same kind of bad as me

Tom Waits' new album out soon.

here's the lyrics to a song from it, Bad as Me

You’re the head on the spear
You’re the nail on the cross
You’re the fly in my beer
You’re the key that got lost
You’re the letter from Jesus on the bathroom wall
You’re mother superior in only a bra
You’re the same kind of bad as me

I’m the hat on the bed
I’m the coffee instead
The fish or cut bait
I’m the detective up late
I’m the blood on the floor
The thunder and the roar
The boat that won’t sink
I just won’t sleep a wink
You’re the same kind of bad as me

No good you say
Well that’s good enough for me

You’re the wreath that caught fire
You’re the preach to the choir
You bite down on the sheet
But your teeth have been wired
You skid in the rain
You’re trying to shift
You’re grinding the gears
You’re trying to shift
And you’re the same kind of bad as me

They told me you were no good
I know you’ll take care of all my needs
You’re the same kind of bad as me

I’m the mattress in the back
I’m the old gunnysack
I’m the one with the gun
Most likely to run
I’m the car in the weeds
If you cut me I’ll bleed
You’re the same kind of bad as me
You’re the same kind of bad as me

you can listen to it here

i'm trying to work out what it's about.
on the surface of it, it's saying don't feel you're too bad to be with me, coz i'm bad too.
I know some people who've got in a terrible mess, worrying they're not good enough for the other person in their life. and they're not good enough. but neither is the other person!

although Jesus is an indirect object (especially in the first verse), there is something right in saying that Jesus is the same kind of bad as me. God lowered himself to become a man, to get down and dirty in the grime and muck of human existence. he identifies fully with us.
the author to the Hebrews writes

Son though he was, he learned obedience through what he suffered
Heb 5.8

and just before that we find

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weakness, but one who has in every respect been tempted as we are.
Heb 4.15

Waits does use lots of Christian imagery in his music (Chocolate Jesus, God's away on business etc.), so i wonder if this is part of his Christian osmosis. that is, when weighed down by sin, we can know that God knows our struggles and temptations. and knowing us, knowing the wickedness of our hearts, he values us so much that he lived, suffered and died as one of us, in order to redeem us.
Hebrews 5 continues

being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who are obedient to him.
Heb 5.9

so Jesus is the same kind of bad as you, and he became that and died as that, sinless, eternal Son though he was, so that you might have life in him.

Batman the Musical

been oddly talking about musicals a bit lately. my parents took us to see the very fun wicked the other day, which fits in between the wizard of oz and return to oz - surely one of the scariest movies ever. i guess sort of like the sarah connor chronicles in between the terminator and T2. the interesting thing about wicked was the not just the freudian analysis of the wicked witch of the west - what made her the 'wicked' witch, why was glinda the 'good' witch. but if people talk about good and wicked, do we need to rethink what those titles mean; who gave them the titles; are we just buying into the hype?

and for some strange reason people are still banging on about buffy the musical which i pray i will never have to see.

anyway, this is a little more my taste. complete with the music meister and the black canary.

1 Samuel Song

reading 1 Samuel this morning i was reminded of a song i wrote for a memory verse for sunday school a few years ago (to the tune of Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant)

The LORD has chosen you to be
        to be his own people
The LORD has chosen you to be
        to be his own people
He will always take care of you
        Just to show how great he is
That's from 1 Samuel
        chapter 12 verse 22

tune: (c) Arlo Guthrie 1967
words: (c) Douglas Fyfe 2005

as with the original song, you can just keep the chords going and tell the story that surrounds this verse, coming in every 10 minutes or so with the chorus here.

nb :: this is the GNB or CEV translation i think.

