness that help us push though. The Roots have done a marvelous job of showing us what to turn from, but their message could be even more powerful if they gave us something to turn toward.

Almost peed my pants a little bit this morning when I read this story from atu2.com in my reader.

U2 frontman Bono has inadvertently given French fans a preview of their new album, which is reportedly called No Line On The Horizon.

Cheeky fans wandering near the Irish singer and activist's home in Eze, in the south Of France, heard his distinctive voice booming out of the family's villa and recorded clips of it on a mobile phone.

Song snippets of the previously unreleased tracks are on YouTube and fans now expect they will on the supergroup's 12th studio record, out on November 15.

That's only half the story. To read the other half, you need to go to the site itself, and there are a couple more juicy tidbits there. Oh, man. I'm so excited. For the album, but also for the prospects of the accompanying tour.

So after reading this, I head over to Youtube. Conflicted, I enter "No Line On The Horizon" into the search bar and fire it up. A bunch of things show up, but I just skim over the videos. I don't really want to hear the clips. Not on Youtube. No, I want to hear them on the morning of November 15 through quality Sony headphones headphones in my comfy recliner with a cup of coffee. But the temptation to get a peek. Oh, my poor virgin ears.

Then, a reprieve. Someone has posted and acoustic version of Vertigo that I have never seen before. Is that Edge playing a banjo? Sho' 'nuff. It's tizzight. I don't know where it came from, and itunes doesn't have it registered. That's fine. It should be enough to tide me over until 11/15.



On a side note, here's a thought provoking (though mature) exercise for you in light of this video. If you can't handle adult themes, we'll see ya next week.

Anyone left?

Ok. So, it has been said that you can interpret U2 songs through the lenses of both spirituality and sexuality. I've read books where authors do one or the other and come to drastically different conclusions about what Bono is talking about in a given song. Like, some folks will listen to the lyrics for Mysterious Ways and hear a poem about the Holy Spirit. Others hear a spicy poem about a beautiful woman.

The lyrics to Vertigo are equally as interesting. It certainly could be a statement about the love of God, but it could also make for a video that would garner an R rating.

Fair Dinkum

A lot of people bag on the cover. I agree that it is not as creative as penning an original song. However, there is still an art to the cover. For instance, while I do not consider Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, Whateverhiddiesnameisnow to be one of the greatest MC's of all time, I have to say that I enjoy the music he puts out. His reinterpretations of preexisting songs are always catchy and sometimes addictive.

I find covers to be even more intriguing when they go cross-genre. Taking songs from other styles and totally flipping them out. Remember that dance song "Word Up"? Well an obscure group by the name of Willis took it, slowed it down, and flipped it to the point where it is straight hot sizzle. Apparently you can even chacha waltz to it.

My current favorite cover comes from Mat Weddle of Obadiah Parker. He took Outkast's "Hey Ya", and went acoustic on it. Wow, wow, wow. You had better believe that I bought that from itunes in about 2 seconds.



Fair Dinkum

This weekend we had the opportunity to take in the "Symphony on the Flinthills". For the third year now, the Kansas City Symphony has trekked out to central Kansas and performed a concert in the middle of a local pasture. We missed the first two, but Stacy's parents were able to secure tickets this year which allowed us to join the festivities.

If you think putting on the concert in the middle of a pasture is a wacky idea, you don't know the half of it. It sounds like a lot of work, but to see the thing firsthand really helps you understand how much of a logistical beast and event like this is.

For starters, the roads in Morris County, KS aren't built to accommodate 5,000 people at once. So you need to be prepared to be patient on your way in and out. Secondly, pastures don't have paved parking lots. Thus, you park your car in a pasture and then proceed to walk about a mile to the concert site. Thirdly, pastures are not air conditioned, nor do they have permanent seating. So you had better haul your chair on your mile hike, or plunk down your $2 to rent a folding chair at the site. And dress for some serious sweating, my friend.

Even with all of that, the experience was a grand affair. I loved it. The planners nestled the symphony in a soft valley, and roped off one side of the valley for seating. It made for a great view, especially as the sun started to set on our right and the moon shone brighter and brighter on our left. Barbecue was available, and I was more than happy to avail myself to the services of Bad Ol' Bern's meat smoking abilities.

