Virtual Methodist

We are coming near the end of this series of posts drawn from our Harvest Celebration of Creation and Creativity, and here I post another poem by someone else, in this case Ann Lewin, from her anthology "Candles and Kingfishers" ( ISBN-10:   0951298232). I post this after watching the denouement of "The Great British Bakeoff" and am convinced that not only music, but good TV, cakemaking and all other creative endeavours, with a good leaven of fun, are God's gift to "enlighten duty and enliven praise" - and that is very important to me at the moment... Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.  This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. Genesis 2:1...

Currently, for some reason I haven't yet discovered, BBC Radio 2 are doing a "Top Albums" season ... That and the recent "most influential albums meme" on facebook, (on which I got a decidedly awful 7 out of 100 - clearly proving that the list was wonky) prompted me to look at my musical back-catalogue... So, in good old internet meme fashion I put my music player on shuffle to see what 10 albums (not counting greatest hits/compilation albums) floated to the top of the murky pool... They turned out to be:  1) Reload - by Tom Jones (the old welsh geezer's re-invention of himself with a little help from some young talent)  2) Traces - by Karine Polwart (her most recent album, raved about at length on this blog )  3) War of the Worlds - by Jeff Wayne (the original, not the recent digital blasphemy)  4) American Idiot - by Green Day (probably the only album in this list that my No1 son would deem to be cool)  5) Unplugged - by Eric Clapton (as if to...

Following on from yesterday and  Peterson's   comments on the subversive power of parable, his comments on subversion itself are worth noting: "Three things are implicit in subversion. One, the status quo is wrong and must be overthrown if the world is going to be livable. It is so deeply wrong that repair work is futile. The world is, in the word insurance agents use to designate our wrecked cars, totaled.  Two, there is another world aborning that is livable. Its reality is no chimera. It is in existence, though not visible. Its character is known. The subversive does not operate out of a utopian dream but out of a conviction of the nature of the real world. Three, the usual means by which one kingdom is thrown out and another put in its place — military force or democratic elections — are not available. If we have neither a preponderance of power nor a majority of votes, we begin searching for other ways to effect change. We discover the methods of subversion...

Doh!  Just realised that I did actually buy a couple of CDs during the year... ie 2 (big spender me!): namely Karine Polwart's " Traces " which I wittered on about at length earlier in the year , and her old album " Scribbled in Chalk ". Also I was given Jools Holland's "Golden Age of Song" for Christmas, which has some cracking tracks on it. But the VM award for best CD of 2012 really does have to go to "Traces". It is also up for a real award on the Radio 2 Folk Awards , although it will probably have been steamrollered in the public vote by the behemoth that is the faux-folk "Bellowhead". Karine is also up for an individual award, and "The King of Birds" has been nominated as best song. So she might get a real prize rather than a virtual VM one... If you want to find out how brilliant she is check out her session on Mark Radcliffe's new folk show on Radio 2 next Wednesday at 7pm OK that is enough o...

At the moment I, and others, are exposing the darker underbelly of our personal soundtracks to those interested in the 30 day Song Challenge over on Facebook, and in that I think that I am confirming my reputation among my critics and friends (and that list overlaps significantly) as a musical Philistine. That can only be reinforced in this post where I am, essentially saying that I really, really, really don't like Johnny Cash's "My Mother's Hymnbook" very much... A number people have recommended it to me in the light of my enjoyment of Tom Jones' "Praise and Blame" and Robert Plant's "Band of Joy" so I borrowed it off a friend. But try as I might, listening to it day in day out over a number of weeks, I'm afraid I just couldn't warm to it. I like Johnny Cash at his best, but even though this was reputedly Cash's own favourite from his mountain of recordings, I just don't get it... Actually even the songs I do like, I p...

Memes are clearly a bit like buses, you don't see one for ages then 2 come along at once (and what a coincidence to be writing about memes the day after refering to the book that, I believe, coined the term ,Uncle Dick's "Selfish Gene"). Anyway, over on FB I recently forwarded a 15 influential authors meme that has provided people across the globe with discussion topics (and has set me on the hunt of a few new authors), and tonight I came across this "First 15" meme on Connexions . The rules are: 1) Turn on your MP3 player or music player on your computer. 2) Go to SHUFFLE songs mode. 3) Write down the first 15 songs that come up–song title and artist–NO editing/cheating, please (no-matter how bizarre or embarrassing the results are). After listing then tag another fifteen people including me (so I can laugh at your results, although I know in advance that 12 out of 15 on Glenn Jordan's list will be Bruce Springsteen songs, while all of Stocki's list...