All The Stars and Boulevards  |  Augustana

         release date:  2005      record label:  Epic

track
listing:    1) Mayfield 
               2) Bullets
               3) Hotel Roosevelt
               4) Boston
               5) Stars and Boulevards
               6) Feel Fine
               7) Wasteland
               8) Lonely People
                                                                                  9) Sunday Best
                                                                                10) California’s Burning
                                                                                11) Coffee and Cigarettes
                                                                                                                                               
                                                                              “Are we gonna make it?”

One of the greatest joys of my life has been growing up with two brothers, although, for most of my teenage years, I didn’t so much act like it.  They love to remind me, even now, of how I would throw fits when they barged into my room, borrowed my CDs, or tried to talk to my friends. 

But time is the ultimate teacher.  It wasn’t until I left home for college, and no longer saw my two brothers day-in and day-out, that I began to deeply value our relationship.  In fact, I was jealous that they, being only a year apart, had the opportunity to grow up together while I had to leave home and be on my own.  I longed for more time with them, just as my life pulled me away. 

As children, my two brothers followed a predictable pattern:  Joseph, five years my younger, almost always imitated me.  My favorite sports team was his favorite team, my favorite superhero was his as well; if I had a bologna sandwich, he wanted one too – it drove me up the walls.  Philip – the middle brother – forged his own identity by being my polar opposite.  If my favorite color was blue, his would be green; if I wanted to stop at McDonalds, he wanted Burger King.  In fact, in 1997, when the University of Kentucky faced the University of Arizona in the NCAA basketball championship, our entire family cheered for the Cats – except Philip.  He was an Arizona fan, at least for one game. 

I started college the same year Joseph, my youngest brother, began high school.  Around that same time, he started discovering music that meant a great deal to me – band likes Counting Crows and the Wallflowers.  A few summers later, we would head to Cincinnati together for our first (of many) Counting Crows shows.  The band opening that day had just released their major-album debut, but remained relatively unknown:  Augustana.  A few months down the road, however, and they’d be impossible to miss.  Boston, the lead single from that debut album, seemed to be everywhere, from TV shows to Top-40 radio and everything in between.

All the Stars and Boulevards, Augusta’s debut album, is everything you’d expect from a band opening for Counting Crows – a litany of hopeless laments over lost love, set to progressive rock music.  The record opens with Mayfield,a song full of doubt that repeatedly begs, “are we gonna make it?”  The emotion in singer and songwriter Dan Layus’ voice leaves little hope for a positive answer; the remainder of the album proves our fears true.  The next rack, Bullets, describes love as “a bullet in the head with the sweetest kiss,” while Wastelandsees the world as “nothing more than fools and whores and sad highs.”  Don’t let Boston’s up-tempo piano line fool you – this song may be the saddest of the set, describing a lover leaving everything behind to start anew because they are no longer known or cared for by their loved one.

If you’re in need of optimism, All the Stars and Boulevards is not the album for you.  But, on the other hand, if you find yourself living in the aftermath of a newly broken heart, this album may just be the soundtrack of your emotional state.  You won’t find comfort on All the Stars and Boulevards, but if you want to sit in your sadness, it will gladly pull you up a chair and ask you to stay awhile. 

I can’t help but think of my little brother when listening to Augustana, mostly because we discovered the band together.  In fact, it was on Joe’s recommendation, a few months after that initial concert, that I went to Best Buy and bought All the Stars and Boulevards for myself.  In just a few hours, that same little brother, the one I chased out of my room when I was in high school, will graduate with two degrees from Western Kentucky University.  Time flies.

The mortarboard hat, most commonly associated with graduates, has origins that go back all the way to the Middle Ages.  Ironically, I’m pretty sure that graduation ceremonies haven’t changed much since then either: Pomp and Circumstance will be played, we’ll hear some inspirational speeches, fight back some tears, and dodge an army of flying hats.  If you’ve seen one graduation, you’ve seen them all.  I don’t mean to make light of this ceremony; my little brother has put in years of hard work and his perseverance deserves the honor of that day, but let’s be honest, no one looks forward to the speeches – mostly because nearly everything they say is untrue.  So, Joe, take it from your older brother – here’s what you really need to know as you walk across that platform, diploma in hand, and start out into the real world. 

                     1)  At the graduation ceremony, a speaker will stand up and, in so many words, declare that your  
                     happiness should be your lifelong number one priority – the focus of your hardest work and attention.
                     Let me tell you, right now, that’s a bunch of crap.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with 
                     being happy and having good times, but that is not the be-all, end-all of your life.  I don’t have to tell 
                     you (but I will, just for good measure) that the most important thing on this earth is your relationship 
                     with God.  Happiness is fleeting, it passes by as quickly as a morning fog; one second it is here, the 
                     next, you’ll find it gone.  Things will go wrong, you’ll have questions, doubt and even anger, but don’t 
                     lose the perspective that, like school, life is also about persistence, and we are commanded to “run 
                     with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of 
                     our faith.”  If you take the time to faithfully invest in this relationship, setting your focus on Jesus, 
                     then you will live a life of purpose – it won’t always be easy (or even happy, as prophets like Job and 
                     Jeremiah so clearly indicate), but in the end, your life will matter.  This is the most important lesson I 
                     could ever pass on to you. 

                     2) After faith, of course, comes family.  At graduation, the speakers will make a big to-do about all 
                     the progress you’ve made while at the university, how you’ve matured, mastered your craft and 
                     they’ll gush over your positive attributes – and all of that will be true.  But they are conveniently 
                     leaving out one important note: the fact that you haven’t yet reached the top.  You will make 
                     mistakes, you will mess up; the important thing is to learn during those moments.  This humble 
                     attitude of learning will do much for your future family life.  As hard as it is to believe, us Mathis 
                     brothers aren’t perfect (at least not yet); your future wife will know this more than anybody (just ask 
                     Janie).  Growing up, Dad stressed that the choice of the woman you marry is one of the most 
                     important you will ever make.  This is because that woman will become your family and be grafted 
                     into our extended family tree.  Choose wisely, but do so with grace, remembering that you aren’t 
                     perfect either.  And as much as everyone tries to force us to believe that change is bad, it’s of utmost 
                     importance that you be willing to change aspects of yourself for the one you love; if she loves you, 
                     she’ll be doing the same thing.  Be the first to admit you were wrong and lead the way in making a 
                     change.  If I’d have known these things a year ago, I could have avoided an abundance of arguments 
                     and tears. 

                     And, on a side note, remember it will be your job, as the man of the house, to not only lead, but to 
                     continually romance her.  You’ll do great – you got that Mathis swag.

                     3) It seems that every graduation ceremony includes a charge to follow your dreams.  This is,  
                     actually, great advice.  Just remember that the only dreams which happen overnight are the kind you 
                     see in your sleep – everything else requires time, hard work, and determination.  You may not get the
                     job you want straight out of the gate, but believe me (and your teachers), you have the talent and 
                     natural ability to make it.  So don’t worry if you have to start at the bottom of the ladder.  Do good 
                     work wherever you are, and you’ll be noticed.  Do that work with patience, integrity and a positive-
                     attitude, and you’ll be promoted.  As a history major, you know Rome wasn’t built in a day – so don’t 
                     worry, you’ll get there.  I have full faith in that. 

                     4) It never fails that every school sends their students off with a mandate to change the world.  Most 
                     of the new graduates, however, don’t believe they are capable of accomplishing such a task. In 
                     actuality, however, they most certainly are.  I heard it said once “that to change one life is to change 
                     the entire world.”  Each day, you will have the chance to do just that by giving hope, showing love, or 
                     seeking forgiveness from others.  They way we interact with those around us, from friends and family
                     to complete strangers, can literally change their lives, and in so doing, change the world.  So please 
                     don’t think yourself incapable of leaving a lasting legacy on this planet; in fact, you’ve already begun.  
                     Your smile, contagious laughter, sense of humor and pick-me-up attitude have endeared you to 
                     legions of individuals across campus, from the autistic students you mentored, to the freshmen you 
                     welcomed into the game room, to the RAs you worked alongside in the dorms.  These same traits 
                     have certainly changed the lives of those people who love you most, the ones you yourself named 
                     Crab, Babe, Goaf and Gave. 

As they set out into the real world with their debut album, Augustana wondered aloud if they would make it, and that answer remains to be seen.  After lackluster sales of their third full-length album, the band was dropped from their record label; months later, key members of the band left to pursue other interests. 

But you, little brother, I have no doubt you will make it.  We’re so proud of you and look forward, with anticipation, to the life you will live.  If you forget everything else I’ve written, at least remember what another group of brothers have so eloquently declared, that there is nothing “like the love that let us share our name.”  

              All The Pain Money Can Buy  |  Fastball

         release date:  1998         record label:  Hollywood

track
listing:    1) The Way 
               2) Fire Escape
               3) Better Than It Was
               4) Which Way To The Top?
               5) Sooner Or Later
               6) Warm Fuzzy Feeling
               7) Slow Drag
                                                                               8) Good Old Days
                                                                               9) Charlie, The Methadone Man
                                                                               10) Out Of My Head
                                                                               11) Damaged Goods
                                                                               12) Nowhere Road
                                                                               13) Sweetwater, Texas
                                                                                                                                       
                                                                        “I complain very little because
                                                                            it’s better than it was…”

Fastball continues to play shows around their native Austin, Texas, releasing their latest album in 2004, and yet the band has never come close to replicating the success of their sophomore effort, All The Pain Money Can Buy.  Released in 1998, the album, propelled by the hit radio singles The Way and Out Of My Head, achieved platinum status (surpassing one-million sales) in only six months. 

It’s amazing just how much difference time can make.

A used book and CD junkie, I’ve spent countless hours combing the shelves of my two favorite places in Lexington:  Half-Price Books and Goodwill.  In the music sections of both, I’ve noticed a trend:  a handful of albums are repeatedly for sale.  These records, once extremely popular, have now taken up permanent residence on the shelves of second-hand stores.  Some of these albums are masterpieces like August and Everything After by Counting Crows or U2’s Achthung Baby (seriously, who is giving these albums away?).  On the other hand, some albums belong on those shelves – honestly, how many copies of Hanson’s MMMBop can there be in the world?

Fastball’s All The Pain Money Can Buy is one of those albums; I’ve seen it over and over in used CD bins.  A fan of 90’s music, I’ve considered purchasing it numerous times but always found myself changing my mind at the last minute.  A few months ago I ran into the album again, this time at Goodwill.  For whatever reason (maybe the money in my pocket was burning a hole), I finally broke down a bought the album for a whopping price of $2.50. 

I’m rather ashamed to admit that after the car ride home, during which I played the two radio singles on repeat, I promptly forgot about my purchase.  Until this week I’d never listened to other eleven songs on this platinum-selling album; truth be told, without this project, I probably never would’ve.   

All The Pain Money Can Buy starts off with a bang, the first four songs being among the strongest.  The record opens with The Way, a song inspired by true events.  In 1997, Lela and Raymond Howard, an elderly couple from Texas, left home to attend a festival in a nearby town.  Two weeks later, their bodies were discovered at the bottom of ravine, some 500 miles away from their intended destination.  In The Way, the band reimagines a happier ending, painting a picture of a couple taking to the open road with no particular destination in mind, searching for a way to escape from the world around them.  The band’s most successful single, The Way spent much of April and May 1998 as Billboards #1 Modern Rock track. 

