Holidays seem to bring about an abundance of posts, but I’ll keep this one rather short. This is a tweet from last year from singer/songwriter Justin McRoberts. I was stuck by the power of its simplicity. This is a video for a song I mentioned in my soudtrack for Easter post.  It’s by Mineral, who to this day, remain one of the most influential bands of all time in my life and in the life of thousands of others.  Even though Chris Simpson didn’t intend for this to be a song about Easter, I listen to it with a set [...]

Earlier today I watched the Good Friday movie from Mars Hill during it’s live stream for Sydney (you can catch it throughout the day here), and a few things occurred to me.  One of those ideas was to put together a playlist of my favorite Easter songs. Some of these are blatant, some are oblique, some are great songs all-around, some are not, and some might not even reflect the writer’s original intent.  But they do portray different emotions, aspects, and perspectives, and stages of the Easter story.  Enjoy. Cool Hand Luke – “This Is Love” Dana Key – “The [...]

I wanted to do something special for the 10th anniversary of writing this song. I wanted to record with a friend of mine singing it to share with you guys for Christmas, but I wasn’t able to get that done. I spent some time over the past few days rewriting the music to make it something more appealing to my tastes now.  Perhaps I can get this and my new year’s song re-recorded with a great singer and share it with you soon. For now, I’ll just post the words cause they mean so much to me. I’m not as [...]

Merry Christmas! A friend of mine recently texted that a video I sent him had very little to do with Christmas. I responded with: “christmas has very little to with Christmas.” Well, these post and these songs have everything to do with Christmas, the real Christmas. It takes a lot of talent, skill, and hard work to make a good song. It takes even more to make a good Christmas song. So much so, very few people have done this. But look no further, these are some of the best worship songs I’ve ever heard. Most are performed by their [...]

Following up on two previous posts about the best albums of the year and the best versions of “O Holy Night,” today I will focus on the best renditions of the other Christmas Carols I enjoy. A carol is traditionally a song of praise and that’s what these songs are. I’ve listened to over 1000 Christmas songs (proof) over the past few weeks and have been keeping notes, both mentally and using Sticky Notes, which is just on of the great new features in Windows 7.  When I envisioned this idea, I thought it was going to be just one [...]

I’ll cut right to the chase on this post: music up front; explanation in the back,or after the non-existent jump, if you will.  Listen to the 7 best version of “O Holy Night” below with the Grooveshark widget. I signed up for this site a long time along when it was invite only and never did much with it. Now it’s public and better than ever and thanks to this Zepfanman post, I became aware of it again. Stream and read away. “O Holy Night” is probably my favorite Christmas hymn. I’ve always liked the song. The simple arpeggio open [...]

Much like the Best of 2009 post I am also writing , this  reflects the best media I have been exposed to during the year.  A few of these came out a year or two ago, but I first heard them this holiday season. Some will be renditions of the traditional carols we all grew up with and some will be more modern originals. The challenge with a lot of Christmas music is there is a plethora (in the correct sense of the word) of it and most of it is old and sounds like it. A lot of these [...]

Mineral (the band) is one of the most influential band from the mid-90′s. They were about as big as you could be without selling out or appearing on MTV. All the members of Mineral went on to pursue other musical endeavors like The Gloria Record, Pop Unknown, Imbroco, and several others. Along with Sunny Day Real Estate they were the personification of what music should feel like. The video below if for their song called “February.” As far as I know it was only released as a 7″ but it is one of my favorite songs of all time. This [...]

…as long as you don’t have a problem with Christmas. I’m not really big into decorations. I don’t decorate for different holidays. I barely even decorate my room. But I don’t mind that most people do. From mid-October until after January 6 (my dad’s birthday and Epiphany) it seems most houses have all kinds of decorations in- and outisde, from the Charlie Brown motiff with scrawny tree to that of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation style. I grew up in a Southern Baptist church and we celebrated a “fall festival.” It was basically the same thing as Halloween but without the [...]

Happy Easter! This is a first person account of what I imagine to be the thoughts going through the mind of Barabbas after being released from jail and watching Jesus take his place and then being executed.  I originally penned the song about 10 years ago but felt it was rather trite and contrived and I never really liked the music.  So last year, I completely rewrote the music rearranged the song. so how did all this come to be this dark cloud that’s hanging over me it wasn’t supposed to be like this i just wanted to make a [...]