I can’t figure out why we complain when someone remakes an old movie, or makes a movie so similar to a predecessor that it seems more like a cheap knockoff of the original.

I mean, I complain about it too. But what was really wrong with remaking Dukes of Hazzard or Starsky and Hutch as a film?

And why is it that we complain about some and cheer about others? I don’t remember too much backlash when Johnny Depp played Willy Wonka in the remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Is it the endless quest of humanity to search for something fresh and new? If so, what is the motivation behind that motivation?

If there really is nothing new under the sun, it seems like the best we could hope for is that artists learn to copy and twist well.

I’m shopping for a keyboard/synthesizer so I can learn to play piano better and have something to make nerdy electronic music. I’m sitting here, staring at MusiciansFriend.com and realizing that it’s a terrible idea to try to buy an instrument that I don’t know how to play.

Here is how I shop for a keyboard:

1. People seem to care about the number of keys. A full keyboard has 88, so 61 is good for a beginner, right?
2. I don’t really get MIDI, but I know I need it if I’m going to hook it up to my computer.
3. Okay, that still leaves me with like 50 options.
4. My friend Justin said something about weighted keys. I don’t see anything about that on here.
5. Ooo, I want one with a sample pad!
6. Oh wait, $2600. Never mind.
7. Too many words I don’t understand. “16-part multitimbral, dual polyphonic arpeggiators, and 384 combinations constructed of up to eight programs each.” I think my brain just melted a little.
8. Maybe reading reviews will help. Wait. This guy bashed it to pieces in his review, but then gave it four out of five stars. I can trust no one.
9. Screw it, let’s just see what I can get a deal on that most people don’t complain about.

My guess is this isn’t that far off from how most people buy things. It seems like everything has about the same base features, so I could probably just roll the dice and end up with something I won’t hate.

I think I’ve narrowed it down to three. Would anyone care to enlighten me?

Since it’s Friday and I’m lazy, here are some fun things for other members of the JCC. That’s the Jaded Christians Club, for the uninitiated.

Christian women’s enthusiasm for Beth Moore may be commensurate with the Catholics’ enthusiasm for the Virgin Mary.

Stuff Christian Culture Likes #68: Beth Moore

Because they struggle with being in the world but not of the world, Christian culture is perpetually about 2 to 5 years behind what mainstream culture thinks is cool. As a result, the pastor/creative director/worship leader looks like a fashion victim to everyone but the people inside his sphere of Christian culture.

Stuff Christian Culture Likes #67: Unwittingly Cheesy Hair

When you write for a music publication and your email address is listed on the site, it doesn’t take long before you “somehow” end up on the mailing list of every public relations firm in the world that has ever dealt with anything remotely related to music.

Unfortunately for PR firms, I have done a lot of work in the world of marketing emails, so I know all about what’s legal and legitimate and what isn’t. If I wanted to, I could report almost all of them for breaking spam law. On some days, I wouldn’t mind it so much, like when random bands learn how to use ReverbNation and decide to email you three times a week to let you know that a show at a coffee shop in some place I don’t live is now at 7 instead of 8. On other days, PR firms give me amazing nuggets of goodness. So I take the bad with the good and deal with it.

Things PR firms do that make their email spam (legally)

• Sending email without permission. Yep, we have to sign up. “Harvested” email addresses are illegal to use for commercial purposes. Even if the address is listed on a site to receive news tips.
• No unsubscribe link. You gots to have a way to let us opt out of that email we didn’t sign up for!
• Deceptive subject lines. Man, those CAN-SPAM people thought of everything! I’ve started getting PR emails with subject lines that start with “RE:”. If I didn’t email you first, that is deceptive. The things people will do to get you to read their email… It’s almost like they’re taking tips from actual, purposeful spammers.
• No physical address listed. That’s right, you have to include your mailing address in all your email. I don’t get it either, but you gotta do it.

Trust me, people. I know how important it is that people see your commercial emails. My (real) paycheck somewhat depends on it. But you don’t want to be sending email to people that don’t want it. You’d think public relations firms, of all people, would understand how to relate to the public.

And a note for the rest of you: don’t mark an email as spam just because you don’t want it any more. Most frustrating thing ever. The unsubscribe links are there for a reason. Getting marked as spam screws with a lot of stuff that hurts more than just the person sending it. It’s there for the illegal stuff, not just things you don’t care about any more.

I grew up being taught the idea that prayer is simply “talking to God.” Lately, I’m starting to wonder if that’s very accurate.

If we are commanded to “pray continually” then the concept of simply “talking to God” doesn’t make much sense. If I were always actively talking to someone, I’d never get anything done in my day.

I think about what it’s like to spend quality time with someone I love. We aren’t talking the whole time; the awareness of each others’ presence is often enough. Maybe that’s closer to the truth: prayer is simply acknowledging the presence of God and keeping Him at the forefront of our minds in all that we do.

But there’s nothing active about that. What is the action of prayer? Maybe it’s active talking when we have a moment, but even then I wonder if there’s not much more we can do than take to heart and repeat the words Jesus told us to pray:

Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

No asking for particular things we want or feel we need. No praying for particular people. It’s simple and it covers pretty much everything I could ever say to God without starting to feel selfish or over the top.

So what is prayer? I still don’t know. But lately, acknowledging God’s presence and saying those words, and those words only, has been more fulfilling than I ever would have imagined.

