I need to buy a CD...

In a few weeks, I'm making an international trip, and I need your help. One of my personal traditions is to buy a CD before a trip overseas and listen to it a LOT during that experience. Then, once I'm home, I've made an emotional/memory attachment between that CD and that trip.

The first attachment was accidental, during my first trip with the fam to Europe back in high school. I only had 2 tapes with me (CDs recorded onto tapes, old-school style), so I listened to those 2 tapes for the entire trip. It's been 20 years since that trip, but anytime I hear either CD, I'm reminded of the experience.

So, I'd like your suggestions on a recent/new CD that I should consider buying for my trip in mid-March. No boundaries, no rules on the suggestions. Maybe I'll pick a suggestion that falls way outside my usually tastes. We'll see!

Music at the airport.

When I left Sacramento on Monday morning, there was a musician in the B concourse, adding musical cheer to the atmosphere. I was tired and a little cranky, so I didn't have a full appreciation of his contribution.

Apparently, this may be a holiday trend at airports this year:

It was an odd sight, to be sure: a rock show amid a tempest of luggage carts, weary airline crews and rushed passengers. But this is the exact reaction the airport's marketing and communication manager, Jane Sullivan, was hoping for when she tapped local musician Marc Capelle to curate a series of concerts at SFO [San Francisco International Airport], billed as You Are Hear.

The intent was to give travelers and the 30,000 employees at the airport a bit of entertainment during the hectic holiday season, and maybe make the whole travel routine a little less stressful for everyone involved.

"People keep telling me it's an unexpected delight, which is a phrase you don't normally hear at the airport," Sullivan said.

Check out the full story here, on the SF Chronicle's website.

Lyrical thoughts: Volume 1.

Sheryl Crow - God Bless This Mess

Daddy’s in the hallway
Hanging pictures on the wall
Mama’s in the kitchen
Making casseroles for all
My brother came home yesterday
From somewhere far away
He doesn’t look like I remember
He just stares off into space
He must’ve seen some ugly things
He just can’t seem to say

God bless this mess
God bless this mess

Got a job in town
Selling insurance on the phone
With Robert and Teresa
And two con men from back home
Everyone I call up doesn’t have the time to chat
Everybody is so busy doing this and doing that
Something has gone missing

And it makes me kinda sad, oh

God bless this mess
God bless this mess
God bless this mess

Heard about the day
that two skyscrapers came down
Firemen, policemen
And people came from all around
The smoke covered the city
And the body count arise
The president spoke words of comfort
With tears in his eyes
Then he led us as a nation
Into a war all based on lies, oh

God bless this mess
God bless this mess
God bless this mess
God bless this mess

Some iTunes purchases.

I'm not the kind of person to go around telling the world what iTunes songs I buy and load onto my device. There are a few reasons for this.

First, I don't buy individual songs. Call me a bizarre hybrid, but I usually buy entire albums from iTunes. Haven't bought a physical CD in a long, long time. But I still enjoy getting the entire experience of an album, and on several occasions I've discovered songs that I really like -- but they wouldn't have been original picks if I didn't buy the entire album.

Second, I haven't been buying a lot of iTunes stuff lately. I've just gotten back in the habit in the last couple of weeks. So for quite some time there really wasn't anything to say on this subject.

Third, most of my purchases are Christian music. Beyond that, most of those purchases are worship CDs. Is this bad? Of course not. But there's a certain attitude among ministry bloggers about Christian music and such. I agree that much of it is weak and mediocre. But the same can be said of most mainstream music, too. Hence the success of American Idol.

All of this leads me to the last few days.

Here are the albums I've purchased recently (within the last week, basically). It truly is an odd mix:

Detours, by Sheryl Crow

Hard Candy, by Counting Crows

God of this City, by Passion

Relentless, by Natalie Grant

We Need Each Other, by Sanctus Real

Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto; Isaac Stern, Leonard Bernstein & New York Philharmonic

Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto; Berliner Philharmoniker, Joshua Bell & Michael Tilson Thomas

Yes, quite a diverse mix. Haven't heard much from Sheryl Crow in years, sounded like an interesting album. Used to be a huge Counting Crows fan in the mid-'90s but lost track over the years. Love almost everything from the Passion worship people. Natalie Grant's stuff sounded intriguing. Usually love Sanctus Real (and I've been listening to it almost nonstop since last night and I really love this one).

And why two versions of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto? Each musician and orchestra interprets the work differently and I wanted to hear some new versions. I already own copies of the concerto by Jascha Heifetz and Kyoko Takezawa. Of these new versions, I really like the Bell interpretation. Stern is an incredible violinist, of course, but it's a slower rendition. Too slow for my tastes.

Our worship experiment.

