The chorus of Harry Belafonte’s “Day Oh’” has been going through my head these last few weeks – so this morning I decided to listen to it, which lead to a trip through a bunch of my old favorites folk/bluegrass songs.
“Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford
“John Henry” by Harry Belafonte
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=g6vcvYJCkic
I recently stumbled upon an article about Stonefield and just had to share with you all. It is a triumphant tale of how the band has conquered the music world and are now working on their debut album.
Stonefield is an upcoming Australian rock band consisting of four sisters ages 13 to 21; Amy, Hannah, Holly, and Sarah. They started off under a different band name, Lotah in the small rural town of Darraweit Guim and renamed themselves Stonefield a few years later.
They started playing about six years ago when they talked their parents into buying them a drum kit to play with. Amy, the oldest sister, took to the drum the best and soon out began to play it each and every day. The family were even thinking of looking at drum wrap companies to customize the kit further but settled on expanding the number of instruments at home.
Hannah, the next in line, decided to try the guitar while Sarah fell in love with the keyboard. Just like their sister, they became dedicated to their music. The youngest sister, Holly, listened to her sisters practicing and realized that the band needed a bass guitarist… the rest, they say, is history. The article I linked is just a footnote in what these talented sisters have managed to achieve in so little time
Their story is an inspiration, that a single investment into a musical instrument can quickly grow into a budding band. Below is one of their music videos, if you like it, then keep an ear out for their debut album coming soon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPTVbWvW240
Video: “Through the Clover”
This was a great movie!
It was fun getting to see Harrison Ford back at the top of his game hanging with Daniel Craig and having adventures. Defiantly NOTHING like Indiana 4!!! This film actually had a plausible plot line (well, assuming aliens exist) that drew you into it.
Jon Favreau sure knows how to make a film.
Shortly before War World II in 1938 a small band of Trappist monks started a monastery in the Algerian desert near Tibhirine. The next five, almost six, decades were fairly uneventful for these monks despite being located in the middle of an Islamic country.
Then the unthinkable happened.
Armed men entered the monastery during the night of March 26-27, 1996 and kidnapped seven of the nine monks currently stationed there. Over the next two months these men were made a pawn in the Algerian Civil War till finally they were killed and decapitated.
The 2010 French independent film “Of Gods and Men” seeks to tell the story of why these monks stayed at the monastery even when they had multiple chances to flee.
And to that end, the film does it a good job.
Moving at a slow pace (almost too slow in places) the director shows the simple life lived by these monks. They were the confidants of the villages – providing medical help to poor, sharing in the heartache of farming the desert land, celebrating the coming of age of the children, mentoring both young and old – in short they were part of the community despite the religious difference between them and their fellow villagers.
As the movie progressed, we see the confused villagers wrestling with their peaceful view of Islam and the radical extremists who killed anyone who did not follow their interpretation. This I believe is one of the most powerful parts of the film as it shows that not every Muslim is an extremist – in fact, as the movie shows, the extremists are killing their own people in an effort to cause fear and to force people to obey their view of Islam.
Christians and Muslims can and do live peacefully side by side. People are people no matter where they live or what their religion may be. We, the followers of Jesus, have been called to love and bless everyone – our neighbors and our enemies.
In a world of fear and propaganda, I would suggest prayerfully watching this film as it shows another side to the news – the real, on the ground, everyday side of life.
A recent (The Customer is) Not Always Right post made me think about the first time I tried ordering an espresso coffee drink.
It was the summer of my freshman year (1999) at LeTourneau University in Longview, Texas. I was working as an environmental field technician for an environmental consulting company who had their offices in the downtown area.
Off and on throughout the summery, my boss would occasionally bring in a cup of coffee for everyone (all three of us). The cool part about this coffee is that it was not the typically black sludge that most Texans drank back them (and still do).
No.
This coffee was sweet and creamy with a wonderful smooth flavor. Ah…it even brought back memories of sitting under a tree in Costa Rica drinking freshly brewed coffee right off the plantation with pure cane sugar. (yeah, that was a fun time!)
Immediately, I fell in love with this new West Coast style coffee.
I have been asked to DJ a school dance on Friday – an elementary/intermediate school dance… which makes me wonder if anyone will be on the dance floor?!
My intermediate years of 4th through 6th grade were marked by avoiding the horned beasts opposite gender as they eked cooties. The one exception to this rule was Jolene (aka the Purple Girl) who played trombone (the BEST instrument as you could bing folks in the back of the head without getting caught!) and had purple eyeglasses, purple braces, and a sweet purple dinosaur on her trombone (give me a break, this was pre-Barney!!).
Years later when I was a freshman (or was it eighth grade?) in high school, I attended my first school dance with my mother. Yep. I took my mom to a school dance…what I can I say, she had a drivers license and we lived a half hour from the school.
This dance marked a turning point in my life as it was the first time I really loosed up and begin to be myself at school. Prior to this dance, I was the outcast of the school (ok, that fact really didn’t change) – attracting unwanted attention by jocks and others in the ‘in’ crowd. This made me retreat into myself (I could go through an entire day without saying 3 words – an act of God to anyone who knows me now) while outside of school I was talkative and friendly.
