Ojeda's

Yesterday was my birthday, so, with my choice of any restaurant in the DFW metroplex, I chose the amazing Ojeda's. Now, for convenience' sake we went to Big Ben Ojeda's in Plano, which is still awesome, but it seems like you loose something in the atmosphere. (Pictured is the one on Maple--much more Latin part of town.) If anybody out there hasn't been, you need to go. It's the best Mexican in town (in my humble, white opinion). Actually, when Bill Clinton came to town it was recommended to him and they still have a blue table cloth with a sour cream stain on it to prove it (just in case).

You Supply The Caption

Separated at Birth?

William Wallace*
John Eldredge
*William Wallace portrait courtesy of Ransomed Heart Ministries and Adobe Photoshop.

You Supply the Caption

here's how this works. i post a picture that begs to be mocked, and you, the reader, come up with possible captions. for example, if i were you (the reader) and you were me (the post...man?) and had posted the above picture i might suggest, "liberal vampires invade local skinhead rally--skinheads get resourceful," or "jurers at cheney hunting accident trial asked for sentencing--jury responds with above gesture."

tom waits (cont'd)

in the words of my friend and waits-mentor "tom waits deserves more than one comment." well, he just may deserve more than one post, too. therefore i dedicate this post to his early stuff. waits' early stuff is quite possibly the most enjoyable music i listen to. the island years are like musical vegetables. one has to acquire the taste before the nutritional benefits can be fully enjoyed. the early years, while not quite musical candy, are rather enjoyable. it is the cereal of the musical world. rare is the moment when i wouldn't enjoy a bowl of cereal--and not the fruit loops or cocoa pebbles junk--i thoroughly enjoy a good bowl of wheaties, quaker toasted oatmeal, or crunchy corn bran. so, the greatness of tom waits early stuff is it takes no getting used to, no learning curve. it's pleasant to the ears and yet offers substance and excites development and growth in its hearer. it was a time when...
life was full of roses
poetry and prose and
[tom waits], all i had was you and all you had was me
there was no tomorrow
we packed away our sorrow
and we saved it for a rainy day

tom waits

this is tom waits. what a weird guy, but man what an artist. i really hadn't heard much of him until one jon kever recommended his debut album "closing time." after buying it, it soon became one of my favorites. then i got "beautiful maladies." what an apt title. his voice is horrible, i was like, "he's not even trying to sound good." but i knew he was an artistic force to be reckoned with, so i listened. it only took two times through the album to see the beauty in the maladies.

couple dating

so there's couples and they date each other and it's not like when you date in high school, but it is, cause you like each other...
...just go read my brother's blog.

click here to laugh

you kind of have to be a dts student to think this is funny.

pilotdrift

i was in a staff meeting at my church the other day and i'd mentioned my love of music. one of our staff members told me about his future son-in-law from texarkana who is in a band called "pilotdrift." he gave me their website and i checked it out. it sounded great--radiohead, the arcade fire, queen--at least those are the closest equivelents in my musical library (i don't actually own any queen). then i picked up the latest copy of paste magazine and on a page called "4 bands to watch" there they are, pilotdrift. i felt so on the cutting edge. because i heard of them one whole day before reading about them in paste i feel like i can say, "you need to watch these guys, they're gonna be big."

more new music

i should also mention the following new music i obtained over the christmas break:
johnny cash- american iv: the man comes around
-it was about time. obviuosly good stuff.
the arcade fire- funeral
-the album art is worth the price of the album, granted i got it used on amazon.
havalina rail co.- space, love, and bullfighting
-a havalina classic
danielson famile- tridanielson (alpha)
-number one in a two-part series. some seriously weird stuff, but entertaining.
the royal blue- where only love has gone (ep)
-this is a good year for me and female vocals. we'd had a falling out somewhere along the way, and between karin berquist, emmylou harris, and kristin leigh they've been redeemed.*
*please note this is in no way an attack on the female gender or their vocal cords. any statements made about their redemption reflect niether an over-realized eschatology nor an inherent sinfulness of female vocals en toto.

new music

i got a few cd's for christmas most of which i highly recommend, and a few that are growing on me:
1.damien jurado- where shall you take me?
-quickly becoming one of my favorite cds. excellent, excellent, excellent! a dark inclusio with plenty of indy-folksie relief between.
2.over the rhine- drunkard's prayer
-loving the laid-back alt-pop sound--somewhat more country than their past stuff.
3.ben lee- something to remember me by
-his debut album. acoustic british indy pop. i'd heard it back in 97 when it was released and have considered buying it ever since. so glad i finally got it.
4.emmylou harris- wrecking ball
-falls under the category of growing on me, but is doing so quickly. contains her priceless cover of dylan's "every grain of sand."
5.tom waits- beautiful maladies the island years
-i had "mule variations" in my hands and the guy at cd world said they'd just got a used copy of this one in. (apparently the island years are a significant period in waits' career...so now i can sound artsy with such phrases as, "hey this stuff kind of sounds like waits' island years" or "yeah, waits' early stuff was good, but man, those island years...") i've only yet listened to the first few songs, so more to come on this one.

