I’ve been listening to the new collection of songs from Terry Taylor and crew, otherwise known as Daniel Amos (also known to fans as simply DA). Dig Here Said the Angel is as good as anything the band has done in their 40-year history of intelligent, Beatlesque alternative rock music.
I was first exposed to DA as a teenager by a youth leader at one of the local churches in my hometown of Princeton, Kentucky. He loaned me his cassette of ¡Alarma!, DA’s third album actually, and I was hooked by the catchy melodies and musicianship.
Taylor’s lyrics are what really got to me, though. I was at the beginning of a long quest to understand my spiritual nature — if I even had one — and the general concept of spirituality as a human quality. DA’s songs, while rooted in basic Christian beliefs (a mono-theistic, omni-God, trinity doctrine, salvation through Jesus Christ, heaven and hell) tended to stand at the edge and reflect rather than preach. This was a big deal to a farm boy from Kentucky who was raised in a mostly fundamentalist religious culture. Taylor explored a sort of modern American Christian life without the underpinnings of judgement that were so prevalent in my stereotypical upbringing.
It was a notable early part of my rejection of Christianity, which is a statement that would probably sadden Terry Taylor. At their heart, I believe DA was and still is a project that has always been on a mission to “spread the good news”, not turn listeners from it.
In my case, the thoughtful theology and liberal scope of the lyrics paired with fun, textured, sometimes intricate music pushed me toward a kind of energetic, yet contemplative, open-to-the-possibilities sort of state. DA has always motivated me to think romantically, yet critically about the animus and how it tends to become codified by large-scale organization (e.g. religion). In my 20’s that was useful as I hit atheism; in my 30’s, as I began to see patterns and granular value in disparate parts of the world’s major religious traditions, DA stood out as a comforting example of modern Christian media.
Today, as an agnostic and a logician, their music is a trip down memory lane, a satisfying nostalgia for really formative periods. Sure, it’s just rock music. It’s couched with popular sentiment and clever allusion to one worldview. It has just enough cool, kitsch, pomp and rebellion to energize and exercise. And in the story of my life and work it’s far more footnote than chapter. But I couldn’t be more pleased that Terry and company are still making it.
The ten-year anniversary of Elliott Smith‘s death is today; it’s hard to believe it’s been a decade since one of the best songwriting minds of my generation decided to log off the Earth server for good.
Smith was a seriously complicated guy. I remember when I got his first solo release, Roman Candle, in the mid-90’s and how blown away I was by the emotion and especially the craftsmanship of the songs. I was writing a lot of songs back then myself, several of which eventually wound up as the pseudo-band project The Daisies (some of those songs are now part of IUMA — see here if you’re interested).
Elliott left us with a number of great songs, and while many are slow, dark ripostes to years of abuse and victimization, much of his work is a healing salve for the mind and heart. This was a guy who suffered tremendously, often by his own hand, but in the truest artistic fashion he transformed that suffering into beauty and truth.
In January a gig with Smith and Jon Brion popped up on YouTube, circa 2000. Smith’s performance is powerful. Independence Day, accompanied by Brion and jazz pianist Brad Mehldau is mesmerizing. Smith also plays a few covers, including renders of Lennon’s Jealous Guy and Big Star’s Nightime(what a treat — Smith covering Chilton!).
Caught a doc recently that I really enjoyed. Hellbound? does a great job of touching on the debate (in Christianity — other worldviews are not really addressed) between those who believe in a real “Hell” (e.g. eternal punishment) and those who don’t (e.g. universalists and annihilationists).
Watching this film quickly reminded me of my “Bible Belt” years, growing up in Western Kentucky and then my first few years out of college in Indianapolis. Back then I had plenty of exposure to more conservative, fundamentalist types who relied heavily on Hell as an important part of Christian doctrine.
Trust me — until you’ve seen the fundamentally ill up close, it’s difficult to understand just how powerful memes like Hell are. That said, I don’t have a problem with those who believe it, as long as they don’t bother the rest of us. Of course they love bothering the rest of us, which means I usually have a problem with it.
As an a-religious, non-theist who values the Judeo-Christian ethic (IMO every major tradition — spiritual and scientific — has at least one or two shiny nuggets), I like the Universalists — in general they’re all about a warm-and-fuzzy, peaceful loving God instead of a vain, violent, judgmental deity.
Chipotle (we have one here in Southern Oregon and the food is fantastic) has done something remarkable. This is a welcome surprise and I’m simply in awe. Well, done, Steve. Seriously well done.
You have to play tennis to understand just how good this shot is, made by Rafael Nadal (vs. Ryan Harrison at the U.S. Open):
I made a shot like this once, but unlike Nadal, I didn’t have the balance to instantly recover. The subsequent combination of linear and angular velocities pushed me into a shoulder roll for about five feet, where my head decided it needed stitches (11, to be exact), smashing into a chain link pole.
The truth is — and this is where you breathe that sigh of relief — is that consumer spending on games didn’t just evaporate. It just moved online, and retail spending is about to start growing again … finally. The industry got through the worst of it and — for now — most indicators are looking up.
The truth is that the industry continues to consolidate in ways that are increasingly bad for developers. Traditional retail is starting to grow because of next-gen consoles but in the absolute sense the new hardware is only damping the retail atrophy that arguably began with Zynga and Apple.
Everybody knows it and nobody likes to talk about it.
Game developers, except for the lottery winners and the ultra-pasteurized cream working on big IP, continue on the path to extinction. The primary choices for developers these days are 1) Shovel F2P metricware at minimum salaries for the new crop of large, multi-national publisher-distributor-promoters, or 2) Buy lottery tickets with their own hopelessly under-funded games.
In either case, games are so YouTube-ified now that as a profession game development hardly resembles itself. Relatively good news? Sure — the future’s so bright we gotta wear Oculus Rifts.
Just caught The Flaw on Netflix, and it’s well worth the watch. Director David Sington pulled together an impressive panel of economists and historians (including Robert Shiller and Joseph Stiglitz — my favorite was Louis Hyman).
The film borrows its title from Alan Greenspan’s 2008 congressional testimony but doesn’t devote a ton of screen time to the video of that testimony. Instead the film focuses on its luminaries’ analysis and opinions, who each have their own take on “The Flaw”. One thing everyone seemed to agree on was the asset-if-ication of real estate, exploited by market forces in unprecedented fashion.
I was fascinated by the film’s liberal use of clips from a cartoon developed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 1954. It’s Everybody’s Business, in addition to being a great example of Cold War capitalist propaganda, is stunningly good design. There’s a video game in that film somewhere…
We went to see Jekyll and Hyde yesterday at the Camelot Theatre in Talent. I really had hopes for this one, but alas we found ourselves doing what we do more often than not — bailing at the intermission. This time it was a clear case of large, bawdy telegraphic material blasting itself into unemotional oblivion in an intimate venue. Dammit we should have known better.
I just hate to say anything bad about the Camelot because we like the little theatre and want to see it continue and thrive, but we could have cared less about this musical. Another example of entertainment-for-entertainment’s-sake.
At least it wasn’t another neo-post-modern, over-priced, masturbatory speed-read production in Ashland where I frequently imagine the director snickering while the actors have more fun than the audience. So far this season we’ve seen A Streetcar Named Desire and The Taming of the Shrew. Streetcar was way over-acted but not a complete waste, but we were in the cheap seats (there are plenty of expensive cheap seats in Ashland venues — don’t let anyone tell you otherwise); Shrew was horribly miscast, weirdly staged and unevenly blocked, and of course, speed-read.