**UPDATE :: the chords**

A   /   F#m /
    B   E   A   /
A   /   F#m   /
    B   /   E   /
A   /   A7   /
    D   /   D7   /
A   /   F#m   /
    B   E   A   /

does music matter?

this isn't one of those posts where i pose a question about which i've already made up my mind. rather, in response to a chat tonight at another sydney-theoblogger-hang (sign up to justin moffatt's blog to keep updated for future meet-ups), i was wondering to what extent our theory and praxis meet in this area.

i know not a few who go to hillsong or oxford falls ccc on an alternating basis with their 'regular bible-teaching place'; they get their worship one week, their teaching the next.

of course, this has a few presuppositions: that worship=emotional singing; that being changed and responding to a deeper and/or corrected understanding of who God is and how he has acted in his world is not worship - of course this does not diminish the importance of teaching and led reflection, but it does say they're different things.


but as mooted, this post is the question of the meeting of theory and praxis. to explain - at my old church they have an awesome band, most of whom play most weeks of the year. music there rocks. but where i went this week, while not bad, was... lacklustre? in comparison?

now while i want to say with all my mind that this doesn't matter, my heart tells me otherwise. so the question is then why? and is it a right feeling or a wrong understanding (if you understand my distinction).

someone suggested tonight (not sure if i should use their name or not - if they contact me i can know one way or the other!) that we should understand the distinction and emphasis as not music but singing. i guess this is to say that the best music in the world with lacklustre singing is nothing, because music is a servant to the singing of praises to God. but something i have been a part of is the most heartfelt singing with at the most a guitar or piano or organ or acapella.

i don't really know where this post is going except to say i want to know how better to match my theory with my praxis. hmmm i think i'm out of the swing of this whole blogging thing.

a mighty fortress

just tidying up an article on Christianity - Club or Kingdom?

thinking about it, i've found it hard to get the jilting tune of Luther's Ein' Feste Burg ist unser Gott (english title: a mighty stronghold is our God)

here's the first verse:

Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott,
Ein gute Wehr und Waffen;
Er hilft uns frei aus aller Not,
Die uns jetzt hat betroffen.
Der alt’ böse Feind,
Mit Ernst er’s jetzt meint,
Gross’ Macht und viel List
Sein’ grausam’ Ruestung ist,
Auf Erd’ ist nicht seingleichen.

words and music: Martin Luther, 1521?

just checked wikipedia - tells me this song was sung by the German princes at the 1530 Augsburg Diät - you can see how it would have been a good reinforcement!


i'm trying to think of a way to link this picture i took of a fenced-off opera house during the APEC protests a couple of years ago, but i'm failing. i like the photo tho - trying to protect the poor citizens from the scary opera house, were they? protecting us from the nasty politicians? who knows.

music and moving

a long time ago (my first post) i wrote about time, where we think it's heading and how that affects how we live today (i may not have mentioned all that but it's there implicitly).


so what does music say about time? Russell Rook writes

"Eschatologically speaking, music seems capable of conveying our greatest hopes and most terrible fears. It can transport us from the heights of heaven to the gates of hell."139*

reflecting on the type of music i like depending on my mood, this chapter has been really helpful.

because repetitive music (i like repetitive music, i like repetitive music) is about escapism - that time is cyclical, that there is no eschaton, that we all just keep going around and around with no consequences, as eagle eye cherry so well put it:

Go on and close the curtains
cause all we need is candle light
You and me and a bottle of wine
going to hold you tonight
Well we know I'm going away
and how I wish, I wish it weren't so
So take this wine and drink with me
let's delay our misery

Save tonight
and fight the break of dawn
Come tomorrow
tomorrow I'll be gone

there is a deep need in us for escapism, for forgetting that tomorrow will come with all its consequences. and it makes sense then that repetitive music is escapist, in popular music, and in Christian music also. anyone who has heard a group singing the chorus to 'How Great is our God' for an hour (as i heard a couple of years ago) has to question whether they are actually looking forward to Jesus' return.

but the Christian's hope is not escapist - it is towards a renewal of this earth, a restoration of justice and peace and true kingship under God's anointed king. platonic escapism that is so ingrained in so much Christian music is nothing more than a gnostic mysticism. we want to praise God with our songs, but that doesn't mean ceasing to exist as we lose ourself in the brahmanistic pantheism repetitive music encourages.

