Remembering Live Aid...

Sometimes seems like yesterday! The 13th July 1985 was an extraordinary day and everyone who watched Live Aid was blown away by Queen's transcendent performance, re-launching them to a new audience and Freddie Mercury giving all the other bands a serious lesson in stagecraft!

Did I ever tell you about the honour of working with his Freddieship? Oh yes, so I did!

Jeff Buckley - BBC Soul Music Take 2

---

BBC Soul Music - Dido's Lament

---

Sadly music mega-corp Sony has removed the YouTube video of Jeff Buckley I had included on my earlier post about the BBC Radio 4 series Soul Music. Checking the visitor stats for this Blog it is clear the post that featured anecdotes about Dido's Lament, including the legendary performance by Jeff Buckley, still has plenty of visits.

However, the really great news is the BBC has increased the duration of the archived pieces from Soul Music and have included this edition along with many others, link above.

P

The Gospel of Cognitive Surplus...

Clay Shirky has just become a bit of a UK Blog Buzz after an article about him was published in the Guardian last Monday, one in the usual round of interviews when an author's latest book is published. He has been using the phrase 'Cognitive Surplus' for a while in his talks including drawing the analogy to the recovery from drowning sorrows in gin when trying to cope with the trauma of transformation from rural to urban life early in the last century.

In a 2008 talk he makes this point:

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened--rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before - free time.

And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.

And it's only now, as we're waking up from that collective bender, that we're starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We're seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody's basement.

We have a positive way of making a difference, by not wasting more of the precious resource of time. It is clear how this applies to charities as well as businesses and particularly to the church. It is interesting to see that Mr Shirky is not so active online himself and along with David Keen's 'final' blog entry today issues a further challenge to be considered...

P

Seven Deadly Social Sins...

The image of the Gandhi quotation poster above arrived in my Sojourners mailing as a 'free bonus' for signing up for a subscription. Although the quotation was familiar I still decided to follow my instinct to Google for a bit more background and was impressed by this analysis from Dr. Stephen R. Covey. Dr. Steven is one of the world's leading management consultants and author of the best selling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The section I found most interesting was on Religion Without Sacrifice (which on the poster is quoted as 'Worship without Sacrifice', revealing?!):

Without sacrifice we may become active in a church but remain inactive in its gospel. In other words, we go for the social facade of religion and the piety of religious practices. There is no real walking with people or going the second mile or trying to deal with our social problems that may eventually undo our economic system. It takes sacrifice to serve the needs of other people - the sacrifice of our own pride and prejudice, among other things.

If a church or religion is seen as just another hierarchical system, its members won't have a sense of service or inner workship. Instead they will be into outward observances and all the visible accoutrements of religion. But they are neither God-centered nor principle-centered.

The principles of three of the Seven Habits pertain to how we deal with other people, how we serve them, how we sacrifice for them, how we contribute. Habits 4, 5 and 6 - win-win interdependency, empathy, and synergy - require tremendous sacrifice. I've come to believe that they require a broken heart and a contrite spirit - and that, for some, is the ultimate sacrifice. For example, I once observed a marriage where there were frequent arguments. One thought came to me : "These two people must have a broken heart and a contrite spirit toward each other or this union will never last." You can't have a oneness, a unity, without humility. Pride and selfishness will destroy the union between man and god, between man and woman, between man and man, between self and self.

The great servant leaders have that humility, the hallmark of inner religion. I know a few CEOs who are humble servant leaders - who sacrifice their pride and share their power - and I can say that their influence both inside and outside their companies is multiplied because of it. Sadly, many people want "religion," or at least the appearance of it, without any sacrifice. They want more spirituality but would never miss a meal in meaningful fasting or do one act of anonymous service to achieve it.

Read the full article here.

P

The Voice Project with Peter Gabriel

Using music as a tool for social change is one description of this brilliant video of Peter Gabriel covering Tom Waits song 'In the Neigbourhood' for The Voice Project, a strategic alliance with Oxfam America:

The Voice Project is a song-driven movement inspired by the women of Uganda who are using their voices as vehicles for change in the war-ravaged region of Northern Uganda, Southern Sudan, and Eastern Congo, an area that has been marred by violence for the last 24 years. The Voice Project is an attempt to support these incredible women and the peace movement in the region, and an effort to see how far a voice can carry.