Ever since the iPhone released two summers ago, the mobile world has changed completely. Sure, smart phones existed well before the iPhone, but it was the first time it was sold as something for everyone, not just business users and tech geeks.

Along with the revolution on phone side of things, it seems as though every web service I use has become highly intertwined with mobile media support. I’m a heavy user of Facebook, Twitter and Brightkite. Facebook has a mobile version of the site that feeds the addiction of those of us with mobile web, and both Twitter and Brightkite would be almost completely useless without text messaging and/or mobile web.

I see potential for huge ideas that would only be possible with the help of mobile computing. The trick is having a phone that encourages and contributes to those ideas in a way that is it is easy for the end user to work with and for them to grasp the bigger picture as well.

All that said, I decided to geek out and come up with the ideal mobile phone for my own personal wants. I am currently in the early stages of shopping for a new phone to take me to the next level (beyond just phone calls and text messages, that is). This is also sort of written for my friend Ben Pike, who is the biggest mobile phone geek the world has ever known.

Here are the features I want in my next phone. Obviously I’m dreaming, so the closest I can find will have to do. The rest are just good ideas to shoot for.

Read the rest of this entry »

There is here no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide. I learn it daily, learn it with pain to which I am grateful: patience is everything!

Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by M.D. Herter Norton) via The Snake The Cross The Crown’s blog.

The band posted this quote, assumedly, as an indirect way of telling their fans (myself included) that they’re working on new material and to be patient.

Yet another one for the being great takes a while conversation.

Side note: Why do I get stuck on one idea and keep going back to it? It keeps happening.

As many people know, I am extremely susceptible to inner ear infections. About once a year, soon after having a cold or some form of congestion, my right ear will cease all operations. I guess fluid drains in from the inside behind my ear drum or something. All I know is that it’s both painful and frustrating. What a supreme irony it is that a music freak should have a chronic hearing problem.

Being a regular part of my life, though, I have become familiar with the symptoms and stages of an ear infection. The worst part, for me, is two or three days into it, all the sounds entering my right ear get garbled. It’s like listening to a radio station that doesn’t come in quite right, or a warped cassette tape. But only in one side of my head.

Earlier this year when I read Musicophilia I was empathetic to the subjects dealing with amusia, the inability to recognize musical tones. Imagine hearing your favorite songs perfectly clear through one ear, and in the other it’s almost as though the musicians intentionally play everything just slightly off-pitch. It’s one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever experienced.

Maybe someday I’ll find a solution to keep these infections from coming back. Or maybe I’ll always be cursed for a week or two every year as a painful reminder to appreciate my most valuable possession: my ears.

Oh no! A meme on my blog? It’s all downhill from here. But really, did you expect me to pass up a music-themed post, especially when I’m not feeling my best and have a hard time finding inspiration?

Think of 25 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world.

I couldn’t even begin to put these in order of preference. They’ve all been number one in my heart at some point or another. So, in true Rob Gordon fashion, I put them in autobiographical order, all the way from high school up to now.

I won’t even begin to try and explain each album or even the general progression of my music habits. If you are curious, that’s kind of what comments are for.

1. Jimi Hendrix – Woodstock
2. Project 86 – Drawing Black Lines
3. Incubus – Make Yourself
4. Radiohead – OK Computer
5. Tool – Aenema
6. A Perfect Circle – Thirteenth Step
7. Sigur Rós – Ágætis byrjun
8. Extol – Undeceived
9. Sufjan Stevens – Michigan
10. The Dillinger Escape Plan – Miss Machine
11. The Mars Volta – De-loused in the Comatorium
12. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
13. Radiohead – Amnesiac
14. He Is Legend – I Am Hollywood
15. Killswitch Engage – The End of Heartache
16. The Dillinger Escape Plan – Irony is a Dead Scene
17. Explosions in the Sky – The Earth is Not a Cold, Dead Place
18. mewithoutYou – Catch for Us the Foxes
19. The Appleseed Cast – Low Level Owl: Volume 1
20. mewithoutYou – Brother, Sister
21. This Will Destroy You – Young Mountain
22. Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
23. Sigur Rós – Takk
24. Ryan Adams – Heartbreaker
25. This Will Destroy You – This Will Destroy You

By 2013 (maybe as early as 2011) it’ll make sense for the labels to finally reorganize their business models around the reality created by the Internet and person to person file sharing services. No longer will the labels be tied to revenue limited to sales of master recordings – by then most or all artists will be under 360 music contracts that give the labels a cut of virtually every revenue stream artists can tap into – fan sites, concerts, merchandise, endorsement deals, and everything else.

via TechCrunch.

I am excited for when this happens. If it happens, that is. I have a feeling there will be a stubborn holdouts for a few years after that. And I’m not just excited because it means free music or feeling free to download whatever I want without paying for it. Rather, I’m excited that the crap we hear on the radio will no longer be force-fed to us. There will be other means for people to find what they like, and musicians won’t be able to get away with abominations like “radio rock.”

Note to self: buy stocks in tech companies that make digital storage devices (hard drives, flash drives, etc.) when this happens because music piracy is going to skyrocket. I predict a one-terabyte iPod within months of the publicized date of collapse. Or maybe a really good portable music streaming player will finally surface.

Of course, by then it won’t be called “piracy” but rather “digital music distribution.” Or just “peer to peer file sharing.”