The next officially released single, Fire Escape, follows, begging the question “I can be myself, how about you?”  Better Than It Was comes third, a hopelessly optimistic song declaring that life only gets better with time, followed by Which Way To The Top, a tune which sounds like it could have been pulled off any Wallflowers album (and coming from me, that’s a compliment). 

The second half of the album, however, doesn’t quite hold my attention like those first four songs do.  By no means is the remainder of the record a wash – its certainly worth a listen – I just find the album to be a bit frontloaded.  Bright spots on the latter half of All The Pain Money Can Buy include Slow Drag, a fierce breakup song, and the exceedingly sing-along-able Out Of My Head.


Less than a month ago, the world was up in arms.  The focus of their ire was a popular socialite, who 72 days after walking down the (heavily televised) aisle in a (very) public wedding ceremony, filed for divorce from her newly married husband.  I try to keep my life as far removed from celebutantes and Hollywood gossip as possible, but I could not dodge this story – it seemed to be on everyone lips (even NPR’s).  I’m in no way qualified to make an assessment of this short-lived marriage, except to feel remorse for the couple.  Most of world seems to believe this marriage was nothing short of a shameful moneymaking venture and popularity boost – and it certainly may have been.  But it’s also equally possible that in moving so quickly to divorce, the bride was only acting out what she has seen modeled. 

Research shows that children from broken homes run a higher risk of experiencing divorce than those children whose parents remain married.  In fact, if your parents divorced, you’re at least 40% more likely to experience divorce yourself.  If your parents married others after divorcing, the chances of your own marriage ending in divorce increase to 91%*.  That being said, I know plenty of couples in happy and healthy marriages who grew up with the pain of separation in their homes.  It’s not impossible to beat the odds – by the grace of God broken things can be made new again.  We can be rescued from the mistakes of our families, but at the same time we cannot ignore the effect of divorce on the children who are forced to live through it.  For whatever reason, divorce seems to beget more divorce.

The fact that almost half of all marriages in America end in divorce has done our society a disservice – it has normalized the premature end of marriage.  Divorce is no longer shocking, no longer appalling or surprising; it’s treated as an unwelcome, but accepted, part of everyday life.  We treat divorce like taxes – we don’t like it, but it can’t be avoided. 

All of this combines to create what scientists call a positive feedback cycle.  Divorce leads to divorce which leads to divorce.  When ending marriages becomes the norm, then divorce looks like the only answer to a relationship on the rocks.  I certainly can’t speak for everyone, but it seems like many marriages end not because the couple has exhausted every means for reconciliation, but because divorce is the simplest, most accepted answer.  Let me be clear, I don’t speak for every situation – Christ himself seemed to allow divorce in the area of infidelity – but, if we’re talking big picture, it’s easy to see that our society too quickly rushes to end our most important human relationship.  We (myself included) have become a people who look to our own needs first, willfully ignoring the compromise and sacrifice that family life requires.    

Which brings us back to that newly divorced socialite.  Of course, the choice to end her marriage before it was barely out of the gate is her responsibility – but at the same time, we can’t diminish the effect her life played in that decision.  At the age of 10, her parents split up.  Less than a year later, her mother remarried; her father followed suit in 2003.  No one can say for certain what role the end of her parents marriage played in her own decision to move toward divorce, but we would be wise to refrain from judging, especially when we don’t know the whole story.  It may be that the cards were never fully stacked in her favor to begin with.     

All this rambling eventually leads to my parents.  The family I was born into is easily one of the biggest blessings I have ever received.  My parents have profoundly shaped my life and set me on the course I am currently on:  working a fulfilling job in ministry, engaged to the woman I love, and living a life of purpose.  I could write volumes on the lessons they have taught and modeled for me, but as the day of my own wedding approaches, one sticks out above the rest:  the way my parents have stuck it out together.  To be honest, I know little about their conflicts, because neither of them have ever degraded or talked negatively about the other in front of their children.  I do know, however, that over the course of twenty-nine years of marriage, conflicts will arise.  My parents have managed to love each other not only during times of happiness, joy and peace, but also through the dark nights of disappointment, pain, and regret.  Only they could really tell the story of their lives, but from my outside perspective, I know that it’s not always been a cakewalk – and yet, they muscled through it.  Together. 

My family is not immune to the pains of divorce either.  While studying for the ministry at seminary, my father learned that his own parents were splitting.  This broke his heart; he could have let it define and set him on a course destined for the same end.  But by the grace of God, he and my mother have found a way to persevere.  While doing so, they have become role models for those around them, not the least of whom are their three sons.

The video below (click the link) is a small tribute to a couple that lives as if every day together is better than the last.  Your marriage has set a foundation that generations of your children and grandchildren will be able to stand upon.  Thank you – for following your God, loving your children, and keeping your commitments.   

"Better Than It Was" - A Tribute to Mom and Dad





* Nicholas Wolfinger, Understanding the Divorce Cycle, Cambridge University Press, 2005. 

    All The Hype That Money Can Buy  |  Five Iron Frenzy

                All That You Can’t Leave Behind  |  U2

        release date:  2000           record label:  Island                  

track listing:  1) Beautiful Day
                       2) Stuck In a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of
                       3) Elevation
                       4) Walk On
                       5) Kite
                       6) In a Little While  
                                                                             7) Wild Honey  
                                                                             8) Peace on Earth
                                                                             9) When I Look at the World  
                                                                           10) New York
                                                                           11) Grace

                                                                 “the only baggage you can bring
                                                                 is all that you can’t leave behind…”

The worst part about growing up is the point when you realize they were right – the people who told you things would get hard, friends would grow apart, and loved ones would leave.  You almost hated them for suggesting such a bleak future while you looked ahead to the prime of your life.  You reasoned these prophets of doom were speaking out of bitterness or resentment; years down the line, they would be forced to eat their words.  Certainly your life would be different.

Time passed, and you eventually found yourself carefully stepping around the broken shards of your rose-colored glasses.  Every deplorable outcome they predicted has become part of your story.  Life got difficult.  Friends disappeared.  Loved ones are now further apart than ever.  Of course, its not their fault – the people who warned us that such a time would come – but still, a piece of you wants to hold them responsible, to pin the blame on someone else.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t stick very well. 

In a story, the most important part is the end.  Everything, from the opening scene onward, moves steadily toward the conclusion.  In that ending, we hope to find an answer for the conflict that the main character has gone through – the guy finally getting the girl, a lost family member reunited, or the forces of evil defeated by an unlikely hero.  But an ending doesn’t have to be “happy” in order for it to be satisfying or memorable.  Who can forget the empty funeral of the title character in The Great Gatsby, the moment Edward Norton turns to his girlfriend and tells her that she met him at a strange time in his life as buildings slowly begin to collapse around them, or when you finally realize that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time?  Without an ending, a story is pointless. 

While we love a good ending in literature or film, few of us have learned to embrace the conclusions that life throws at us.  Its one thing to finish a book; its quite another to live an ending.  But as much as we want to avoid it, we can’t escape that fact that we will all have to face the end of a relationship, a project, or a dream.  In my twenty-six years, I could count on one hand the endings that I have handled in a healthy way.  The past year has been difficult for just that reason.

In June of 2010, I made the decision to step away from a promising career as a high school science teacher.  It was a bittersweet ending – in some regards, I welcomed it, but in others, I grieved the loss.  I left teaching in order to care for my aging grandparents – one an invalid, the other suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.  While I treasure the time we continue to spend together, each day brings with it an ending, as independence and health slowly slip away from the both of them. 

Providing round-the-clock care obviously takes away from the opportunity for social interaction.  During that year, I saw many friendships suffer under the weight of the responsibility I was shouldering.  Single, in my mid-twenties, these should have been the freest years of my life; instead, I spent most of my time, including weekends, at my grandparents’ house.  A handful of close relationships withered to nothing.  At the same time, the small group that I had been leading for almost three years began to disintegrate.  At one time, over twenty of us would meet weekly for Bible study and fellowship.  By the end of my tenure, we were down to five.  On top of all that, I also found myself approaching the end of my time with an intentional Christian community that I had helped form.  I had been living there before moving in with my grandparents, but the time required caring for them made it impossible to continue, in any meaningful way, in the work and the relationships within that community. 

The switch to providing in-home care was a shock to my daily routine.  As a teacher, I rarely saw free time, washed away in a flood of lesson plans and papers to grade.  And then, almost over night, I entered the much slower-paced world of my grandparents.  We ate all three meals together, watched every newscast, and continually napped throughout the day.  As these endings began to incessantly bump up against my life, I found myself with more than enough time to brood over each of them.  This led me to one conclusion:  I was a failure. Obviously some things were out of my control (namely the health of my grandparents), but in regards to my dying friendships, the end of my once-successful Bible study and the conclusion of my time with the Christian community, I placed the blame squarely on my own shoulders.  Needless to say, this was not a healthy response. 

I struggled because I believed that endings, at least in our personal lives, were a bad thing.  Instead of embraced and welcomed, they were something to be avoided and shunned – a sign of failure.  I spent over a year believing that some deficit within me was to blame for the losses I was experiencing.  And then, near the end of August 2011, I got a shock to my system. 

This summer, I started working at a church in Lexington as the Creative Arts Pastor for Student Ministries.  A few months later, near the end of August, the entire staff went on retreat for three days.  During this time, our senior pastor shared with us what God had been teaching him during the course of his summer study break; little did he know he would be speaking right to me.

He began by giving an overview of a book he had recently read, Necessary Endings by Henry Cloud, in which the author makes the case that endings “are not a tragedy to be feared and later regretted, but a necessary stage on the way to growth.”  He explained that endings are an essential component of a healthy life, yet we so often do all we can to avoid them.  If nothing in our lives ever comes to an end – be it a job, a relationship, or a goal – then we are allowing unhealthy baggage to accumulate.  Our bodies expel waste as a way of survival – if this did not occur, toxins would build up in our system and very quickly kill us.  Why should the same not be true in our lives as a whole? 

But let me be clear:  just because life hits a rough patch does not mean its time to go on an “ending spree.”  There is certainly a time to fight for our relationships, dreams and goals.  But its important to remember that there may also come a time in which, for our own spiritual, emotional and physical well being, an end must be embraced.  As our pastor continued to teach, the work God had been doing started to come into focus; the endings He was bringing about were something to be celebrated, not feared.  I realized that the relationships which had been deteriorating were the unhealthiest, ones in which I received little support and acceptance.  The end of the Bible study that I led was not a failure on my part, but an opportunity to use my gifts and talents in a different area of ministry, as well as an opening for a new leader to step in, giving the group fresh vibrancy and life.  And even now, I’m beginning to understand that the desires God has placed within me to be a part of an intentional Christian community are not ending, but rather being pruned to produce more fruit in the future.  This was a totally new way of thinking for me; I needed time to let these thoughts marinate.

A week or so ago, I put on my iPod, clicked down to the next album and went for a walk on a fall afternoon.  It was overcast, with a slight chill in the air, but it seemed as charming as any warm summer evening as Beautiful Day, the first track from U2’s 2000 release All That You Can’t Leave Behind, came roaring through my headphones.  I meandered through a field beside my house, watching butterflies and moths take to flight as my feet shuffled through the tall grass.  As the album continued, I came to a set of trees, one which I was able to climb into; I sat on a branch, ten feet off the ground, listening to the remainder of the album under the protection of its green leaves. 