*Russell Rook, 'In God's Good Time', 138-148 in Stephen Holmes and Russell Rook, What are we waiting for? Christian Hope and Contemporary Culture. Bucks, UK: Paternoster, 2008.

Set List

Walk to Beautiful Fundraiser - 28/5/09

1. All Blues
   
2. Blue Bossa
   
3. I'm Beginning to see the Light
   
4. Nature Boy
   
5. Autumn Leaves
   
6. Satin Doll
   
7. Mercy Mercy Mercy
   
8. Chamæleon

let's see how many we get thru.

any requests for other songs to play on our international tour (assuming recording companies sign us up as a result of tonight)?

(if you haven't got tix yet you're too late - they're all sold out. how much that's due to the pulling power of duck5.blogspot.com and how much that's due to the movie and the cause will be told at 7:15 or 8 - the movie starts at 8.)

walk to beautiful

we're putting the band back together. we're playing at a fund raiser for the fistula hospital in Ethiopia. if you don't know what a fistula is or why they would have a hospital for them, you should probably find out.

we're playing and then they're screening the film about women who've been involved with the hospital:

This award-winning feature length film tells the stories of five Ethiopian women who suffer devastating childbirth injuries and portrays the hope provided by Dr Catherine Hamlin A C & Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital (The Hospital by the River).

Date: Thursday 28 May

Time: 7:15 pm refreshments & jazz band
8:00 pm screening

Venue: St Alban's church hall
Corner Lindfield Ave and Tryon Road, Lindfield, Sydney, Australia

Price: $20; $15 concession, includes refreshments

Tickets: Available after each service from Sunday 3 May or from the church office from Tuesday 5 May - call in or phone +61 2 9416 1703

Find out more about the film at www.walktobeautiful.com

This screening is a fundraiser to mark the Hamlin Golden Jubilee of 50 years in Ethiopia. See www.fistulatrust.org

Please come and celebrate the occasion.

And, as i said, you can hear the band. Back together.

backmasking for beginners

a post on Led Zep IV over at F&T reminded me about the eerie art of backmasking. my old music teacher once put on Queen's another one bites the dust, which when backmasked (ie, unmasked by playing it backwards i presume), appears to say 'start to smoke marijuana'. we then got to try it ourself, doing it both backwards and forwards (ie saying 'start to smoke marijuana' and seeing if it said 'another one bites the dust'). we did it on a cassette player with an adjustable head so you could read the tape going the other direction. it was pretty cool. a few years ago i tried the same thing with the Beatles' i'm so tired, which pretty obviously says 'paul's dead man. miss him, miss him' as i recall. Revolution 9 also says 'turn me on, dead man' under 'number 9'

as a youngin', i was pretty freaked out. we were played a gospel choir, and that was backmasked, and the subtitling told us we were hearing them say good things about God. even backwards! however when played death metal, they all seemed to be saying that Satan was a swell guy and they had fun serving him. [i'm not quite sure then where the other popular idea going around back then came from, that people in satanic churches read the bible back to front - is it back-to-front or all thru?!]

for your paranoid pleasure, check out this guy's site for a dozen more obvious songs backmasked (without you having to destroy your dad's records!)

it did put a lot of fear in me, but in retrospect it shouldn't have, for several reasons:

1. enough songs are, and always have been, explicitly immoral and crude, and generally against the very idea of God, that putting messages in backwards isn't really necessary
   
2. you have to be a] paranoid, and b] have someone tell you what it says in most cases for you find it plausible
   
3. who says we can hear stuff backwards anyway? it's not like it's straightforward - it's not like reading a word backwards, it's a completely different thing

it seems you can separate this into two groups: some are really bored people putting things into their music (including things really really slowly such that it just sounds like bass, or the converse - really fast so it seems like a quick electronic squeak - both needing to be played at an appropriate speed to get any meaning from them), or it's the paranoid people imagining things.

but i don't know - maybe there is something to it. but i doubt it. it's cool tho!

