Paying to worship

Today I discovered that all Christian organisations have to pay a blanket music licence to a society called the CCLI (I believe they're the Christian version of the PRS For Music). This includes Christian Unions, one of which I am the treasurer of, so naturally a payment of £170 for playing five songs at a meeting each week seemed a little steep for my liking.

Here are some reasons I'm pretty angry about the concept of licensing worship music. Feel free to disagree with them, they are just my reasons. I'd love to know other people's opinions on the matter too. NB: I'm just referring to the church-on-a-Sunday type of music (i.e. "Christian music" rather than "music made by Christians" if that makes sense).

Firstly, paying Christian songwriters for their lyrical content is a joke: 90% of worship is directly lifted from the Bible, and probably 75% of that from Psalms alone, so unless King David has employed Redman, Hughes & Co. as his collectors, I'm not sure entirely why we're paying them.

Of course, I understand that these writers need to live, but very few (I think - could be wrong) are full-time worship leaders. I assume that many of them hold another 'day job,' so to speak, and/or they hold another position within the Church. Conversely, if they are a full-time worship leader, surely they're being paid for that? And of course, there are sales of CDs to take into account (many of you will know my opinion on the pricing of Christian CDs, but let's not go there), which should provide income as well.

I point out at this juncture that for CU purposes, we would literally only be paying for the song rights, not the performance rights (as we are the performers, and we're certainly not making any money!).

I think my main reason for why I think it so appalling, however, is that if we are paying to use music that was written primarily (I hope) for people to sing worship, surely we are - directly or indirectly - paying to worship. Now that is a concept I am extremely angry about.

Paying to worship.

Thoughts? I'm interested in hearing other opinions (he said, throwing a match into the petrol canister).

j.r.

Sunday CD Project

Oh my gosh! This week, the Sunday CD Project has its very first pre-release review! (Only just, but hey ho).

Battles – Gloss Drop

After their frontman Tyondai Braxton quit in August last year, it was unknown whether we'd ever hear from Battles again, but luckily we have. And oh, how lucky we are! Their new album Gloss Drop is the perfect balance I was hoping for in new material from the experi-completely-mental New Yorkers: it's obviously lacking the pitch-bent vocals that Braxton brought, but it opened doors for guest vocals from Gary Numan and three other people you've probably never heard of.

But it's not an all-new Battles sound. There are a lot of aspects that hold true to their critically-acclaimed debut LP Mirrored: the stupidly oversized guitar amp rigs (I saw them on Friday - ask me if you're interested in guitar amp rigs), the acceptable cheesy keyboard riffs, and the effects plugins that make their guitars sound like dinosaurs are all still very much there.

Having listened to both Mirrored and Gloss Drop several times in the last 24 hours, I'm not sure I can pick a favourite yet; they are dissimilar enough (and brilliant enough) to make that a hard choice. What I will say, though, is that Gloss Drop will be a firm contender for SCDP Album of 2011 come December.

Also, if you get a chance to see Battles play live, I recommend going! They seriously know how to put on a show!

j.r.

Sunday CD Project

A week or two ago I went into Guildford's independent record store, and bought a selection of CDs I've never heard of by bands I'd never heard of on the basis that they had pretty artwork, cool band names or amusing titles. Here's the first:

Midas Fall - Eleven. Return And Revert

What a cool name for a band, and what a lovely front cover! Seriously, look at it! Very nice. It reminded me of 65daysofstatic's artwork for their single release of 'Hole'. Nice and yellow.

I have to admit, sadly, that the music doesn't quite live up to the beauty of the band name and artwork. That said, it's still a good album. It begins sounding like a less-polished Explosions In The Sky record (small band, less production; fine by me), but I was totally taken aback when a juxtaposed female vocal entered. And I have to say, it works somehow.

Alas, the songwriting is a little lacking in places, with some tracks sounding a bit samey, but equally, all members are clearly competent musicians who know their strengths and limitations, and they use that knowledge well.

As I say most weeks, check it out! It's a solid record by a small band who I think could do quite well.

j.r.

Sunday CD Project

As mentioned in the first indie rock-orientated QC strip in several years (thank you @jephjacques) . . .

Spiritualized – Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space

It's an oldie this week, circa 1997. I was amazed I'd never even heard of this band until the above-mentioned QC last week. Anyway, to the point: SPACE ROCK! YES! Basically this album is an epic space-rock album (but somehow not in a highly pretentious way), comprised of very simple chords, melodies, and lyrics but played in such wonderful way that I have been utterly enthralled by it all week.