All That You Can’t Leave Behind is a great album; the first of many U2 discs I would purchase.  Besides Beautiful Day, it contains Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of, written for Bono’s friend Michael Hutchence, the former lead singer of INXS who committed suicide in 1997 and Peace on Earth, which pleads for an end to warfare.  One of my favorite songs of all time, Grace, closes the album with some of the sweetest theology you’ll ever hear put to music: “grace, she takes the blame / covers the shame / removes the stain / grace makes beauty out of ugly things.”  But that fall day, as I sat in a tree whose leaves were still green, the song that spoke to my very soul was Walk On, an anthem written in support of democratic Burmese freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi.

As the song began, everything I had been learning over the past year seemed to come full circle:  “love, is not the easy thing / the only baggage you can bring / is all that you can’t leave behind.”  As children – perhaps even as young adults – we believe that in this life we’ll never be forced to leave anything behind.  Our lives are a grand adventure, one in which everyone and everything we desire will also be involved.  But that is just not the case.  Some things will, eventually, have to take precedence.  The list of things that we can take with us throughout the entirety of our life is quite short – and only you can decide what makes the cut.  For me, the list tops out at two:  faith and family.  The love of Christ and relationships with those who share my last name are two things that I can’t leave behind.  And one of them, according to Christ, must take precedence over the other. 

Walk On implores its listener to continue living their life, even as they have to leave pieces of it behind.  The songs ends as Bono sings “leave it behind / you’ve got to leave it behind / all that you fashion, all that you make / all that you build, all that you break / all that you measure, all that you steal / all this you can leave behind.”

There are plenty of things in life that I love – my job, close friends and dreams – but I realize that there may come a time when I must leave these behind in order to hold onto the two things that I can’t leave behind.  Endings will continue to rear their ugly head throughout the rest of my life, but instead of something to be feared, perhaps they are to be embraced, for, as my pastor taught me that late summer day, “good cannot begin until bad ends.”

               All-Time Greatest Hits  |  Lynyrd Skynyrd

              release date:  2000              record label:  MCA        
(songs recorded between 1972-1977)                                                        

track listing:  1) Tuesday’s Gone*
                       2) Sweet Home Alabama
                       3) Gimme Three Steps
                       4) Simple Man
                       5) Saturday Night Special
                                                                              6) Swamp Music
                                                                              7) The Ballad of Curtis Loew  
                                                                              8) Free Bird (studio version)*
                                                                              9) Call Me the Breeze
                                                                            10) Comin’ Home
                                                                            11) Gimme Back My Bullets
                                                                            12) What’s Your Name?
                                                                            13) You Got That Right
                                                                            14) All I Can Do Is Write About It
                                                                            15) That Smell
                                                                                                              * not included on original release

                                                                     “Tuesday’s gone, with the wind…”

The other night, I was flipping channels, when I stumbled upon Jay Leno’s Tonight Show.  In the ever-waging late night wars, I proudly fly the flag of Jimmy Fallon.  But with more than an hour before he would take the air, I lingered as Leno brought out his first guest, actor Charlie Sheen.  Sheen, as most of you can remember, was fired from his hit prime-time comedy Two and a Half Men for being, well, insane.  The few months that followed are the definition of a public relations nightmare.  Mr. Sheen went through a very high-profile meltdown, which culminated in the posting of several bizarre online videos in which he blasts his former bosses, speaks of drinking tiger’s blood, and “winning.”  For weeks, Charlie Sheen was a train wreck that no one could avoid. 

Eventually, Sheen worked through his problems and has recently landed another acting job on an upcoming sitcom.  That night, Leno began his interview with Sheen by noting the cheers of approval from the crowd and remarking that “Americans will accept anything but hypocrisy.”  Turning to Sheen, he continued, “the one thing you are not is a hypocrite… you always said, ‘I like girls,’ ‘I like to party,’ and I think that’s why people rolled with you through this [turbulent year].”

Thirteen albums into my quest to listen to (and then write about) every album on iPod, I have come face-to-face with my own hypocrisy.  In my original post (which you can find here), I decried a culture that no longer has time to listen to entire albums, instead choosing to purchase only singles from online outlets such as iTunes.  I felt as if I soared above this practice until I came across the next album on my iPod, All-Time Greatest Hitsby Southern-rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd.  It forced me to hold up a mirror and see, in myself, the problem that I condemned in others.  But, if there is to be redemption, it must come through confession – so here goes.  All-Time Greatest Hits, in my opinion, didn’t live up to its name.  So I changed it.  Edited it, until it became the record I wanted it to be.  I added songs through purchasing them from iTunes, and removed a track I didn’t like.  Funny how my self-righteous tones diminish when I start preaching to myself.  But more on that later.  

I didn’t grow up a Skynyrd fan.  My little hometown in central Kentucky had two high schools.  I graduated from the city school.  We fancied ourselves a strange mixture of top-40 popular kids, punk rock outcasts, and hip-hop street thugs.  In actuality, we were none of the above, but we thought ourselves mighty tough.  On the other side of town was the county school.  We city folks knew that the kids over there were nothing but rednecks, listening to country music and flying their rebel flags high.  Lynyrd Skynyrd was associated with the county school, so I didn’t have much to do with the classic rock icons.  (It’s funny, or maybe sad, how we draw lines in the sand to separate “them” from “us,” even at such a young age.)

Ironically, in college, I dated one of those “redneck” girls from the county school.  She helped expand my musical taste beyond three chord punk-rock anthems.  Janis Joplin,  Bob Seger, and Skynyrd were always in her CD player.  I didn’t mind Janis, and I warmed up to Seger pretty quickly – but I fought against Skynyrd as long as I could.  I didn’t want to like their music.  First, I objected to them on the grounds that I was raised a Neil Young fan.  His 1970 release, After the Gold Rush, contained a song entitled Southern Man, in which Young decried Southern racism.  Sweet Home Alabama, easily Skynyrd’s most popular song, was written as a counter-attack to Young’s song.  In my justice-driven mind, I equated choosing Skynyrd over Young as tantamount to supporting racism over equality.  Secondly, and I’m not proud to admit this, but I judged Skynyrd based upon their fan base, which I perceived to be party-hungry frat boys and beer-guzzling NASCAR fans – and I wasn’t interested in joining the ranks of either.  Even before I gave Skynyrd’s music a chance, I had decided not to like them.

But then, I listened to them.  I fought it as long as I could, but the music of the Southern-rockers eventually wore me down.  It was too good to dismiss, and too important to judge unfairly.  When I listened to Sweet Home Alabama with impartial ears, I didn’t hear racism, but boys who didn’t want an outsider (like Young, a Canadian) to judge them.  If I’m honest, the same thing happens to me when outsiders turn their nose up at my beloved home state as being “backward,” or full of people who “don’t wear shoes and only eat fried chicken.”  In fact, Young and Ronnie Van Zant, lead singer and principal songwriter for Skynyrd, were actually close friends.  Young wrote a song for Skynyrd, while Van Zant was seen numerous times, most notably on the cover of Skynyrd’s Street Survivors album, wearing a Young t-shirt.  Luckily, the choice between Young and Skynyrd isn’t an “either/or.”  As for the idea that Skynyrd wrote only light-weight, party music – nothing could be further from the truth.  Of course, they have songs like Sweet Home Alabama, Call Me the Breeze, and What’s Your Name which seem to extol the virtues of riotous living, but to assume that the band has nothing of significance to say is nonsense.  Just a cursory listen to Skynyrd’s songs prove otherwise.  In Saturday Night Special, a song which decries violence, Van Zant peaches that guns “ain’t good for nothin’ / but put a man six feet in a hole.”  On That Smell, the band tackles the issue of substance abuse, “the angel of darkness is upon you / stuck a needle in your arm / so take another toke / have a blow for your nose / one more drink, fool, will drown you.”  The Ballad of Curtis Loew finds the band daring to place value in a man whom the rest of society has rejected, “people said you was useless / but them people all were fools” and  Simple Man, one of my favorite songs by Skynyrd, is full of worthwhile knowledge passed from a mother to her growing son, “take your time, don’t live too fast / troubles will come and they will pass / and don’t forget son, there is Someone up above.”  Much to my excitement, I found that my premature judgments of the music of Ronnie Van Zant and company were completely off-base.  Skynyrd was about so much more than just drinking music.

After deciding it was past time that I embraced Lynyrd Skynyrd, I went out looking for an album to add to my collection.  Problem was, I couldn’t find one that included all the songs I wanted.  I had only had three requirements:  the album had to have 1) Simple Man, 2) Tuesday’s Gone (which, on a side note, has to be one of the best songs ever – heartbreak and trains, it don’t get much better than that) and 3) the studio version of Free Bird (I know, everyone likes the live version better – except me).  Problem was, I couldn’t find that combination.  So I took matters into my own hands.  All-Time Greatest Hits included Simple Man, but its version of Free Bird was live and Tuesday’s Gone was nowhere to be found.  Luckily for me, a Skynyrd album that my brother purchased at Goodwill did have the studio version of Free Bird – so, on my iPod, I made the first change to the All-Time Greatest Hits album by removing the live version of Free Bird and replacing it with the studio recording.  My freshmen year of college, Coca-Cola was running a promotion that printed an iTunes code, redeemable for one song, on the bottoms of winning Coke caps.  I drank a Coke a day until I became a winner, rushed home, and promptly spent my winning cap on Tuesday’s Gone, adding it to the All-Time Greatest Hits album on my iPod.  Of course, changing an album so that it contains the songs I want makes me, at least to some degree, a music hypocrite.  But, at least, the album now lived up to its name. 

Great art has the ability to transport its beholder.  So often, a song, a painting, or a sunset has created a story in my mind.  Sometimes I attempt to record them; other times, I just delight in watching them unfold.  A few years ago, I had the idea to create something I would call a M.A.E. – a multisensory artistic experience.  The idea was to utilize music, writing and photography to tell a common story.  For me, Tuesday’s Gone has always been a work art that has transported me into the middle of a story: its opening lines take me to a train track, a broken heart, and a grey fall sky.  Over two years ago, I tried to record the story that Tuesday’s Gone crafts in my mind every time I hear it.  A few weeks ago, I finally had the courage to try my hand at photography.  A finally, after days of putting it together, my first M.A.E., years in the making, has been completed.  I hope it has the ability to transport you to that train track, to that broken heart, and to the grey fall sky as well.  

Access my first M.A.E. here - Tuesday's Gone.  

               Again, for the First Time  |  Bleach 

        release date:  2002              record label:  Tooth and Nail

track listing:  1) Intro
                       2) Baseline     
                       3) Celebrate
                       4) Broke in the Head
                       5) We are Tomorrow
                       6) Fell Out
                                                                              7) Weak at the Knees
                                                                              8) Found You Out
                                                                              9) Said a Lot
                                                                            10) Almost Too Late 
                                                                            11) Andy’s Doin’ Time
                                                                            12) Knocked Out
                                                                            13) Jenn’s Song

                                                                “All that I’ve done, I hope that it counts…”

My youngest brother, Joseph, was born on August 29th, 1989, in Lexington, KY.  Every year, as the summer begins to wind down, my family searches for birthday presents, my mother purchases a cake, makes a big meal, and gathers a slew of family and friends together to celebrate.  And like clockwork, one story gets retold, year in and year out.  The time that I, his oldest brother, ruined his birthday.   

Like everyone else, I have my fair share of character flaws, but one tends to rival all others in intensity:  my lack of foresight.  Making plans has never been my strong suit.  In my excitement, I ignore flaws obvious to most anyone else.  Literally, every trip I go on finds me arriving at the destination without something crucial:  a toothbrush, deodorant, shoes.  On a trip to Florida with my cousin, I forgot to pack underwear. 

