Tag Archives: rock

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MOMENTOUS MONDAYS: INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS OF ALL TIME – WEEK 60: GOO GOO DOLLS

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This upcoming band that I’m about to discuss was a band that I initially didn’t think I’d touch with a ten-foot pole, nor did I even have a good preconception on how this band actually was. You know when you sit down to write about something (or in the case of my blogs over the last year or so, someones), you come to the table with assumptions of what you’re about to write about, things you’ve believed over time, things you’ve heard from other people, and once you go through the musical journey yourself and listen to the artist in its entirety through all their songs and start to see the music that they really make, that what they create and stand for is so much different than what you were even led to believe? Maybe these sentences just aforementioned mean nothing to you, and now you’re just thinking that I am some over-analysing person who likes to over-think things. And that’s ok if you think that. But I’ve been on a journey of late, a good one. My eyes have been open to the wonderful music of artists gone by, from Josh Groban, Bryan Adams, Sara Bareilles and Lady A, to Lecrae, Hanson, John Mayer and Colbie Caillat, to name a few, and in each of these cases, I came into it with a certain idea in my head of what I thought that particular artist was going to be, and that wasn’t what it was…in a very, very good way. As I enter into my 60th blog of this series, discussing rock band Goo Goo Dolls, I came into it in a similar way- assuming that the band was only influential and impactful for their chart-topping hit ‘Iris’ and nothing else. Boy was I mistaken, in a way that I can say now that I was glad that I was.

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Momentous Mondays: Influential artists of the next 5-10 years – Week 28: Lindsay Ell

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There once was a man who walked across Niagara Falls on a tightrope. After the tightrope had been fixed in place, he started gathering a crowd to watch his daring and dangerous feat. “Come one! Come all!” he shouted into his bullhorn. “Watch me walk above Niagara Falls, balancing on nothing more than this little rope!”

As people started gathering, he passed around a sample of the rope so people could see how small it was. “One little slip, and I will tumble to my death in the waters below!” he shouted. “You never know when I might fall. The rope is getting wet from the misting water. A wind is coming up the gorge. I don’t want to die, but today could be the day!”

As the crowd swelled even more, he shouted to those who had gathered, “Who believes I can walk across the falls and back without falling to my death below?”

Most of the crowd shouted that they believed he could do it. Many of them cheered him on to try it. So he climbed up onto the rope, and balanced his way across Niagara Falls. When he reached the far side, he turned around and came back. He didn’t slip. He didn’t fall. In fact, he barely wobbled or wavered. So when he returned to the safety of the shore, he motioned with his hands for the cheering crowd to quiet down.

“That was too easy!” he yelled. “That wasn’t a challenge for me at all! Let’s make it more difficult! Who believes I can do again, but this time, while pushing a wheelbarrow? If my hands are on the wheelbarrow, I will not be able to use them to balance on the rope. Shall I give it a try? Do you believe I can do it?” He motioned to a nearby wheelbarrow, which he had brought for this very purpose.

The crowd cheered their approval, which caused the number of gathering people to swell even further. So with the help of two nearby men, he lifted a wheelbarrow up onto the rope, and then started pushing it across the Falls. He went more slowly this time, and even had a few wobbles, which caused the crowd to gasp and cry out with fear, but he made it to the other side and back without any great problem. The crowd went wild.

“That was too easy!” he yelled. “Who believes I can do it again, but this time, with another person inside the wheelbarrow?” The crowd roared their approval. “I would not only be risking my own life, but also the life of the person in the wheelbarrow,” the man shouted to the crowd. “With a show of hands, let me see how many of you believe I can do this!” Almost every person in the large crowd raised their hand. It was nearly unanimous.

“Wonderful! I am so glad to see that you have such faith in me! I think I will give it a shot!” the man yelled. “Now … among all of you who raised your hand, do I have a volunteer to get into the wheelbarrow?” Every hand in the large crowd went down. “What?” said the man. “You’ve seen me walk across Niagara Falls twice without any problems, once while pushing this wheelbarrow! And most of you believe I can do it with someone else in the wheelbarrow with me! But when I ask which of you wants to get into the wheelbarrow, none of you volunteer? Do you believe I can do it or not?”

But there were no takers, so the crowd did not see him push someone across Niagara Falls in a wheelbarrow that day.