It transpires, on reading more about this project on the Gabriel website, that one of the The Voice Project's founders is Peter's daughter Anna:

"Music has always been a part of my life and I believe it's one of the most powerful and effective tools to bring about change. My father has inspired me with his humanitarian work and has always been supportive of my work as a film maker so shooting this video bought together all aspects of my life in an amazing way."

P h/t @martinwroe

Redemptive Rock and Spiritual Songs...

The announcement that this band, 30 Seconds To Mars, are going to be visiting these shores again this Autumn I thought I would post some thoughts I have been mulling over for a wee while. Part of this is a reaction to the support I've had when I've stuck my head above the parapet and slagged off the dreadful Worship Music scene and genre. I hope this post gives some supporting evidence to explain why my views are more about substance than just taste driven opinions...

I have a relatively broad taste in music ranging from not too high brow classical, through ethnic / indigenous music to pop and stadium rock. I like pieces which have spirit, integrity, passion and believability regardless of whether it is technically impressive or flawed. I love hearing a song that makes you want to learn more about it, glean what's behind the lyrics and the artist.

Now this song is not particularly original and could be criticised for being derivative of other bands' earlier work. However, there is a certain comfort in a bit of familiarity when hearing something for the first time. This song, combined with the video, is such a great piece of art that issues challenges and hope! If anything it is the optimism musically and lyrically that I find so enthralling... and the depth of what the storyline covers is not lost on the band's followers, check out some of the comments on Youtube:

Can we all get the message? Eternal inspiration (song). No stupid fashion or trends (clothing). No damn pollution (bikes). No hate (car accident). Continuous miracles (white horse and resurrection). The good and true path (all going in the same direction because they know thats The way). True life (no death and no impossibilities).

unfortunatelly i don´t know if will have learned our lesson either, with all these things hapenning a lot of people are still destroying the nature, only thinking about money.

This song would be best suited to the part where someone makes a massive life-changing decision or turning point in their life.

We are born into a world at war for our hearts, and we are desperate for God. He wants us to become the "Kings and Queens" we were mean't to be. This can only be done by not making ourselves the focus of everything, and becomeing the "lesser god" that the song says.

and prompted this joined-up response:

This really does make me think of the oil spill in the Gulf. If honestly makes me what to cry. How much more are we going to punish the earth? I ask myself when will it be enough, to satisfy us selfish humans. It makes me so angry, but also at myself because I can't really do anything about it.

Here's one that suggests corporate singing still moves peeps:

i love this entire song, but especially the chanting "oh oh ohhhh" part! there's something about chants that always makes me go wow. it just sounds so cool when there's hundreds of voices blending together. =)

I love the shots in the video of the basic band, the flight cases, backs of guitar amps, it depicts the tools of the trade of a rockin' band, that's what it really looks like! That moves into images of redemption, the shining cross in the cityscape, the white horse...

Some will also be cynical of this band's rise to fame as singer Jared Leto was already a successful actor. Yet they have cemented relationships with their fanbase by inviting them to be part of the video as above and to take part in the recordings. Wikipedia quotes the band:

'How great would it be to invite the world to come and be a part of the next 30 Seconds to Mars album? There were some things [we tried] that were left-field sound experiments — using the group, the collective, as a musical instrument. We did everything from percussive expression to whispering to things that were a little bit more familiar, like inviting the 1,000 people that were there to sing the chorus of a song. And those people who were a part of it all will be a part of the next 30 Seconds to Mars album. It was quite simply one of the best things we've done as a band.'

So the chants are already congregational and not simply multi-tracked backing vocals!

This aptly demonstrates Seth Godin's notion of Tribes, where there are leaders but collaboration and inspiration are key. Obviously this band has a totally commercial purpose but their passionate and committed approach is definitely working... real music, heartfelt lyrics that listeners relate too, wonderful!

For the connoisseurs of amazing recording detail, check out the vocals only version here (starts 30s).

P