This Guy Falls Down

Roaring Lambs winning "essays"

You ask for it, you got it. Here are the winning "essays". If you take the time to read them, you will be amazed, as I was, at the diverse areas in which these folks operate. And that's really what a "roaring lamb" is all about: being used in your area of influence. While Briner talks a lot about education and media and entertainment because these are areas of both greatest need and greatest potential influence, it's all about being used where you are. Thanks to all who participated.

More on filesharing, and a long-needed correction

The Supreme Court began hearings yesterday on a case which could have widespread consequences. MGM, along with representatives from several record companies, is suing P2P companies such Grokster and Kazaa. What makes this trial different from others is that it would hold the companies responsible for illegal activities using its technology. This would, in effect, take the blame for music and video piracy from the consumer to these companies.

The LA Times has an interesting take on this, pointing out that blaming the technology punishes amateur music and film makers in addition to pirates.

For a good background on the trial and its ramifications, check out cinematical.com's story.

In related news, Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy will appear as part of a panel on the topic next Thursday at the New York Public Library. You can listen in live at the band's website. He has been outspoken in his support of the P2P companies as of late, so it should make for some interesting discussion.

In completely unrelated news, many of you will be happy to hear that I finally enabled HTML tags in the comments section, so you guys can link away to your hearts content. Thanks to Izzy for pointing this out. BTW - since I fixed the glitch, the movie links he worked so hard to post are now sans hypertext. Here they are:

Waking Life

I Heart Huckabees

Roaring Lambs contest winners

Thanks so much to everyone who participated in our first ever Book Club mini essay contest. It was so interesting to learn about the different ways everyone is able to impact their communities. I hated to have to pick some over others, but that's what contests are for, right? So, with out further ado, the winners are...

Songwriting Hack #3: Listen

OK, so you've decided that you want to try your hand at writing some songs. Whether or not you actually decide to stick with it, it will be a very rewarding experience. Before you get the party going, you need to begin to develop what I'll call, for lack of a better term, "pop sensibility". You need to know what elements go into a song, and why some songs work better than others. Yes, there are several books written which delve into concepts such as song structure, rhyme and melody. But you will be bored to tears, trust me. You can and probably should read one of these at some point, but I would hold off for now. The best musical education you can give yourself is listening to great music.

A reminder

Remember that today is the last day to submit your entry in the mini-essay contest. And when I say mini, I mean mini. Who knows, maybe one of the judging criteria is how short your entry is? Seriously, it's been cool to hear from those of you who have emailed so far, and I look forward to even more. It will definitely be hard to decide. For those not in the know, just send me a brief email indicating why you would qualify as a potential "roaring lamb". The winners will receive a copy of April's Book of the Month selection, Roaring Lambs, by Bob Briner.

Speaking of Briner, I've just started reading his Final Roar. The book's out of print as far as I know, and that's a crying shame because it has a lot of things to say which need to be heard by a lot of people. I'll give a full review when I'm finished with it.

Also, I found a good article which was written in 2000 when the Roaring Lambs CD came out. While not quite disagreeing with Briner's ideas, it does take him to task on a couple of very valid points. I'll share it with you soon, but I don't want you to get sidetracked. Read the book first.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's still March. If you haven't yet read Blue Like Jazz, do yourself a favor and read it. I've heard so many people talking about it lately, and it would be great to have you join the dialogue. It doesn't matter if you don't like the cover. It doesn't matter if you don't like the title. It's what's on the inside that counts, right?

What the Bleep Do We Know?

I just finished having a "film festival" with some of the guys from the Tuesday morning group. We watched What the Bleep Do We Know?. It's been about an hour since the film ended and I'm still not exactly sure what I think about it. I will say that this movie has made me think more than any that I've seen in some time.

I'll try my best to describe it. Basically, the movie traces a couple of days in the life of a photographer in which she has some bizarre Alice in Wonderland type things happen to her. This storyline is intertwined with interviews with several scientists, doctors and other extremely intelligent people. The idea is to push the envelope of what is reality in our lives and what is created by our minds. Or is reality created by our minds? Throw in some really odd animation and you've got a party on your hands. Who all's invited to the party? Theologians, psychologists, quantum physicists, and biologists all join in the fun. They take you to a place where the air is thin because few have charted these territories before.

You may love this movie, or you may hate it. Entertainment Weekly actually gave this film an 'F', which they usually reserve for Revenge of the Nerds sequels. Sadly, what I think will happen is most people will watch this movie and go "hmmmm", and then go on about their lives. And that's a shame, because this is the kind of movie that comes along every now and again which challenges us "not" to go on with our lives. We don't have to keep doing the same things we've always been doing. We can do so much more than we give ourselves credit for.

Just how far do you want to go down the rabbit hole?

Digital Downloading: 18 months later

Many of you who have hung around these parts for a long time may remember that early on in the history of this blog, there was a great deal of posting surrounding the legality of digital file sharing. And there was a lot to write about. The RIAA sued over 200 people for participating in illegal downloading; many college campuses were just beginning to crack down on the phenomenon; and iTunes was beginning to turn heads as a legal alternative. And even lowly I was quoted in Newsweek in an article about how this debate played out in Christian circles.

