Dull Razor

About a year and a half ago, I was listening to A Diamond in the Rough and decided to see if I could track down why Jenn disappeared so suddenly from the music scene several years ago. I couldn’t find much other than all sorts of wild rumors about contractual disputes, having kids out of wedlock, secretly being gay, giving up Christianity, etc. – although I did find one brief interview with her, and so I wrote a post with what I’d found. Since then, it’s become my second most visited post on the site, only surpassed by that one time I got instalanched. Thousands of people have found that entry thanks to Google and other sites and I allowed myself to think, “Hey, maybe some people are being disabused of all these rumors now thanks to me!”

Well, it turns out that one of the rumors was actually true, as Jen revealed today in an interview with Christianity Today that she’s been in an eight year long relationship with another woman. She says that it’s a hard decision even admitting to it publicly:

There’s some extremely volatile language and debate—on all sides—that just breaks my heart. Frankly, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t be making any kind of public statement at all. But there are people I care about within the church community who would seek to throw me out simply because of who I’ve chosen to spend my life with.

I empathize with her frustrations and pain, but I have to admit I’m kind of saddened by the news. I honestly believe that what she is doing is sinful, and that her denial of it being so is a dangerous act on her part. Denying sin only ever lets it dig its talons into you deeper. I’m not going to use this space as a spot to talk about why I think homosexuality is a sin – I’ve talked about it before, and if you’re curious there’s always email or comments (or the search button).

Instead, I want to talk about what Jen’s music has meant to me.

For years, her albums have been a place for me to find some comfort, some solace when life seems to be battering my door down and the sky looks like it’s falling. A few songs in particular have really meant the world to me – Martyrs and Thieves, Hallowed, Undo Me, Refine Me and more have really been huge impacts in my life. It’s funny how when everything is going so badly, something as simple as a song can ease the burden and make it seem like maybe, just maybe, things might be okay after all.

I’ve struggled with depression for as long as I can remember, and the simple and honest pleas that Jen sings have always connected with me on some level that most music doesn’t. When I was in a dark place, listening to that music made it seem like I wasn’t alone, like there was light to reach for even though I couldn’t see it at the time.  The words to Martyrs and Thieves remain some of my favorite ever written.  So when I read that interview, my initial reaction was one of anger and betrayal. How could one of my heroes do this? How DARE she?

How dare she sin?

How dare I hate her for it.

Jesus once said, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” While I still believe that she’s in sin, I’m in no place to think she’s any less than she was before I knew her situation. I’m just as sinful as she is, if not moreso. Why is her sin any worse? She’s heard from plenty of people already that she’s a terrible person, or that she can’t be a Christian with this out there now, and I’m not going to add to it. Christians sin just like everyone else, the difference is that we have hope to have that sin forgiven and taken away by the grace of God. The difference is that we can repent of it and have the Holy Spirit work in us to strengthen us in our weakness so that we don’t fall again.

In Refine Me, Jen sings “Lord, come with your fire, burn my desires; refine me. Lord, my will has deceived me, please come and free me, come rescue this child for I long to be reconciled to you.” If that’s truly the desire of her heart, and I really hope it is, then the Holy Spirit will work in her and convict her where she needs to be convicted. God will not leave even one sheep behind. So in the meantime, let’s just continue to support a sister and pray for her.

I’m going to keep listening to her music, and I’m going to buy her new album. I’ll keep following her on Twitter, and grinning like an idiot when she replies to a tweet. Even if this all goes south and she becomes the raving evil hedonist that the most judgmental of Southern Baptists are saying she is, she still has written some of my favorite music and she has still had a major, positive influence on my life. Nothing can change that.

So Jen, if you ever stumble across this: Thank you. Keep on honestly seeking God, and he’ll take care of you.

