Oh hey, it’s April. Time flies when you’re having… a busy month. Or something.

So for those of you that don’t read Buzzgrinder — which, according to my highly-detailed traffic metrics, is 100% of all two of you — it might be worth noting that I didn’t get Radiohead tickets despite staying up all night for that sole reason. Still looking for an outlet for my anger. Someone buy me a punching bag. Or, even better, Radiohead tickets. (Preferably ones where I can actually, you know, see the band without binoculars.)

March was more dub, a few ambient discoveries and rediscoveries (Stars of the Lid and Brian Eno, respectively) and remembering a bunch of stuff was good that I hadn’t listened to in a while. Oh, and sometimes watching TV influences my music listening, oddly enough. That’s where Yael Naïm and José Gonzalez came from.

1. Marilyn Manson - “The Reflecting God” (Antichrist Superstar)
2. Dub Trio - “Awakening Dub” (Exploring the Dangers Of)
3. Envy - “A Will Remains In The Ashes” (A Dead Sinking Story)
4. Brian Eno - “1/1″ (Ambient 1: Music for Airports)
5. Bloc Party - “Banquet” (Silent Alarm)
6. Gorillaz - “Dracula” (Gorillaz)
7. Boys Like Girls - “The Great Escape” (Boys Like Girls)
8. Nickel Creek - “Doubting Thomas” (Why Should the Fire Die?)
9. He Is Legend - “(((louds” (Suck Out the Poison)
10. Public Enemy - “Son of a Bush” (Body Of War: Songs That Inspired An Iraq War Veteran)
11. Bright Eyes - “When the President Talks To God” (Body Of War: Songs That Inspired An Iraq War Veteran)
12. Yael Naïm - “New Soul” (Yael Naïm)
13. Rogue Wave - “California” (Descended Like Vultures)
14. Stars of the Lid - “Even If You’re Never Awake” (and Their Refinement of the Decline)
15. José Gonzalez - “Killing For Love” (In Our Nature)
16. José Gonzalez - “Teardrop” (In Our Nature)

I’m probably going to upset someone with this. That’s not the goal. I only want to explain why I don’t regret one bit that I voluntarily skipped John Piper’s Desiring God conference this last weekend.

Does “You shall have no other gods before me” ring a bell?

I love a lot of musicians. They are very important to me, and I hold many of them in very high esteem. But when I see them live, I do my very best to not treat them as anything more than the human they are. He or she may have created something greater than I can or said something that inspired me more than I can describe, but the minute I say “[insert musician] is amazing” instead of “[insert musician] creates amazing music,” I know I’m in trouble.

I feel the same should hold true of those that put so much value into prominent Christians, maybe even more so. Certainly it’s nice to see that people have so much respect for a man that clearly has devoted his life to understanding the Gospel. My concern is more with the fact that the “Don’t Waste Your Life” conference was dubbed “the Piper conference” within days of its announcement. (I had to go to his site to look up the official name.)

A rule of thumb I’d like to propose: if the person teaching the conference/writing the book/speaking the sermon/leading the worship is being held in higher regard than the content he or she is presenting, it’s time to question priorities. For as much buzz as I heard about the event, before and after, I still don’t know what it was about beyond what its official name tells me. That to me is a bad sign.

The irony is painful

I heard a lot of talk about how this “could be a once in a lifetime chance” coming from everyone from friends to respected pastors. A once in a lifetime chance for what? To spend your hard-earned money and two days of your time watching a guy speak out of the Bible you read every day, only to find that he puts the recordings on his website less than 48 hours later for free? It hurts me to wonder at the man hours that were spent to put this all together. There is pain in seeing the irony that so many “wasted” their time and money to see someone in person who could have saved thousands of hours and dollars by speaking his message into a microphone and putting it online.

I apologize for being so brash. Being so entrenched in Christian culture has only made me jaded and I don’t think that’s the way it was meant to be. I just can’t help it when the contradictions are so glaring.

I’m not going to hold firmly to my statements, though: show cases of truly changed lives of those that attended the conference or tell me where my thinking has gone wrong. Please. It hurts to tear down my own people so I don’t want to be doing so unnecessarily.