One Direction and the Priesthood

Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you One Direction, a floppy-haired boyette-band of boys who share two common distinctions: the first is that as solo artists they failed to win a singing contest and as a put-together Cowellesque boyette-band, they failed to win a singing contest. Still, lickle ickle girls like them and they do have floppy doppy hair, so that is alright. 

But why are these new princes of disposable muzak adorning this hard hitting theological publication (pah)? 

While I was with the family on our little holiday last week, it came to pass that this conglomeration of the pre-pubescent actually won something - a Brit award. And good for them - truly. They are committed to doing something, they haven't gone Cocozza and they seem to add to the world, not detract. Well done them (I have to take this view now because I fear that their faces will the ones that will adorn my daughter's Anaglypta very soon).

I confess, though, that as I recieved this news from the Brit Awards, I nearly inhaled my Mocha and pebble-dashed the wife's face with it. Why? Because they are a product of the skill of others. They are given a song written by a gifted song-writer that they sing into a computer that filters it for quality - a computer in the hands of a gifted producer who spews the end result into a beautifully well-oiled marketting machine. That song will have been accompanied by qualified and gifted musicians who went to school and college and everything. The song in question is funky and annoyingly catchy - I don't like it one bit, but I was hardly going to - and now a prize-winner. In short, the wife and I concluded that One Direction were not much more than the processing mechanism for the good work of others - a little like a floppy doppy Pentium chip. 

As I supped my very large (and woefully expensive) Mocha, having railed at the news that Pentium Pop had won a prize, I considered how much different One Direction are to your average everyday priest Vicar type bod. Are we not, in some ways, be-collared processors of all that our members offer to God? Unlike a colleague who actually describes himself in terms of being The Big Voice in his community, I regard the role of Vicar to not be the star. I set the scene, conduct the orchestra, move a flock around and sling some hay around the place. What I am not is the virtuoso violinist, or the gifted chef - more the maitre d'. My job is to ensure that everyone else shines - and when it is I who do that first and foremost, it is then that I am getting it wrong. 

Unlike One Direction, I will not receive a Brit for being Vicar - any more than I would with my singing. However, we like them are not stand-alone stars - we are where we are by virtue of the skills and gifts of so many more people, and very often despite our own shortcomings. 

And I would look even dafter than I do now with a hairdo like that! 

The Food of My Soul

I was trawling through video clips so that I could update my Vernacular Video Bar, and struck (for me) gold. Today I have placed two pieces for your enjoyment - one because it is technical picking as I like it (though not hard to do if you know what you are doing), and because the other made me cry (in a nice way).

This is hard on the heels of a journey that I have made this morning where, as ever, I was plugged into my iPod. 

I reflected this morning that I could live without many things physical or temporal - but not music. I can no more live without music than I can live without air, and the starvation of either makes for a poor day, I find.

The video at the top of this post is of Mark Knopfler, the only man alive who by his creativity can make me weep because I find his skill overwhelming and beautiful. His music, to me, is stunning. It is music that soars like a feather on a spring breeze, just before crashing into me like a freight-train. It is effective, lyrical, hard yet soft, winsome when needs be and technically about as good as you will find. This video is of a song that is dripping with pathos anyway, and with an orchestra, is a perfect moment. The fact is, that Mr Knopfler is a man who makes the notes that he doesn't play sound stunning too. 

In general terms, music reaches us where we wish to be reached. I played a wide array of snippets of music last night at the service I lead in the Week of Prayer for Christian unity - including Maria Callas, Metallica, Eric Clapton, a kids' nursery rhyme, Alien Ant Farm and the odd Wesleyan hymn - partly to illustrate that we are all different, but to comment that despite their differences, all of that music was on my one iPod. In its breadth I am best served by music as there are Faure days as their are Chris Rea days. Unity, I said, wasn't about being the same, but about being united in our variety.

The thing with music is that we choose what we like. We don't waste a moment of our time listening to music we dislike, so it fast becomes the purest expression of ourselves. I am not sure that much else works like that so easily and so purely in our lives. Our musical tastes have their seasons too, and it fair to say that I haven't listened to Hitman Howie Tee for a few years (though I used to listen to little else when I was a sprog).