In the fall of my sophomore year at the University of Kentucky, I heard about a concert in Nashville.  I was dead set on attending.  Having recently gotten a job, I scrapped together enough money to order a ticket.  As the weeks passed, and the day of the show grew closer, my anticipation hit a fever pitch.  In my single-minded excitement, however, I had failed to recognize two glaring problems.

First, I would be attending the concert alone.  Not usually a problem, except in this case, as the ever-dutiful student within me planned on driving back to school after the show.  I didn’t want to miss classes Friday morning.  Somehow, the seven-hour round trip didn’t faze me.  Second, and most important, the day of the concert also happened to be the day that my little brother was brought into this world.  Learn from my mistakes:  if you plan to miss your fifteen-year-old brother’s birthday party for a concert, you should tell him before the party. 

I arrived at my parent’s house the afternoon of the concert, proud of myself for leaving enough time to at least see my brother on his special day; he was lucky to have such a thoughtful older brother.  After singing “Happy Birthday,” the family sat down for a huge dinner.  Finishing my food quickly, I got up from the table and announced that I had to leave. Every face in the room turned toward me, varying degrees of shock and surprise on each of them.  You’d have thought I had just crowned myself the king of Narnia.  I hadn’t anticipated this.  I started to blush.  Naturally, my brother asked why.

“I’m going to a concert,” I answered matter-of-factly. To say I was unprepared for his reaction would be an understatement.     

“A concert?”

“Uh, yeah,” I replied sheepishly. 

“On my birthday?!”

I was almost beginning to feel guilty about it.  Almost. 

“It’s their last show.  Ever.” 

My father raised an eyebrow,  “Who’s playing?”

“Bleach.”

My brother shook his head in disbelief. 

“Bleach?!”

I thought my family had gathered to celebrate my brother’s birthday, but from their appalled stares, I was beginning to wonder if they had assembled to prevent me from attending the show.  I was beginning to feel desperate. “They’re my favorite band… it’s their last show!” I said again, to no one in particular. 

“Where is this concert?” my mother asked.  With my answer, I could see the worry begin to move across her face.  “Is anyone going with you?”

I shook my head.

“Son, you will fall asleep at the wheel and die on the side of the road.”

Mom’s a worrier. 

I reminded everyone, for what seemed like the tenth time, that this was Bleach’s final show.  “I have to be there!” 

My mother proceeded to speak words that shook me to the core.

“Well, then I’m going with you.”

Simultaneously, my brother and I blurted out the same response:  “What?!”

“Its my birthday!”

“MOM!  I’m eighteen!  I think I can drive myself to Nashville!”

Thirty minutes later, I was riding in a minivan.  And I was not alone. If you’re going to skip your little brother’s birthday for a concert, and you don’t tell him ahead of time, at least have the decency not to rob him of his mother as well.   

Every year, on August 29th, when the story gets retold, those unfamiliar with the tale question me, an air of righteous indignation in their voices.

“You missed your brother’s birthday for a concert?”

Seven years later, it still shocks me that no one will accept my answer. 

“It was their last show!” 

Two years prior to that fall afternoon – almost to the day – Bleach released their fourth studio album:  Again, for the First Time.  The group broke onto the Christian music scene in 1996 with their debut album, Space, but it was their second and third albums, Static in 1998 and Bleach in 1999, that cemented Bleach as a mainstay in the Christian music industry.  Not bad for a band birthed at a little college in eastern Kentucky.  As 1999 came to a close, Bleach’s stock seemed to be rising by the day; critics and fans alike were certain the band was destined for even greater things.  And then, seemingly overnight, Bleach disappeared. 

Fans eagerly awaited a new album and another tour, but years passed with no word from the band.  Behind the scenes, the foundation was crumbling, as members were lost to other pursuits.  By 2000, the band comprised of five friends from Kentucky Christian University had been whittled down to only two:  Davy Baysinger, lead vocalist and principal songwriter, and guitarist Sam Barnhart.  The duo were forced to confront a difficult question:  was this the end of Bleach? 

It took three years for fans to get an answer to that question, but in August of 2002, Bleach burst back onto the scene with a new album, three new members, and a new lease on life.  Brothers Milam and Jared Byers took over lead guitar and percussion duties, while Jerry Morrison and his bass guitar completed the new lineup.  It was nothing short of a rebirth.  Once facing the end of their musical dreams, the members of Bleach remerged with Thoreau’s passion to seize the day, live deliberately and “suck the marrow out of life.”  The new set of songs were loud, rowdy and fun, but at the same time, deeply personal and reflective.  Bleach, at once, had grown up and learned to let loose – the result was something truly magical. 

Again for the First Time, the world’s reintroduction to a reborn Bleach, begins with a track aptly titled Intro.  An instrumental piece, lasting all of eighteen seconds, it provides a perfect complement to the raucous mixture of rock, pop and punk to come.  The band jumps into its new sound with Baseline.  Clearly excited about being back where they belong, Davy sings “bring back / bring back the baseline / I think it’s about that time / I can’t afford to miss / I was made for this.”  The party continues with Celebrate, a love letter which could equally have been written to a significant other, a band, or the God who “makes all things new.”  With the boys backing him, Davy’s joy overflows: “I celebrate the day / that I met you / the impossible is possible / the unthinkable is coming true.” 

But life isn’t all celebrations.  On Again, for the First Time, Bleach gives significant time to exploring the rollercoaster that is human relationships.  Most everyone can identify with the situation chronicled in Broke in the Head, “you haven’t said a single thing / the whole way home / the air is thick with awkward silence / so you turn up the radio,” or the description of heartache in Fell Out:  “what’s wrong with me / I just been layin’ around / wishin’ it’d be like it was before I fell out / now is there any chance, that I can find romance / like we had back then, oh, I want it again.” 

But Bleach is ready to offer something drastically missing from most songs about heartache:  hope.  In Weak at the Knees, Davy describes a dire situation by singing that “this hole is big / and my light is starting to burn out,” but for Bleach, darkness is never the end.  By the conclusion of that same song, the band has found the will to carry on:  “I won’t let go cause something inside me is saying hold on / just for one more night / I can’t explain it, but something is tell me its alright / it’s alright / You found me.”  Likewise, in Said a Lot, frustration with a friend surfaces, “makin’ friends so you can use them / that’s the way you pick and choose them… you said a lot of things this year / half of them untrue.”  But the boys in the band are unwilling to give up, the song ending with the promise “there is hope and I’m not jaded / my passion for this hasn’t faded / there is hope and it’s unchanging.” 

But nothing preaches hope quite like Knocked Out, a song that, at certain times in the past, has literally brought me to tears.  It begins, “how did I get here / all tied up … complacency has gotten the best of me / and the best of me is forgotten / beneath the sea of what I’ve become,” before going into the chorus, “all that I’ve done, I hope that it counts / I’d rather be knocked down / than to be knocked out.”  Who hasn’t, at times in their life, wondered if they were going to be able to get back up?  But hope finds us in the end, as it does with this song, with Davy definitely singing into the darkness, “I will sing at the top of my lungs / I will dance even if I’m the only one / and I hope that we’ll never be apart / and I will sing and I hope it heals my heart.”  That kind of hope changes things.     

Seven years after ruining my brother’s birthday and being chauffeured to Bleach’s last show by my mother, I have come to a realization:  were I put into that situation again, I would make the same decision.  Sure, I’d do things different the second time around –  I warn my family beforehand, and do much more to make my brother feel loved on his birthday, but seeing the closing chapter on a band that has meant so much to me was something that I’ll never forget.  Over a year after that concert, Bleach’s record label would release a double album entitled Audio / Visual, which contained a greatest hits-type retrospective of Bleach’s nine year career, as well as a DVD of their final concert.  A few years back, I remember reading an article about Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York album, the first record released after the suicide of frontman Kurt Cobain.  The writer of the article noted that, having attended the historic performance from which the album was recorded, he bought, but then never listened to the album.  For him, the memories of the live performance would be diluted by listening to the recording; the same is true for me in regards to the DVD of the Bleach farewell show.  I never watched it, because I lived it. 

No band has meant as much to me as Bleach.  The music, the honesty of the lyrics, the energy of the live shows, and the attitude of the band members make them unforgettable.  I lost count of how many times I saw Bleach live through high school and college – but what I do have are memories.  The time Davy climbed up the speaker towers and jumped off, into the loving hands of the mosh pit, inside a church in Wilmore.  When I got stuck in traffic on my way to see them at the Ichthus Christian Music Festival and didn’t make the show; when I finally arrived, a close friend presented me with a piece of wood autographed by each band member.  That last show in Nashville, and the fact that my mom was probably right – as soon as the show was over, I crawled into the passenger seat of her van and feel asleep, my mother driving the entire distance back home.  And every time, after each show, when the guys were gracious enough to stop and really talk to us.  There was a time when I saw the band so much that they began to recognize me.  What a shot of self-esteem for a high school student, to have his favorite band actually know him. 

Davy, Sam, Milam, Jared and Jerry – rest assured, all that you’ve done has counted.  Over and over and over again. 

Each time I write a new blog, I poke around the internet, researching it and the band.  I was going through this ritual with Again for the First Time, remembering my favorite band, when, completely by accident, I came across something that made me yell like a school girl: bleachisalive.com.

Apparently, the boys have one more rebirth in them; I couldn’t be more excited! 

                     After the Gold Rush  |  Neil Young  

           release date:  1970         record label:  Reprise Records

track listing:  1) Tell Me Why
                       2) After the Gold Rush
                       3) Only Love Can Break Your Heart
                       4) Southern Man
                       5) Till the Morning Comes
                       6) Oh, Lonesome Me
                                                                             7) Don’t Let It Bring You Down
                                                                             8) Birds
                                                                             9) When You Dance, I Can Really Love
                                                                           10) I Believe In You
                                                                           11) Cripple Creek Ferry

                                                                   “I was thinking about what a friend had said,
                                                                             I was hoping it was a lie…”

When it comes to the second-coming of Christ – the time when the Church is taken to heaven (sweet!) and the rest of the unbelieving earth is torturously destroyed (not near as sweet) – Christians seems to fall into one of two camps.  On one side are believers who seem to base their entire relationship with God on this future event.  They read and reread the book of Revelation, look for signs of the end times in the news, own the entire Left Behind series, and, with hushed voices, even dare to predict the date.  Their obsession with the end of the world is, honestly, quite unsettling. 

But on the other side of that coin are the majority of Christians who rarely give the return of Christ a second thought.  They blissfully go about their lives, daring to fall in love with a life and world that, according to scripture, has already been doomed to pass away.  Their faith ignores the end of the story.  And we all know, with out a good ending, a story isn’t worthwhile. 

For most of my life, I have fallen squarely into the second camp, standing with the vast majority of believers who do their best to avoid thoughts of Armageddon.  In our defense, the book of Revelation is pretty scary.  Four-headed beasts.  Whores riding dragons.  Pits of fire.  War.  Famine.  Pestilence.  Death.  Those images just don’t fill me with the warm fuzzies like “God is love” does.  But no matter how badly I want to avoid it, the end of our story has already been written.  We’re on a bullet train barreling toward the end, with no idea when that last stop will occur.  The question is:  what will we do with our trip?  And how will we face the end?  