album update

i finished and handed in my album. 13 songs. 6 instruments (3 of which are different kinds of shakers). i plan on revisiting it here and there throughout the year to clean up vocals, add various instruments, etc. the album had a title, but it was extremely lame, and i lack the self confidence to ever use it again, so i scrapped it.

reading week

so, reading week is a wonderful invention, although i'm a little upset i'm missing ets this year. i'm still a member, so i got the conference schedule and i've been parousing it the past few days...i don't know why i do that to myself. the theme is "christianity in the early centuries," good thing i'm not interested in that topic.

myspace

i just set up a myspace blog. it's got four of my songs on it. i'll try to rotate the songs periodically. the recordings are pretty rough, at least that's my excuse.
here's the url:

http://blog.myspace.com/tysonguthrieandthesteelbeltedradials

may i recommend...

i was so excited to read this book i picked it up before i was done with the one assinged before it. i wasn't disappointed. i'm only half done with it, but unless it takes a nose dive, i recommend this book to any Christian who is an artist. notice i didn't say "Christian artist." the book is expressly for those Christians who want to contribute to culture, not the Christian subculture. the guy is a journalist and a poet, but he writes music reviews and interviews musicians, so the two most prominent arts highlighted in the book are literature and music, but all the arts are in mind in the writing of the book. he's also associated with squint entertainment who gave waterdeep their first contract, so at least he hangs with people who know true art.

music

i just realized i don't have a link to havalina. this ought not be so. they are a great band. i really only have one album, and that's because it's free on their website, but i saw them at cornerstone a few years back and have been a fan ever since.
in their words: "havalina, not unlike most of our influences, is about change and various forms of wrecking pop music." gotta love that.

update on the album

today i wrote the fourth song for my class project, so all the writing's done and the album's ready to compile, i have 14 songs total already rough-recorded, and a couple more that could work on the album, but that i didn't like as much.

how to work the system

between school and youth ministry i find little time to sit down with my guitar and write these days. thus i find myself jumping at every chance to write songs for "creative projects" in classes. so far i've written three songs for credit and added two verses to existing songs for class. but this semester i've outdone myself. i'm taking a class from dr. kreider (theological studies prof.) called issues in theological method. its a class on cultural exegesis (obtaining general revelation about God through His image born in the culture--that is in those members of the culture who bear His image). one of the assignments is an album review. you listen to an album and write a paper on how it demonstrates the metanarrative--creation, fall, re-creation. well, instead of reviewing an album, i'll be writing one. i have to write at least 4 new songs for it, but i can compile from songs written in the past. the compilation must be done in community, which i'm actually looking forward to. that way all the songs i wrote with a pre-opined position on the album may perhaps be given a better--really, a more spiritual--placement.

pseudo-parenthood

as dog owners my wife and i make every effort to abstain from the cheesy language of calling our dog "our baby," referring to each other as "mommy" and "daddy," etc. so far we've been successful, but it's hard to avoid such connections when you go to puppy training class. last night my wife and i were at one such event. there we sat on the floor indian-style (is that term still pc?) with our dog running around playing with other dogs talking to the young couples who own those dogs about all the travails of raising a puppy. there was the look of disdain on the owners whose dogs were out of control, and the envy of those owners whose dogs would probably have pulled every last one of us out of the building in case of a fire...and then dressed our wounds. yeah, there's no doubt that owning a puppy is nothing like parenting, but it's hard to ignore the similarities.

genre nazi's

it seems like the younger part of my generation (gen y as the generation nazi's would call them) have a fascination with assigning musical genres. i noticed this in talking about music with some of them, but it never bothered me until i was playing my brit pop/rock playlist from my ipod and was criticized that it was really more of a stadium rock playlist. (please note that the title of my playlist does not exclude stadium rock) he then began to assign each artist in the playlist their own genre. this phenomenon is no surprise to me. despite what people say-everyone wants a label. they want to be seen as preppy or alternative or country. however, all the alternative kids don't want to be lumped together, so there's emo, screamo, hardcore, punk, alt-punk, pre-punk, post-punk, mid-punk and pre-wrath-punk. i particularly like the prefix "alt" see that way i can listen to artists like kasey chambers and buddy miller and yet avoid the whole cowboy boots/big belt buckle image, cause i'm not country--no, no--i'm "alt-country." i wondered why the visual arts have escaped this trend. why is there not alt-cubism? or post-dali-brit-surrealism?