Yeah, I’m late on this one. And I’m thinking of a few people who are going to kick me for this, but I just finally got around to checking out Switchfoot’s latest album, Hello Hurricane. Switchfoot was one of my favorite bands back in the first half of this decade, and after A Beautiful Letdown, I thought they’d remain that way for a long time. That album is still one of my first “go-tos” for a variety of situations and emotions, and the raw emotion on that album is just amazing – nearly every track on it holds a special place in my heart, and can be sung on cue from memory. There’s not a single track on the album that I don’t love.

Their next album, Nothing is Sound, was pretty good, but I thought a noticeable step down from A Beautiful Letdown. When Oh! Gravity came out, they’d drifted further from where I’d hoped, going with a less polished, more experimental feeling to the album that I really didn’t think was that great. As a result, “new Switchfoot album” wasn’t really something I was thinking about when November rolled around, and it wasn’t until I kept hearing about how good it was from everyone that I decided to hit Amazon MP3 and see if it lived up to the hype.

Let me just start by spoiling my conclusion a bit and note that the album is now repeating for the third time and I still have an idiot grin on my face.

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I wrote last night about my thoughts after hearing the APC song Judith in the car on my way to visit my family, and upon further thinking on the songs I mentioned, along with a sermon I listened to this morning by Mark Driscoll, I had a few more thoughts that I would like to share.

I think that the picture of heaven and reward, along with God, that Keenan paints in Wings for Marie is a flawed one, but flawed in such a way that many people would not think of or even realize was flawed. In the climax of 10,000 Days, Keenan writes about his mother:

You’re the only one who can hold your head up high
Shake your fists at the gates saying:
“I’ve come home now!
Fetch me the spirit, the son, and the father
Tell them their pillar of faith has ascended
It’s time now, my time now, give me my wings!”

It’s a common sentiment that heaven is the reward for piety on earth, illustrated here by the wings. He tells his mother to boldly approach the gates of heaven, shake her fists in pride and demand her reward. I think that many people in our culture would think this to be an appropriate, natural action to take. Even the the Apostle Peter asked Jesus, “We have given up everything to follow you! What will we get in return?” And Jesus does respond with promises of eternal rewards and everlasting life. The idea of rewards is Biblical, and Jesus makes it quite clear that Christians can expect a reward in heaven.

There is a subtle flaw here, however, for Keenan’s suggestion to his mother is troubled by a lack of understanding of what it means to truly follow Christ. Can you spot the problem?

While it is true that God has promised us rewards, we are not to shake our fists at the gates and demand our reward. Pride and a sense of entitlement have  no place in heaven. Humility is a key point of Christian living, and if Keenan’s testimony of his mother’s faith is any indication, Judith knew this. She would not have approached the gates of heaven shaking her fists, but dancing and singing praise to her Lord. Even the angels, the sinless beings created specifically to be in the presence of God, cover their eyes and their feet as they cry “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts!” Even they know they are not worthy to gaze upon God, much less make demands of him.

No, we are not to approach our Lord with our demands. We are to approach him with open, empty hands, crying “Abba” – for we have nothing to offer but ourselves. Even our most pious works are worthless, tarnished by our sin and failures. But by the grace of God, we have hope. He has offered us not just redemption from our evil ways, but eternal life in paradise with him. We cannot demand this, because we do not deserve this. We don’t deserve anything but the fires of Hell. But the Lord, in his infinite mercy, has given us everything if only we will follow him and accept his free gift of salvation.

I hope Keenan one day accepts this gift. As my friend Scott pointed out to me earlier, Keenan’s passion and talent could be used in mighty ways for God’s kingdom – he is anything but lukewarm.

This may seem an oddball post to the few of you who read this, but it’s something that’s been on my mind occasionally for quite some time now, usually whenever I hear one of a few songs written by one Maynard James Keenan, most commonly known as the lead singer of the band Tool. Keenan is a controversial figure, known nearly as much for his odd behavior and political incorrectness as he is for his brilliant musical talent. But here I want to deal with one specific issue he has often addressed: the Church and Jesus Christ, and his mother, Judith Marie, who was a devout Christian.