My father graduated from Fayette County High School, Fayetteville, Georgia, in the summer of 1973.  As a sophomore, in the fall of 1970, he purchased Neil Young’s third solo LP, After the Gold Rush.  It quickly became one of his favorites.  Fast forward thirty-one years:  now a father of three, my Dad, on a quick run to Wal-Mart, happens across that long-forgotten album in the electronics section.  Fondly remembering it as one of his favorites while in high school, he buys the album, now in CD format, and rushes home to give it to me.  Isn’t it odd how seemingly mundane events in our lives find their way permanently into our memory banks?  This would be an example of that.  For whatever reason, I can remember it like it was yesterday.  I was sitting in a chair in my room, working on homework, when my dad knocked on the door and entered, handing me the CD.  At this point in my life, I only knew Neil Young as part of CSNY – that hippie group Dad made us listen to while on long car rides.  But, I could tell my father was excited about his gift and so, an ever dutiful son, I played along.  As quickly as he entered, he was gone again, leaving me with my unexpected gift.  I set it aside and finished my homework. 

To say that the attacks of September 11th changed our nation would be an understatement.  Growing up, my mom would tell us about the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  She was in elementary school, blissfully going about her day when the principal interrupted class with an announcement.  At that point in time, he had not learned of the death of the president – only that he had been shot while in Dallas, Texas.  He announced this to the student body, asking each of them to pray.  School was let out early and, upon returning home, the radio told my young mother that the president had succumbed to his injuries and died.  She remembered hearing reports of the manhunt for the killer, and the eventual assassination of the accused, Lee Harvey Oswald, by Dallas businessman Jack Ruby.  My mother was young enough to worry that the authorities would mistakenly arrest her mother, whose first name was Ruby, for the murder of Oswald.  It was a time in history that left a permanent imprint on her – she will always remember where she was on that fateful day.  I had no way of knowing, as I walked to school on the morning of September 11, 2001, that only hours separated me from the day I would never forget – the one I would tell my own children about. 

I was at my locker, during class change between first and second periods, when a friend ran up to me.  “Did you hear about the World Trade Center?”  I looked at him confused.  “There’s been a terrorist attack … it’s really bad.”  This particular friend was very interested in political science – we had actually had conversations about terrorism and Osama Bin Laden before the attacks on the World Trade Center – so I trusted his report.  I rushed through the crowded halls to my second period class.  My biology teacher, Ms. Calvert, was turning on the TV when I came into the room.  As the images flashed across the screen, my heart dropped.  It was much worse we could have ever imagined.  It quickly became apparent that instruction wasn’t going to happen today.  The students in my class were transfixed on the television.  Some were crying.  Others were praying.  All of us were in a state of shock.  We watched, live, as the second plane hit the towers.  To our horror, we realized that what we thought were falling pieces of debris were, in actuality, people jumping to their deaths.  Minutes later, the towers were falling to the ground, and alongside it, our youthful sense of innocence came tumbling down.  A close friend, a Muslim girl from Pakistan, turned to me and asked why this was happening.  I didn’t have an answer. 

In the madness, I remember someone saying that this was a sign of the end of the world.  Christ would be coming back for his Church soon.  Hell, fire, and brimstone would follow for unbelievers.  Armageddon was upon us.  I didn’t tell my Muslim friend this.  It wouldn’t have comforted her.  In fact, it did nothing to comfort me. 

The bell never rang for third period.  Much like the day my mother will never forget, the principal came onto the loud speaker and, addressing the entire student body, asked us to pray for our nation.  School was dismissed early.  I walked home and found my parents watching the coverage on TV.  It was the only topic of discussion in our house that night – it was as if a heavy blanket had fallen upon us, and we couldn’t find our way out.  After supper, I went to my room and closed the door.  I needed some peace.  Some quiet.  Some escape.  Without checking to see what it contained, I turned my CD player on, and lay down on the carpet, staring up at a ceiling covered in band posters.  After the Gold Rush started to play, with Neil Young begging “tell me why.”  What was the answer to that question?  I still had no idea.  Were the students at school correct?  Could this really be the end of the world?  My thoughts consumed me as the album progressed into the title track, After the Gold Rush, when a line stopped me dead in my tracks.  Over somber piano chords, Neil Young admitted, “I was thinking about what a friend had said, I was hoping it was a lie.”  My friends had told me this was the beginning of the end.  Like Neil Young, with all my might, I was hoping they were wrong.  

After the Gold Rush was released near the end of a prolific time of recording in Neil Young’s career.  In the span of fifteen months, Young released three records:  his sophomore album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere in May, 1969, the CSNY classic Déjà Vu in March of 1970, followed by After the Gold Rush five months later.  Originally conceived as the soundtrack for a movie by the same name, After the Gold Rush was released as a stand alone album after the movie project was abandoned.  All that remains of this unfinished film is its soundtrack, recognized now as a quintessential Young recording.  In 2003, Rollingstone magazine recognized it as the 71st greatest album of all time – the highest ranking for a Neil Young record on that list. 

In 2011, hindsight allows us to look back at After the Gold Rush and recognize it as a virtual microcosm of Young’s carrier.  It’s an uneven mixture of the folky, Americana-influenced music of Crosby, Still, Nash and Young and the rough and tumble, often highly political, rock and roll Young created in albums with his backing band, Crazy Horse.  The album jumps right into the folk end of Young’s carrier, with Tell Me Why, featuring Young’s characteristic vocals over a few acoustic guitars.  The title track, After the Gold Rush, comes next, with Young on both vocals and piano.  Three tracks into the album, percussion instruments, in the form of drums and bass, finally make their first appearance on Only Love Can Break Your Heart.  But don’t be fooled, the scope of the album, up to this point, has remained squarely on folk.  No blaring guitar solos just yet.  Young finally lets the rock out with one his most popular, and controversial songs, the album’s fourth track:  Southern Man.  The song decries the history of slavery and the then current state of race relations in the south:  “I saw cotton and I saw black / tall white mansions and little shacks / southern man, when will you pay them back?”  Young also calls into question the hypocrisy of racism arising in a historically religious portion of our nation:  “southern man, better keep your head / don’t forget what your good book says.”  The fire in Young’s lyrics is equally matched by his ferocious and impassioned guitar playing.  This is Neil Young’s brand of rock and roll at its finest.  Not everyone, however, shared Young’s feelings.  Many southerners objected to their portrayal in the song, chief among them Ronnie Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd, who penned their biggest hit, Sweet Home Alabama, in response to Southern Man.  Van Zant specifically addresses Young in the lyrics:  “I hope Neil Young will remember / a southern man don’t need him around, anyhow.” 

Young’s electric guitar disappears with the last notes of Southern Man, and the album again slips back into the Americana mindset, with Till the Morning Comes, Oh, Lonesome Me (featuring Young on harmonica), Don’t Let It Bring You Down and another piano ballad, Birds.  The rock and roll band reemerges on When You Dance I Can Really Love, just to disappear again for the last two tracks on the album:  I Believe In You and Cripple Creek Ferry.  With five of the eleven songs clocking in at under three minutes, the album moves along rather quickly, finishing in just over thirty-five minutes. 

“I don’t want Jesus to come back.”  All heads in the room jerked instinctively toward the sound of the voice, looks of surprise in our eyes and nervous laughs in our mouths.  As middle school students, we weren’t aware of much – but we at least knew you weren’t supposed to say that – especially at church.  Embarrassed, the girl who had interrupted our Sunday school lesson began to backpedal:  “I mean, I want Him to come back, just not yet… at least not until I get married.”  The tension in the room vanished, and a smile crossed our teacher’s face.  The girls in the youth group, who had been dreaming of their weddings for as long as they could remember, politely nodded in agreement.  The boys snickered amongst themselves – marriage, in their minds, meant only one thing.  And, truth be told, we really wanted to be on earth long enough to experience “it.”  Don’t get the wrong idea – its not that we didn’t love Jesus – it just didn’t seem fair that we could be called into eternal bliss without ever having a chance to experience our wedding night.  The girls continued the conversation, “I’d really like to have children,” “I want to raise my family before Christ returns;” the boys, on the other hand, didn’t have much to say. Their thoughts were focused on what they would miss if Christ were to return that afternoon, their eyes gazing despairingly into space. 

The night after the attacks of September 11th, I didn’t want Christ to return.  Unlike my friend from youth group, I wasn’t brave enough to verbalize those thoughts – but that’s exactly what was going on inside my head.  I wanted to live my life.  I wanted to get married (and yes, have my honeymoon), raise children, and pursue my dreams.  On Sunday morning I would proclaim my love for Christ, during the week I would allow that love to influence my thoughts and actions, but when it came down to it, I just was not excited for the source of that love to come back to earth.  To be honest, part of that fear was based on my teenage understanding of end-times theology, influenced heavily by popular Christian culture, which made the event sound more like a horror movie than a source of hope.  But, to be fair, I’d have to admit that an equal portion of my trepidation was rooted in selfishness.  In my mind, it was only fair for Christ to avoid returning until I was in my 70s - that way I could live my life, but still avoid that pesky death thing.  As I sat and listened to that Neil Young record, I realized that I wanted my future more than I wanted Christ.  Unfortunately, ten years later, many days I still feel the same way.

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells a story about flowers.  Although they do not work or labor over their appearance, they are the most splendid of God’s creations.  In fact, plants essentially do one thing – grow upward toward the sun.  This growth, however, does not just occur vertically.  Plants, especially seedlings, actually follow the course of the sun as it passes by overhead, centering their whole selves on the source of their life.  When the sun shifts positions in the sky, the plants shift ever so slightly as well.  This phenomenon, known as phototropism in the science world, teaches a most important lesson.  Like flowers, our lives should be focused squarely on our Giver of Life.  Our singular vision should be the Son, His purposes becoming our own. 

After talking about flowers, Christ commands his followers to stop worrying about what they will eat, drink, or wear. Instead, He asks them to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”  Seek me, Christ says, and everything you need will be provided.  In his book of essays, God in the Dock, C.S. Lewis calls this promise the “law of first and second things.”  To Lewis, the first thing in our lives must be Christ.  Everything else – our relationships, friendships, family and jobs – must be second things.  If, in the course of our life, we make secondary things (our lives, our happiness, our futures) into first things, then we will lose both first and second things.  But, if our lives reflect Christ’s command, and first things remain first, we shall gain both first and second things. 

In my favorite Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back¸ the hero, Luke Skywalker, in the course of looking for the great Jedi master Yoda, crashes his spaceship on a swampy planet named Dagoba.  While getting his bearings, Skywalker runs into a little green creature with huge ears.  Prideful, thickheaded and selfish, Skywalker does not realize that this creature is actually the famed Jedi knight he has been looking for.  He eventually realizes his mistake and begins to train under Yoda, but his pride, doubts and fears continue emerge and derail his progress.  Yoda, reaching a point of frustration, tells Skywalker that he must “unlearn what [he] has learned.”  That advice contains much truth for the follower of Christ.  Growing up, we learn to be self-centered, to hate those unlike us, and to live with judgment.  Christ, on the other hand, commands us to seek His kingdom first, to love our enemies, and to bless those who persecute us.  Following Christ in this life requires unlearning what the world teaches, and replacing it with the truth of God. 

In the past year, I have begun unlearning what I was taught about the end of the world.  Instead of a source of fear, the return of Christ should be hope for all Christians.  Watching the nightly news is enough to convince even the most optimistic viewer that our world is broken.  Children murdered by parents.  Bloodthirsty dictators killing their own citizens.  Theft and deception robbing seniors of their life savings.  Thousands dieing each day from drought.  Thousands more suffering from preventable diseases.  Christ commands his followers to be the answer to these problems, but I am convinced, now more than ever, that our world will never be completely cured until “the dwelling of God is with men.”  The writer of Revelation describes this time, saying that “[God] will live with them forever.  They will be His people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.  He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.  He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making all things new.’”