I pity the poor soul that has to arrange my funeral. I can't even do it (an exercise I have tried to do so that Mrs Acular is spared). Music in death is as evocative as music in life, and the effort to sum me up in hymnody and song will be a rocky one. Put another way, if you want to get a real idea of who this blogger really is, listen to these videos and others as they appear - for they do a far better job than I could. 

We Will Rock You

I have just enjoyed a wonderful documentary about the group Queen, a group that means a considerable amount to me, and whose music is a significant part of who I am, in many ways. It was a programme that told the first half of the story of a remarkable band whose music found such considerable success in the latter part of the last millennium. It is unlikely that you will have no idea to whom I refer, but if you are one such person, they are group who wrote and recorded Bohemian Rhapsody! 

I place a considerable value on the place of music. I am, perhaps, set in my ways as regards the things I enjoy - and my family might testify that I always was. Just listening to an hour of telly devoted to the musicians who underscored perhaps all of my teens and twenties has proved to be haunting and wonderful, all at the same time. 

My taste in music favours those groups or choirs or orchestras that demonstrate commitment and what I regard to be technical musical excellence. I cannot abide flaccid disposable pap, and this probably why most modern throw-away garbage is a source of irritation to me. It is perhaps why on one hand I can enjoy very heavy rock music while on the other taking delight in Spem in Alium. Music is for the soul, in my estimation, not for a light snack. I take pleasure in gifted musicians crafting their art, be that acoustically, electrically, chorally or any other ally you can think of. My foray into the synthesised began and ended with Jean Michel Jarre. He got in because he was a prodigious pianist. I just like my music to be good and not flim-flam. I can even warm to a gifted rapper, as my parish community may have noted had they been to the right parties! (OK, perhaps not gifted, but very amusing). 

I cannot imagine a world without music. I am never (literally) more than two or three feet away from my own source of music, and I have long resolved that, if I were to be cast to the proverbial desert island, or indeed if I was granted a day left to live - that my iPod would be among those things involved in the arrangements. Music is such a pure and evocative force, when done right (a subjective thing, of course). It is who I am, and the way markers in the journey from who I was. My daughters already have a repertoire of the stuff they like (which has a little too much Abba in it for me, but we are all different). I have even discovered some (I lean on 'some') worship music that, under duress, I could say I like. 

I once pondered long and very hard on an issue of sensory deprivation, and I am absolutely sure that I would sooner lose my sight than my hearing. This is perhaps a naive comment from one who has the nominal choice, but my thought was that I would far sooner lose the ability to see a wonderful view or even the faces of my babies than lose the ability to hear them sing. Music is such a wonderful sacrament - a gift from and of God, that no less sustains me than the blessed Body and Blood.

Compilation II

A little while ago, I listed my favourite songs as they were at that time. With the very sad news of the death of Gerry Rafferty, I remembered how much I loved some of his music, noted that all I had of his music was on cassette, that I no longer owned a cassette player, and so downloaded some of his stuff from the Interweb. Listening to them in the car earlier gave me time to think of my 'musical roots', a train of thought I have taken much pleasure in for the rest of the day. 

I need not remind you that I am all 'give give give' so am going to list the influences on my musical tastes: music that has shaped me very probably. Perhaps reiterating the present would be helpful. I love heavy rock music. Hold that in your thinkings, as you toddle with me through my grimy musical past.

1. Oxygene & Equinoxe - Jean Michel Jarre: These two albums of synthesiser music (it is better than I have just made it sound) belonged to Mum and Dad, and were the first albums that I remember loving listening to and choosing to put on the record player (when I was allowed). I still love to listen to them now, and it is probably fair to say, that they were the best he made. 

2. Shamrock Diaries - Chris Rea: This was the first album that I ever owned in my own right, courtesy of my dear old Nan one Christmas. It introduced me to light rock music, and again, is a firm favourite when driving or entertaining. I have fallen in love with 'One Golden Rule' all over again in recent years - beautiful track.

3. Love Over Gold - Dire Straits:  This was my Dad's tape that I nicked, fast on the heels of Chris Rea and a burgeoning love of listening to the electric guitar. The track 'Telegraph Road' is a fourteen minute epic, a wonderful instrumental second section, and a a constant presence in my lifetime favourites. There is not a bad track on the whole album, I believe!

