Doug Van Pelt

Are you hungry?

Are you aware? Are you listening?

Okay, on the way to work this morning I had an older compilation disc of hard music playing on "mix mode." When the song "Southpaw" by Precious Death came on, I remembered the flood of excitement that came when that band hit the scene. With the tightness and slight funk edge of a Living Colour, the vocal dexterity of a woman named Cher, and the "gunk, gunk, gunk" heaviness of a Metallica, this band welded a progressive mix of melody and power. In my outspoken opinion, they are easily one of Christian hard music's highlights.

I thought of some of my other Christian rock and roll friends and sadly assumed that some of them might not share my opinion. They might've missed this coming of greatness. "Why?! Why did they miss this album, Doug?"

I'm so glad you asked. Sometimes a groundbreaking band comes along and we notice it because we are ready. We are bored. We are hungry. We want something new, something fresh, something powerful. If we are fat and gorged on the good music around us, we might miss the special new thing. It's good to appreciate what's out there, and, in that sense, I guess it's not a cultural sin to be fat. I'm speaking metaphorically, of course, about being dulled and a bit numb to what's new. Some artists just seem to come along at the right time. Certain art is created in a void. When a band called Creed was touring around with the tagline of being the "world's biggest rock band," along came U2 with a comeback album (All That You Can't Leave Behind) and a tour (Elevation) that took back the throne. The story of four or five bands from the same city (all of which point to Mother Love Bone and a couple others as predecessors) redefining hard music in the 90s has been told way too often, but the point is that the musical climate was stagnant. It demanded a change.

Another reason for my friend's missing Precious Death is similarly related. Besides being distracted with something else (the 77s album Sticks And Stones was overlooked and overshadowed by its own record company because another album was orbiting the planet in a higher arc at the time -- The Joshua Tree). Having a favorite album that occupies a lot of our time can by proxy keep us from hearing that new thing. The great thing about this mistake, though, is that we can "catch up" and exercise our ears with listening to new music.

I hope I find something new and exciting at SXSW this year.

By the way, in the random acts of useless bits of information category, here are some announcements:

-Goodness, of the feline trilogy known as Surely, Goodness, and Mercy, has disappeared. If you count Samson and Delilah that makes 5 cats that've come and gone from the HM Ranch. Were they eaten by coyotes? Carried off (and then eaten) by an owl? Catnapped by a drive-by human? Run over by a speeding pickup? Who knows. Here's hoping we can get some more residents of the whisker variety soon.

-The cows and horse + donkey are back. My neighbors have stopped trying to protect the seeds of hay they planted a couple months ago in front of their gates, and they've let the animals roam on both our properties again. Douglass, our donkey, is certainly smitten with their Shetland Pony. I should give this lass a name, huh? It's fun to look out the window and see big animals grazing or running around. It's not hippos, baboons, or water buffalo, but it's cool.

-One of our neighbors horses, I recently found out, met its end in our small "broken" pond. Apparently a month or two ago it was back in the water and it got stuck in the mud and died. Not sure if it was starvation or drowning. That was not a fun piece of information to discover. Every once in a while I walk back there, and, when the weather is more inviting, I'm riding a bike or jogging by every day. I'm kind of glad I didn't discover the dead horse on my own. It would have been great had I been able to see it and rescue it before it expired, but who knows when that was.

-After our presentation last night at church (which was really a sit down on the couch type interview, skillfully handled by our pastor) a child was sponsored. Several people came by and looked at our computers and got information to sponsor later, but one couple signed up and got the ball rolling. I know there's a family in Uganda that is having some major needs being met now.

Posted by Doug Van Pelt at March 6, 2008 09:43 AM