averyfineline

As several of you have noted already to me in email, Jim Hamill died this morning. When we started this discussion a few weeks back, I had no idea he was as ill as it now appears he was. So I can’t claim any real foresight here, but in retrospect, it was a well-timed conversation, […]

Over at her WAJ blog, the songwriter Sue C. Smith has been posting installments of an extended reflection on discovering her particular gifts as a writer (in her case, it was realizing she was a lyricist and not necessarily a musical composer). This is not just a wonderfully told series of anecdotes about coming up […]

From Bill’s Blah Blah, a delightful tale of what can go wrong even when things go right for the up-and-coming songwriter in Nashville cutting a work tape (a quick and dirty recording of a newly written song to hear how it runs through as a whole) on the fly. Money quote:
We’re doing OK; it is just […]

Now that I have your attention … of course it does.

Naturally, though, I have a longer answer too. In a recent post I referred to a “sexed-up” version of “Get Away Jordan” and some readers thought I was implying that EHSSQ uses sex in some way to sell their music. This made me chuckle at […]

It’s official. The SN Fan Awards show is moving to Saturday night. I’ve already hashed out most of what I have to say about all this in the original post. The bottom line on the move is, it’s worth a try, I guess (and Saturday night is smarter than a per-head showcase, which I stand […]

So it seems that EHSSQ’s “Get Away Jordan” will go No. 1 in the next SN chart. I’ve been getting lots of email about it and, as you might have already seen, several comments. What I find interesting about all these comments is that no one assumes the No. 1 position actually reflects the popularity […]

Back to our charting discussion: David Bruce Murray has a fairly innovative idea for ways to track chart data inexpensively and more or less reliably using iTunes. Check it out here and here. I’ll leave it up to people who actually do this sort of thing for a living to say whether or not it’s […]

If you enjoy reading about the transporting experience of really feeling good music in a live setting, go read songwriter Joel Lindsey’s Annie Lenox concert report. For our purposes today, class, we’re going to focus on a rabbit Lindsey chases for a few sentences in the middle of his paean to Annie. Thus Lindsey:
I […]

Way back when, this comment coupled with this article (hat tip, Martin) got me thinking about the Isaacs. Specifically, why didn’t or haven’t they left a more profound impression on the musical world? Or have they, and I just don’t know where to look? In this alleged age of the cross-over, poly-generic, stylistically diverse, mult-repurposeable […]

Two emails suggest that on the heels of their bass singer leaving earlier this week, Mercy’s Mark has disbanded. Anyone else heard this? If it’s true, it’s the sad but perhaps, uhm, merciful conclusion to the slow deterioration of a group that debuted with an explosion of great promise, and then dwindled off into mediocrity.
Update: […]

That didn’t take long. A website devoted solely to pushing back against whining about the Singing News’s recent changes to the charting system. Gospel Music Coalition aims to “ensure every artist and songwriter gets an equal opportunity in airplay and charting privileges.” There are a lot of assumptions embedded in there that strike me as […]

Just a heads up. The next few days the IT interns will be doing some technical updates and adjustments to things around here so if you try to hit the site and it’s down or you try to post comments and it doesn’t work, that’s probably why. We’ll try to have you back to regularly scheduled programming […]

Scott McDowell is leaving (has left?) BFA? So says commenter undercover. If it’s true I’ll be at least as interested in where McDowell does (not) go as who his replacement is. Behind Stan Whitmire and Justin Ellis, he’s probably among the most gifted keyboard players in gospel music right now.

Commenter Bob writes:

I don’t understand, All three groups at a church for a L O. When I called to have just 1 group come to Ohio they want to charge $4 to $5K. How do you get all three to come for a LO.

[Am] I missing something ???

I can get 350 […]

Date: Sunday, November 3
Location: Orlando, Florida
Setting: First Baptist Church, Orlando
Occasion: FBC-O Free Gospel Concert event
Average age guesstimate: 58
Opening act: mercifully, none, but while I killed time before the show, I found this wonderful note scrawled in child’s script inside the Praise! Our Songs and Hymns book in the book rack: “OZZIE: Where is my gameboy? […]

There’s a fascinating thread of comments from readers at Matt Yglesias’s blog about finding an ideal balance in blog postings. I know you’ll be shocked to here this, but I tend to write long and tedious blog posts, so I offer all this without amendment to reform. (I have to communicate with discipline and […]

I still don’t know for sure how the Kingsmen would be received today, but someone who was reading our latest KM discussions seems to think the demand for the old KM music remains pretty strong. The bidding for two used cds of old Kingsmen live cds on eBay opens at $50.

Is it possible the NQC board unilaterally decided to move the Singing News fan awards from Thursday night to Saturday afternoon and to charge $20 a head for it - without consulting the SN? That’s what I’ve been hearing, anyway. And Kenneth Kirksey of the SN confirms as much. The only thing else he’d say […]

So my ISP tells me that the the Wordpress PHP script on my index file is apparently causing excess CPU usage (I’ve been quarantined to a special server, evidently). I know next to nothing about these issues, so I’m wondering if any savvier technical minds out there than mine have some theories. Could it be […]

My earlier post on SN changes to the chart has generated a flurry of chatter, including David Bruce Murray’s post here. Aside from ignoring everything after the “but” in my reaction to the SN changes, he makes some good points, especially about chart speed.

To be perfectly honest, I just don’t get too amped […]