Thank God It's Friday: Thank God for subtle reminders

While driving to work on a dark, rainy morning, I got passed by someone driving a dark grey car who hadn't turned their lights on. They were pretty hard to see - it was quite an issue since they were at various times behind me, on my left, on my right, all over the place. I found myself thinking "Hey, buddy, turn on your lights so I can see you more easily." And then I double-checked and yes, my lights were on - other drivers can see me! So today, I thank God for subtle reminders...

Thank God It's Friday: Thank God for Spring

So what if Spring doesn't officially start for another couple of days. The last few days it has looked like Spring and felt like Spring. The snow has finally melted and the flowers are starting to peek out. Spring is here! Spring is a good time for taking walks through the woods with the boys, for playing outside, for grilling, and so much more. What's your favorite thing about Spring? Whatever it may be, take time to thank God that it's Spring!

Thank God It's Friday: Thank God for Other Bloggers

I hadn't really thought about what to blog about for this Friday and then I read the following post. Check it out! I don't want my children to be happy! Great post and today I thank God for other bloggers!

Five songs with five stars in my iTunes

I haven't rated all of the songs in my iTunes, but here's five songs that have five stars:

1. AC/DC - "Let's Get It Up"
   My favorite song from For Those About To Rock... We Salute You
2. Aerosmith - "Walk This Way"
   The original verison. I think the Run DMC/Aerosmith version has four stars...
3. Big Country - "Wonderland"
   This may be my favorite Big Country song.
4. Circle of Dust - "Chasm"
   Deadly chasm opened wide...
5. Rush - "The Spirit Of Radio"
   This song has one of my all-time favorite bass lines.

There's many more five star songs in my iTunes. That means I can probably milk a few more posts like this.

Five albums I bought while out of town

Whether I was traveling or visiting relatives, these are five albums/CDs that I bought while out of town. In no particular order:

1. AC/DC - If You Want Blood You've Got It
   I bought it at Sam Goody while visiting my granparents in Philadelphia. My grandmother even let me listen to it on their record player. I kept the volume pretty low...
2. Pat Benatar - Crimes of Passion
   I bought this one while in Nashville visiting grandparents. My teenage mind thought that rock albums should be cheaper in Nashville since they only listen to Country music there. My teenage mind was wrong.
3. David Bowie - Let's Dance
   I bought this one while at the beach with friends right after graduating from high school. It rained most of the week so we saw movies and played arcade games and I bought a few albums.
4. DC Talk - Jesus Freak
   I bought this at a Baptist bookstore in Nashville after seeing DC Talk at the Youth Specialties Convention.
5. The Violet Burning
   I bought this at the Virgin Megastore in Times Square while at a conference in NYC. I listened to it about the whole train ride home.

Five opening acts I enjoyed

I continue my lists of five today with five opening acts I really enjoyed.

1. Face to Face (not the punk band) - opening for The Alarm
   I was pleasantly surprised by them. Laurie Sargent had a great voice. "As Forever As You" was a great song. They nicely set the stage for The Alarm.
2. Sam Phillips - opening for Luka Bloom
   I was really there to see Sam Phillips and in fact I cut out before Luka Bloom went on. Luka Bloom will probably wind up on a list of concerts I wish I had paid attention too. Sam was accompanied by (I think) Mark Heard on guitar. It was either her first or second show of the tour. It was great!
3. Foghat - opening up for Triumph
   Foghat was past their prime but put together a tight set dominated by songs I already loved.
4. Ashley Cleveland - opening up for Rich Mullins
   Great backing band - awesome heartfelt vocals from Ashley. Joined on "Henry Doesn't Care" by here young son Henry. Quel suprise ;-)
5. Pedro the Lion - on a triple bill with Damien Jurado and Vigilantes of Love
   I didn't know much of their music at the time, but I enjoyed it. They definitely would make the list if I do Five bands that I wish I knew better before I saw them in concert.