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Mike Masnick has pretty much been my hero lately, with a string of brilliant posts on alternative revenue models being used by various musicians, all based off the idea that giving your music out for dirt cheap or free and encouraging your fans to share it is A Good Thing. One of the artists he uses as an example, Adam Singer, goes so far as to say that the Creative Commons license is the “ultimate music promotion tool” – something with which I think Jonathan Coulton might agree.

The concept here is that punishing your fans for liking your music and wanting to share it with their friends is incredibly stupid. That seems like an obvious statement to make, but there’s more than one major industry player out there who thinks that this is exactly what the industry SHOULD be doing – which is why many bands, big and small, old and new, are abandoning “the industry” as it stands.

There are a handful of basic ideas being tossed around on his blog that have been used, in various ways and degrees, by several different musicians. Note that each of them revolves around the idea that the music is free and that sharing is good. I’ve categorized them as follows:

1. “Just pay me whatever you think it’s worth.”  This is the strategy used to great success most famously by Radiohead and Jonathan Coulton but also numerous smaller acts. This seems to work best for artists who already have a fan base, but has worked very well for smaller acts as well.
2. “The music is free, but please buy my merchandise!” This strategy seeks to build a fan base with free music who will then in turn buy “special edition” CDs, t-shirts, and concert tickets. This strategy is tailored for the smaller artist because it seeks first to build your fan base, and second to make a profit, but would work for an artist of any size as the profits will only increase as your fan base does. The risk here comes with the fact that you have to execute it well: your merchandise has to be worth the separate purchase. Don’t insult your fans with CafePress t-shirts. Adam Singer talks about this method at his blog.
3. “If I get enough money in donations to cover my costs, I will release a free album.” This method carries almost no risk, because if you don’t get enough money, then you don’t make the album, and you don’t lose anything in the process (at least monetarily). The tradeoff is that your fan base who is doing the donating needs to be confident that you will produce something worth their investment, so you have to have that base before you can attempt this method. This works not just for music, but almost any medium: books, digital art, whatever. Once the album/ebook/whatever has been released, it is free to share and will build your fan base who can then purchase your other stuff (option 2) or give you more money next time you want to solicit donations for your work. Marillion succeeded using this model.
4. “The music is free, but if you buy XYZ too, you’ll get more that you wouldn’t otherwise!” This one starts with a smaller body of work that is free to share, but rewards the buyer with extra stuff they wouldn’t get otherwise. This can take many forms – Jill Sobule had different levels you could buy at that included perks such as getting the album before its release date, a free concert at your home, or even performing on the next album. Trent Reznor offered the first CD of “Ghosts” for free, with additional content costing extra, and options to buy higher-quality recordings, vinyl record, DVDs, books of accompanying art, or autographed merchandise at different price points. This is very similar to numbers 2 and 3, but has a different enough focus that I gave it its own number.

Using these methods and combinations of them gives artists many new ways to find fans and make money while connecting with those fans on a much more personal level than they might otherwise. As Masnick said, you can’t ask your fans for favors when you’re suing them. In addition, it automatically solves the “problem” of piracy – you can’t pirate something that’s already being given out freely! Make the economics of scarcity your friend, not your enemy, and watch things just work.

That’s apparently the question that drove at least one visitor here. And it got me thinking – what did happen to her? The last album I remember her releasing was The Collection back in 2004, which (in the 2-disc version) was a mix of hits and unreleased or hard to find b-sides, covers, and demos, and was a permanent fixture in my CD player until it was abandoned for my Zen. Gotee apparently also recently re-released Kansas, remastered and with a couple bonus tracks. To be honest, I hadn’t thought much about it until I saw the search and realized I hadn’t heard anything about her in years now.