If this world needs anything, it is a Savior who can make us new.  God forbid that I should choose my desires for happiness, or a future of my own planning, over the only event that can truly bring peace and healing to our world.  Although I do not fully understand what will occur when Christ returns, I pray that I can approach that day, and each day of my life, with the attitude of John the Revelator, who after seeing the entire vision recorded in the book of Revelation, responded by writing “Come, Lord Jesus, come.”

             Across a Wire:  Live in NY City  |  Counting Crows

                 release date:  1998          record label:  Geffen

track  listing:  1) Round Here
                        2) Have You Seen Me Lately?
                        3) Angels of the Silences
                        4) Catapult
                        5) Mr. Jones
                        6) Rain King
                                                                               7) Mercury
                                                                               8) Ghost Train
                                                                               9) Anna Begins
                                                                             10) Chelsea
                                                                                                          
                                                               “Remember everything, she said,
                                                       because sometimes only a memory remains…”

Our lives are a string of experiences.  Each one, good or bad, becomes a part of our memories.  These can be comforting, as with the elderly, who remember the past as a testament to the life they lived, a monument etched in the stone of their soul.  On the other hand, the young approach life with the hope of creating memories for themselves that will last – the kind that will comfort them when they approach the age of their grandparents.  When the sun begins to set on our lives, we all want to look back on our memories and see a life we can be proud of.  But our memories are not just remembrances of the past, they stand as proof that we have lived.  Without them, we lose our identity, and perhaps, even our lives. 

Alzheimer’s isn’t fair.  Every day it erases the past of thousands of men and women, robbing them of the years they spent on earth.  Of course, their family and close friends remember them before the disease, but for the individual suffering under the weight of Alzheimer’s, life becomes a fog.  Memories fade like a Polaroid photograph moving in reverse – and what is left to take their place once their gone?  A blank canvas where once there stood a masterpiece.  A family photograph without familiar faces.  A house filled with a lifetime of unimportant objects.  To be such a significant part of our lives, our memories are as fragile as glass.

My grandmother is in the middle stages of Alzheimer’s disease.  It prevents her from living a normal, unassisted life.  She has a hard time recalling names, remembering important facts, or even what she did earlier in the day.  It is equal parts frustrating, discouraging and heartbreaking, not only for her, but for her loved ones.  Details of her life, important memories, are disappearing.  They live, now, only in the memories of her family and close friends.  Alzheimer’s teaches a tough lesson:  while you still have the ability, take time to remember.

For much of my teenage years, I listened only to Christian music.  In an ironic twist of fate, the only secular music in my world belonged to my father, a pastor.  He had a collection of tapes he kept in his car.  Most of it was classic rock, music he had grown up listening to:  the Allman Brothers Band, CSNY, Peter Frampton and Joe Walsh.  Driving around town, he usually listened to the radio.  The tapes were saved for long trips, like our yearly vacation to Georgia to visit his side of the family.  The music of the Allman Brothers and CSNY still bring to mind the tall, skinny, kudzu-covered pine trees lining I-75 South.  As the oldest of three boys, I was the first afforded the chance to sit in the front, passenger seat of the car and help determine the music we would listen to.  On one such occasion, the cover art on one of my father’s tapes caught my eye.  In sloppy black letters, strewn across a golden background, was written “Counting Crows.”  I couldn’t remember ever listening to that album, so I asked my dad about it.  “They’re pretty good – pop it in, if you want.”  A few years later, when I had my own car with a tape deck, I “borrowed” Dad’s Counting Crows tape.  I never returned it. 

Periods of my life seem to be classified according to the music I listened to.  In middle school, when I was learning who I was and trying as hard as I could to stand out, it was Five Iron Frenzy.  In college, discovering the importance of working out my faith, I fell in love with the justice driven music of U2.  As my faith has matured in the past few years, I have found the music of Derek Webb to be both uplifting and challenging – an important mixture in our world, where it’s too easy to have a complacent faith.  Likewise, my four years of high school are defined by the music of Counting Crows.  The rollercoaster of emotions following first love, first heartache and everything in-between found its musical equivalent in the lyrics of Adam Duritz and his band.  By the time I discovered Counting Crows, they had already released four albums.  I scoured our local, small-town Wal-Mart for all the discs I could find – only two.  The local pawn shops had nothing to offer, so I turned to the internet.  The first (and up to this point in my life, I think the only things) I ever purchased on eBay were two Counting Crows albums. 

Across a Wire:  Live in New York City was the third album released by Counting Crows.  A double live album, it contains songs from their first two albums, August and Everything After and Recovering the Satellites.  The first disc, recorded for VH-1’s “Storytellers,” is acoustic, purposeful and intimate.  The accompanying second disc, recorded at MTV’s “Live at the Ten Spot,” is the complete opposite – driving, sloppier and intent on delivering rock and roll guitar licks.  While both discs are great in their own right, my personal favorite (and somehow, the only one to make it on to my iPod) was the acoustic set.  If you ever get the chance to see Counting Crows live, please, by all means, go.  While their albums are outstanding, nothing is like their live shows.  The band members are easily some of the most talented musicians I have ever had the pleasure to hear.  Each concert has been distinctly different.  I appreciate a band that is not afraid to experiment with their songs, and Counting Crows are the poster-child for this.  The only thing that can be guaranteed about seeing them live is that the concert will not be a photo-copy of the studio album.  Lead singer, Adam Duritz, directs the band like a dread-locked symphony conductor, asking for swells and signaling for the music to diminish as he works his way through lyrics both familiar and on-the-spot brand new. 

My grandparent’s house quiet behind me, I sat down on the front porch with the moon shining down overhead as Across a Wire opened.  Accompanied only by an acoustic guitar, Adam Duritz tears into the opening track from August and Everything After, Round Here, followed by Have You Seen Me Lately, from their sophomore effort, Recovering the Satellites.  The album hits its stride as the full band joins in for another track from Recovering the Satellites, Catapult.  Adam Duritz introduces fan-favorite Mr. Jones next, saying that “this is a song about my dreams.”  This version, however, is decidedly more somber than the original, with Duritz coming to the conclusion that “when everybody loves you, that’s about as f----- up as you can be.”  My favorite song on Across a Wire, Rain King, comes next.  Totally reworked by the band, it is no longer driving like the original from August and Everything After, but rather meandering.  This song, for me, defines a live show by Counting Crows – the musicianship is superb and Duritz spouts off new lyrics on the spot.  The album concludes with Mercury, Ghost Train, and reworked version of Anna Begins.  Following a lengthy pause in the recording, a previously unreleased track, Chelsea, brings Across a Wire to a close.

I couldn’t even begin to guess how many times I have listened to this album in my lifetime, but sitting on the porch that night, the music filling the darkness around me began to take on new meaning.  I was transported back to the small town where I grew up, to the high school I attended, and the five friends who filled by life with so much joy, heartache and laughter.  In the eight years since I graduated high school, it seems as if everything has changed.  Neil Young sings in One of These Days that his friends are “scattered like leaves from an old maple.”  Eight years ago, I left my home to attend college and, like many students before me, I believed my friendships would survive the test of time and distance.  Alas, most of them did not.  Of my five friends, some have moved far away from that little town, others live nearby, but one thing is true for most of them:  our lives remain painfully disconnected.  But that does not mean those people and the experiences we had together are not still dear to my heart.  On the contrary, absence does seem to make the heart grow fonder.

Invited in by the music that defined by high school years, memories came flooding back to me as I listened to Across a Wire.  The nights spent at Wal-Mart because we had nothing else to do.  The time we snuck into the graveyard, or when we drove up to the haunted mansion, just to see if anything was going on.  The proms, the first dates, the puppy love and the broken hearts.  And the endless, endless, endless conversations about our two favorite topics:  God and girls.  In the chorus of Have You Seen Me Lately, Adam Duritz begs for someone to “just tell me one thing you remember about me.”  Everyone wants to be remembered – to live on in the memory of our friends, even if the years have separated us. 

What follows are just a portion of my memories.  They are written, primarily, for my five friends.  But I invite you into them as well, for perhaps in joining me, you too will remember relationships that time and distance have robbed from you.  My dear friends, although we may be separated, known that you continue to live on in my memories. 

R.L. – my brother and my best friend.  For me, you have been the definition of faithfulness.  I remember when you were a new student and our fifth grade teacher introduced us.  My stutter kept me from saying much then, but since that day, you have been in my corner.  We shared everything:  video games, music, clothes, even girlfriends.  We spent hours talking, playing sports, and bumming around town together.  Remember the night we walked all the way to BP?  Or the time we convinced our prom dates to go to Gatti-Town?  On the paper route, we would always stop at a certain house and see who could throw the paper closest to the front door.  We ran cross-country in the snow, joked about the awkward names of lunch options at Gold Star Chili, tried to start a band, and spoke in French whenever we could.  A decade later, it brings me so much joy that see our lives continue to be intertwined.  I pray that you feel as supported, loved and uplifted by me as I feel from you each day.  Who knows where I’d be without you.  I’d hate to even think of it.  Let’s freakin’ get you married. 

A.J. – my first love.  You turned my world upside down.  One day my only concerns were punk music and baseball, and the next, I was having phone conversations with you till sunrise.  My dad would get furious at me for keeping the phone lines tied up at night, but after everyone had gone to bed, I would still snuck upstairs for the cordless phone.  One of our first dates was going to Danville Cinema in my Crown Victoria to see “Domestic Disturbance” with John Travolta.  I sat through “Pearl Harbor” twice, just because you wanted to see it again.  If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.  I remember trying so hard to impress your dad, being scared of your mom, and hoping your sister was as fond of me as I was of her.  My friends made fun of me for wearing periwinkle to prom, but it didn’t bother me, because you were my date.  We certainly had our problems, but not all of those were your fault.  You were the first to learn what every girlfriend after you has been forced to understand:  dating me is not for the faint of heart.  We had some good times together.  I hope life is treating you well.

J.J. – my friend.  I remember when you moved to Danville, just up the street from my house.  I thought I was so lucky to be your friend; let’s be honest, you were way cooler than I was.  I remember hanging out in your basement, trying to wrestle you and being pinned in no time at all.  The first time you came to youth group, you stole all the ladies’ hearts – I hoped hanging out with you would rub some of that charm off on me.  We stayed up for hours talking about the Bible, arguing our points and searching for scripture that backed up what we believed.  You showed me that just because I said something didn’t make it true.  You tried to convince me that “Perfect Dark” was better than “Goldeneye.”  I still don’t believe you.  I always admired your ability to love others.  While I judged and put people into boxes, you embraced them with open arms.  By being your friend, I was introduced to people I had gone to school with my whole life, yet had never had a conversation with.  That kind of love drew people to you, and as a Christian, you pointed them on toward the ultimate lover of their souls.  To this day, I wish I could be more like that. 

L.B. – my first serious love.  In high school you were such a great friend.  You talked me through my rocky relationships, offering me a shoulder to cry on every time I needed it (and Lord knows, it was more than I’d like to admit).  Even at my saddest, you always had a way of making me laugh.  I remember how crazy my best friend made you, and the nights we hung out at your house, sitting on your trampoline and staring up at the stars.  I remember when you got the phone call about your father passing – I was driving a few people home and you were sitting in the back seat of my car.  My heart broke into pieces for you.  Every day, on my way to the paper route, I would pass your house.  Sometimes I’d honk, other times I’d put off work to hang out with you for a few minutes.  I remember the highs of church camp and the lows of having to come back home.  We sat in the back seat of the church bus and talked about life and love for hours.  In college, our friendship blossomed into something more.  You supported me as I left to do mission work in the mountains, and the next year, you came with me.  Those few months in Harlan County changed our lives forever.  I confess that I haven’t been the best friend, but I hope you know that I still want the very best for you.  Let’s hang out soon.  I mean that.  I miss seeing you. 