[i hope the thing with the tape made sense. there's two sides to a cassette reel, normally only half is played, whilst the other returns to the spool. when you spin it, that bit gets played. but if you move the head that reads the tape to the 'returning side', you are backmasking. easy!]

motorcy... cle

i've had this song in my head for a while now
by Arlo Guthrie - famous for

1. being the son of Woody Guthrie,
   and for
2. his 18 minute song Alice's Restaurant Massacree.

it goes:

I don't want a pickle
Just want to ride on my motorsickle
And I don't want a tickle
'Cause I'd rather ride on my motorsickle

And I don't want to die
Just want to ride on my motorcy ...cle.

that's about it. he has an interesting story to explain the song, youtube clip here, one version of the 'verse' here.



just as an aside, i had a squiz at his website - he wants his church to be on some Massachusetts state currency!

it just happens he's gone and bought the church that Alice used to live in (you remember Alice?) and, keeping the name 'Holy Trinity', has dedicated it to all those around the world who believe that there is one truth and infinite ways to approach it.

apparrently on the front door his guru has written,

One God - Many Forms
One River - Many Streams
One People - Many Faces
One Mother - Many Children

this church has been re-consecrated to the service for which it was originally intended - Service to God and to all sentient beings.

never let it be said that there are any sentient beings Arlo doesn't care for.
i wonder how many orang-utans he gets coming thru...
(i still like his songs tho.)

just a post about jazz

been enjoying a lazy saturday morning - drinking a coffee, doing a few hebrew exercises before monday's all-determining exam, and listening to my good friend Richard Maegraith's album Free Running.

i saw them last week at the sound lounge at the seymour centre, as well as at the album launch at the basement. they filmed them and interviewed them for 'live at the basement' - hopefully we'll see it on telly sometime soon! if you don't get to see it, or hear the CD, perhaps you'll hear them on Qantas radio, on 'James Morrison presents'!

Expectantly Waiting For You (track 7) is probably my fave - i'm a big fan of Gary Daley - i've heard him a few times around the place, and Tim Firth (on drums) is amazing at setting what i like to call a 'soundscape'. you also hear the great back and forth between Rich (tenor) and Jonathan Zwartz (double bass), and Kristin Bernadi's (vocals) close just means that the track gets better all the way!

for some earlier stuff, here's Richard doing Duke's caravan

The Calling - Altar Boyz

Do you love Jesus?
Do you love Boy Bands?

if the answer to those two questions is YES, then you'll be sure to love this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yCnpMZwDkAY

i heard on the radio they're going to sing for the Pope when he gets Down(Under)
- only 50 days kids till WWYD08

top played songs?

from davemiers.com, here, he posted his 25 most played songs on his ipod/itunes.
there are obvious slants, ie how old the songs are (eg dzihan&kamien was the first album i uploaded)
i've also cheated - i included a couple that were the same number count - the last 6 all being played 15 times

1. Love Power – Skeewiff
   
2. Twisted – Lambert, Hendricks & Ross
   
3. This Year – The Mountain Goats
   
4. Thin As Clouds – Chokebore
   
5. drophere – dzihan&kamien
   
6. Weightless – Chokebore
   
7. Take a Bullet – Dan Brodie
   
8. ABC – Jackson 5
   
9. Another Rainy Day – Corinne Bailey Rae
   
10. I've Been Loving You Too Long – The Hiptones
    
11. Caravan – Nueva Manteca
    
12. The King Is Dead – Kent
    
13. 11.30 – Mattafix
    
14. thrill – dzihan&kamien
    
15. Music Non Stop – Kent
    
16. Why Didn't You Call Me – Macy Gray
    
17. Heaven Is a Halfpipe – OPM
    
18. airport – dzihan&kamien
    
19. Good Times Bad Times – Led Zeppelin
    
20. don't go there – 24-K (from Dangerous Minds)
    