Turns out that in 2004, she announced she was going on a sabbatical of sorts, and then rather disappeared off the face of the earth. Google has brought up dozens of totally unsubstantiated rumors, but the one link I could find was referencing a Relevant magazine article from 2004:

In an interview from the January/February 2004 issue of Relevant Magazine, Knapp stated that she was taking a break from music for a while, leaving the future of her career in God’s hands.

“It was definitely time for a break,” she said. “I was touring Lay It Down while recording The Way I Am, then went directly into touring that record. It got to where I was just doing shows to support the record, rather than having a record support the heart of the people I was supposed to be serving. I don’t want to make and tour another record just because that’s what people expect, or because ‘it’s about that time.’”

Knapp gave no indication of when new material will surface. “Truly, no plans and no promises of when,” she said. “At this time there’s really not enough material, and I don’t want to force anything just for the sake of getting a record finished.”

It’s too bad she’s retired from music, as she remains one of my favorite artists, but I can absolutely understand wanting to have a life back after the chaos that surrounds the modern musician’s lifestyle. I hope she’s still making music, even if it’s just for herself, as it would be a shame to think that so much talent could be left untapped.

Edit 10/28/09: For those of you still stumbling here via Google, commenter sami points out that Jen is back!

Edit 4/13/10: For all you stumbling across this post in reaction to the CT article, I’ve posted some new thoughts.

So I finally got around to getting my mp3 library largely sorted – I say “largely” because I still have a folder full of songs that don’t seem to fit anywhere and I can’t recall the source of half the time – and proceeded to tackle the album art issue I mentioned a few posts back regarding my iPod. I was unable to get anything working in Songbird, but my long-time media player Winamp ended up giving me just what I needed. I feel like I should apologize to it; going on ten years of use and I leave it for Songbird, only to come back like a junkie to his dealer.

Fortunately it is a forgiving mistress and using the magnificent plugin ml_ipod I was able to get my iPod fully loaded with album art and most of the rest of my music. There’s something oddly satisfying about seeing the album art in Cover Flow. It’s almost cathartic.

So how’s that for geeky? I relieve stress by flipping through my iPod music library. Yes, I’m a dork.

Also, I find that PJTV will not allow me to register using an email address containing a plus sign. For those using Gmail (or Gmail for your domain), plus signs are used to create email aliases, which are then in turn used to help fight spam and organize your email easily. Now, this isn’t unique to Gmail, many other providers offer this service as well, although I’d wager Gmail is the largest of such providers. Use of certain ASCII characters such as the plus sign is totally acceptable according to RFC 5322, and so there is no reason that a website should disallow their use unless they want to annoy potential subscribers (like me!) for attempting to sign up with something that doesn’t fit Hotmail’s arbitrary standards. Me being me, I probably will not subscribe to this service on a matter of principle until they get that fixed.

Lastly, this is hilarious. Burger King’s marketing department is full of geniuses.

Music sales went up another 10.5% in 2008, largely due to over one billion (yeah, with a “B”) digital song sales. There were 428 million full album sales as well, but as the online market explodes (32% increase from last year) physical CD sales drop accordingly (down 14%). This is not surprising to anyone who can look at this rationally. If you have a potential market of 100 people and they can only buy in one format, then the people who will buy will all buy that format. So let’s say you sold 60 CD’s to those people. The next year you release a second album, and allow the new one to be purchased online as well. This time, 66 albums are sold, 40 hard copies and 26 digital.

Are sales down? No. You sold six more albums, and increased your sales over the last album’s by 10 percent. You should be happy about that, not complaining that you sold twenty less CD’s. In fact, if anything, you would be happier, because you have eliminated the cost of creating those CD’s from the process, which gives you a higher net profit from an album sale (and/or allows you to lower the price, thus potentially attracting more customers).

So when you hear the big labels, the RIAA, and the anti-digital music loons claiming that piracy and online music distribution in general is killing music sales and hurting artists, remember that this screwed-up logic is what they’re using. Also remember that countless artists have spoken out against the harmful (and ineffective) tactics used by the RIAA to “combat piracy,” culminating in the creation of a copyright czar cabinet post under the new Obama adminstration, some artists going to far as to drop their labels entirely and finding great success in doing so. Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead both had incredible and well-documented success with their independent online album releases, and many other bands have dropped their larger labels to found independent labels for artists seeking to leave the stifling, anti-consumer attitude propagated by the RIAA.