I haven't written much about it as of late, not out of lack of interest, but simply because not much has really happened. But just where exactly are we in this whole thing? iTunes has certainly taken off, and other companies have followed suit. So a legal alternative now exists. But what of the millions of files which are still downloaded illegally in the U.S. each year?

Recently, the major record labels have filed another suit against P2P networks. Is this the answer? In this article, many artists don't think so. V2 records has taken the whole "if we can't beat them, join them" approach. None other than Jeff Tweedy has compared illegal downloading to the library or the radio. While I love that line of thinking, we mustn't forget that the library is a non-profit organization, and artists are compensated when their songs are played on the radio. There's still a massive contradiction here.

Enter Weed. In their model, listeners can hear a song up to three times before paying for it. And artists get compensated for it. But here's the most interesting part: if you share a Weed file with a friend and they buy it, you get paid too! This is a brilliant system which both encourages sharing and compensates artists. Will it work? Probably not, because very few major artists have signed on, and the big labels weren't involved in setting the compensation structure. But if it's even moderately successful, it could be another step in the right direction.

Some thoughts on Easter

• Max Lucado had an interesting take on the "temple curtain" (he spoke at the Good Friday event Mac and I played at): when Christ died on the cross, the curtain in the Temple was literally torn in two. Besides fulfilling prophesy, this symbolized Christ's body being torn so that we can have access to God. Lucado, in classic fashion, compared trying to go into the inner room of the Temple with just strolling into the White House and trying to go to the Oval Office. It's not going to happen. But Christ provided us with that kind of access to God through his sacrifice.
• In his book A Year of Days with the Book of Common Prayer, Bishop Edmond Browning has some insight on the view of Easter from the "outside": "I can see how it might look...from the outside. A man dies a slow, miserable death, and his friends spread abroad the unlikely story of his resurrection...We can't force people to see us the way we wish ourselves to be seen. All we can do to answer the charge that we are unconcerned about this world is to behave in a way that demonstrates our concern." Yes, we have the hope of heaven, but we must also look for ways in which we can help alleviate suffering in the world. In this way, Christ's suffering will not have been in vain.
• Finally, at Easter services at The People's Church, Pastor Rick White had some great words that seemingly contradict those of Browning's: the world is stuck on the Saturday between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. But we know that Sunday's coming. Therefore we should share our hope in the resurrection with others. I Corinthians chapter 15 is a great passage which furthers this illustration.

As in everything, I think the key is in the balance. Through sharing in the suffering of the crucifixion, we are able to further appreciate the hope given by the resurrection. The key is that we spend all of our time telling the world about both, as they lie at the heart of the Christian faith.

To quote Tommy Lee Jones's character in JFK, "I would like to extend to each of you, and to each of your families, my warmest wishes for a Happy Easter."

Maybe we should start a webring or something

I know what you're thinking: "Oh, Mark. A webring? That's so 1997." You're probably right, but hear me out for a second. I have had this here weblog, er, blog working for almost 2 years now. And I have met some great people through doing it. But what has been quite odd for me as of late is the fact that several people that I know (you know, in real life, as opposed to online) have started blogs in the last several weeks. In particular have been most of the guys in the mentoring group I attend weekly.
In honor of that fact, I'm going to shuffle around my sidebar links to accomodate this ever-expanding group of blogs. What's kind of cool about it is that we, unknowingly for the most part, are stumbling into some uncharted territory here. I do not know of other blogs which feature musicians in the CCM scene. So maybe we have something to offer the world after all. At any rate, it's been a lot of fun around here as of late. Check out these sites (if you haven't already):

• Ethos: Randy is our mentor and fearless leader. He is what Hugh Hewitt would call a sherpah, or Malcolm Gladwell would call a maven: he gets into something, and everybody around him gets into it as well. Hence all these blogs you're seeing spring up.
• Normal Rockstar: Jeremy plays drums for downhere. He, along with Randy, were named "Blog of the Month" at hughhewitt.com.
• Chad J (Blogstar): Chad is the singer for Among Thorns. He's about to begin a new chapter of his career, which should make for some interesting blog posts...
• Last but not least, there's Glenn. Glenn plays bass for downhere. He broke everyone's heart and moved back to Canada last year, but we still consider him a vital part of the group. He just started his blog up, and would probably love for you to stop by and check it out.

So that's it for now. I'll keep you posted as other people from my "real life" join the blogosphere...

Tales From the Georgia Tech Sidelines, by Kim King (***** out of 5)

After Georgia Tech's recent demise in the NCAA basketball tournament, I felt the best way to think about happier times would be to review a great book about Georgia Tech football. Anyone who's followed Tech sports for a while will recognize King as the longtime commentator for radio broadcasts, first alongside the legendary Al Ciraldo, and later with Wes Durham. Sadly, King passed away in 2004 after a long bout with cancer. Thankfully he had the forethought to leave us with this wonderful treasury of memories from his experiences first as a player and then later as sportscaster and one of Tech's most prominent alumni.