The opening title track takes the form of a round (you know, like Frere Jacques, only . . . cool) and got me hooked from the outset.

The themes of the album range from beautifully simple (possibly even naïve) love songs, to mild anti-theism (not so much of a fan of those bits, as you can imagine), to pleasant tunes about the mundane.

The closing track 'Cop Shoot Cop' is a pretty sick 17-minute wig-out, and is probably the most proggy part of the album in a '90s hip-hop kind of way.

Definitely worth a listen. Like . . . definitely.

Just read that back: I apologise for such a disjointed review. Can't be bothered to re-write though. Love you all!

j.r.

Sunday CD Project

I cheated a little this week. This was Tori's birthday present, I was a bit low on cash. Two birds with one stone and all that.

The New Pornographers – Together

Hurrah for indie folk rock (ish) music! This is the fifth studio album (and most successful yet) from the Canadian 8-piece, and although I love their earlier works (2005's Twin Cinema especially), it's easy to see why this album has done as well as it has.

The album starts with the catchiest cello riff you'll have ever heard in your life. The whole album is littered with cheeky melodies and beautiful harmonies, and even the slower numbers (peculiarly theological 'My Shepherd', for example) still have a forceful powerpop energy that make any of the songs impossible to dislike.

If you're not convinced, the aforementioned cello riff (and proceeding song) is on their homepage in the form of the Youtube video. Splendid.

There you are then. Great album. Go find out why Tori wanted it for her birthday; you won't be disappointed.

j.r.

Age

Today I went to a concert in the music department. A friend of mine had written a piece and was performing it with another of my friends.

In the programmes for departmental concerts at Surrey, the title of the piece and the year it was written are printed, alongside the name of the composer, and their dates of birth (and death, which is applicable most of the time).

The piece my friend wrote was, therefore, dated 2010 and accompanied by his name and "1992-"

1992.

I went to a concert where one of the composers was born two years after me, and was an adult when he wrote it.

I feel old. I know I'm not, but I feel it. In the words of Jeph Jacques, sdjkfbhlsvnasejlkfisaefn.

j.r.

Common courtesy

I just got back from Tesco. In the just-under-ten-minute walk there I bumped into two of my coursemates. In the same walk back I bumped into two of the girls from the flat above mine, and two members of CU. On each meeting, both parties stopped, did all the hello/how are you?/how was your Easter holiday? stuff, said "see you soon" and went on our way.

Literally thirty minutes later, I couldn't tell you what any of them did over their breaks, and I'm going to make the fairly grand assumption that they don't remember what I did either.

This little essay is basically a continuation of that age-old question, "why do English people ask each other how they are when they don't really care?" This is of course a generalisation, but I'm as guilty of it as most. What's more, when people ask me how I am (unless it's a certain person in a certain context), nine times out of ten, I will say something along the lines of "I'm pretty good thanks, how about you?"

In modern conversations, certainly among my generation, we've managed to streamline these mini-conversations to be able to fit into a passing dialogue. This could be anything from,

"Hey mate, how are you?"

"Yeah, good, you?"

"Yeah. Cool, see you."

"See you."

to a slightly less coherent,

"'ight?"

"'ight." (with all the appropriate nods)

So, it's a common courtesy, and that's good, it keeps human interaction going strong, and I'm in favour of that.

However, if the dialogue includes "how was your Easter?" (for example), it makes the conversation too long to have in passing. This is also fine, providing there's something you actually want to talk about with the person (for instance, one of my coursemates and I caught up for a minute or so, and it was good). But here's where it becomes a problem:

One of the people I saw on my little Tesco trip, I know by name, but we're not all that familiar with each other. Said person is very nice, and I'm sure we'd get along in a social situation, so this is meant to be anything personal. What happened was that we'd just stopped, having done the little Easter bit (which had we not stopped, would've involved us walking backwards to say), but then we had an awkward silence before saying "cheers" (I still don't know what for) and parting ways.

And it was awkward. I cringed a little bit when I'd departed.

So why do we do it? Why do we ask a question that we don't really want to know the answer to in more than three syllables? Why do we answer the same question when we can be fairly confident the other party doesn't really care either?

Of course, as I said, there are exceptions, but it seems strange that if common courtesies create awkward moments in conversation, then why do we comply to them? That's not rhetorical; I'd really like to know.

I apologise if that came over as a rant. It may well have done. It was supposed to be more observational than anything else. I'll also clarify that I'm not going to be a douche and refuse to have passing conversations; that's really not what I was trying to say!

j.r.