But the undisputed highlight of the night was the performance art that was performed this year. During the first half of the concert, ranchers rode the hillside behind the symphony and provided a wonderful compliment to the music. But that was nothing compared to what they were storing up for the second half of the concert. The ranchers executed a full-on cattle drive across the back of the hillside while the symphony busted out the theme from the Magnificent Seven. I don't even have a word to describe what it is like to witness something like that.

As excited as I was to attend this event, it managed to live up to the hype. It's easy to see why it sold out in just 4 hours.

Fair Dinkum

As we await the drop of the next U2 album, we continue to look at some of the lesser known songs in the U2 library. Today's selection is a love song. In some respects, it's pretty simple. Fairly simple vocals and a background track that seems tailor fit for radio. Lyrically, there is a little more going. The beauty of the whole things is that on the surface it is a song that you can play and understand as a love/jealousy story. But deeper than that there are some pretty amazing lines of poetry that have deeper and, ahem, shall we say, errrrrr..."saucier" meanings. It's one of the trademark U2 traits, especially on the love songs we find in Achtung Baby.



On a side note, I noticed the other day that I have three highly rated songs on my itunes playlist that all have the wild horse imagery. Alicia Keys and Adam Levine did a Wild Horses duet that they covered from the Rolling Stones, and Natasha Bedingfield gave us Wild Horses as well. I absolutely love both songs.

I wonder what it is about that wild horse imagery that is so powerful to us. Must be our cowboy roots. That, and the fact that horses are powerful and magnificent. But for me, it's mostly the cowboy thing.

Fair Dinkum

I fully understand the joys of mindless television. It's not like we sit around our house watching PBS all day. I enjoy Survivor. Stacy is a fan of America's Next Top Model. It's all good.

But there are times when television throws me a curve ball and surpasses what I thought would be the lowest the bar could possibly be set.

Enter Miss Rap Star Supreme, courtesy of our friends at VH1. Mind you, VH1 has a tack record of giving us sub-par rap reality shows. Almost 18 months ago I noticed that VH1's White Rapper Show was racist against white folks. And now, VH1 is at it again.

I'm not going to go into all of the issues I have with Miss Rap. It's casting is similar to the White Rapper Show, in that it picks a bunch of unstable people who can't rap very well (but think they can) and throws them in a house together so that they can battle it out on the way to rap stardom. Whatever.

The mess of a show can best be understood by the single scene I caught by chance this past weekend.

The women were mad at each other and about to throw down. So the host comes in and tells them to get ready, because they are going to a house party to get some air. Lo and behold, they end up at the mansion of rap star Too $hort. Mind you, $hort Dogg gained fame in the '90's by lyrically exploiting women. Well, these particular hip hop heads didn't seem to care. They went nuts when they realize that $hort was there.

In an ingenious act of scripting, the host then pitted the ladies in a rap battle against $hort. He proceeded to absolutely kill them with his rhymes and drop some bars that were indicative of his misogynistic trademarks.

The crazy thing is that the ladies ate it up. Absolutely loved it. And I'm like, hold up...wait a minute. This dude disrespects you, he takes a dookie on your gender, and you're going to give it up for him? Really? Where else would that happen? If a white dude got up in front of a crowd of black folks and proceeded to drop a bunch of N Bombs and deprecating language, how would the crowd respond? Please.

But it gets even more unbelievable after that. The ladies have a chance to battle back at $hort, so they take some time out to pen their responses. What both groups come back with are raps that end with the idea that these ladies will take $hort's women from him in the end. In essence, they all bought into this economy where the currency is women. They felt as though their legitimacy as MC's was contingent on how many women they could get. Wow. Objectifying your own to get up.

So I'm ticked at VH1. I love Hip Hop, but it needs to get over its misogyny. And it's hard when giant media outlets just feed the monster without bringing any kind of reason or thought into the discussion. And, might I add, that they really make my job a lot harder. Because the girls we work with eat this stuff up and now we have to deprogram all of this junk.

Stupid VH1.

Fair Dinkum

A little practical piggy back on my last post...

The other day I caught the last minute or so of the new Madonna and Justin Timberlake video. I didn't like it. My first thought was, "Dang. Madonna's lost it. She's just not the artist she used to be."