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MOMENTOUS MONDAYS: INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS OF ALL TIME – WEEK 59: VANESSA AMOROSI

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Think about life for a moment in all it’s ebbs and flows. It’s ups and downs, ins and outs, valleys and peaks. It’s not that hard to do now, when we see what’s happening with the world, with COVID-19 wreaking havoc around the world. We look at our lives and think and wonder. What are the constants in our lives when everything around us seems be less certain? And then hopefully we start to think, and we can then write them all down. Our friends and family. Check. Our relationship with God. Check. Our endless supply of DVD’s and movies, the streaming services of Stan, Foxtel, Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV and Disney +. Check. Well…then again, maybe streaming services isn’t as constant in our lives as we ourselves initially think. But you get the picture. And then last but not least, something in our lives that has been constant for forever, in ways that maybe we ourselves don’t even know it, is in fact music. Music, just like film and TV, has the power to delve deep into our souls, and minister to our very core of our humanity, hopefully bringing to light, issues that maybe we ourselves need to work on, while also highlighting our very relationships with our friends, family and God Himself, in the whole process of us enjoying a song and reflecting on its meaningful lyrics. For me, music has always been a staple in my life for as long as I can remember- I started listening to children’s music like The Donut Man and Psalty the Singing Songbook when I was younger, and as time went on, my musical tastes continued to expand. Artists like Delirious?, Carman, Steven Curtis Chapman, Chris Tomlin, Newsboys, Tim Hughes and Rebecca St. James were all artists I thoroughly listened to throughout my primary and high school years, while my university days were impacted by a lot of CCM- artists like the ones aforementioned, alongside others- Third Day, Casting Crowns, MercyMe, Nichole Nordeman, Natalie Grant, Bebo Norman, Kerrie Roberts, Paul Baloche, Phil Wickham, Matthew West, Kari Jobe, Britt Nicole, BarlowGirl, Hawk Nelson, Sanctus Real, Building 429, David Crowder*Band, and Jason Gray (to name a few of the many, many artists we- my twin brother and I, branched out into). Now here I am in 2020, one year and a half into my blog series, and my musical tastes have continued to grow and expand even further. Yes, this blog series (which you can read more about here) has been daunting and at times, uncertain, but on a holistic level, has also been rewarding, as I felt the Lord’s presence and Him speaking to me through a lot of music that one wouldn’t necessarily call ‘Christian’. And that was my own conundrum that I was working through- and am still working through. I’ve concluded that mainstream music isn’t ‘bad’, as a lot of fundamentalist Christians believe. And maybe I believed that statement too, even though I didn’t grow up in such a fundamentalist environment.

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Music Reviews

Colony House – When the Walls Come Crashing Down (feat. Jon Foreman & Jillian Edwards) – Single

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Independent

Release Date: June 12th 2020

Reviewed by: Joshua Andre

Colony House– When the Walls Come Crashing Down (feat. Jon Foreman & Jillian Edwards) – Single (Amazon mp3/iTunes)

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Momentous Mondays: Influential artists of the next 5-10 years – Week 25: Colony House

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Hands up who loves watching nature films/series/documentaries? Anyone? No one? Nope The Lion King doesn’t count! Nor do Cats And Dogs, Homeward Bound, Napoleon, The Secret Life Of Pets, Beethoven, Zootopia, Marmaduke, Ice Age or Ferdinand! No, I’m talking about real in-the-wild behind the scenes nature documentaries like Richard Morecroft Goes Wild, or anything from David Attenborough such as Blue Planet or the Life series. I guess other nature films include Wild Australasia or Wild Asia and anything else in that series. My point is that regardless if you love watching them or not (and believe me, I have seen a few episodes of a number of nature shows in my life, and some have resonated with me and some haven’t…); there are indeed a few things that animals themselves can teach us humans about life. Especially in this period of isolation and quarantine due to COVID-19. Not to say that animals are smarter in every way than humans… but there’s been a few times where I’ve seen something in a nature show- like how a number of species of animals gather their food or look for shelter or travel and migrate south or north for the winter, or fight other animals for territory or how they raise their young; and I think to myself. I think to myself ‘Gee, creation is so complex, could it be possible that God made it that way so that humans not only can learn off other humans but off animals too?’. Now I’m not completely bonkers, so don’t write me off or send me to an asylum… hear me out for a bit. Sometimes us humans let our emotions take the best of us, and instead of thinking things through methodically and systematically with calmness and no panic, we go right ahead and do the opposite. Often this leads to disaster and unforeseen calamity which could have been avoided had we sat for a little bit and thought about the course of action best needed to be taken. So what if we took a page out of our four legged and winged pets and friends? Is there something to learn from man’s best friend?

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