Thank God It's Friday: Thank God for Guilty Consciences

Last night during our family devotions time, we were talking about guilty consciences. Because we are created in God's image and because He has written His law on our hearts, we know wrong and right. Yes, sin clouds that knowledge. Yet, when we sin, we do feel guilt. A child caught sinning by a parent may not be able to look the parent in the eye. The guilty conscience clouds the relationship between child and parent. Sin clouds our relationship with God. God, through His Spirit, convicts us of sin and gives us the guilty conscience. That guilty conscience helps us to realize that we need to confess our sin, be forgiven, and be cleansed from all unrighteousness. I hate when I've got a guilty conscience, but I need it nonetheless. So, today I thank God for guilty conciences.

Five instruments I've played in church

Today's five list is a little bit different. I've been actively involved in leading worship, whether it be in my college Campus Crusade group, a church youth group, or in a church worship band, for the better part of the last 27 years. I'm listing them probably in decreasing order of how many times I've played them, but it's really just a guess since I haven't been keeping track!

1. Acoustic guitar - I've played both six and twelve string in college, with a church youth group, and with church worship bands, on retreats, and during home groups
2. bass - in church worship bands, youth worship bands, and maybe even once in college
3. electric guitar - in church worship bands and youth worship bands
4. banjo - for one song in a church worship band. I think it was one of the songs from Jars Of Clay's Redemption Songs
5. mandolin - for one song in a church worship band. I think it was "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" inspired by Mark Heard's arrangement.

Five songs with great guitar solos

Today's list is "Five Songs with great guitar solos." I lost the original text and am reposting largely from memory. In no particular order...

1. Janet Jackson - "Black Cat"
   Michael had Eddie Van Halen; Janet had Nuno Bettencort. Advantage: Janet.
2. Journey - "Any Way You Want It"
   This came over the iPod the other day and I just HAD to play air guitar. Unfortunately, when the song started, I was driving. Fortunately, when the solo came around, I was stopped at a red light!
3. Lincoln Brewster - "Today Is The Day"
   Who says a worship song can't have a fun guitar solo? Not me!
4. REO Speedwagon - "Roll With The Changes"
   An old favorite air guitar song of mine. In my high school youth group, we had an entire air band "AiREO Speedwagon."
5. Steely Dan - "My Old School"
   My favorite Steely Dan song for the guitar solo alone. The rest of it is good too, but the guitar solo: awesome!

Five concerts worth remembering

Today's list of five is "Five concerts worth remembering."

1. Cheap Trick - Baltimore Civic Center - touring in support of All Shook Up
   Tom Petersson had just left the band and had been replaced by Pete Comita. The concert tee I bought was basically the album cover with Tom replaced by Pete. Ugh... Bun E. Carlos busted a bass drum head and the concert paused while they replaced it. The main reason this concert was memorable: On the floor of the Civic Center they had wooden risers which the chairs were on. As they kicked into "Gonna Raise Hell" the floor shook beneath me. Cheap Trick, the band that had made me want to become a guitar player, now made me want to be a bass player!
2. Big Country - University of Delaware - touring in support of The Crossing
   It was December of my freshman year of college. I hadn't been to a concert since summer. I had seen a couple of Big Country videos on "Friday Night Videos" and thought they were OK. I went to this concert mainly because I was desperate to go to a concert. I didn't care for the opening act. They stunk. Enough said. Big Country, however, blew me away. Though I only knew two songs of theirs, I was greatly impressed with the rest of their set. Their cover of "Tracks Of My Tears" sounded really good too. The next day, I rushed to the local record store and bought the album. (It probably should have made my previous list!)
3. The Alarm - University of Delaware - touring in support of Change
   The other end of my college experience. The Alarm booked a last minute show at UD because their gig of playing on Saturday Night Live had been cancelled because of a writers strike. The Alarm was a lot better in concert than I had expected them to be. I already had the CD, so I didn't need to rush out the next day to buy it.
4. Vigilantes of Love - Truro Church - touring in support of To The Roof Of The Sky
   This was the first time I saw VoL in concert. The most memorable moment of this concert was when Bill stepped away from his microphone to sing "Judas Skin." His unamplified voice filled the church. Sublime!
5. Sam Phillips - 930 Club - touring in support of Martinis and Bikinis
   Martinis and Bikinis ranks up there with The Turning as one of my favorite albums of all time. This was the third time I had seen her in concert. (The fourth if you count the one time while she was still singing CCM pop - although I wasn't really paying attention to that set.) On this tour, T-Bone Burnett was on guitar and Jerry Scheff was on bass. At this point in my life, I was mainly a bass player, and Jerry's work on Sam's CDs made him one of my favorites. I had direct line of sight to his bass amp and could hear every note he played. He did not disappoint. However, my favorite moment of the concert was when Sam came out by herself with an acoustic guitar and played "Answers Don't Come Easy."

