Reflecting on Rufus and V-day

So for Valentines’, my wife and I headed into NYC and saw Rufus Wainwright.  Here’s the story, a couple years ago, I listened to a couple mp3s of Rufus at his piano.  He was great and I loved the soul in his voice.  Now, my wonderful wife does not keep up with my taste in music. So there are only a few bands./musicians that I tell her, “You have to hear this!”  She gets bored with that. So I never mentioned Rufus to her.

Then one day, she came home having seen Rufus perform at some kind of ballet recital in Philadelphia.  Rufus became part of our musical canon, along with Sufjan, Iron and Whine, KT Tunstall, etc. 

Some are surprised that we like him so much since he is gay and we are allegedly good Christian people.   And not only did we not protest the concert, but were delighted to give him money to sing to us on Valentine’s Day.   God bless Rufus, why not, He blesses you and me.

Should Christians listen to music performed by gay people?  Why not, they listen to ______.   Sorry, it’s not that kind of blog.  But I think you get the point.  Unless Dan Brown has some long-lost vinyl recordings of Jesus singing to himself, then there’s not whole lot of options.  Are we not a bunch of sinners listening to a bunch of other sinners?

Listen to Derek Webb … on his podcast

 I’ve been trying to catch up with the Derek Webb podcast lately.  Really appreciating it.  He’s been doing it for a while.  If you are one who enjoys his music, most likely you’ll enjoy the podcast as well.   

In the third podcast, he is summarizing good art and the Christian involvement. He insists that it’s his (like all artists) job to produce bold and truthful art.  Derek also says that too many Christian artists want to be popular and sell a lot of cds as opposed to making great art.   We have all heard that a million times before but what I appreciate about it is that it’s

coming from someone who actually is selling records.  Someone who has enjoyed the royalty checks from the Christian music industry and someone who turned his back on it.

 He also mentions his appreciate for Dylan and Wilco – can’t wrong with that.  

Check him out here.

Dylan & Jack White Share the Stage

Wish I was there for this.

The Shins

Saw the Shins at the Electric Factory. Great show!

Relient K’s new cd

(review from Christianity Today)

Say Goodbye to Tower Records

I have mixed feelings towards the closing of Tower Records. It was a store that I would usually go in, found good music but couldn’t afford and so it’s hard for me to feel a lot of sympathy for them.

I did spend a lot of money though during their clearance sales – because they were actually good prices! Those of you who know, another company bought Tower, raised most of the prices, then started with 20%, 30% off sales eventually down to 80% off. As the discounts continued and the music became more obscure, I ended up buying many cd’s for about $5 just out of curiousity or after remembering a friend’s suggestion. I wouldn’t ever do that if it were still at its $18 regular price. (or even $15).

Since moving to where we are now in Northern Jersey, there is only one indy music store within 15-20 min. from me. I either buy online, or the opening week at Best Buy (bc. they usually sell them for $10). Maybe soon Best Buy won’t do that, and I won’t buy from them either.

You want to save the album and part of the music industry, lower the prices.

Read the Rolling Stone blurb and comments (which are a little more interesting) by clicking on title.

Hidden Under a Bushel Sufjan Stevens and the problem of Christian music

I read almost everything I come across about Sufjan Stevens.
The writer of this article, Delvyn Case says a couple interesting things and criticizes Sufjan’s style. Maybe he’s musically right, but still, Sufjan’s music is beautiful.

“…A Michigan native, Stevens was something of a musical prodigy. He attended Michigan’s prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy, where he honed his skills on the oboe. He attended Hope College in Michigan, formed a band, and started piecing together his slightly outsider compositions with a few other sympathetic souls. From obscurity, Stevens has taken the college rock world by storm. His 2005 CD, Illinois—which occupied the number-one slot on college music charts for weeks in the fall of 2005, and has since received wide acclaim—and its recent companion disc of outtakes, The Avalanche, are part of his staggeringly ambitious project for a state-by-state romp through America. Stevens has done two states so far, the first being Michigan. Each release will be devoted to a single state, intended as a sweeping travelogue, a character study, and a window into Stevens’ worldview.

Even a casual listen to Stevens’ work reveals his fascination with Christian themes—creation, fall, and redemption. Take for example these lines from one of the tracks on Illinois, “Casimir Pulaski Day,” a heart-rending exploration of theodicy (via the story of a friend’s death from bone cancer):

All the glory that the Lord has made
And the complications when I see His face
In the morning in the window
All the glory when He took our place
But He took my shoulders, and He shook my face
And He takes and He takes and He takes

Certainly an overtly Christian message is a bitter pill to swallow for the average indie rock fan, but in song after song Stevens is open about his faith. As critical acclaim has mounted, though, he’s become much more evasive when questioned about his faith. He routinely brushes aside the matter of his personal beliefs, strategically separating himself from the weird world of contemporary Christian music. He has a “knee-jerk reaction to that kind of [Christian] culture,” he quipped in one interview. “Maybe I’m a little more empathetic … because we have similar fundamental beliefs. But culturally and aesthetically, some of it is really embarrassing.”1 More bluntly, he has said, “I don’t make faith-themed music.”2

