averyfineline

I’ve tried to limit the traffic updates as much as possible, lest I seem self-aggrandizing. But now may be a good time update traffic stats. So for what it’s worth, in March (the last complete month of stats), AVFL averaged about 8000 hits a day, 1700 unique visits daily, and 3400 page views per day. […]

The Dove Awards present the student of sg with a bit of a quandary. In order to see the awards given in the southern gospel categories, you have to sit through the pre-show – a 2+ hour slog with very few (if any) live performances to interrupt the tedious scripted banter from the counter-intuitively paired […]

Zane King, this year’s SGMG president, sassily offers that familiar critique that I’m all carp and no constructive help:

[I]n the future, I would love to hear your wonderfully expressed dialogue about the “problems” of our genre followed by a carefully outlined strategy that helps to us overcome the hurdles that we face. I’m […]

I write to you, dear readers, from the middle of GMA week in Nashville the morning after the annual Tuesday night Southern Gospel Music Guild showcase of southern gospel talent. If NQC is a chance to hear the range of what southern gospel offers, the showcase is a quick finger on the pulse, a way […]

It’s GMA week. Didn’t know? Don’t worry. Only two or three other people in sg do, and unlike me, most of them get paid to care. One standard feature of the weeklong string of Christian music-related events is a songwriter’s showcase. I’ve been getting notes from a few people who attended, so I thought I’d […]

So this is pretty much off the top of my head and it may already be in place and I just haven’t seen it. But I’d love to be able to go to a radio station’s website, call up its play list, find the song I just heard that I liked or remember wanting to […]

Did I read this wrong, or is the songwriter Sue C. Smith very politely saying she wasn’t invited or otherwise notified that she was up for an award at the SGN’s Ovations awards? And she won! At least she didn’t have to bother fussing over an acceptance speech.

Some friends gave me a pair of their season tickets to the symphony the other night, and it was a delightful evening of Strauss, Bernstein, and Brahams (his angsty first piano concerto). This should go without saying at this point in civilization but from I hear (quite literally) it needs to be repeated a little […]

After reading Michael English’s new autobiography, David Bruce Murray is having some very serious, thoughtful, and (in the blogosphere) rare second thoughts about his longstanding support for English. Money quote:

I’ve drawn a few conclusions in the past few hours. One is that I was extremely gullible at the time…gullible to the point that I […]

Daniel Mount finds it “surprising” that Gold City took home so many awards at the Sogospelnews.com Ovations shindig recently. Which is, well, surprising. For my part, I’d have been surprised only if Gold City HADN’T won big. They’re the highest profile and most accomplished talent signed with Southern Spin Entertainment, a minor fiefdom in the […]

Reader TE asks:
I don’t understand why you limit your observations to one genre of music. It would seem that the more general, vague lyrics found in today’s AC Christian music allow for an even more personalized constuct of meaning and it happens to a larger audience numerically.
A good point. Two reasons why I limit my […]

And as if to prove my point in the post below, Martin Roth (whose site I clicked over to just after I posted the last entry) links to this story about a Catholic who finds the Gaither’s gospel mainstay “Because He Lives” the best expression of Easter sentiment.

I was at an academic conference last week presenting some work of mine on gospel music and the function of religious sentiments in artistic works. It’s part of a professional effort I’ve been dabbling with for several years to better understand my personal affection for the evocative harmonies and self-abnegating lyrics of gospel music. I’m […]

I am snowed under here in Sunny Florida with projects and deadlines and end-of-term stuff, so I won’t be able to properly or adequately synthesize all the smart comments building up in the recent radio threads. But if only to put a finer point on my remarks about ideas and the sg blogosphere, allow me […]

By far the most common criticism I hear about gospel music blogs from industry insiders and decision makers is that there’s too much carping and not enough ideas. Looking through my file of nasty-grams and other love letters from industry types, I see that I am regularly challenged to (as one email I selected more […]

Reader TLS imagines what an extended (and amusing) rewrite a la the SN might look like, in extremis.

Original:

The newest recording by Bubba and Ethel had my ears ringing. I thought for a second that I was stuck in hell (like the SNL sketch with Paul Simon stuck in an elevator hearing “elevator music” […]

For a while now, I have, evidently, been banned from receiving Chuck Peters’ SGShowPrep newsletter (he didn’t, it seems, care for this too much). So I didn’t see this until it showed up on musicscribe blog recently. Chuck is a veteran gospel music radio type and though his skin may be a bit thin when […]

I’ve had to travel this weekend, my first time on AirTran. The airline has XM satellite radio hook ups on each armrest, so I was able to listen to XM’s sg station for three hours in flight. It was my first extended listen since the free trial way back when.
The song selection was decently, […]

A mountain out of a molehill? So says David Bruce Murray himself of my comments on the SN editing his review to soften his take on the McKameys latest project (and he suggests I’m an opportunistic flip-flopper to boot).

Doug,

As I recall, you were a lot more easy going than me a couple of […]

A disappointing account from David Bruce Murray about how the SN’s changes to his review of the McKameys tests the limits of reform and improvement at the magazine. Take a look at DBM’s post for the full account, but the upshot is, some editorial tinkering pretty much completely changed the meaning of DBM’s review so […]