daily life as life goes on . . .

On Sunday we showed a teaching video during our service.  "Indescribable" with Louie Giglio.  At least three people have enquired about where they can find the DVD.  You can look here for information.

Jason and Blanca Ambros are newly married — February 3, 2007 in Mexico.

Not all of us could go.  So, the reception came to us tonight.  In Kerrobert. 

The couple had a great program — free food — and community.  That’s what marriages require.  Not so much the food as the community!  Family and friends abounded.  Love and grace freely flowed.  The couple were blessed and blessed us!

And here is the kicker.  Not only did we get free food.  For those of us who wanted, there were flowers left over — freely available for the taking!

A new book by an anglican youth minister — Mixing It Up With The Simpsons, written by Owen Smith, a youth worker with the Church of England.  This article lets you in on a bit of the history and continued discussion on Bart and the boys!  Here’s a taste!

• From the Church’s perspective, enlisting Springfield’s dysfunctional clan to ride shotgun with the Almighty makes perfect sense, especially since Sunday attendance figures for young people (under 16) dropped by more than 20,000 between 2000 to 2005.

Classic jazz and blues?  Steely Dan combined that and black stylings with gospel and just a lot of good musicianship.  I was listening to a YouTube video of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker talking about producing the music. to Deacon Blues.  While I don’t always agree with the lyrics of their music, I can appreciate their approach to making good music.

Dean Parks, a guitarist for some of the recording, comments on Donald and Walters approach to recording (around 3:40 minutes into the video).  He says that they were not looking for perfection, they were there for "beyond perfection."  They wanted the music to be something that people would listen to over and over.  You worked past perfecc to where it seemed natural and then to where it seemed almost improvised.  There music was a two step process — perfection and then beyond perfection.

I know what that is about.  I have played with musicians who got every note right.  But the music was lifeless.  One pianist I know could play the hardest pieces in the world.  But you seemed to be missing a reason to listen to him again.  You can’t always define that, but you know it when  you hear it!

Getting to that place in music is where we are headed as musicians!  But first we must get the foundation down — learn to play music first!