Flash forward a couple of days later. I'm sitting in my car and I hear this song that sounds amazing. I turn it up. I'm bobbing my head. Feeling it.

Yeah. You guessed it. Same song.

As I was pondering this crazy phenomenon, I started to think about what gender and sexuality had to do with my differing opinions of the same song. If I am really honest with myself (and everyone reading this on the internets), then I have to admit that part of the reason that I didn't like the song when I saw the video was due to gender and age bias. I wasn't really thrilled with the idea of a 49 1/2 year old woman dressed in a flesh-colored body suit with black knee high gogo boots, who just so happened to be dancing with a young man.

Now some people probably look at that and commend Madonna for breaking gender stereotypes, and proving that a (nearly) 50 year old woman can be sexy. It is a statement that continues to be played out over and over again. It's something I attribute to the Desperate Housewives phase. In the eyes of some, we have made progress.

I'm not sure that it's progress, though. I just think that the music industry has proved they are equal opportunity exploiters of female sexuality. The age of sexy is going up as the likes of Madonna continue to define themselves in terms of sensuality. But at the same time the age of sexy is going down as media types (women media types, I might add) are willing to publish sensual photos of teenage entertainment sensation Miley Cirus.

Good for the media. Give them a cookie.

I think that healthier signs of progress will be when people (myself included) aren't judging the value of something based on sexual and sensual bias, be it intentional or unintentional. Progress will be made when we can respect the beauty and value of middle aged women in a way that doesn't force them to virtually put out. Progress will be made when we get to the point where we are able to halt and reverse the increasingly disturbing trend of sexualizing our teen entertainers.

Fair Dinkum

I've been a fan of CeeLo since back in the day. During my high school years, you could often find me rocking "Goodie Mob" in my cd player during bus rides around town. It hit. The flows were tight. It was unlike anything else on the market at the time.

Fast forward 10 years, and CeeLo is still bringing a different type of flavor. He's not a part of a rap group anymore, per se. Now, he has teamed up with Danger Mouse to wreak havoc on the music scene and all across the airwaves.

My initial impression of The Odd Couple was that it was a very challenging album to listen to. It's almost as though Cee and Danger were having a competition in the studio. I imagine Cee furiously pouring out his heart on a legal pad and feeling as though he was taking it to another level, only to have Danger pass the headphones and share some sick beats that raised the bar a whole 'nother notch. The sample would then send Cee back to his notepad, his poetry bubbling up and frothing over more intensely than before.

So what do you get when you combine downbeats, dissonant harmonies and uniquely transparent lyrics? A freaking awesome album, that's what. The word that best describes it is "gritty". It is just so reminiscent of those vintage WuTang cuts circa the mid- to late-1990's. In some ways, I'm a little bit surprised that the label gave these guys the freedom to create and produce such an atypical album for mainstream consumption. But then again, even the labels are willing to throw us a little steak in the midst of the blizzard of cotton candy on occasion.


Fair Dinkum

Word on the street is that U2 is dropping a new album in October. You know what that means? Awesomeness. AND...a 2009 or 2010 tour.

Just so we don't go into shock when all of this finally goes down, I decided to start a new feature on the blog. There are tons of U2 songs that everyone has heard before. But there are also a lot that are unfamiliar to the average music fan. I thought it would be fun to talk a little bit about those songs so that when the next album arrives we will be worked up into a full lather.

Today's entry is my new favorite unofficial Easter song, Window in the Skies. If Bono's voice wasn't so distinctive, I'd email all of the worship pastors I know and tell them that I just heard the best new Christ Tomlin song. Then we could actually sing it at church.

The rule has been disproved,
The stone it has been moved,
The grave is now a groove,
All debts are removed...
Oh can't you see what love has done?

For real, dogg. That's tight. And though the video is low budget, I thought it was really well done.



Now I cannot in good conscience tell you to run out and purchase the U218 album if you already have a bunch of U2 cd's sitting around. After all, it's a bunch of previously released singles with a couple of new songs on it. But if you don't have much U2 in your library, it's a good buy.

Fair Dinkum

I watched the Grammy's for about 5 minutes. Long enough to see Alicia Keys perform, and mention to my wife that I really want to attend a show should she swing through KC. When tour dates were finally released, there was the coveted KC date staring me in the face.