4. Baker Street (Song)- Gerry Rafferty: I refer to the song, of course, as distinct from the album. It took me years to identify this song for myself and acquire a copy (together with the next entry). I believe this to be an iconic track, and so evocative of another time and place. Only since Rafferty has died have I learned about the meaning of the song and his own problems with alcohol. 

5. Forever Autumn (Song) - Justin Hayward and the Moody Blues: This is one gloomy song, but it haunted me for years. All I could remember were the first five or ten notes, no more. I discovered its name in 1992, promptly forgot it and re-discovered it when the Greatest Hits album was advertised and I heard it again. I think this takes me back to memories I was too young to label or remember properly. 

6. Alchemy Live - Dire Straits: When I decide I love an artists' music, I buy all the albums. This was one of the first records I went our and bought on my own with my own money, and it is stunning. It holds (in my opinion) the best versions, by far, of 'Sultans of Swing' and 'Telegraph Road', and the two tracks together take nearly half an hour. It is a live album, but a rare case of being better than the studio versions (I think). 

7. The Glory of Bach - Bach: Now unavailable, this was a cassette compilation of the best pieces. It has a couple of movements from the Brandenburg Concertos as I remember, the Air from Suite 3 in D, and the best version of Toccata and Fugue in D Minor that I have ever heard - played by Karl Richter [a version is on the link]. This little tape is the reason I am passionate about classical music, almost certainly what informed my choral tastes and has set Bach as a much cherished favourite composer. 

8. Let's Dance (Song) - Chris Rea: The process that was started by Mark Knopfler et al was accelerated by this track. By this point, I knew that my passion was for rock music, and perhaps a reason why I have always loathed more popular genres. Pop, disco, and all the modern variables on these themes - all passed me by.

9. Local Hero & Cal - Mark Knopfler: The soundtracks to these films are just beautiful, and yet more reasons why, apart from Metallica, the prospect of seeing Mr Knopfler live brings me out in a wanderlust. 

10. Pump - Aerosmith: This tape sat in my bedroom for two years before I ever listened to it, because I didn't think it would up my street. When I heard it, the days of my heavy rock loving commenced. This album represented the moment of conversion. 

Extra Entries for Loyal Readers:

11. A Kind of Magic - Queen: This was cheap in a garage discount bin, so I bought it, in 1987. The Queen era began in earnest, as did the spree of buying up all twenty-odd entries on their back catalogue. This album was broadly the soundtrack to the now cultic film Highlander, still a favourite, and still a reason why a man loves to watch Clancy Brown in films. 

12. Live Killers - Brighton Rock - Queen: The link is only available in two parts as it is nearly fourteen beautiful minutes of guitar solo and timpani solo. If a teenager ever thought they loved rock, this track sealed it!

12. Eat 'Em and Smile - David Lee Roth: The man is bonkers, but this baby album was always a joy. Not so heavy, but it was still a cause for recognising the 'lectric geetar as a work of God when held by the right hands. 

13. Van Halen - Van Halen: The same as above, with the added joy of Eruption. Listen to it, you might not dislike it! Sweeeet. Probably the best guitar solo bar none!

There, that is my musical pre-history. I hope you have fun trawling through it, if you choose to, though if you don't, it has given me a good day of happy remembrance. I'd love to hear your thoughts - I am open to new directions!


(Links to the music added, click on the links and a small window should open for you! D)

Metal Head

The place of 'Heavy Metal' music in the lives of Christians has crept up the agenda a little more recently - though I doubt it will ever overtake the Papal visit. 

For many, Heavy Metal is the work of one Mr Lou C. Ferr, and in truth, its symbology does little to dissuade that viewed. It is often a genre of music that appears to be followed by the oily and lank-haired breeds who seek comfort from their leather jimmie-jams and and spider-web tats cast artfully across their acne-scarred visages. They wear jeans which are so tight they promote herniae; their ankles seem to be of a magnetic order that they can only exist poles apart, thus causing the legs of the 'Metal Head' to be forces to a perpetual inverse 'v', with each legged concluded as it is by scuffed boots with more buckles and straps that a clergy away-day!

'Bloody Noise', my dad called it. 'Awful Racket', Mrs Acular says. 'Why are they shouting', the Twins Aculae enquire. But they are mistaken, all of them.