When I first heard that someone had started a winery in my old home town, I was skeptical to say the least. Surely any wine scavenged from grapes grown in the hot humid climate of East Texas was bounded to be cheap and terrible tasting…..
Yet, I was wrong (shocking, I know!)
The wines produced by Kiepersol Estates are first class wines with a smooth, oaky favor that does justice to old craft. Especially their “2007 Kiepersol Estates Syrah” – wow..that was a good bottle!
Sadly enough, I didn’t really care for their Cabernet Sauvignon….mostly because it was a tad too oaky – which was due to the wine being aged in America Oak barrels. However, I was impressed that all their wines are brewed to be aged five or six years – a striking statistic as most commercial wines are make to last one or two years max.
The third wine I tastes was their “2007 Vitzin Rosé.” This was also a very good wine, abet one that is not really my style (I tend to stay with the dry reds), but it did have a nice favor. Continue reading East Texas Wine
It was a multicolored package holding an excellent sophomore album by Midtown Dickens’.
In fact, it held the album “Lanterns” in four different formats: vinyl, CD, digital download and printed words. (this way you can enjoy the songs anyway you want!)
Much happiness! 🙂
For those who don’t know, Midtown Dickens is a great independent folk band out of Durham, North Carolina. I stumbled upon their “Tetris” song several years ago via an online music station and have been following them ever since.
In my opinion, the song “Cowboy” on their “Oh Yell” album is their best song today (followed closely by “Tetris”). However, there a few songs on their newest album that may replace these two… 😉
If you are interested in knowing more about Midtown Dickens, follow this link to their MySpace page and be prepared to enjoy some good music.
Today is a melancholy day – meaning it is a day to listen to my country playlist
- Johnny Cash
- Kenny Rogers
- Alison Krauss
- Charley Pride
- Charlie Daniels
- Conway Twitty
- Dennis Agajanian
- Confederate Railroad
- Hank Williams, Jr.
- Ronnie Milsap
And of course, King George
It was one of his songs that stood out to me this morning as the ones and zeros flipped files into my ears – If You Ain’t Lovin’ (You Ain’t Livin’)
In a nutshell, the song states that money and fame isn’t worth squat if there is no one there with you. Good words… Continue reading A Melancholy Day…Music
The Winter Olympics have thrown a wretch into my online TV show watching schedule – namely, the networks are not playing/uploading new episodes of “Castle” and “Burn Notice” (my two favorite shows).
So Em and I decided to do what any good Hulu watcher would do – we decided to watching something else! 😛
Pocking around a bit, I stumbled upon a new show called the “Human Target” based up a comic book character of the same name. The premise of the show is that there is a bodyguard / security consultant named Chris Chance who so integrates himself into the lives of his clients so that the threat targets him instead of the client.
Sounds pretty cool….but it’s not really that good… 😕
Chance as a character is pretty flat – mainly he is a guy who has a death wish and loves adrenaline. These facts led to a guy who walks into dangerous situations with no plan, relying instead on luck and his gun. As I’m watching this, I kept thinking: “Michael Westen could do it better, smoother, and with less property damage!”
The next evening we decided to watch “White Collar” on the advice of a good friend. Usually we always watch the show pilot first – as it always pays to watch episodes in order…however, the pilot for ““White Collar” was unavailable as the show has been on all season. Luckily, Wikipedia had a quick overview of the show premise so that we wouldn’t be too lost. 🙂
In a nutshell, the show is about a con-man (Neal) who gets caught by the FBI and is offered a job by them, helping to catch other white collar criminals. At the same time, Neal is trying to find his former girlfriend who is been held or controlled by someone with a 10-yr FBI pin. In other words, Neal is playing both sides – the FBI and his criminal contacts for his benefit.
In the episode we watched, Neal (the con-man) joins a group of stock traders who are manipulating the system to scam folks out of their money. At first everything is going smooth – Neal talks his way into the inner circle and is gathering information in an attempt to take them down. However, things go bad when the inter group of thieves starting fighting among themselves – leading to a tense confrontation involving some guns.
Again – while the show was ok – I keep thinking about how Michael Westen from “Burn Notice” would have handled the situation. Neal, while a smooth talker, does a horrible job at concealing his emotions (he thinks that his FBI buddy/boss whom he is working with on the job kidnapped his girlfriend), which almost gets him killed.
Michael, on the other hand, routinely cons his way (“White Collar”) into dangerous situations on behalf of clients ( “Human Target”). Only he does it with a ton of preparation and skill that results in the bad guys being forced to leave town, turn themselves in, or, sometime, die. Michael Westen is the perfect con-man who’s on the fly story crafting is amazing! Yet, he is good enough not to let emotions or other jobs interfere with the current project.
Basically, “Burn Notice” is ““White Collar” and “Human Target” rolled into one power packed, smooth talking show. Continue reading Human Target + White Collar = Burn Notice