Playlist Nostalgia and Girl Power

Looking for some new tunes for my running playlist and got this as a suggestion:



Immediately bought it...because I rocked my childhood out listening to Pat Benatar and wanting to be Pat Benatar.

She was rivaled only by Linda Ronstadt for my childhood adulation and devotion. I can probably still sing every lyric to Ronstadt's Heart Like Wheel and Simple Dreams albums....because I listened to them over and over...probably on my mother's 8-track tape player while I danced around crazily in my bedroom.



Good times...good times.

I rounded my playlist off with Vanessa Carlton's version of Paint it Black:



Maybe I'll come up with a complete Girl Power playlist for my next 5k.

For Your Listening Pleasure

I'm a sucker for folk music and I love, love, love The Wailin' Jennys.

New Addition to the I-Pod

I have been obsessed with this song ever since I heard it on the Lincoln MKZ commercial.

It's a remake of an eighties New Wave song, Major Tom.

This version is by a group called Shiny Toy Guns.

Perfect for working out on the treadmill!

Music and Musician's Personalities

While getting ready this morning, I was listening to pandora.com again. I've had fun creating new stations and letting them play in the background. I experiment and wrack my brain to remember songs or artisits that I love, and then I plug them in to see what else gets grouped with them.

I'm very predictable. 

Most of my stations consist of singer/songwriters with an acoustic rock/folk sound. In CCM I usualy wind up with Sara Groves, Rich Mullins, Jennifer Knapp. In secular music I gravitate towards Bonnie Rait, Natalie Merchant, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Jason Mraz, Dave Matthews Band and John Mayer.  (and Michael Buble....though I hate to admit it. Makes me feel like a schoolgirl.)

As John Mayer sang heartbreaking lyrics in the background, I wondered how someone whose personality I find so annoying could be so talented and make music that I love.  I have to overcome my disenchantment with his sometimes vulgar attitude in order to appreciate his music.

We assume we know musicians through their music, especially in the singer/songwriter category.  They frame intimate feeling, dripping words full of meaning into our ready ears. They express the emotions welling up inside of us that never found phrasing on our own lips. They tap the well of universality, pouring us a drink and inviting us to partake with them.

It's a heady illusion....and such a disappointment when they act like people we hardly know.

Oreo Cookie Blues

Goofing around with pandora.com, I came across this song on the Stevie Ray Vaughan station I created.

Too funny.

Turns of Phrase

My favorite song lyrics right now:

Hope has a way of turning its face to you

just when you least expect it.

You walk in a room, you look out a window

and something there leaves you breathless.

You say to yourself,

"It's been a while since I felt this 

and it feels like it might be hope."   

Sara Groves--It Might Be Hope

Tell me what you know

'bout God, and the world and the human soul

How so much can go wrong 

and still there are songs

Sara Groves--In the Girl There's a Room

I can't help it. I'm a Sara Groves addict.  I would inject her intravenously if I could.

Music Stream of Consciousness

I'm making dinner--just mac and cheese tonight--and listening to a Fernando Ortega CD. Normally he's a little mellow for my taste, but this particular CD has several hymns on it that I love!

Be Thou My Vision has to be one of the hymns I came across later in my life that just always gets me...could be my Irish heritage...the use of thou and naught ...or maybe just the urge to kick it old school style, but it's one of my favorites.

This past Sunday we actually sang one of my other favorites during our worship time; Great Is Thy Faithfulness. It wasn't quite the same with a slow, electric guitar and keyboards, instead of the grand piano, but you take what you can get in a contemporary service sometimes.

I started mentally compiling a list of hymns I actually like and miss singing:

Be Thou My Vision
Great Is Thy Faithfulness
Holy, Holy, Holy
It Is Well With My Soul
Immortal, Invisible
All Creatures of Our God and King
Fairest Lord Jesus
A Mighty Fortress Is Our God

That's all I could think of off the top of my head.

As I listened, I contemplated the roles of music in the church, remembering all those Baptist arguments that older people in the church would make against the use of modern worship and praise. Every once in a while I bump into a site, or person, that is still interested in fighting over what style of music is honoring to God and appropriate for church. I scratch my head and think, "Are we still arguing about this?"

Every hymn was new once upon a time. Every style of music was once considered strange and bizarre. Gregorian chant isn't going to make its way back into every day church life. But, I get it sometimes. When I enter church and the youth band is alt rockin' it out at a million decibels, I have a hard time feeling very worshipful. I guess that's just the way it is. You get older and start sounding like people you used to scoff at. heh.

Is worship music corny sometimes? yes. Is it mediocre sometimes? yes. But to those singing it is an expression of their heart however corny and mediocre it can be.

and speaking of mediocre

Occasionally, we will have dancers in the service--usually only for some special song or dramatic skit or something. It probably only happens about 2 or 3 times a year. I am not opposed to it in principle, but came up against some objections during our Christmas Eve service. There were four young teen girls dancing rather dramatically--except, they weren't very good. It was obvious two of them had actual dance experience, but one dancer in particular was completely lost and missing steps and just generally botching up her moves.

I felt bad for noticing...but it was hard not to notice.

I thought,"Wow...they should have held her out until she had practiced more." I caught myself and felt bad. After all, this was church, not American Idol. I wondered what I would have done if I had been the worship leader. Would I have called a young girl over and told her she wasn't very good, thereby completely crushing her....or would I grin and bear it and hope she pulled it out at the last minute?

Hmmm. That would be a choice I wouldn't want to make.

My next thought was that perhaps dancing just shouldn't be used simply because it is so visual that poorly executed dancing is far more noticeable than poorly executed singing. Both can be distracting, but the former is much more cringe-worthy. It requires a certain level of precision to be done well; precision that most local churches don't possess.

Is that too snarky?

One Of My New Favorite Songs

This song is from Sara Groves' album, All Right Here, released in 2002. I just borrowed it from the library because of several other songs that I already knew and liked, but this song spoke to me both as a mother and as a child of the only Father I really have.

You Cannot Lose My Love

You will lose your baby teeth
At times you'll lose your faith in me
You will lose a lot of things
But you cannot lose my love

You may lose your appetite
Your guiding sense of wrong and right
You may lose your will to fight
But you cannot lose my love

You may lose your confidence
In times of trial, your common sense
You may lose your innocence
But you cannot lose my love

Many things can be misplaced
Your very memories be erased
No matter what the time or space
You cannot lose my love

You cannot lose
You cannot lose
You cannot lose my love