by The Police which was quickly followed up with Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (Dlx)
by AC DC and Paradise Theatre
by Styx; all of which were listened to on the clock radio I received for Christmas with the built in tape recorder/player. It was the same clock radio on which I would listen to Casey Kasem's Top Forty every Saturday to record my favorite songs and make tapes. Music was and is important to me and in many ways it has been the bookmarks of my life. So many of the periods in my life can be marked and now remembered through the music I listened to at the time whether it was drinking to Randy Travis and Hank Williams Jr., navigating pre-adolescence through the guitar riffs of Eddie Van Halen, or growing into a young man exploring Jazz and the old standards. My walk with Christ can even be marked with music.
Growing up in traditional church I learned to hate the "hymns of the faith." I can remember attending church with some good friends of ours where Mr. Ed was the preacher and he led the music in his little church with a guitar and I thought, "hey, this is so much better than hymns." I can't remember the songs he played, just the fact that he used a guitar. It would be many more years before I was actually introduced to modern praise and worship music with guitars and drums and bass guitars, and at this exposure I suddenly began having the thought that maybe church could actually be fun. When I got to seminary I made a monumental discovery regarding the "hymns of the faith," it wasn't actually the hymns I hated it was the organ. Today my most intimate God moments can generally be connected with a particular Christian song. My favorite hymn has to be "It is Well With My Soul," for praise and worship music it is hard to pick a favorite because they come and go so fast, but "Better is One Day" is one that I constantly come back to as well as "How He Loves Us."
With the exception of Rap, I have yet to encounter a music style that I cannot stand. My tastes are eclectic, but my love really falls to Jazz. This page will have review posts of albums I have been listening to, both new and old, principally Jazz but anything else that catches my attention.
Thoughts on Music:
Learning to love a song I used to hate (A post about theology as it relates to John Lennon's song Imagine)
Music Reviews:
Jazz:
Music Review: Jane Monheit Concert, January 24, 2012
Melody Gardot
My One and Only Thrill
Review: http://faronowen.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-one-only-thrill-by-melody-gardot.html
