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Church for Husbands: What Music Means to Me

By Vic SizemoreAugust 15, 2011

Music might be the thing that in the end helps me keep my faith. I haven’t admitted this to my wife or kids, because I’ve made it abundantly clear that I don’t like the TV show Glee. I really don’t like it; most of the time it annoys the hell out of me. However, we…

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Battle of the Bands

By Andy WhitmanFebruary 10, 2011

Back when garage bands actually used to practice in garages, my local swimming pool sponsored Battle of the Bands nights. Sixteen-year-old boys with hair hanging down in their eyes used to flail away on their guitars, spurred on by visions of appearing on Shindig or American Bandstand, or, failing that, winning the adulation of a…

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How I Accidentally Wrote a Book About Listening to Christian Rock

By Joel HartseDecember 15, 2010

This post is adapted from the introduction to Joel’s new book, Sects, Love, Rock and Roll, available now from Cascade Books. I tried not to write a book about Christian rock. I tried fiction, but gave up after a teacher couldn’t get me to fix the ending to the story where a seventeen-year-old kid loses…

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Impossible Soul

By Joel HartseNovember 4, 2010

The recorded version of “Seven Swans” on Sufjan Stevens’ album of the same name always seemed a bit too subdued for the apocalyptic revelation it presents. Stevens opened his recent show at the beautiful Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver, BC (and all the shows on his recent tour) with that song, alone, spotlighted, scraping timidly at…

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The Inner Ear

By Joel HartseOctober 15, 2010

“I found the safest place to keep all our tenderness / Keep all our bad ideas / Keep all our hope / It’s here in the smallest bones / the feet and the inner ear / It’s such an enormous thing to walk and to listen” —The Weakerthans, “My Favourite Chords” I need to be…

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Kiss Me

By Joel HartseJune 15, 2010

Sixpence None the Richer is my favorite band. I used to be embarrassed to say this, particularly in 1999, when their bouncy pop song “Kiss Me” became a ubiquitous, worldwide radio hit. I knew, and know, that the band was more than this one song, but “Kiss Me” on the radio, in 1999, was the…

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Performing Art

By Brian VolckJune 4, 2008

I’m told music, dance and theater are performing arts, distinguished from “plastic arts” in that the medium of expression is the (frequently augmented) human body moving in time, the realization inseparable from interpretation. While such distinctions continue to die the death of a thousand qualifications, I can’t help but wonder at what point the categories…

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Resonant Silence

By Peggy RosenthalMarch 6, 2008

“Desperately Seeking Silence” is the title of an intriguing essay in the current issue of Cross Currents (Fall, 2007). The author, Brett Esaki, who identifies himself as a member of the Hip-hop generation, argues that the noise we hear in youth culture’s art forms is actually creating a meditative space of silence for those who…

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Auf Wiedersehen, Karl!

By Michael CappsFebruary 22, 2008

Recently, I was home sick catching up on my reading. Flipping through an accumulation of The Economist magazines, I began in the back with the obituaries…a singular and fascinating specialty of this publication. What greeted me was the obituary of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, who died December 5 at the age of 79. Ironically, I…

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The First Pitch

By Michael CappsFebruary 6, 2008

I can recall the first time that I heard ‘classical’ music. My mother had just retrieved the long disabled record player back from the repair shop and put on an LP to test it out. For a kid of seven or eight, the novelty of the thing must have brought me into the room to…

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