For those of you unfamiliar with the breed, 'Heavy Metal' is something of a British invention, spawned of the likes of Ozzie Osbourne and Tony Iommi that then spread to America and brought to genesis the likes of Metallica and then onto splintered genres [Nu-Metal, Death Metal, Glam etc] which all have their own sound. In essence, these bands comprise one or more electric guitars, bass, drums (often double-pedalled for machine gun speed), and a lead singer who growls. Put another way, Metallists are musicians, often classically trained in their instrument, but nonetheless experts. Their music attends to subject matters that the fluffy popsters tend to avoid. 

I have, I think, all the albums of Metallica and many of their tracks deal with a struggle with God and the pain that some human activity can bring to being. The lyrics often speak of struggling on in the face of the odds - and very often the struggle with evil. There are some very noble songs. Another group I like to listen to, System of a Down (since disbanded, sadly), write songs about justice and the horror of war and its machinery. 

In short, these are musicians who deal with some of the spectres that live in all of us. I love classical music and with that I find this to be very compatible. Yes, the genre is loud and often angry, and it is often sweary and growly - but if you can get under the facade you can hear some poignant sentiments. Give me a moment of Metal music to a lifetime of plastic pap that Mr Cowell engenders. I would rather a moment of 'The Judas Kiss' than a year of 'My Baby-boo Is My Cootchy Coo' - bleh!

I Am Doloris Van Cartier

Not really - that would be preposterous. 

It was my joy and delight to see the musical 'Sister Act' at the London Palladium last night. We went with two good friends to see this stage-remake musical of the 1992 Whoopi Goldberg film [she was meant to star as Mother Superior, but she had lost her mother a couple of days earlier - prayers for Miss Goldberg aplenty]. I am not much of a one for musicals, but Mrs Acular is, and when she is happy so am I - but this was an amazing production. Quite unlike some musicals I have seen (and didn't enjoy), this one featured a long succession of really well produced songs that just thumped to the beat without exception. 

When I am in the presence of creativity, I often inexplicably become creative. Last night was another example. I sat and I ponder the possibily of writing a musical of the life of St. Peter. I would set in the context of English comtemporary street-culture; the events in the life of Peter could be translated easily into such a context, with moments such as 'I Will Follow You', 'Do You Love Me', 'I Do Not Know Him' all set to a rock score and choreographed with an edgy street-dance support. This enterprise would be called The Rock - sorted; send me my quids Lord Lloyd Webber.

The real musical I saw yesterday tells the tale of a lounge singer who witnesses a murder at the hands of her boyfriend. She is hidden away in a convent for 'witness protection', and during her stay turns a group of closeted Sisters from an choir of the queazy into a Gospel Troupe Extraordinare. She not only transforms their musical fortunes, but attracts new worshippers, raises money pay for a crumbling inner-city church, and finds her own soul at the same time. The set was amazing - a 20' high statue of Our Lady, robes made by a genuine clerical-outfitters. The context I could understand and relate to.

It struck me as I sat there loving this thing - that there was something of the familiar about all of this. The reasons that brought me into a life of faith are very different, but I feel at times as that character felt (and have reported in this blog ad nausiam) - it's the square peg round hole thing. That all said, it was a joy to watch a tale unfold where the differences are the catalyst for good change, not a forceful wrench away from what is normal!

Old Expressions of a Fresh Church

I am just back from a visit to Lincoln and the cathedral which I took with the crowd from the parish. We had a wonderful time, welcomed as we were by so many people, including the Diocesan Bishop who just happened to be wandering past us when we were in the great Edifice. 

As I had a little spare time and didn't feel inclined to bankrupt my family in the cathedral shop, I paused a while and reflected on all that Lincoln Cathedral represents in a Christian context that is fast changing (or fast developing the appetite to change). Change is good, don't get me wrong, but not wholesale change. Whilst I consider it laudable that we have churches that seek to be messy, one-size-fits-all nuture courses for the 'un-churched' masses, play that is Godly, I wonder where the past and all that we have as a rich heritage fits into the funked-up world of the twenty-first century church of Christ. 

Lincoln Cathedral's offering to the worshipping people was this:

 - Simple structured liturgy done well

 - Beautiful music sung ably

 - Pastoral flourishes done with an open heart and outstretched arms

 - Dignified worship that wasn't self-centred but a vehicle for the adoration of God

 - A proper acknowledgement of the rich inheritance of the past that we enjoy (and take for granted) today.

 - ...and all done to be inconspicuous so that we all may gaze on the Cross of Christ

Informality and its companions are good, but are only part of the story. If all of Christendom were funky and spontaneous I think it would all become uniform and mute. We would quickly become immune. There are those who condemn the worship at the catholic  'end' as 'old hat', 'disconnected', 'boring', and 'irrelevant'. I suspect that they have never been to a cathedral to witness its worship because to see it is to know that it is still very profound, connecting and wholly relevant. And yes, worshipping the Lord in the same place that a millenium's congregations have poured our their hearts and souls to Christ is itself a humbling and wonderful thing. The stones are like sponges; you can hear the music in the place many hours after the last soprano leaves the building; you can feel the prayer ricocheting around like so many atoms. The Spirit is palpable in such places.

Amen to the future; amen to moving forward; amen to new advances and new intiatives in worship. However, I can't help thinking that when the messy church is finally tidied, the godly play comes of age and the one-size-fits-all nurture course is found to be terminally restrictive - at that point I sense that Lincoln Cathedral will still be doing simple  structured liturgy well, singing beautiful music ably and with a pastoral heart and arms. To move forward without regard and respect to the past inheritance feels a little like the antics of the Prodigal Son!

Compilation

I am sure that everyone would have the own compilation album. 'Desert Island Discs' is this premis made manifest, and every once in while I consider my own. 

Partly because I have just enjoyed a track from that notional album, and partly because it is a very insightful self-reflective tool (oh, how these 'compilations' change from year to year), I have pondered my own again:

As I happen to be logged into this thing again, I am going to sling it all down here - I have never written my 'compilation' down before, so here starts a record, for my own interest later, if nothing else.

1. Telegraph Road - Dire Straits

[A long moody rock song, about the corrupting and disposability of the world in a commercial age (I am not selling well, I know) with an guitar led 8 minute instrumental that is made in heaven. Knopfler rocks]

2. Forever Autumn - Moody Blues

[Haunting and beautful, sad and gloomy - all in equal measure. I don't know why, but this one gets me every time]

3. Easy Lover - Phil Collins and Phil Bailey

[Disco blandness, but released at the very same moment that my hormones fired for the first time - so brings back a whole array of happy reminiscence)

4. Agnus Dei (From the 'Requiem') - Gabriel Faure

[A stunning choral moment, wonderful to listen to and wonderful to sing - and the soaring tenor line at the climax make the hairs on my neck prickle every time]

5.Walk This Way - Aerosmith/Run DMC

[Stonking - the original version by Aerosmith is a little dull for me, but this one is wonderful to drive to, on a wide open, empty, straight road]

6. The Power of Love - Huey Lewis and the News

[mostly 'cos I am perpetually locked in the 80's, and this one is great to catawaul to]

7. Broken, Beat and Scarred - Metallica

[Having seen this performed live, this is my new Metal Anthem - leave no speaker un ruptured - technical excellence of the sort you have to admire whatever your tastes]

8. Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon and Garfunkel

[Apparently the most covered track of all time - only the orginal cuts it for me]

9. Feel Like Going Home - Notting Hillbillies (Mark Knopfler)

[This track connects me to my dad, was quoted by me at his funeral and has a momemt of Knopfler axework that is simply amazing - even typing this has caused me to shed a tear, sad git that I am]

10. Old One Hundredth - Wesley, Vaughan Williams [All People that on Earth do Dwell]

[No better version of no better hymn exists - when played and sung with conviction]

11. Question! - System of a Down

[A beautfiul mix of hard metal and classical guitar picking - a beautiful song]

12. Shoot me Again - Metallica

[Played loud when life conspires to run me over, and doesn't]

Bonus Tracks:

1. Viscinity of Obscenity - System of a Down

[Bonkers, but satisfying when you can work out how to sing along - this will make you smile]
2. Guitar Solo - Queen (Live Killers Album) - Two links

[Virtually 13 minutes of Brian May and Roger Taylor in guitar or timpani soli. Any ten minute guitar-solo is a winner with me, and this is the Daddy

There, you can all abandon me as a weirdo, or else you can think your own Album through, maybe even burn the disc - you know you want to ....


07.01.11 links to the music added - sorry they are a little late.