In addition to the obvious benefits of online music sales over traditional music sales, what has traditionally been described as “piracy” by lawyers and the media is often one of the artist’s best tools to spread his music around and reach ears he would otherwise be unable to. The classic success story here is Jonathan Coulton, who came out of nowhere and distributed his music via his website (with the option to pay, but not forcing you to) and now makes more money off his music than he ever did as a software engineer. I’ll leave you with a 2001 statement from David Draiman, lead singer of Disturbed, that kind of sums up why even the typical examples of piracy given by the RIAA and its ilk are not quite what they seem:

[I'm] Very positive about the internet, Napster. I think it’s a tremendous tool for reaching many more people than we ever could without it. When you release music you want it to be heard by people. Artists really want to have their music heard. They want to have their creation heard by people. Nothing is going to do that better than Napster. I can’t tell you how many kids have come up to me and said, ‘I downloaded a couple of tunes off Napster and I went out and bought the album.’ Or they say, ‘I want to come see you play.’ I don’t really make money off of record sales anyway.

And again in 2003, on the series of lawsuits brought against file sharers:

This is not rocket science. Instead of spending all this money litigating against kids who are the people they’re trying to sell things to in the first place, they have to learn how to effectively use the Internet. For the artists, my ass… I didn’t ask them to protect me, and I don’t want their protection.

The internet as a method for music distribution is (still) exploding. It’s time to jump on the train, not hold on to the boarding station for dear life.

I got an iPod for Christmas. An iPod Nano, 4th gen, to be specific. This is my first iPod, and also my first Apple product. You see, I hate Apple. I hate Steve Jobs and his black turtlenecks and that whole cult of personality going on over there. I hate Quicktime and iTunes and the monopolies they try to create on your system if you install them. I hate the iMac, the iBook, the iEverything, and that whole cutesy, trendy, overpriced iStyle they’ve managed to foist on the hipster crowd. I hate OSX – not really for any good reason, mainly just because it’s an Apple product and its fanboys are annoying. And I hate that guy that plays the Mac in the Mac/PC commercials – John Hodgeman is so much cooler. So yeah, you could say I hate Apple. Or at least I did. Let me explain.

I’m not a complete neanderthal when it comes to portable music – I’d had a Creative Zen Touch which served me well enough for a couple of years, but the battery had died for good and so I’d been without a player for a while. Even when I was using it, the size and weight of the thing made it uncomfortable to carry casually, and the interface was a bit clunky. It sounded fine and did just what it was supposed to do – play mp3s – but it was about as convenient as an old walkman CD player as far as size. So I just didn’t use it all that much.

This iPod is very different. If you, like me, have managed to steer clear of the iCraze til now, I feel it important to emphasize how incredibly small the Nano is. It’s slightly less long, and about two-thirds as wide as my cellphone (a Samsung u540, for comparison) is when closed, while being about one-fifth as thick. It’s as thin as the door badge I have to get into work, and weighs about the same. The build quality is phenomenal – the metal casing feels solid, and the glass covering the surprisingly-large screen is also very sturdy-feeling.

Another thing about the screen – its about the same size as my cell phone’s – is that it is remarkably clear. At 320×240 we’re not talking about anything earth-shattering here, but it’s much more than I had expected or become used to. That, combined with the incredibly smooth Apple software (cover flow is awesome!) provides a really pleasurable experience. It’s actually fun to use the Nano. Hold it in your hand and see the album art and song playing, and adjust the volume with the click wheel. Tilt it on its side and it shifts to cover flow view, so you can browse your collection easily. I’m really impressed with the software on the device, and this is the one area I’ve always conceeded Apple excels at. They simply have a better interface than anyone else out there when it comes to the iPod line of products.

