averyfineline

The Recording Industry Association of America’s latest claim? It’s illegal to create copies of your own CDs and store them on your personal computer.
Happy new year. See you in jail.
Update: you’ll want to note this update from the Wash Post on this story. On the question of the RIAA’s prosecution of file-sharing, the larger issue […]

I’ll be away from the blog most of the next week. That doesn’t mean a post or two might not slip by, but in case I don’t see you until then, happy new year too.

Apropos our discussion of what a post-Gaither landscape might look like, longtime reader Ben Harris writes:

Maybe a better question would be who is going to take Gloria’s place? From all I have heard from people who were often on the Homecoming series, she was the one with the plan.

An excellent point. For […]

Speaking of the singing convention tradition and Gaither, as I did in passing below, allow me to engage a little shameless self-promotion and mention this conference - Farther Along, a conference on southern gospel singing conventions - that Middle Tennessee State University is hosting in the spring of 08.
I’ll be presenting a paper titled “The […]

A longtime reader saw this announcement about the Nick Trammell engagement to Jessica Brown and asked me if I thought the Perrys would be much, much better if Trammell ends up joining the Browns after the wedding.

Interesting question. Obviously this assumes he would join the Browns in the first place, and there’s a long […]

What will the world look like after Gaither leaves the scene? I have no idea, I should say, but in a way, we’re already post-Gaither. The thing about the world after Himself is that, given what he’s done to Chrisitian music generally and gospel music specifically, it’s no longer a question of (with apologies to […]

I’ve been traveling through most of the latest NQC developments, which means that much of the time I’ve had one eye on the computer and the other on the roadmap. At any rate, and perhaps needless to say given the boneheadedness of my remarks in the post below on the issue, I hadn’t looked closely […]

Holiday traveling (I finally saw one of those YH/KPNR billboards outside Chattanooga … hooo boy!) and other stuff will keep distracting me from much new posting for a bit longer, so feel free to talk amongst yourselves. Will the Thursday night NQC line-up be strong enough to bring weekenders like me in a day early, […]

Writing that post on The Eddies, I was reminded of an email exchange I had with a friend recently. Thus my friend:

For a lot of different reasons, most of the concerts I’ve attended of late have been those of part-time groups. The weekend warrior types. To borrow the favorite euphemism of the Baptists - […]

I’m hearing that we might expect a big announcement from NQC about an “arrangement” the convention has reached with two major SG artists for 2008 whose recent absence at NQC has been conspicuous. That’s all I got, and it could turn out to be a bust, but I guess we’ll see. Stay tuned.
Update: our crack […]

Eddie Crook is in the news a lot lately. First, the inaugural “Eddie” Awards were given out recently. And now NQC has announced that Crook’s recording company will be awarding prizes at the 2008 NQC talent competition (if memory serves, this isn’t the first time ECC has been in this role, is it?). Several of […]

I gotta say, I was really surprised by the stridency of feeling on both sides that the mere mention of Ricky Atkinson’s name brought up in the comments thread of a post that didn’t have anything to do with Atkinson or his group (at least not initially anyway). Beyond having heard the group a few […]

I’ve verified the authenticity of this post (having spoken on the phone with the author and contacted Roy Hayes and Vivici/CMP), and am as comfortable as you can be online that the author is who he says he is. Thus I’m resposting the Dissent of the Day as it appeared yesterday, with your comments (for […]

As you will see, I’ve taken down the AGM-related Dissent of the Day that I posted yesterday evening. It’s not something I like to do, removing posts, but the more I read some of your comments and thought about it, the more it seemed warranted in this case, until or unless I have additional information […]

Not too long ago, I got a note from Roy Hayes, president of Vivici Inc., an affiliate of Christian Music Presenters, which is a big player in the American Gospel Music boondoggle enterprise we’ve talked about from time to time here. Hayes was writing about the AGM Carnegie Hall event in late November and how […]

To begin with, a confession: I am among the many thousands across the Western world who at this time of year participate in choral events that inflict Handel’s Hallelujah chorus upon our communities. I apologize, dear readers. In the choir of which I am part, we attempt to atone for this musical transgression by singing […]

We’ve pretty much hashed out the gospel-music-and-Grammys issue in the past (see here, among other places), so no need to re-cover that ground. Put another way: I don’t have a lot to say about KPNR getting a nomination. My main reaction to the news, coming as it does a year after another Daywind artist who […]

Kyle Boreing asks an interesting question: if songs like “Jesus Take the Wheel” can come out in secular country and then be adopted by gospel audiences – a so-called reverse crossover – why can’t it work the other way? Why can’t some songs originally released in sg be (re)released to country and adopted by those […]

Now here’s something: Daniel Mount notes that several of Amazon’s top 25 Christian music videos are (Gaither) gospel. I’ll leave it to you to sort out all the various socioeconomic reasons for this (would nice to be able to compare these sales to top viewed YouTube videos for Christian music - my suspicion is the […]

Do the Hoppers really “average singing to over 1 million concert goers” a year, as recent press releases of theirs have claimed? (Hat tip, AD) The Singing News has them listed as doing fewer than 10 concerts in December 2007, or, counting generously, about 120 dates year. At that pace, they’d have to be singing […]