Stevens seems convinced that to own up to evangelicalism would amount to professional or artistic suicide, and he is probably right. Though Christian culture warriors are put off by his calculated ambiguity, fans and critics are captivated. The high praise he has garnered from The New York Times and Rolling Stone—let alone thousands of fans around the world—may be the direct result of Stevens’ willingness to grapple, in a suitably cryptic fashion, with issues of faith. Indeed, the secular music press now views the spiritual component of his work as an asset, best summed up by the Village Voice, which called him “the Next Flannery [O'Connor].”… (article linked to title)

A pic of Cate Blanchet playing a Dylan on Set

Only because it’s a Bob Dylan movie will a woman playing him probably still be cool.

going to see the Raconteurs

Sufjan Stevens: The Story Behind the Relunctant Indie Icon by Cameron Lawrence

This article is excerpted from a story in the latest issue of RELEVANT magazine. You can click here to subscribe and get the full version of this article in issue 22 of RELEVANT.

Relationships remain a core value in Sufjan Stevens’ work as an artist. The Michigan-bred singer/songwriter, who only five albums and six years into his career as a recording artist has achieved near-idol status in indie circles, makes community a priority in his career.

While on the road, he makes sure to bring his friends along, and if you’ve seen his ensemble, that’s no small few. “When I’m touring, I bring a lot of people with me, because it’s important for me to be surrounded by my friends and good people, and to create a social environment.”

By contrast, Stevens’ creative process is initially isolated from creative community. Typically, it’s not until he brings his material to the studio, which also is often a solitary experience, or when he prepares to tour that the creative process involves others. He describes writing songs as a sacred and unique experience, believing music exists somewhere in the supernatural realm—even before its incarnation in the physical realm of sound waves, frequencies and eardrums. The songwriter, then, somehow captures the song from the supernatural and reconfigures into music, which according to Stevens, is somewhat artificial. The song, he says, is a controlled musical environment.

Stevens exudes reverence for music and the craft of songwriting. “As I’m writing alone in my room, there’s a weird communion with the art form. Initially you’re throwing around chord progressions and experimenting with melody. You begin shaping, sort of accidentally, words out of sounds. That’s a pretty special, sacred, divine experience.”

Stevens explains that the act of songwriting, in some way, mimics the act of God creating the earth. “In Judeo-Christian theology, the world is created through words,” he says. “And that’s how I perceive what I’m doing musically. I’m just sort of mimicking, or modeling, that endeavor.”

In addition to being a formally trained oboist, Stevens plays most of the instruments on his records. When asked where creative community comes into the picture, and whether or not it’s a necessary element, he’s conflicted.

“Those are difficult things to reconcile, because I initially work in isolation and tend to write and record by myself,” he says. “That’s always been the case. The social dynamic of performing with other people, and recording with other people is really important, but it’s a bit of a challenge for me. I tend to be a workaholic and a micromanager, and a bit of an egomaniac in how I orchestrate everything. Even down to the drum parts I tend to micromanage every single nuance. Generally the musicians know they are being hired to perform according to my demands.”

While Stevens is widely accepted by people of all kinds, perhaps no one group has latched onto him more than indie-rock-minded Christians, and rightfully so. He’s among a handful of artists—the Danielson Famile, The Innocence Mission, Denison Witmer, Woven Hand and Half-handed Cloud, to name a few—that have sidestepped the Christian music industry while still using music to share or explain their Christian beliefs and backgrounds. He’s also among the few embraced by a community of journalists, musicians and fans who don’t share his faith and didn’t compromise his own faith to get there. Because of the unique position he holds, seemingly standing between two worlds, for some he’s a leader and an inspiration. And still there are others who misconstrue his identity and purpose or misinterpret his motives.

“I can’t honestly say how I’ve been misconstrued, because I can’t gauge the mind of the listener,” he says. “But I do know there’s a tendency to simplify and to categorize. I’ve been categorized as a particular kind of artist, a folk musician and a Christian. And these terms are used to possess and categorize and simplify what I’m doing. But they’re also out of my hands. I’m not concerned with how I’m received or how I’m misconstrued, because that’s really the work of the listener and his or her responsibility.”

While Stevens believes that people oversimplify or misinterpret what he’s saying, he understands that his lyrical honesty and vulnerability are the cause. And he’s not about to change that.

“I don’t ever want to be responsible for or engage with a particular subject in my music in a way that is dishonoring it,” he says. “And I can’t tell if I’ve done that or not. I still don’t know. I do know that I kind of walk that line, and I tend to disclose things about myself that are really important and personal. For me, it’s part of my conviction. It’s necessary for me to do that sometimes to achieve a kind of greater revelation and understanding of who I am and what I’m doing. It’s an instinct that, on some level, I want to share with people.”

Cameron Lawrence lives and writes in Atlanta, Ga.