Ramble On

The preamble to this is so long I'm sure it's hard to believe I could have anything further to say.  You guys, I haven't even gotten to the actual song list yet. Fasten your seatbelts. 2013 was an incredible year of music.  Artists are using production, sound, and their instruments in groundbreaking ways.  I, for my part, worked at being a more attentive and active listener.  Somehow, music never sounded so sweet.  I went to fewer live shows but diversified the ones I did attend. My rotation also broke more into the cringeworthy Worship genre.  ( Michael Gungor writes very honestly on this subject, even as the leader of a "Christian" band, and about how sometimes music in the genre has a strange "soulless" sheen to it.  In part, I agree with him, and it is for this reason I call the genre cringeworthy. He's since written a response to his first essay sort of correcting himself a bit but the initial premise and discontent remains intact.  As I ...

Thanksgiving was so late this year, coming directly on the heels of Advent.  This year I wanted to explore more of the many activities DC offers at Christmas time, and revel in the beauty of this city under the limited winter light.  A majority of the new people I meet in DC are from somewhere else.  But my closest friends here claim the metro area as their own hometown.  This resident tourist series sparked from a kindling of love for this area and a desire to know it better, despite the length of my relationship with it.  Even though I have kept up with the promise to undertake in one new DC thing per month, I haven't kept with the blogging part.  So now with Christmas upon me, I figured I should get it out there before the moment has passed. One thing that DC does well is museums.  They are excellent museums, with expertly curated collections and they are free! Since going to South Africa, zoos are pretty much ruined for me, but I still lo...

It's that time of year again.  List after list chronicling, categorizing and ranking the musical year pops up in my inbox. I love looking and listening through them as much as I can because there is so much new, undiscovered territory for me.  And I am about to finalize my own year-end list. It's an annual tradition friends and family have been collaborating on and it's one I hope never falls by the wayside. One of the opinions professionals shared this year more than ever is that there just isn't enough time to cover all the music being made.  Even if you only focus on one genre, or sub-genre. Music can be recorded on an iPhone, mixed, uploaded and disseminated so quickly, there would be no way to stay afloat with all that's being produced.  But even the well-known bands with big followings seemed extra prolific this year.  Take, for example, the Avett Brothers.  They released two full-length,studio albums about one year apart.  The Avetts tour ...