Five albums I absolutely had to have

I thought that it might be fun (and might get me to blog more) if I were to start posts on the general theme of "Five Albums that..." or "Five Songs that..." This is my first attempt at such.

Today, I'm starting with five albums I absolutely had to have. They are listed roughly in chronological order...

1. Paul McCartney and Wings - Wings Over America
   I got hooked on Wings long before I realized that Paul had been in a band before that. I have Bozo the Clown to thank for that. The Bozo the Clown show that used to run on Channel 20 in Washington had a feature where kids would send in pictures they had drawn and the show would hang them on the wall and pan over them with music playing in the background. The day that a picture I had draw was shown, "Jet" was the background music. It instantly became my favorite song. Later, I remember having Wings at the Speed of Sound and enjoying that album immensely. When Wings over America came out, I scoured the newspapers and proudly told my parents that I wanted to get the album and that Korvette's had it cheaper than any one else. It was a bit more of a drive than K-Mart and maybe my parents needed something else at Korvette's that day, but they drove me to get it.
2. Cheap Trick - Cheap Trick at Budokan
   "I want you... to want... me!" Those words changed my life. I bought the single for IWYTWM and played it over and over and over again. I flipped it over and listened to "Clock Strikes Ten" over and over and over. I saved my allowance for a couple of weeks so that I could buy the whole album. At that point in life I was pretty much a singles collector because they were under a dollar and I could rarely wait to collect enough allowance to spend eight dollars on a full album. But after enjoying both sides of the IWYTWM single so much, I had to have this one. I loved it from start to finish. This is the album that made me want to become a guitar player. I own many different variations of it nowadays: the original CD, Budokan II, the complete concert CD, the 30th anniversary...
3. Leslie Phillips - The Turning
   I had heard Leslie Phillips on Christian radio and prior to the release of The Turning, I had pretty much written her off as too poppy for my musical tastes. When The Turning was released, I have absolutely no thought to picking it up. But, at the end of the year, Richard Harrington of The Washington Post named it as one of the five best of the year. This picqued my curiosity. He said (and I paraphrase extensively) it's a shame it was marketed as a Christian CD and so few people got to hear it. Well, I went to Kemp Mill Records to buy a copy. I was not disappointed. The songs were great. The production fantastic. The bass playing by Jerry Scheff amazing. This remains one of my favorite CDs today.
4. Stryper - The Yellow and Black Attack
   I might have #3 and #4 reversed in order, but I don't care. I first heard one of the songs off of this on the Saturday night Christian rock radio program while I was in college. I think I heard "From Wrong To Right" first. I liked it. Then I heard more songs "Loud N Clear" and "C'Mon Rock" I really liked it. This was in the days when I'd take songs off the radio. One tape I had going had these songs on it and I listened to it over and over. I don't recall if I finally found the casette for this in one of the record stores in town or if I had to mail order it, but I had to have it. Even though it only had six songs, I bought it. And then I bought it again when I wore out the first casette. A while later, when I finally found it on CD, I bought that too.
5. Vigilantes of Love - Audible Sigh
   At this time in my life, VoL was easily my favorite band. An old college friend had gotten me hooked. He started my off with Welcome To Struggleville. I later picked up Blister Soul. I remember finding a used copy of Driving The Nails on the day I bought my wife's engagement ring. I was excited to read that Audible Sigh was going to be released on a new mainstream label. I would read on VOL-List about what people who had gotten the prerelease thought of it. Then, the label folded. The pre-release copies started going for exorbitant amounts of money on eBay. When it finally came out and I could buy it, I snapped it up right away. Now, I have three of the four different versions of it in my collection. I had to have it and it was worth it!