D.P. – my friend.  You were the smartest guy I knew.  We spent so much time in my room, discussing everything from art, to faith, to relationships.  You loved sitting in my yellow chair – I still have that ratty thing.  I think about you each time I sit in it.  The other day, I ran across a food tray from Sonic that we accidentally stole – halfway home from the restaurant, we noticed it still attached to the windowsill of my car.  You walked with me through every heartache I experienced in high school.  My parents thought of you as another one of their sons and you were always welcome at my house, no matter the day or time.  The first time I heard the Decemberists was in your car.  To be honest, I didn’t like it much.  How things have changed.  I was so proud when you got into the college of your dreams, even if I couldn’t join you there.  As our friendship progressed, you taught me that life was not just about black and white – we had to leave some room for gray.  Because you challenged me and my faith, you caused it to grow.  I love you.  I’m sorry that we lost touch.  I hope you know that it has nothing to do with you.  Next time we’re both in Danville, let’s get some coffee. 

As the last chords of the album faded into the night, I looked up to notice the moon sinking behind some trees.  It was no longer visible, but I remembered its light.  Friends pass in and out of our lives, and sometimes only a memory remains.  But for you, my five friends, that memory is a light that still illuminates my life.  

                        Achtung Baby  |  U2

         release date:  1991             record label:  Island

track listing:  1) Zoo Station  
                       2) Even Better than the Real Thing
                       3) One
                       4) Until the End of the World
                       5) Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?
                       6) So Cruel
                                                                              7) The Fly
                                                                              8) Mysterious Ways
                                                                              9) Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World
                                                                             10) Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
                                                                             11) Acrobat
                                                                             12) Love is Blindness

                                                                    “You know, there’s a lot of things,
                                                                         If I could, I’d rearrange…”

I’m an introvert.  I live a great deal of my life inside my own head.  I am constantly thinking – weighing the decisions I have made and processing my interactions with others.  At times, I can be so engrossed in my thoughts that I lose sight of the real world.  This is especially interesting when I’m driving.  I can’t say how many times I have arrived at my destination with no idea of what route I took to get there.  To be honest, life would probably be much easier if my brain had an off-switch.  It does not, so I often find myself distracted by my thoughts.  From time to time, these thoughts have been known to drag me into an existential wilderness, the place where unanswerable questions take root.    This happened again, just the other day.   

In about a month my world will change drastically.  Last year, I left a very active life as a high school teacher to care for my aging grandparents.  The difference between these two lifestyles is like the difference between night and day.  As a teacher I was eternally busy planning lessons, attending school functions and, on the weekends, using the excuse of trying to maintain some semblance of a social life as the reason for avoiding grading my students’ work.  As a caretaker, I have been forced to stay, night and day, with my grandparents.  Life is slower here, much more isolated, and every day is, essentially, the same.  Being unable to leave my grandparents unattended, my so-called social life withered months ago.  If anything, my time as a caretaker has pushed me even deeper into my own head.  But all this will change in little over three weeks.  My one-year commitment to my grandparents fulfilled, I will transition into another job working with students, this time with the youth ministry at my church.  I am equal parts excited, nervous and overwhelmed. 

Driving across town a few days ago, these future changes were running around my head when I tripped over a question I didn’t see coming:  can I change?  My life is soon to be filled with external changes – a new job, a new house, a new set of responsibilities – but even with these knocking on my door, I feel like the same person.  I suffer with the same insecurities, struggle with the same fears and see, within myself, the same faults that have been there for years.  A thousand times I have dreamed of moving far from this familiar town, leaving my problems and frustrations behind.  Unfortunately, the one thing I’ll never be able to outrun is my self.  My faults are destined to follow me no matter where on this earth I may go.   All the while, this question unblinkingly stared at me – are humans able to change, or are we destined to forever suffer from the same flaws that have always held us down.  Borrowing a metaphor from the Apostle Paul, are we able to pull the thorn from our flesh, or will it dig deeper and deeper into our skin until we leave this earth?    

There are many aspects of my personality that I would consider faults, some which fall entirely on me, and some which I have little control over.  But, if I had to name the one “thorn” that has pierced my flesh since childhood, it would be my speech.  In elementary school, around the third grade, I began to develop a stutter.  By fifth grade, this burgeoning speech impediment was in full-bloom.  School, and especially reading class, was a nightmare.  I remember avoiding eye-contact with the teacher in hopes of avoiding being asked to read aloud.  Of course, that plan never worked.  She would call my name and the words would die in my throat.  My tongue tied itself in knots.  I would repeat sounds, and get hung up on words.  It was brutal, not only for myself, but for anyone having to listen to me.  Of course the kids teased me, but far worse was the pain of being unable to express myself.  I was an intelligent child, but my thoughts, dreams and ideas remained largely in my own head because my mouth would not cooperate in sharing them.  Speech impediments create a degree of loneliness that is, even now, hard to express. 

As I grew, and progressed through school, my stammer eased.  It was, however, never fully conquered – it remains something I struggle with daily.  In elementary school, my stutter manifested itself through the repeating of sounds.  Over the years, I have learned to deal with this by remembering which words to avoid.  Nowadays, this impediment results less in repeated sounds and more in terms of ineffective communication:  tripping over words, unnecessary pauses and simple vocabulary.  I am jealous of that majority of the population which has no trouble in expressing themselves – a thought travels from their mind to their mouth seamlessly.  For me, it is not that simple. 

For years I have struggled with my ability to speak.  At times, it weighs on me heavily.  Can a boy who couldn’t string together a coherent sentence be re-created as an adult that can express himself?  That is the type of dramatic change I long for.  Of course, humanity’s biggest hope to be re-created is in Christ, who makes each believer into a “new creation.”  But what about the Christian who finds himself at a crossroads, unhappy with himself – can he be changed, or does he have to live the life that has been handed to him?  I once heard that the bravest thing man can do is hope.  Recently, two works of art relit the fires of hope in my soul, reminding me, as Paul wrote to the church at Philippi, that the one who “began a good work in you will carry it on to completion.” 

About a week ago, Janie and I went to the discount theater to see The King’s Speech.  Unless you have been living under a rock, you’ve at least heard of this film.  It won numerous Oscars this year, including Picture of the Year.  It tells the true story of King George VI of England.  His entire life, George suffered from a stammer.  He choked on words to such a degree that he was useless to give royal speeches or declarations.  George had no hope of overcoming his impediment, instead using it as a reason to stay out the public eye.  As the younger of two brothers, he was not in line for the throne and so would have only minimal responsibilities requiring public speech.  After his father’s death, though, things changed very quickly for the Prince.  George’s brother, the new King of England, chose to abdicate the throne so that he could marry an American woman who had been twice divorced.  This left, George, the stuttering Prince, as the newly crowned King of England, the weight of leading and addressing his country falling fully on his unsuspecting shoulders.  The need for a strong monarchy had never been greater.  Germany, under the leadership of their new dictator Adolph Hitler, was threatening world war, and the new King could not even coherently speak to his subjects.  Tragedy and disappointment seemed to be threatening a full-scale invasion.

In 1987, U2 released The Joshua Tree, an album that changed the face of rock-and-roll.  Containing the songs Where the Streets Have No Name, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, and With or Without You, its easy to understand why Rollingstone Magazine named The Joshua Tree the 26th most important album of all time.  It was unlike anything else being made at that time.  Instead of the perpetual over-the-top, “look-at-me-attitude” of rock and roll, U2’s music was characterized by simplicity and minimalism: atmospheric guitar licks by the Edge underscored by the steady bass and drum progression of Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr, and over this sonic experience, the lyrics of front man, Bono, soared.  U2’s songs tended to focus on making statements about the world around them, calling for justice and espousing a deep sense of Christian spirituality.  The Joshua Tree emerged as a breath of fresh air, forever changing the direction of rock and roll music, and setting the band upon an impossibly high pedestal.  From that height, it must have been hard for the band to see the desert they were headed for. 

Upon the release of their next album, popular opinion turned against the Irish rockers.  Rattle and Hum was produced as an exploration into the history of American music, a subject which the band had been interested in for some time.  Reviewers, though, had few positive things to say about it.  The harshest of listeners accused the band of being self-righteous for trying to “rescue” American music or for thinking that they deserved to record alongside such great musicians as B.B. King.  Two years earlier, U2 had been billed as the saviors of rock and roll; now, they were described as pretentious, conceited and pompous.  Listeners were no longer interested in the band’s vision of the world.  A strong sense of unity, something which had always described U2, began to erode under the pressure.  Infighting and arguments over the direction of the band became more common place.  It seemed the world wanted nothing more than to give these holier-than-thou Irish rockers a push from their pedestal.  The foundation seemed to be crumbling right underneath these four boys from Dublin.   

But, even in the darkest night, hope remained. 

His back against the wall, King George did not accept that his story had to end in heartbreak.  Swallowing his pride, the king of England accepted help from an unconventional speech therapist.  Through months of intense training, he began to gain the upper hand on his stammer.  It was never fully cured, but with his therapist by his side, the stuttering-king learned to address his subjects.  The film ends with the two of them together, the king facing a radio microphone, as he delivers a speech condemning the actions of Hitler, declaring war on Germany and asking the nation to stand strong beside him.  Never in his wildest dreams had King George see himself delivering such an address, and yet, with the help of a dear friend, he found the power to change. 

Staring down the end of their dreams, U2 holed themselves up in a recording studio in Berlin, Germany, on the eve of the destruction of the Berlin Wall, and began working on the album which would become Achtung Baby.  The band put everything they had become comfortable with on the chopping block:  the airy-guitar playing, the thumping bass and drum, and the confident lyrics.  They looked to tear down the wall that had become their music, looking through the rubble to see if anything existed on the other side.  It was time for them to totally reinvent themselves and their music.  In fact, one band member described Achtung Baby as “the sound of four guys chopping down the Joshua Tree.” 

Where their previous albums had been clean, minimalist and polished, Achtung Baby was heavily industrial, influenced by electronic music, and, for the most part, was to recorded to sound sloppier.  Zoo Station starts the album with heavy distortion, industrial synthesizer sounds and modified vocals from Bono, elements unheard of on their previous albums.  Near the end of the track, Bono repeats “its alright, its alright, its alright, its alright,” as if he is trying to convince the listener (or perhaps even himself) that these changes will be positive.  As the listener continues to travel through this uncharted territory, it becomes obvious that Bono was, in fact, correct.  Unlike their previous albums, Achtung Baby explores questions without necessarily having to arrive at an answer.  The lyrics touch on relationships, materialism, soul searching spirituality and community.  After introducing the listener to a re-invented U2 with Zoo Station, Even Better than the Real Thing looks deeply into materialism, hoping to find meaning there.  One of U2’s most important songs follows – One – which paints a picture of forgiveness and the reunification of broken people.  Until the End of the World is an imagined conversation between Christ and his betrayer, Judas Iscariot. 