21. Choking – Angus and Julia Stone
    
22. White People For Peace – Ben Lee
    
23. Celebration Day – Led Zeppelin
    
24. Underground – Ben Folds Five
    
25. New Wave – Ben Lee
    
26. It's Not Up To You – Björk
    
27. Heirloom – Björk
    
28. Kerb Krawler – Ed Rush & Optical
    
29. Friends – Led Zeppelin

(if someone can post html hints on how to do this properly, i would be grateful)

please post at least your top 5, or at least a link, and i'll add them as they pile in!

U2 : above the rest

i very nearly wet myself listening to U2's new single.
check it out here.


unless you really like them that is...

cool music. uncool musicians.

sort of following on from the previous discussions, how do we sort out the discontinuity with the cool-ness of music, with the un-cool-ness of the musicians?
a couple of cases in point are:

miles davis: drug addict, child neglecter, wife beater

queen: hopelessly amoral. not just the obvious reasons either

foofighters: support a "charity" claiming AIDS is a conspiracy

janis joplin, jimi hendrix, jim morrison: members of the so-called "27 club", all who died drug-related deaths (at age 27)

now, i love the music these people make, despite their (a)moral standing, but i sometimes ask the question, if they would have made the music they did, were they not the type of people they were?
i wonder whether their life of excess, and the resultant polarising affect they had (have) on people, actually drove them to create the kind of music they did

(of course, this applies to artists aswell - think brett whitley, h.r.geiger et al)

whilst i have nothing against the sons of korah, the creative edge we see in these others is often breathtaking.
perhaps it's all to do with the closeness between genius and madness.
maybe someone can point me in the direction of a morally upstanding, well-collected, widely renowned, genius? i, as always, am happy to be reproved.

this isn't about dissing these people who i regard as gifted. however i'm quite happy for you to diss the idea

eschatology and music (and angels!)

having read many a blog (drew et al) as well as articles suach as in the case magazine, and also seeing as drew's blog is inaccessible to simpletons such as myself (beta what?), i thought i'd make my response here!
Drew was commenting more specifically on U2, who claim to be Christian.
Nick Cave's claims, on the other hand, are not so straightforward. Having written the introduction to the book of Mark seems to have been more of a pop-culture-hook than embracing a fellow Christian with a common faith in a common God, the God of the Bible.
His eschatology is indeed quite sketchy, with a view few Christians would agree with.

But Drew's point about what i shall call 'osmosis' of spirituality, is something that quite intrigues me.
One of my favourite artists, Ben Harper, has some interesting thoughts in his music, yet is quite inconsistent with his thoughts when it comes to eschatology.

for example this section from waiting on an angel:

So speak kind to a stranger
cause you'll never know
it just might be an angel come
knockin' at your door
knockin' at your door
And I'm waiting on an angel
and I know it won't be long
to find myself a resting place
in my angel's arms
in my angel's arms
Waiting on an angel
one to carry me home
hope you come to see me soon
cause I don't want to go alone

this includes almost a direct quote from Hebrews 13:2,

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

but where does he get this idea of an angel being the one to take him home from?
The closest i can find is in 2 Kings 2, where Elisha is taken up, but by a whirlwind; in 1 Thessalonians 4 when Jesus arrives, with the voice of an archangel (not with an archangel), the dead in Christ will rise, then we who are left will be caught up together with them.
The whole idea of angel worship is something we in the west are very guilty of, Ben Harper not excluded.
Although there are many things angels do do, ascribing random things like this to them shows the lask of biblical theology involved by many a songwriter (robbie williams be warned - not least for other reasons!).