Yet Not I

Posted kyleLeave a commentPosted in Faith, Music

A lot of modern “worship” music tends to be pretty hit and miss for me…mostly miss. But once in a while I’ll hear something that I actually like.

The latest project from Australian-based CityAlight is one of those. It’s a short, 6-song EP called ‘Yet Not I’.

I bought and downloaded it it from Amazon here: CityAlight – Yet Not I

Here’s the audio from YouTube…

Guitar Prowess

Posted kyleLeave a commentPosted in Music

Converting Phil Keaggy’s ‘Getting Closer’ LP prompted me to go back through some other selections in the Keaggy catalog. I had kind of forgotten about the title track from his 1981 LP, ‘Town To Town’. A little rock, a touch of jazz-rock, some electric, some acoustic…lots of guitar goodness here…

Conversions

Posted kyleLeave a commentPosted in Music

I’ve recently gotten the bug to do some more LP to CD/MP3 conversions. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve done any. I have an Audio-Technica turntable that has both line out and USB out, which makes the process a bit simpler. The turntable isn’t super high-end, but it’s plenty good for these types of conversions and for playing the occasional LP. I capture the USB audio using the free program Audacity on my Linux media center in the living room, then move the files to my desktop in the den for processing.

Going back many years – to my pre-Linux days – I’ve used a program called Cool Edit Pro to process and clean up the audio from the LPs. With a bit of tweaking, it runs just fine in a virtual Windows machine on my Linux desktop. Back in the day I purchased a plug-in for Cool Edit Pro called ClickFix, which does a really nice job of reducing the pops and clicks that are part of the LP listening experience. Some additional noise reduction, along with a bit of subtle EQ, brings the audio around quite nicely. Cool Edit Pro was purchased by Adobe in 2002, and released as Adobe Audition in 2003, which shows how long I’ve been using this software. But it also shows that 15+ year old software is still more than good enough.

On the current docket is a 1983 album from the (UK-based) Barratt Band, a 1984 album from Steve Camp (recorded in the UK with the Barratt Band), a 1986 album from a California-based alternative Christian band called 441, and a 1985 album from guitarist extraordinaire Phil Keaggy.

Strangely Dim

Posted kyleLeave a commentPosted in Faith

For a while now, I really haven’t been very interested in the popular culture. It’s been slowly building for the past several years, but has become increasingly pronounced in the past year or two. Whatever’s trendy – fashion, music, TV, political memes – just hasn’t struck me as compelling enough to dive in. I have no doubt that some percentage of it is probably of decent quality, and that by not paying attention I’m missing out on something I might enjoy. But for me, the wheat-to-chaff ratio is just too low to bother.

I know that at least part of it is due to a shifting in perspective on my part, particularly in the realm of things eternal and things temporal. I still very much appreciate art and beauty, but “hipness” has lost much of its luster. Glimpses of eternal truth and beauty – however limited and brief those glimpses are – throw much of what currently passes for truth and beauty into sharp relief.

C. S. Lewis has probably summed it up as well as anyone:

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”  ― C.S. Lewis, ‘The Weight of Glory’

I wish I could say that my fidelity and devotion to Jesus has grown in the same measure that my interests in current trends has waned. It hasn’t. But perhaps, in the long run, losing interest and letting go of the need to be identified with whatever is popular is a step toward that end.

There’s an old hymn by Helen Howarth Lemmel, ‘Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus’. I honestly had never heard any of that hymn until my college days, when the chorus was tagged on to the end of a song by the Christian rock band Prodigal to close out their album ‘Electric Eye’. I don’t think I even realized it was part of a hymn at the time, but I remember being taken with that ending. The words of that old chorus are ringing more true to me today than they were in 1984.

 

Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace