LSU live blogging

For everyone not at a bar at 10 this morning or have a friend with ESPN Classic (thanks Ali!) I’ll be live blogging/Twittering updates.
It’s my little man’s 1st LSU game so we’re celebrating! They’ve been showing the upsets App. St. turned up last year but so far 7-0 LSU leads in the 1st ten minutes of the game

Update: 17 yard touchdown! Career first for Hatch.
LSU – 14
App. St. – 0
Gustav – 0

Update: 2 quarter starts with a field goal, a nap, and a drawing!
LSU – 17
App. St. – 0
Gavin – asleep

Half time!
LSU – 31
App. St. – 0

LSU vs. Appalachian State Game MOVED

That dastardly Gustav strikes pain and suffering even before it hits land! The LSU season opener against Appalachian State has now been moved to 10AM! Can you play football at 10 in the morning?!? That means we have to start tailgating tonight at midnight!! 

Info available here at LSU Sports.

Gustave approaches and I wag my finger!

It’s hurricane season down here and the curly mustached Spanish beast of Gustave has South Louisiana in a frenzy! I waited in line at the pump today as trucks filled up spare tanks as well as their own vehicles. Batteries and bread are vacant at stores. City councils are meeting daily to discuss and manage plans. Emails are circulating from everything regarding the Cone of Uncertainty to Emergency Numbers.

BUT I’M LEADING WORSHIP THIS SUNDAY! Can’t I have my moment This is the first time in a long time for me and I’m totally stoked about it! So, hurricane or no hurricane, I’m practicing, preparing, and pexcited about playing! I also alove alliteration.

Not to Us
My Glorious
You’re Beautiful

I stand Amazed (How Marvelous)

Glory in the highest
Oh Praise Him

Take that Gustave! Go and boil your bottom! I blow my nose at you, silly spanish pig-dog! You empty headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

This blog post has EVERYTHING! National news. Local update. Worship Songs. Tom Foolery. Alliteration. Hilarious quotes from Monty Python!

Don Miller’s Prayer at the DNC

I can’t believe I missed this live but I caught up with it on Don’s blog. You can head over there and read the full text of the prayer and I’d encourage you to do so! 

In case you missed it like I did though, here’s the video of it. 

I’ve been lazy in my efforts in getting involved and educated in politics. However, I wish to respect Don’s words and keep the conversation thoughtful and not reactionary. Seriously, I don’t care what convention it is, to hear those words prayed out loud is spectacular. 

Father, unify us!

Fall Festivus 08

The Summer Funeral was greatness, there’s no doubt about it. However, it was the one-two punch of the Summer Funeral in conjunction with the Fall Festivus that got students saying things like:

Our youth group is crazy! I love it!!

There’s not a whole lot of explaining involved in what happened with the Fall Festivus. So here goes: 

• Flour bombs – fill single sheet Kleenex with flour
• Shaving cream – fill hands full of shaving cream and have at it
• Water balloons – fill balloons with water
• Slip N Slide – head in to your local hardware store (Lowe’s or Home Depot or whatever you chose) and in the painting section they have rolls of super thick plastic rolls. I think ours was 10 feet by 50 feet. 
• Jambalaya – yeah…it’s delicious!

But why allow me to ramble on. Check it out for yourself: 

Kudos to: 

• A Soup Named Stew – Rob Zombie Pancake Breakfast
• Charlie Hall – The Second Alive
• David Crowder*Band – …neverending…
• A Soup Named Stew – Penguins

Summer’s Funeral

My posts lately make it seem that all I do is sit around and listen to music all day…wait…I do that! Ha. Well, we’ve been having some intensely awesome youth afternoons lately and it’s because of them that I’ve been so busy. So for all you Youth people out there…get a load of this: 

HAVE A FUNERAL! 

I know, it sounds like a ton of fun already. I know, I don’t need to say anything more, you’re laughing already! I get how hilarious it does NOT sound So let me explain, my kids at the beginning of the summer tossed out all kinds of suggestions on what they’d like to do at youth and one of them was: theme days! Then, a children’s director at a conference said, “We did something wacky at our old church: we had a funeral!” I didn’t really know what she meant by that but it came to me that it could be an incredible way to have a ton of fun at the end of the Summer! We basically took the elements of a funeral and had a ton of fun with it. Here’s what you need: 

 

• Funeral arrangements before the event notifying them of the funeral and to respectively wear black and bring flowers. 
• A guestbook for the students to sign when they come in. 
• A wall of pictures from all the events of the summer. 
• A video montage from all the events of the summer is nice. 
• A time for students to share their highs and lows of the Summer, what they loved, what they learned, etc. Warning: this will take a LOT of time, but it’s a blasty! Hahaha. 
• A coffin (don’t worry, it’s just a plastic box that’s really a time capsule but coffin sounds creepy!) 
• Some worship songs having to do with Salvation or Death or Heaven.
• A “eulogy” (again don’t worry, it’s just your message for the night!)
• A bunch of memorabilia from the summer to place in the coffin.
• A hole dug somewhere on your church property! 

 

And voila: you’ve got yourself a Summer Funeral! A great sense of comedic sarcasm mixed with the right amount of tact and professionalism is the key to a successful afternoon. Because here’s what you’re doing, you’re creating a wildly bizarre experience that helps them remember all the incredible things you’ve done over the past 3 months! It’s all about remembering and memorializing the time spent between last school year and this year. You KNOW the first things teachers, students, counselors are all going to ask: SOOO WHAT DID YOU DO THIS SUMMER!?! Guess what you just did? Not only have you helped them remember all incredible things you’ve done this summer the week before they start back to school but also just given them one more thing to talk about! 

One of the cool things we did was print off 160+ photos and tacked them onto this portable wall we have. During one of the montage pieces I gave the students the opportunity to view the wall and take the pictures and place them in the “coffin” or bring them home and keep them! That was a ton of fun and they enjoyed it alot! The time capsule then holds all these pictures, the guest book, and all the other various keepsakes you might have collected from the summer! 

The Picture Wall

 

The Coffin

  

The Funeral Director and his mourners!

Chris Tomlin delivers a checkmate with God of this City

So, if you’ve been following along the past few weeks, we’ve been previewing the new Chris Tomlin CD, Hello Love a track a week as they are leaked out to us from Worship Together.com.

This week’s track is God of This City. I must admit, I almost deleted the email right then and there. I remember what they gave us with Holy is the Lord in the studio after an incredible live release on a previous Passion CD and I was not anxious.  See, I’ve played this track out from the God of This City CD release from Passion so what could a studio track actually do for me? The answer comes with: 

 

for Mr. Tomlin and company! 

Right off the bat, the ethereal little opening just draws me in. I even hear the crowd screaming over the intro loop once it begins It starts off well, but it’s after the first chorus when the band and Chris just find a cool groove to sit in and man, by the time the second chorus hits, I don’t need the live audience anymore, I’m singing out myself all alone here in CC’s! HAHA. 

They really do a great job of still capturing the magic of this song in the studio. I love it! Great sound, great layering, great use of back ground vocals, great job of surprising me just when I think I had you all figured out!

If you’ve missed the previous tracks you can catch up: 

• You Lifted Me Out
• Praise the Father, Praise the Son

Music/Movie Review: David Crowder*Band Remedy Club Tour

Not nearly as surprising at the result of the Remedy Club Tour Edition as I was with The Bright Sadness, but NO LESS satisfied. I mean I have seen the Crowder*Band live at the House of Blues on the Remedy Tour and on Monday night in theaters and have seen Crowder I think at least every year for like the past 6 years! Therefore, I knew to expect greatness from the live recording CD. Especially since the Passion live CDs are always done so magnificently. This live CD/DVD does not fall short. If anything, it’s perfection is almost nauseating! Hahaha!

So allow me to jump right on the DVD: chock a block full o’ goodies! Besides having all the live concert footage there’s also a Behind the Scenes on the Road montage (as if we needed to know that the Crowder*Band had more personality than already comes oozing out of them onstage One good thing to know is that the band is actually big fans of Pearl Jam! ME TOO! It really is worth the watch. I think Crowder does a great job unpacking what it is they are all about and trying to do. 

As well as a Learning the Songs that is like getting a one on one private session from each of the members of the band for most of the songs that are on the CD/DVD! I mean craptastic that is incredible! Who does that?!? Did you read that correctly? Yes, I said EACH of the members of the band! Crowder sits down with you for each song of the CD and the rest hit the main spots but the coverage of the tunes are pretty impressive! Plus, it’s really cool to see the gear and stuff for all us gear heads lusting out in the audience! I ATE UP THAT MESS UP!! Especially since if my Uncle Bob still has his electric violin up for grabs then my Christmas present is under wraps, but I don’t know how to play one so this is like Christmas come early!