But that brings me to the point of the software on your computer. No way in hell was I going to install that resource-sucking abomination called iTunes onto my computer, so I needed to figure out a way to easily manage my collection and syncing duties via a third party. Enter Songbird. I’d just started playing around with this on my laptop recently, so it was already installed, and came by default with the iPod plugin. Syncing my music to my iPod was completely painless using Songbird’s interface, and for that I give them many props. My only complaint is that the Songbird plugin does not yet support album art uploading to the iPod, but the Songbird staff has said that they hope to be able to support this feature soon (though they have been saying that for at least six months…), and the loss of album art is just a minor annoyance to me at this point. I don’t really look at the album art on the Nano except if I was using Cover Flow, which I can navigate just as easily by name as by picture. That said, if anyone knows a way to easily upload the album art without using iTunes or messing up Songbird, I’d love to hear it.

So this Apple-hating PC user has finally caved and got an Apple product, and he loves it. In fact, he’s using it right now. I’m listening to Dark Passion Play by Nightwish, and it’s fantastic. This the first gadget I’ve had this much fun with in quite some time. Now don’t expect me to go buy an iBook now and spend all my time in the local Starbucks wearing a stylish black turtleneck, but I’ll certainly be more receptive to Apple’s offerings in the future.

So, posting has been nonexistant rather than light the last couple weeks. Sorry for that. Work has been keeping me busy, and I’ve been doing a bit more to get caught up around here – not to mention the holidays busyness. In addition to that, politics has just been depressing lately, as have local sports, so I haven’t felt much like writing on said topics, which left me without obvious source material. That said, I’m back to give a quick update on what’s going on in the world of me.

The Cardinals have lost 4 of their last 5 games and now look like a team that doesn’t deserve to be in the playoffs. I’m hoping they come back and prove me wrong tomorrow against Seattle, but I’m not holding my breath. If we don’t shape up, it will be a quick first round exit for the boys in red. The Suns lost on Christmas day to the Spurs on a heartbreaking buzzer beater three, and the Celtics have now lost two in a row to break their 19 game winning streak. So color me annoyed.

I also got Mass Effect for Christmas from my brother, but am reluctant to install it due to the draconian DRM scheme put in place by EA. I am not sure whether to look for a crack of some sort, or just install it into a virtual environment, but I’ll certainly update with results of whatever I decide to do there. I also got an iPod (yeah, I know) which will be the subject of its own post later.

I finally saw The Dark Knight – and while I don’t feel it quite lived up to the earth-shattering hype that it was given by my friends and the online reviews, it was a masterful movie. Ledger truly did give a brilliant performance, in that I didn’t even recognize him as the actor in nearly any scene. I felt that Aaron Eckhart’s portrayal of Harvey Dent was also genius, perhaps on par with Ledger’s Joker in the method of portrayal, although obviously not given quite as much screen time or opportunity in the script. But I really felt that Eckhart was Dent, and being so convinced is the mark of great acting. With that in mind I think the character and portrayal of Batman by Christian Bale was outshone by the masterful acting of Ledger, Eckhart and the ever-brilliant Gary Oldman (as James Gordon). The movie was less dark than was expected as well, which made it easier for me to recommend to my parents and more squeamish friends. While it’s certainly deserving of the PG-13 rating,  the violence was done in such a way that it was mostly kept off screen, and is thus easier to take. It’s a movie I can absolutely recommend, and strongly suggest viewing twice – it was much better the second time, for me.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Johnny Cash. The man was a genius. I’ve also been actually enjoying some Christmas music this year, which I normally don’t. I suppose that’s a good thing.

Christmas was a small, informal event in which my family got together, watched basketball, talked about life and God and the meaning of Christmas, and ate delicious foods. Exactly as it should be.

Here’s hoping you all had a wonderful Christmas. Now go drink some egg nog or something.