We did something in our youth service this week that I've heard discussed many times but never seen implemented. I've even talked about it in the past but finally felt it was time for us to attempt it. It's a pretty crazy experiment.

We turned the crowd away from the band. Or we put the band behind the crowd. However you want to say it.

And the world didn't stop spinning. Remarkable.

Our youth recently moved into a "new" facility. It's new for us; it's either the 10th or 11th "home" we've had on our church campus. Or maybe the number is much higher. I keep losing count.

Last month, on my mini-sabattical/personal spiritual retreat, this was one of the ideas I had as a way of helping our students focus more on what worship is all about. There really were two reasons for moving the band behind the crowd.

1. It's good for the band. It's too easy for student musicians to get involved simply because they get the attention and the eyeballs and the focus. That's not the purpose of worshiping God through music. Our goal is to lead young people into God's presence. Moving the band helps the band members remember what their role IS and what their role ISN'T in the service.

2. It's good for the crowd. One student asked me, "Well, what will we look at if the band isn't up front?" Well, the words on the wall -- if you don't know the lyrics to the songs. And if you do know the lyrics, you could close your eyes. Lift up your hands. Clap your hands. Kneel in prayer. Focus more of your energy on WHOM you're worshiping.

So, just as we entered that segment of the service, we explained to the crowd why we had modified the room. We asked them to not turn around and watch the musicians. We asked them to focus on the words they were singing and the reason we sing.

And then we led. And worship went better than it has in a long, long time. Our musicians felt freer. I felt free vocally. I didn't feel the need to "push" or "drag" people into worship. The students didn't turn around. Many of them lifted up their hands. Many of them really seemed to get what we were doing.

Only drawback? With no one up front, many people struggled to clap on the correct beat. You know what? If kids are more focused on the real reason for worship, I can live with that drawback.

It's a one-week experiment that worked well for us. We'll see how things go next week. Would I recommend it to others? Well, I'm not gonna write a book or build a whole theology around "band in the back." It's meeting a need in our group. A month from now, six months from now, a year from now -- at some point we'll likely switch back. When we're ready.

Denegrating language.

Great article today from The Associated Press talking about hip-hop culture's attitudes toward women. The thoughts stem from all the controversy surrounding Don Imus and his unintelligent comments this month.

Fighting in vain to keep his job, radio host Don Imus claimed that rappers routinely "defame and demean black women" and call them "worse names than I ever did."

That's an argument many people made as the Imus fallout intensified, culminating with his firing Thursday for labeling the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos." Now that Imus has been silenced (for the moment), some critics are moving down the radio dial to take on hip-hop, boosting the growing movement against harmful themes in rap.

"We all know where the real battleground is," wrote Kansas City Star columnist Jason Whitlock. "We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show."

Chris Sligh, 4Him and American Idol.

Sounds like the opening line to an old Johnny Carson "Carnac the Magnificent" skit. Sorry kids, probably too old of a reference for ya.

So, I'm scanning through websites today and came across a news article about Chris Sligh getting bumped off "American Idol." Gotta be honest: I really don't care about the show, even though I've watched more of this season than all the other seasons combined. But I know Sligh has gotten lots of attention in Christian circles because he's a worship leader at his church.

This article pointed out that Sligh used to attend the ultraconservartivehyperfundamentalist (pretend you're speaking German on that one) Christian school Bob Jones University. Apparently, Sligh got kicked out for "attending a contemporary Christian concert featuring the group 4Him."

You're kidding, right? 4Him is still around?

Oh, and you're kidding about the college kickin' him out for such a silly "offense," right? Negatory, says the story. It's true.

This is crazy on multiple levels. First, 4Him hasn't had a "hit" song since at least the 1990s or so. Second, Sligh is the long-lost half-brother to Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons; this is absolute fact. Third, why is a 28-year-old singer/worship leader listening to drivel like 4Him? Fourth, Bob Jones kicking out a student for attending a concert like that makes my own alma mater look like a bastion of liberal hedonism. Back in the 1990s, Evangel College actually HOSTED a couple of concerts by 4Him. Crazy.

Well, I'm going public with my prediction. Sanjaya is gonna win "American Idol" this year. He has the support of all the non-fans, and they will bring about the show's demise.

Ain't democracy great?

An Apple a day...

Wow, big news in the world of apples today.

IPod maker Apple and the manager of The Beatles' Apple Corps resolved their long-simmering dispute on Monday about who has the right to the Apple trademark.

The settlement offered greater hope to fans of George, Paul, John and Ringo that the two sides could now focus on permitting downloads of the band's music through the iPod maker's iTunes online music service. The catalog of all Beatles songs, including "Let it Be,""Get Back" and "She Loves You," is the largest holdout from iTunes and other online music services.

You can read the rest of the story here.