Disaster Area

O Holy Night (from hell)

UPDATED - see below.

As usual at this time of year, the Christmas Carols Gone Wrong get circulated around the intertubes.

The Music Academy trotted out this one again. Audio only. Keep listening, or fast forward to 2:13 for the really great bit.

Many people have commented about how they can't believe someone wouldn't know they were so terrible. And the answer is no, they were not unaware - it's a spoof.

Full story here:

I'm not saying the spoof was a good idea, mind...

UPDATE: Oh, you can even buy it on iTunes. Much like the Portsmouth Sinfonia (see below), a little of this goes a long way.

My favorite version of this great song  is still my friend Eileen McIntyre singing it 20+ years ago back in Pennsylvania. Simple arrangement, beautiful voice.

 

iPad My iPad...

I know I posted a few weeks ago about why not to buy an iPad (yet). Then I bought one. The reason is simple - it does something right now that I want it to do and nothing else comes close. Plus, it has a fantastic amount more potential to be useful in so many other ways.

The thing I wanted it to do right now is replace my music book - to be precise the massive paper book of chord charts for songs that I play in various church settings. Having had it a mere week I got to test it this weekend on a church retreat. 70 songs in three days. I uploaded all of the songs needed for the weekend in pdf format, some in Word and was set.

And the thing performed like a champ. With a ten hour battery life, I was able to go two days of use without recharging. Flipping between songs was faster than I could do it in a paper book. The page size is smaller than a physical page, but with a two finger zoom I could always zoom the page to be at least as large as the paper page, and it was brighter. In dim lighting, no book light required. For a relative leap in the dark, there was nothing about the experience that didn't work.

Even better, before the weekend, I was dreaming with a couple of friends about the perfect app for managing music. We figured out a whole host of features. Then, when I got to the retreat, the leader - a musician himself, had an iPad and already had an app (OnSong) that does 99% of the things I was dreaming about. For $4.99.

So let's call that a big win for Apple and Steve Jobs' wallet (not for the first time...)

Fresh Breath Problems?

Maggi Dawn posted recently on various and sundry tacky Christian novelties. Well, the same people who brought you the wash away your sins soap also have this lovely borderline sacreligious product for sale...

Are the flavors of your last supper lingering too long? Freshen your palate with the miraculous breath-cleansing power of these Last Supper After Dinner Mints. Each collectible, 3" x 1-1/4" x -1/2" (7.6 cm x 3.2 cm x 1.3 cm) tin contains one hundred mints that you can share with your apostles! Thirty-six shrink wrapped tins in each illustrated display box.

In the right circumstances, I could see these figuring into a humorous alt-worship service of some kind. Come to think of it, why does church have to be so solemn all the time? Why couldn't we cut loose a bit with a humorous service? Of course, there's no need to get stupid about it...

Creed

For the alt worship Advent service a month ago I put together a video of one of the "alternative" creeds in Jonny Baker & Doug Gay's Alternative Worship book. The backgrounds are a variety of 50 NASA pictures from space.

I burned it to DVD and set it up for viewing on a large-ish TV. Here's a low resolution Quicktime version (about 4 MB). Kudos to the first person to name the music...

As for pushing theological boundaries, the creed itself has a few really interesting thoughtful twists, which makes it much more than just plain vanilla worship with candles (although never underestimate the power of candles...)

Waiting In The Starlight

After spending the last few months being intrigued by the myriad facets of alternative worship (thanks Adam Cleaveland) and experimenting with a few things here and there, we (myself and our youth director) decided we should go for it and put together an alt worship Advent event. We've roped in a few other people to help with stuff and this is what we came up with...

First, reading the Advent section of Jonny Baker and Doug Gay's Alternative Worship book (awesome, by the way - buy it now!) the theme of starlight struck me. I mentioned it to D (she's the artsy one, I'm the musical one) and she married it to the waiting theme of Advent. So we had a title.

From there it quickly morphed to the notion of a star labyrinth - 8 points/stations, with an empty manger in the center. One of the creeds from the Alt Worship book seemed like a natural, so I set that to a background of 50 NASA pictures from space - various parts of the earth, planets, moons, solar flares, so that's one station. Another station will be "light" prayers (with candle lighting, of course) - a lot of them from Evening Prayer. Throw in a Jesse tree, a scripture station and you're almost set. One other station will be a set of 24 black and white photos to ponder and meditate and the last station will be a payer wall prompted by the question "what are you waiting for?".

Musically we'll start with about 20 minutes of live music. So far I've got Tim Hughes' Here I Am To Worship (which could be an official Advent song with a different bridge...), O Come Emmanuel, Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, and maybe (if I can get the music in time) a Maggi Dawn song Into the Darkness and some other stuff I'll figure out this weekend. Once that's over I've put together a mostly instrumental mix while people interact with the stations. Now, having lots of Enya and Vangelis CDs I'll confess to a weakness for going with what I've got. I also resisted the temptation to use some of my more favorite tracks that are just too overpowering for this. I did, however, stick with Delerium/Sarah McLachlan, even though it gets fairly intense and the vocals are potentially intrusive. But whatever... sometimes you just have to put in stuff you think works. All this stuff just feels right for "starlight"...

Here's the track listing (all nicely cross-faded with Nero - I love their software...) (let's see how the formatting works - not, I bet)

Name - Artist - Album
A Day Without Rain - Enya - A Day Without Rain
The Oracle Of Apollo - Vangelis - Direct
Shepherd Moons - Enya - Shepherd Moons
Raincry (Submerged) - God Within - Plastic Compilation Volume 1
First Approach - Vangelis - Direct
'S fagaim mo bhaile - Enya - Oíche Chiún [EP]
Silence (Michael Woods Remix) - Delerium/Sarah McLachlan - Chillout/A Nettwerk Escape
To The Unknown Man - Vangelis - Portraits
No Holly for Miss Quinn - Enya - Shepherd Moons
Alpha - Vangelis - Portraits
Pulstar - Vangelis - Portraits
Storms In Africa - Enya - Watermark
Sauvage Et Beau - Vangelis - Portraits
The Memory of Trees - Enya - The Memory Of Trees
Hymn - Vangelis - Portraits
Oíche Chiún (Silent Night) - Enya - Oíche Chiún [EP]

The goal is to start quiet, crank up the intensity in the middle a bit (Alpha & Pulstar) and then wind it back down, starting with the driving but lighter Storms in Africa. Oh, and it's all a nice 75 minute track on my iPod now, too.

So I'm pretty psyched about this. I can't wait (hah!) to see how it works out. And for once, the musicians can actually participate...