I just so happens that the show is on the same night as our huge awards ceremony at The Hope Center. No Alicia in KC for me. Onto plan B.

Checking out other dates, I scoped to see what would be within a manageable 4 hour drive. And there it was. St. Louis. But what is this? Another day I can't attend due to a work commitment. Well, freak my leg.

So no Ms. Keys for me. I'm bummed. I guess this Thursday's Aaron Mitchum Band concert will have to do as a replacement. It should be an adequate replacement, I imagine.

Also on the musical horizon, a new Gnarls Barkley album. CeeLo Green and Danger Mouse up to their musical shenanigans again. I was watching the new video on Youtube and peed my pants. "Run away. Run away. White children. Run for your life." All of this with a Justin Timberlake cameo. I'd post the video here, but apparently it can cause Epileptic seizures. Who knew?

On a completely non-musical note: Is it possible to get the smell of baby spit up off of your pants without taking them off and washing them? I don't think so. This morning as we were walking out of the house, Elli spit up her string cheese onto my pants. I didn't have time to change my outfit, so I wiped them off, hit them with Lysol and then spritzed with some cologne. Unfortunately, I can still smell residual spit up. I probably should have "accidentally" spilled some bbq sauce on my pants at lunch, but I wasn't thinking clearly.

Fair Dinkum.

Dear will.i.am

Congratulations. The "Yes We Can" video you made featuring Senator Obama is amazing. It is the single best piece of political propoganda I have ever seen. As a person who has been luke-warm about Sen. Obama's Presidential aspirations, I was ready to go out and vote for him after I watched that video. I've probably watched it 20 times since it dropped on YouTube a couple of weeks ago. Which raises an obvious question.

Where in the heck has this been the last five years?

Before you guys made it big, I thought you would change hip hop. You were revolutionary. You were different. There was a social conscious to your music. Then, you brought on Fergie, dropped the Elephunk record and sold out to pop rap's tired conventions of sexism and appetite for a good party.

Then Fergie spun off into her solo career, and things got worse. You produced an album that had her asking

How come everytime you come around,
My London, London bridge, wanna go down like,
London, London, London, wanna go down like,
London, London, London, we goin’ down like…

What depth. I was glad to see her living up to her lyrics in the music video for said song by doing a strip tease on a table while wearing underwear emblazoned with a British Flag on the butt.

To be honest, I'd given up hope. I had written you off as a guy who went for the money grab and was not willing to follow in the footsteps of Talib Kwali, The Roots and Common. I figured you were so happy with commercial success that you would not dare drop anything that would let people think that you had a depth and a social conscious. Those attributes don't sell records.

But then you surprised me with this piece of musical wizardry. Strong work. I hope it becomes the norm and not the exception.



Fair Dinkum

Nothing like a little Conjunctivitis (read: pink eye) to really put one in a good mood. Last week I went to check out the much acclaimed U23D movie. It was great. Bono popped right out of the screen and sang to me. I shouldn't have swooned so hard for his sweet serenade, though. He gave me pink eye.

At least that is what I'm going to tell myself. It sounds way better than "I got pink eye from the nasty dude who used the 3D goggles before me". That's nasty.

Pink eye aside, U23d was amazing. Prior to the movie starting, I sat in the dark auditorium and doubted why I was there. Could I really be entertained for 90 minutes by some guys singing? Is digital 3D all it is cracked up to be?

Yes and Yes.

The film was beautiful. So beautiful that I was entranced by both the crowd and the band. The last 3D movie I saw was Michael Jackson's amazing performance in Captain EO, circa 1989. We've come a long way since el capitan.

The theater did us all a favor and blasted the volume loud enough for the bass lines to rock my sternum. Not the ear-bleeding volume that we are afforded at an actual concert, but a nice volume nonetheless.

I was a little surprised by the set list. More political and less of a party than I would have expected. The inclusion of Bullet the Blue Sky was a shocker. The fact that the footage came from the Argentina concert made it an appropriate inclusion however.

I suggest everyone go check it out. Just make sure you take some Lysol.

I can't wait to go see the Hannah Montana 3D concert this week so that I can find out which one is better.

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike.

Did you know that HM3D will run you $15 per ticket? Dang. That's twice what I paid for my pink eye. What a ripoff.

Fair Dinkum