Best Musical finds 2012 / 2013

The best of the best of the best....sir...with honors

I’ve been told I listen to way too much music.  Maybe…  but some people watch too much football,  golf too much, Pintrest too much, fill in your vice here:
I __________________ too much _________________.

In my musical journeys, here are my favorite finds/listens this past year followed by some groups I'm starting to dig into here at the end of the year.

Many of these groups/bands/artists can be listened to on Spotify (embeded & links included). 

So if you're looking for good new music, perhaps you'll find something here that connects with you just right

Best Music  2012

OR click the following link and when Spotify opens you can click "shuffle" so you get a sampling of all the groups without listening to one entire album
(Best of 2012)

Obvious/Expected - bands I was expecting great music from

Muse – The 2^nd Law

Killers – Battle Born

Snow Patrol – Fallen Empires (released in ’11 but I just found it this year)

Future of Forestry – Young Man Follow

Shiny Toy Guns - III

New to me - bands I stumbled on and fell in love with

Pas Neos -  Wheat & the Tares / Who Do You Say I Am?

Among Savages – Wanderings of an Illustrative Mind

Paper Route – the Peace of Wild Things

Abandon – Control

Gotye – Making Mirrors

Michael Ketterer – Love/War/Solar System

Sound of Arrows - Voyage

Kimbra – Vows

Welcome Back / Returning to the Stage

Men Without Hats – Love in the Age of War

Worship

We Are Creation – We Are Creation

Young Oceans – Young Oceans

Brett Younker – Come to the Water

Christmas

Solid Rock – Gloria

Heading into 2013 … these are groups I’m test driving

The Hollow Threads

Scientist (not on Spotify yet)

Hey Ocean!

The Rival

Reign of Kindo

Kye Kye

All Sons & Daughters

Loud Harp

Young Galaxy

OR click the following link and when Spotify opens you can click "shuffle" so you get a sampling of all the groups without listening to one entire album
2013 Test Drive

Summer Flix

I don’t know about you, but for me some movies are seasonal – it just doesn’t feel like I’ve experienced that season unless certain movies are part of the routine.

I think most people feel this way about winter and Christmas: movies like It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol (the Muppet version), A Christmas Story, White Christmas, Home Alone, Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas…  OK, that last one is a stretch, but you get what I mean.

But what about summer movies?  Is it just me, or do others of you have perennial summer movies that put the ‘cherry on top’, so to speak, of your summer?  That it kind of feels like you skipped something if you don’t watch that movie every summer?

Maybe it’s because these movies came out in the summer and I have fond memories of my skin slightly tingling with sunburn, dodging the 90+degree heat with my cousin at the Crossroads Mall in Omaha.  Or walking the 3 blocks from my grandparents in Hastings to the local cinema with that same cousin in the sweltering July heat.  Sure, some of it is nostalgia, but not all of it.  I mean, I clearly remember waiting in the summer heat of 1983 to see Return of the Jedi for the first time, but it’s not a movie that I feel like needs to be a part of my summer.

These are the movies I feel like are a necessary part of my summer… for whatever reason, but in no particular order:

-       The Goonies
(“’nice’ is my middle name Mrs. Walsh”)

-       The Karate Kid
(“wax on. Wax off.”)

-       Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
(“strange things are afoot at the Circle K”)

-       Back to the Future
(“I am your density”)

So… is it just me? Or do you have perennial ‘summer’ movies too?  If so – list ‘em below – and the first quote you can think of from that movie….

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the 2nd Advent

This year I’ve been thinking a lot about the grander scope of what advent means.

“Advent (from the Latin word adventus meaning "coming") is a season observed in many Western Christian churches, a time of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus at Christmas.”

thanks Wiki wiki woo

It also describes our current here and everyday ‘now’.  We are in the time of waiting for Christ’s 2^nd advent, His second coming.

Hopefully for those who are followers of Jesus it is an expectant time characterized with both joy and longing.

Its easy for any of us to lose sight of this precisely because the wait is long and the arrival time completely unknown.

So when I ran across this video, I was struck with the thought that it serves as a great parable for how we Christians should live during this current advent.

A little background:

An AirTran plane is on the tarmac waiting while a maintenance check is performed.

The passengers are… waiting

They don’t know if it’s a 5 minute check or if it will keep them grounded for an hour or more.

Amongst the passengers a choir is seated, some clumped together, some next to non-choir people.

Beautiful.

During their wait, the choir sings a beautiful song of satisfaction found in Jesus.  It is not a song of coercion.  It is not a song of eloquent apologetics. It is not a song detailing a logical case that can be made. It is not a boastful song. It is a song of longing, and waiting.  A song of longing for the Savior who has so changed a life, that the singer can’t help but sing of how nothing else compares.

So as we wait on the tarmac…waiting, as we journey during this advent, let’s bring beauty to the wait.  Let’s sing of hope during the wait.  Let our lives be songs, whose movements and decisions and interactions are notes borne of love for our coming Savior.  


And maybe in so doing others who were not once part of the choir will consider joining the song.




My wife has a great airplane analogy in a similar but completely different vein that I hope she will one day blog.