Rachel is playing in an old time music jam in Paoli tonight. Having no musical talent, I’m one of four or five spectators. Two upright basses, two mandolins, a banjo, a fiddle, a dulcimer, several guitars, and fifteen voices. If you aren’t jealous, you should be.
Posts in: Music
A memory of the old timey internet: in the early 2000s I used to listen to a Christian rock internet radio station. No idea what it was called. It was broadcast live, with actual DJs. It was the station that first introduced me to Evanescence through their breakout song “Bring Me to Life.” Also discovered several other bands through that station: The Benjamin Gate, Jeremy Camp, Kutless, 12 Stones.
Evanescence was particularly big for Rachel and me. We loved that combination of ethereal vocals and heavy guitars. And the lyrics? Well, I’ve always held a special place in my heart for melodramatic goths.
Despite what I said the other day about not wanting to analyze what I love, I’m listening to a podcast where David Benjamin Blower and Lydia Catterall discuss his new album. He’s just confirmed my suspicion that “The Boot is on the Other Foot Now” is about the Gazan genocide:
We are all here
Be upstanding for the hellscape yonder there
Roman stakes sprawl across Judean hills again
Scroll through the dust. Meander round the famine
Vespasian, who wears your crown now?
Done something with your face. Wearing a different gown
Wearing the boot on your other foot now
Hear the screeching tables turning round round
Aeola Capitalina on the mount again
You recognise yourself? Tell me what you’re thinking…
Making offerings to Moloch there in topheth: these
Never crossed even God’s mind: you’re a genius
Your king keeps his throne for another year
And Rachel is weeping for someone else’s children
Your king keeps his throne for another year
And Rachel is weeping for someone else’s children
Thinking back on my phone call with mom last night, how she was cried, worried she would go to Hell. Remembering a line from an old David Bazan song: “I discovered Hell to be the poison in the well.”
Two wonderful songs by local folk music legend and forest protector Andy Mahler. 🎵
The land of God
Wendell Berry, “Two Economies”: Some time ago, in conversation with Wes Jackson in which we were laboring to define the causes of the modern ruination of farmland, we finally got around to the money economy. I said that an economy based on energy would be more benign because it would be more comprehensive. Wes would not agree. “An energy economy still wouldn’t be comprehensive enough.” “Well,” I said, “then what kind of economy would be comprehensive enough?
Still listening to the new David Benjamin Blower while cranking through month-end closing today.
Where there are feet upon the earth there is a village hall
Where there is prayer there is a temple and a gathering
This is an event
This is a happening
God dwells in tents where the beasts sing
God dwells, God dwells here with everything
I’m not sure how I heard of David Benjamin Blower or when I followed him on Bandcamp but I’m glad today that I did. His new album is great. “Apocalyptic folk,” he calls it, and that certainly got my attention. 🎵
The Louvin Brothers, “Dying from Home, and Lost.” The harmony on this one really reminds me of my childhood church, which I wrote about here. That album, by the way, is one banger after another.
This might interest a cross-section of folks here: A Greek Orthodox priest has released “Paradise Metal.” From the review site: “microtonal Byzantine modes with DIY electronic modernism,” “sublime new age ambient to shoe-gazy basslines and mountaintop guitar shreds to techno incantations.” Bandcamp