Bono described the first single released from the album, The Fly, as “a crank call from Hell… from someone who enjoys it there.”  Another one of U2’s biggest hits, Mysterious Ways, follows, before the albums ends with three of my personal favorites:   

Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World, Love is Blindness and Acrobat, the latter containing a great piece of advice:  “don’t let the bastards grind you down.”  And that is exactly what U2.  While many established groups struggled to find their footing during the rise of alternative music in the early 90’s, U2 remade themselves and, in the process, created a masterpiece.  In fact, in 2003, Rollingstone magazine placed Achtung Baby at number 62 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. 

If nothing else, in these two seemingly disparate stories, the central theme is hope.  From a stuttering king, I find hope that, although I may never fully defeat a speech impediment, it does not have to define my life.  I can become a man who expresses himself, even teaching and leading others with his words.  And from a reinvented rock band, I see that dramatic change is possible.  It may be not easy, it may not be pretty, but it is possible, and at times, it is quite necessary.  And although I know that full re-creation will not be achieved until the return of the Creator, I understand that every day is a chance to be remade in the image of our Savior – and that gives me enough hope to face tomorrow. 

Who knew that a dead monarch and an album that was released when I was in first grade could move my soul in such a way?  The Lord truly works “in mysterious ways.”  

              Achilles Heel  |  Pedro the Lion      

release date:  2004         record label:  Jade Tree

track listing:  1) Bands With Managers                
                       2) Forgone Conclusions                    
                       3) The Fleecing                  
                       4) Discretion                  
                       5) Arizona                  
                       6) Keep Swinging
                                                                              7) Transcontinental 
                                                                              8) I Do 
                                                                              9) A Simple Plan
                                                                            10) Start Without Me 
                                                                            11) The Poison 

                                                       "who should I blame for this sweet and heavy trouble,                
                                                              for every stupid struggle, I don’t know… ”

In Greek mythology, Achilles stands tall as a great warrior and the turning point in the Trojan War.  Homer’s Iliad tells the story – with the Greeks facing certain defeat at the Battle of Troy, Achilles’ learns of the death of his cousin at the hand of the Trojan champion, Hector.  His rage spills over and he rushes to the battlefield, looking for Hector and killing scores of Trojans in the process.  Finally, a one-on-one battle allows Achilles to seek revenge against Hector, whose death all but ensures victory for the Greeks.  According to the legend, Achilles was a demigod, the offspring of a god and a human.  Hoping to ensure immortality for her son, the mother of Achilles took her newborn child by the heels of his feet and dipped him into the river Styx.  This left him impervious to injuries; the one part of his body which was not submerged, his heels, were his only point of vulnerability.  Thousands of years after these stories were first told by the Greeks, the term “Achilles heel” remains a synonym for an individual’s flaws or points of weakness.  

Dave Bazan was Pedro the Lion.  As principal lyricist and musician, this talented multi-instrumentalist built his band into the premier indie-darling of Christian music around the turn of the millennium.  Musically, Pedro the Lion is known for fuzzy, distorted guitar licks that seem to never be in a hurry.  The causal listener, however, is forced to a crossroads when it comes to Bazan’s lyrics – it is at this point where one becomes either a dedicated fan or is completely turned off.  To put it mildly, his words turn heads.  Although pegged as a Christian artist, Bazan has never been opposed to using an occasional four-letter word to express himself.  Pedro the Lion’s third album, Control, was a concept album against capitalism.  The lyrics stirred the waters of controversy quite a bit, especially the song Indian Summer, which, in reference to children said “you aught to start them young, that way they’ll naturally love the taste of corporate cum.”  No matter how dark the subject matter covered by Bazan’s songs – unrequited love, hypocrisy and fighting doubt – there always seemed to be a silver-lining, a reference to hope in Christ or encouragement not to give up in the face of adversity.  As fan of Pedro the Lion for a number of years, it was hard not to notice with each subsequent album, that the silver-lining was growing thinner and thinner.  Unlike the ancient Greek hero for whom the album is named, Bazan makes no attempt to hide his vulnerabilities on this farewell album.  In fact, Achilles Heel sounds like a man drowning in a dark sea of questions, doubts, misgivings, and fears.  The silver-lining is gone.  The honeymoon is most assuredly over. 

The eleven songs comprising Achilles Heel are like individual Hemmingway novels – direct, each word carrying weight, leading us to a tragic end.  Hopelessness is rampant, as is death and regret.  As is the case with Hemmingway, Bazan’s songsare compelling – but don’t expect to leave them with anything other than a heavy heart.  Achilles Heel is not an album for a sunny afternoon. 

The albumopens with Bands With Managers, a slow-moving lament to the fate of most musicians – struggling to make a living and unable to please their loved ones:  “bands with managers are going places … bands with messy hair and smooth white faces … but you don’t believe me when I say that it will be all right.”  The album picks up considerable steam with Foregone Conclusions, a fan favorite regarding judgment and doomed relationships:  “you and I are nothing more than foregone conclusions.”  The Fleecing slows the pace down yet again and asks Job-like questions regarding why humans suffer and if there is anyone to blame.  Discretion tells the story of the murder of a farming family who lay undiscovered for a number of days, allowing the killer to escape unscathed.  (Although there are differences, I can’t listen to this song without thinking about Truman Capote’s haunting novel In Cold Blood, which tells a similar story.)   One of my favorite songs on the album, Arizona gives the states of western America the human abilities to love, hate and cheat on each other:  “Arizona curled up to California, and tried to hide the whole thing from New Mexico.”  Keep Swinging tells the story of a character who deals with the trouble of life by abusing alcohol, riding in taxis while passed out and vomiting in hotel rooms;  Bazan encourages the character to “just keep swinging till your over it.”  There may be a bit of autobiography contained here, as Bazan himself has openly struggled with alcohol abuse. 

Things don’t get much brighter as the listener makes his or her way past the halfway point of the album.  Transcontinental, over an up-tempo beat, tells the story of a man who has his legs cut off by a train.  Lying in pain, our character remembers a story he once heard about a man who, pinned beneath a fallen tree, freed himself by cutting through his own legs.  Despite the inspiration, the character can’t find that type of bravery within himself and, instead, is “left to bleed to death.”  I Do removes any bliss from the idea of marriage, telling the story of a couple who will now “bury dreams and raise a son to live vicariously through.”  Bazan leaves no hope for the child as well, singing that if the baby knew the world he was being born in to, he would “climb right back in.”  A Simple Plan finds a man who has worked his whole life to achieve equality among the classes and rights for workers.  This man realizes the goal of his life – “the class war is over and everyone wins” – but in so doing, loses his “reason to breathe.”  Bazan, as the character, continues “now that it’s over, and now that we won, I still sit in my bedroom, alone with a shotgun.”  Instead of finding joy in his victory, the character settles on the simplest plan to deal with the pain of loss:  suicide.  Start Without Me follows a racecar driver who finds his family slipping away from him due to his addictions and a job that takes him far from home.  The album ends with The Poison, yet another song about alcohol abuse, this time used to cope with the loss of a romantic relationship: “now its over and I can’t stay sober, but it isn’t like I try.”  Bazan promises to continue drinking until “you come over, or there are x’s on my eyes.”      

Bazan’s music, and especially this last album from Pedro the Lion, is depressing.  If I’m honest with myself, I am drawn to his music because I can be a little depressive myself.  More frequently that I’d like to admit, I find myself focusing on the negative, being hopeless or giving up too easily.  My girlfriend has a name for me when I get into these funks:  Eeyore.  It’s a pretty spot-on comparison.  I find, though, that I am not alone in this.    

Watch TV for any length of time at all and you’re bound to come across a commercial for antidepressants.  It seems, at least in America, that happiness is only a pill or two away.  Before I go any further, let me say that I understand that there are some types of depression that need medication.  For people truly suffering through that darkness, medication can certainly be a part of their healing.  That being said, though, I fear that too many of us are numbing ourselves instead of truly confronting our inadequacies, questions and doubts.  If we ever hope to find true healing, we must realize that the answer is not always going to be found in hiding behind a pill.  

Thinking about my own depression-prone personality, I find that how I feel is often a function of my point of view.  When my focus is myself, depression creeps in because I feel ordinary.  Like everyone else, I’m struggling with finances, dealing with unfulfilling relationships, having arguments with loved ones and feeling unable to achieve my deepest dreams and desires.  I was taught as a child that God made me special.  Why, then, do I feel like just another face in the crowd?  As my focus shifts to others, the feelings grow worse.  When I think of friends who are working exciting jobs, getting married, having children and chasing their dreams, I feel like a failure.  These emotions are understandable and, in fact, quite common.  Nobody wants to grown up to be ordinary. 

It is only when I forget myself that I begin to remember Jesus’ upside down kingdom – one where the poor are blessed, the first are last and the sin-sick are valued.  In this kingdom, I find hope that what makes me ordinary, instead of being a reason for depression, is actually cause for celebration.  The Creator of the universe loves me precisely because I am helpless and forgotten, chasing dead ends and feeling like a failure.  This truth is portrayed throughout the arc of history, as God sets his affections on stuttering prophets, faithless followers, common fisherman and useless lepers.  In His kingdom, prostitutes, tax collectors and former terrorists all find themselves being called a new name:  children of God. 

Small children are helpless to care for themselves.  They rely on their parents for nourishment, provisions, guidance and love.  If we consider ourselves children of God, then we must accept our role as newborns – people who, when left to our own devices, are utterly helpless.  But Christ, as he promised in the book of John, did not leave us as orphans.  We are being raised, feed, guided and loved by the most perfect parent, our Heavenly Father.  When we realize and accept that we will never be able to help ourselves, our attention can turn fully to the only One who can.  Christ himself declared that it was not the healthy who needed a doctor, but the sick.  As I age, I recognize more and more sickness within myself.  This can be viewed as personal shortcomings, leading to unhappiness and depression, or I can recognize that, because I am sick, the doctor will see me.     

Doubtless, not everyone will view their weaknesses, vulnerabilities and flaws as a road to redemption.  In fact, only a few years after the release of Achilles Heel, Dave Bazan would leave behind Christianity, publicly declaring himself an Agnostic.  Since the end of Pedro the Lion, Bazan has continued to record as a solo artist.  As has always been the case, his lyrics continue to shine a bright light on his doubts; many of his new songs focus on the loss of faith.  Since I am not a personal friend of Dave Bazan, I cannot speak to what issues drove him to Agnosticism, nor can I begin to judge his decision or the thought processes that lead him to it.  I do, however, feel a great deal of sadness for him. Part of that sadness, if I’m being completely honest, is selfish.  I miss the biting lyrics and biblical honesty of his early albums, much of which was already gone by the time he made Achilles Heel.  The brunt of my sadness, however, is focused on how hopeless he must feel.  Viewed through the lens of an agnostic or atheist, human suffering has no purpose.  There is no reason for depression, no higher purpose for having flaws or feeling like a failure.  In Christianity, however, our flaws have a function – to convince, and remind us, that we are children in need of a Father.  With Christ, our worst qualities may in fact be our best, for they express a need for a Savior who is greater than us. 

When we can accept who we are – our seemingly ordinary lives, common problems and human flaws – we stop fighting our salvation.  The most dangerous person to a lifeguard is a drowning man or woman who is panicking; their kicking and flailing makes their rescue all the more difficult.  When we stop trying to earn the love of God by being strong enough, pretty enough or successful enough, we become like a drowning man who stops panicking.  At that moment, we can be rescued.  Bad things happen to good people, even followers of Christ, to remind them that they are still a child that needs a Father.  If our lives were perfect, we would have no need for a God who is.  Thank God, then, for our Achilles heels.