I like spotify. I only use it sporadically, but when I do, I go to town. I especially like creating playlists. I recently created a playlist entitled 40% Stonehill. Of the 25 songs I have on the playlist so far 10 have them are from Randy Stonehill. If you do the math that means 40% of the songs on the playlist are stonehill songs.
The other night I listened to 10 of the songs and am going to write a little bit about each one.
This album contains the song Awesome God that propelled Mullins to the top of contemporary Christian music at the time. However, it is the lyrics from If I Stand where the album derives it’s title. Also this song is imbued with much more lyrical depth and sheer poetry than Awesome God. If I Stand is one of many fine songs on Winds O Stuff O (my nickname for the album) that along with Awesome God displays the passionate genius of Mullins.
Thoughts: It had been quite a while since I had heard this song. Of all the Stonehill songs mentioned on these 10 songs it may be my least favorite. However, I do like this rocking anthem and was struck by how timely the lyrics are 1/3 of a century after it’s original release.
Think about 2020 and consider these lyrics:
The world is spinning faster, It’s out of control, it’s out of control, In the air is the smell of disaster, No running away, it’s time to say who we’re gonna choose to make our master.
Thoughts: I’m a Punk is a song from the 1971 cartoon adaptation of the Cat in The Hat. Even though my family grew up listening to the music of Alan Sherman, I didn’t realize until recently that Sherman had provided the voice for T Geisel’s titular cat, This song reminds me of a first person version of you’re a mean one Mr. Grinch,
I’m a big fan of Maggie B. Deep Calling Deep which opens her 1995 album Grace (The follow up to Soul and the end of her 1 word album phase) goes along way to explaining why. Soulful. wistful, haunting and rocking all in the same package. an
Have you ever had a moment that started as a dream come true and ended up a nightmare? Thia aong reminds me of one such time. A few years ago my family drove to Indinapolis to visit friends and watch Randy Stonehill in concert. It was an intimate gathering and Stonehill asked for a volunteer to belch during this song which is the high point of the song. I volunteered and totally biffed the belch. It took me a long time before I could appreciate this song again. Sorry Sir Stonehill. I’ll tty not to bring it up again(belching humor).
I’m a big fan of Phil Vischer and all things Veggietales. I especially love silly songs with Larry. The song the Pirates who don’t do anything really has had a life of it’s own. I think it’s the only song to have recurring parts in veggiedom. They came back to host the silly song countdown and were featured prominently in both veggie tales movies. Usually my favorite silly song is whatever I’m listening to at the time, but, this is the one I listen to the most. I still haven’t been to Boston in the Fall.
The last Stonehill song of the 10 finishes well. Besides having a very similar melody as Randy’s Stop the World it is a good song, My favorite line is chase the fickle butterfly of cool.
Jacob’s Trouble is my favorite band to play ping pong to and Wind and Wave is one of my favorite songs of theirs. Instead of talking about them I’ll just show a video of them performing it back in ’91.
I hope you enjoyed this special glimpse into my musical tastes. It is something I hope to do again.
I don’t spend a lot of time on any of my blogs posting about my jobs. It’s not that I don’t find them interesting. Most of my life my jobs haven’t really said a lot about who I am. Working as a stocker in a grocery department doesn’t really define me. Sustitute teaching does and I just haven’t found a way to work it in to the blogs very much.
First of all I can’t really get into specifics like I did when I was blogging about my own home education experiences. I can’t take pictures of my students let alone post them nor would I ever think of doing so. In my 3rd year of subbing I am no where near an expert with advice to dole out. What I can do occasionally is make some observations and comparisons which is what I’ll attempt to this evening.
Even before Covid hit the scene I have been very impressed with the types of media that are available to the teacher. Back when I was college and doing my pre student teaching we were still using filmstrips in high school classes and computers were pretty much for word processing only and typing classes were still taught on typewriters.
In current times even in the live classroom the smartboard has replaced most if not all chalkboards and dry erase board. A smartboard plugs into the teachers laptop and a teacher could run videos, slide presentation, even quizzes disguised as games. In the school I’m in now a pretaped video of annoincements has replaced the traditional over the intercom announcements.
The teacher can also share their screen with students at home om platforms like zoom or provide the students with links to the material through the teachers home page. Homework is generally sent in electronically whether the student is live or at home.
Today some of my students went to a music class where the teacher was explaining the concept of theme and variation. After explaining it very well, he then showed this neat video which you can find on you tube simply by typing in theme and variation.
Later my students went to gym where much of their class activities were shown on the smart board. While traditional teaching still does take place this kind of vee-jay approach does enhance the learning experience and because of Co-vid the technology has become less a nicety and much more a necessity.
This technology is not just in the public schools. My daughters last year of being home schooled was 60% done through computer technology until covid increased that number to nearly 100%.
Technology in schools may be a million miles away from wheeling in the A-V cart but education does continue to roll along nicely.
In June of 2019 I wrote this post about the last 5 posts I had put on this blog. I always wanted to revisit that feature and thought I might have done quicker than 18 months but as it’s the beginning of the year ot is always a great time for looking backward.
Last time I started with the least recent of the 5 and moved on to the most recent. I’ll go the opposite way today and start with the post I just published.
Now that the Trump presidency is over I wanted to see if I could find some positive things about his presidency. I was able to find 5. I wanted to make it an even 10, but then I would have had to say things like I like his middle name or go back to his days on the apprentice.
The title doesn’t 100% match the content of the post. As I do sometimes, I titled this post with an idea in mind and but as I progressed in the writing the post evolved into something just a little different.
I originally started a post about finding a musician who performed at a summer camp I was in high school on the music platform Bandcamp. That post never fully developed but it got me to searching other artists at Bandcamp and seeing not only was Alan Levi there but his out of print Rivertown was available.
This is another example of starting in one direction and ending up in quite another.
This was my last post of 2020 and is a compilation of information and videos of one of my favorite music artists. It is something that might generally appear on my vlog, but I wanted to tell it in more narrative fashioned than just linking a clip from you tube.
The majority of these posts share 1 or 2 commonalities …
I have been trying to put more pictures in my blog posts. 4 of these 5 have pictures. Most of these posts are meant mostly to encourage. This isn’t always my central goal but the end of one year and beginning of another are times that I really like to uplift my audience.
In future posts: I will be writing about music I am enjoying listening to. I will be taking a break from political writing for a few weeks. Not sure what else is on the horizon, but I can assure you it will be random.