Let me also just say that I thought Crowder was funny but Jack is the most hysterically dry funny man I never knew existed

It truly is a must have for any Crowder fan as well as those aspiring musicians looking to emulate their favorite worship band. 

David Crowder*Band Remedy Live CD/DVD

Music Review: Charlie Hall The Bright Sadness

Can I start by saying: WAY TO GO CHARLIE!! YES! YES! YES!

Charlie Hall and company dropped The Bright Sadness today that is so far leading the pack on Albums sold on iTunes today! I’m so happy because Charlie’s probably the least talked about leader from the Passion crew and he’s one of my absolute favorites! I remember getting the chance to talk to Charlie last year about Flying Into Daybreak and him saying that they were really trying things differently musically and I was stoked about the end result of FID. Well the evolution of The Bright Sadness is another incredible step for Charlie and company in creating a fresh and relevant worship sound with Charlie’s incredible lyrical content that I’ve always found to be the pulse of what I’m battling with and even a bit prophetic about what’s around the bend! 

I found this CD to have a bit of a club feel to it. The mix is a bit different that what I’ve grown to expect from SixSteps artists. I remember thinking in my truck today that the vocals are settled a bit in the mix with heavy instrumentation leaning on the bass. I found that interesting. Know what else is refreshing? I don’t think I heard any combination of “amazing+love” once! HAHAHA. 

Here’s my initial thoughts as I’ve burned through this CD twice already! 

 

• Chainbreaker – Initially, I had to look at the CD again to make sure I didn’t accidentally buy the wrong artist! A great opener that kicks you in the teeth! 
• New Year – This is such a special song. Charlie has this gift of writing a song like this that just seems like we’ve taken a glimpse into his journal that sits on his end table next to his bed. Kendall’s echoing slide riff is just beautiful as well.
• Walk the World – As heard on God of This City but loses NO luster recorded in the studio! The funky 80s electronica at the end is a great addition as well! 
• My Brightness – Hey a song about God’s love that does NOT use “amazing” as an adjective! I didn’t think that was possible Sorry. Instantly in the truck I’m bobbing my head along. 
• Scenes – Here’s another great example of the band’s evolution: the loops and whirls and such are done very tactfully here to create such a cool vibe. One of the lyrics that just sticks with me throughout the whole project: 

“I have such a short memory so You keep reminding me of You“ 
Man that one slaps me between the eyes! 

• Thrill – Quirky, groovy, cool baby! 
• The Second Alive – This is another unexpected gem found on a Charlie Hall CD. Gritty and raw and all up in your face! 
• Hookers and Robbers – Seriously, how many songs do you know have the word “hooker” in it and you can play in church? 

“Crack kids, track kids, hookers and robbers, the naked and hungry, Mothers and Fathers
Abuses, excuses, and guns in your hands, and I even welcome the arrogant man!”

That ends with, “Come break this bread, celebrate the Forgiver. Come as you are!”
What an inspiring song!  

• Bloom Again – Sorry, I was so excited to get to You are God that I skipped this one both times  
• You are God – This isn’t You are God, must be the next track.
• Knit my Heart – Nope this isn’t You are God either.
• You are God - What the heck is this?!?! Oh my, you mean I don’t get the same version I already purchased from a live Passion CD but a totally fresh and new version!?!?! YES! YES! YES! The piano part is simply beautiful and the transition to the bridge is wicked sweet! I imagine this has to be so hard for these artists, taking a well loved and incredible tune recorded in the magical live arena with thousands of students singing along and then popping it down in the studio and still captivating us. Well done fellas! Well done.
• Knit my Heart – I wish this song had it’s actual title that was something like, “June 7th, 2007.” If there’s a weak spot on the CD, this could be it but that’s still saying alot! The care and attention that went into this song is still admirable.
• Mystery – I get goosebumps every time listening to this song. I’m not saying anything other than it is simply amazing what Charlie and company do with the most simple refrains. 

Are you still reading this review? You should have checked out a long time ago and ran to iTunes to pick this up!

Charlie Hall The Bright Sadness

What a Great Day for Music!

David Crowder*Band Remedy Live CD/DVD

Charlie Hall The Bright Sadness

Phil Wickham Singalong

Full reviews coming soon! Chris who?!?!?! Hahaha.