averyfineline

I’ve got be away for a few more days, so just in case anybody has anything on their mind that doesn’t include deadend debates about why conservatives/liberals are always right and conservatives/liberals are always wrong, here’s your chance (CB, this is your cue).

Larknews.com has the scoop (h/t, Tom). The stage will be in the women’s clothing section and Bill Gaither promises a celebration of low prices and gospel favorites:
“For believers, coming to Wal-Mart is like coming home.”
Gloria Gaither may also read a poem over the store’s loudspeakers about cheap affordable grace.

I hadn’t heard of this novel before this commenter brought it up, and as so often happens in these kinds of things, I immediately started seeing references to it. Most recently: today’s New York Times includes a story about the way the novel bubbled up from obscurity to the bestseller list.
I haven’t read the book […]

Speaking of politics, Chuck Peters reports that Rick Hendrix, the music promoter everyone loves to hate, is thinking about running for Congress in North Carolina. Judging by his comments to Peters, I think it’s safe to say Hendrix will be running in the great southern neo-Dixiecrat tradition:
As a Democrat, I have strong beliefs against abortion, […]

From the New York Times this morning:
Although a majority of Americans say religion is very important to them, nearly three-quarters of them say they believe that many faiths besides their own can lead to salvation[.]
The full study is here. Apropos our discussion about the difference between southern gospel and other forms of Christian music, I’d […]

Via our good friend SR, some clips of the magnificent Kitty Parham, then and nowish.
Then (watch her wonderful hand motions … talk about choreography):

Nowish: The embed code for this video has been disabled but I hope people will watch it, not least of all because I’m curious to hear what y’all think about how Gaitherized […]

An interesting essay on the internet and its effects on the deep structures of writing style and imagination. Money quote, which follows a brief summary of the opening of a novel:
The internet is inhospitable to that kind of quietness. If your browser were to happen on such a page, your eyes would likely go blank […]

All you hear is hard luck stories, financially, with these sg ’superstars’. The late great Jake Hess bankrupt twice or three times. JD going round with a hat collecting for his lapsed insurance money coercing a post office official into back-dating the postage date. Vestal, almost with an empty check book prior to the first […]

Via DBM, I see last week’s SN poll asked what makes sg different than other forms of music. DBM thinks it’s the audience. Most people seem to think it’s lyrics and “music,” whatever that means. Who knows. Like all polls, this one oversimplifies a very complex question - in this case, one that I think […]

Copies are on sale now through June 30. I think this is what most people assumed would be the eventual outcome when the funeral wasn’t streamed online, as is increasingly the practice with sg memorial services these days.
It’s all being handled through the church of Rambo’s daughter, Reba, and Reba’s husband, and unless I’m missing […]

Apropos our meandering conversation of late about ministry/monestry, Kenny Bishop wonders about the hidden costs of putting a price on Christian music (h/t, CC):

Even back when our group was enjoying great success I’d ask myself from time to time if we were selling something that should be given away. Were the folks who managed our […]

Reader JP passed along this clip of Ricky Skaggs singing “Somebody’s Praying for Me” on Gaither’s Billy Graham tribute video, noting that it’s linked to from the National Day of Prayer site as an “amateur video.” Heheh. I’ve never heard Skaggs without stringed instruments before this, and the quiet style of acoustical piano suits […]

I’m not sure I agree with the business plan referenced in the most recent dissent. I know it wasn’t the main point of his message, but I think it is the financial reality for many fledgling (and many not-so-fledgling) groups that they sacrifice everything, buy a bus and make mama worry how they’re going to […]

I’ve Got an idea. If you want it done right and you are the only one that can do it right and you have all the right ideas quit being a back seat driver and sacrifice everything like many of my friends in this business have done and get your several friends on this board […]

My post about multimedia in gospel concerts has generated a discussion that might warrant a bit of elaboration: namely, innovation is one thing. Amateurism and shoddy gimmickry are entirely another.
Watching Sandi Patty’s use of visual imagery or seeing some country star’s multimedia show may have inspired many of the sg acts we’re discussing to incorporate […]

This is “slightly surprising” to Daniel Mount, who evidently was unaware denominational affiliation doesn’t usually require a blood oath to never affiliate with other denominations.

From a charter member of Avery’s Friends, the ever observant SR writes to vent:
have you been to a lot of shows where the groups have implemented multimedia (basically souped up powerpoint or video clips)? i went to the second one of these last night and confirmed that i absolutely hate it. when i […]

David Bruce Murray wants your help preserving sghistory.com.

Classics
LordSong
Kimichael, 2007
ALI: 50%
Go to a gospel concert these days and chances are at some point the performers will turn off the digital music makers and make an elaborate show of encircling the piano (assuming someone can play) to sing some old song “out of the red book” with just the keyboard for accompaniment.
Before the […]

Ricky Atkinson, TK&McCrae, HisSong, Naomi & the Segos … what do these names have in common? Perhaps a lot of things I can’t think of, but for the purposes of today’s class discussion, two things.
First, they’re all at best second- (or third- or fourth- or shoe-) string presences in gospel music. And second, as topics […]