music

…you come with empty hands…

art, Christianity, music, writing

Here’s singer-songwriter Bill Mallonee on the artistic process:

now look if you’re gonna come around here
and say those sort of things
you gotta take a few on the chin
yeah you’re talking about sin and redemption
well you better wear your thickest skin
sometimes you can’t please everyone
sometimes you can’t please anyone at all
sew your heart onto your sleeve

If you’re an artist you know what comes next:

and you wait for the ax to fall

Watch him perform the song at the link below. And then go make art.

Bill Mallonee – Skin

Go into the past young man

Christianity, music, writing

Chad Thomas Johnston has a nice post up at the Image blog about 1990’s Christian pop music. I was the kid listening to Deliverance.

As a seventh grader, when I wasn’t testing the tensile strength of my eardrums with Christian speed metal—music by Deliverance, for example, whose slogan was “Faster for the Master”—I was listening to Go West Young Man seven or eight times a day.

If you like this sort of thing, check out Joel Heng Hartse’s Sects, Love, and Rock & Roll: My Life on Record. Now if only I had something in my house that could actually play cassette tapes…