averyfineline

Kyle Boreing and John Scheideman are kicking around an interesting question for gospel music history buffs and other discographic nerds: watershed albums in sg. Like all such “high impact” terms, this one could hang up a pedant like me for several thousand words just defining it, and John and Kyle have their own interpretations and […]

For those who want to, Christian retailers have made it awfully hard, CVH notes, especially for music shoppers.

As far as the Christian bookstore question goes, I decided a number of years ago that loyalty to the concept of Christian brick and mortar retail is no longer valid. Thirty years ago the only […]

Regular reader NG asks a good question:

So what’s the solution to the problem … especially with costs becoming more of an issue these days?

I have no idea. But I can’t believe the answer is to start passing along your costs to your most reliable consumers in such lopsided ways (unless you’re American […]

Evidently, it’s the kind of thing artists would be talking about these days if they talked around a water cooler. According to a friend’s email yesterday:

I’ve heard from a number of groups who are trying this or thinking about [raising cd prices]. Experimenting. With Diesel @ $5.15, concert flats only level (if they indeed […]

Hello everyone, Mark Bishop here. Settle in.

First let me say that this year has been a year of firsts for me. Along with the fantastically talented and creative people that I have worked with at Crossroads and a few of my label mates, we have finished an atypical recording that we believe will bless […]

That’s the new price of Dove Brothers cds, according to Chuck Peters’ ShowPrep, up from $18. Is that how you spell “high fuel prices” in southern gospel? And will people really pay that much for sg music?
Update: a quick email to Crossroads clarifies that the $23 is only for DBQ product purchased through the group. […]

And I’m shocked … as of 10 a.m. EST, not one bid. It claims to be one of a kind, which may or not be true but sort of speaks to our earlier discussion. Plus, check out that cover art. (hat tip, DA)

Fields of Love
Mark Bishop
Crossroads 2008
ALI: 40% (with caveats)

Down on the family farm, the saintly matriarch dies in childbirth. The tiny fractured family that remains – the good pious son trying to keep his mother’s memory alive, the grieving father aggrieved at God for taking his wife too soon – struggles to cope with […]

It’s hard to use my homemade ALI metric on an album that’s essentially a musical. Most of the songs matter in relation to the larger narrative so it’s difficult to say which one’s I’d go back and listen to since that number changes depending if I’m just dipping into the album or listening to it […]

Lately it seems a small but stubbornly disruptive number of comments have tended to be hopelessly off-topic. And I’m not the only one to notice. Two recent comments pretty much lay out the issues succinctly, so let’s go to the tape. On the one hand, off-topic comments that take a thread into the high weeds […]