Me and about 10 other people bought this cassette back in the day. I think these dudes were Christians so they might be forgiven for the mullets.
I’m not sure about the spaceship though. This was their minor hit “Everything You Are”
It doesn’t get better than that.
…I’m thinking about switching my blog host to blogger. I like WordPress and all but I’m just not design oriented enough to do much with it. I’m running 2.0.4. The current version is 2.3.1. .
But the sheer thought of doing everything required to upgrade makes my head spin. And it’s long past time to change the look of my blog but wordpress is labor intensive. At least for me.
Any thoughts from those with their own domains as to which way to go?
If you are interested in any of these ties you can get them at the Goodwill on Hewitt Drive in Hewitt, TX. No more ties, baby!
And for the record, I would have kept them all. The Good Wife is the one who tossed them.
Tramadol is a synthetic, centrally acting analgesic agent with 2 distinct, synergistic mechanisms of action, acting as both a weak opioid agonist and an inhibitor of monoamine neurotransmitter reuptake. The 2 enantiomers of racemic tramadol function in a complementary manner to enhance the analgesic efficacy and improve the tolerability profile of tramadol. In several comparative, well designed studies, oral and parenteral tramadol effectively relieved moderate to severe postoperative pain associated with surgery. Its overall analgesic efficacy was similar to that of morphine or alfentanil and superior to that of pentazocine. Tramadol provided effective analgesia in children and in adults for both inpatient and day surgery. Tramadol was generally well tolerated in clinical trials. The most common adverse events (incidence of 1.6 to 6.1%) were nausea, dizziness, drowsiness, sweating, vomiting and dry mouth. Importantly, unlike other opioids, tramadol has no clinically relevant effects on respiratory or cardiov
ascular parameters at recommended doses in adults or children. Tramadol also has a low potential for abuse or dependence. CONCLUSIONS: The efficacy of tramadol for the management of moderate to severe postoperative pain has been demonstrated in both inpatients and day surgery patients. Most importantly, unlike other opioids, tramadol has no clinically relevant effects on respiratory or cardiovascular parameters. Tramadol may prove particularly useful in patients with poor cardiopulmonary function, including the elderly, the obese and smokers, in patients with impaired hepatic or renal function, and in patients in whom nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are not recommended or need to be used with caution. Parenteral or oral tramadol has proved to be an effective and well tolerated analgesic agent in the perioperative setting.
Apparently this is good stuff. Although it killed ODB. Just FYI.
Going off the Springsteen list from yesterday I decided that it was way past time to put together a new Finetune playlist. These are essential artist tracks that nobody should be without. Give it a listen and access the playlist here. It’s heavy on Dylan, Springsteen, Costello, Prine, Hiatt, Waits and Zevon. Enjoy.
…apparently other sports are going on during football season.
I know. I was surprised to learn that too.
I’ve been a fan of The Boss for as long as I can remember. When I left Waco last week I decided to make the long needed switch from XM to Sirius. During that drive I was unable to switch off of the Bruce channel for any extended period of time. I was even treated to a replay of one of his 1999 concerts that I was able to attend at Staples Arena in LA, one of only two Springsteen shows I’ve ever seen (the other being a solo acoustic show at Nashville’s Ryman in 1996.)
As I was driving I began to think what would comprise my favorite Springsteen songs of all time. It was too difficult to narrow it down to 10 so I left it at 20. Note: no songs from his new disc, Magic, made the cut. That is due to the fact that they have not withstood the test of time yet, not to the fact that they aren’t incredible songs from one of his finest albums. In addition these are all Springsteen originals so, alas, no Trapped or Jersey Girl.
20. No Surrender–This is a wall of sound gem from Born in the USA. Can you not sense that Bruce knows this is the end of the active membership of Little Steven in the E Street Band?
Money Lyric: We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned is school.
19. Hungry Heart–We will never get to hear this song as Bruce originally intended: a Ramones tune. Instead, we have yet another quintessential Springsteen tune of running.
Money Lyric: Everybody needs a place to rest/Everybody wants to have a home/Don’t make no difference what nobody says/Ain’t nobody like to be alone
18. Highway Patrolman–This song is from the first Springsteen album I ever bought when I was 13 years old. Nebraska is still my favorite Bruce disk and this song about brotherly love and fidelity still resonates with me. If you feel nothing when Joe Roberts pulls over then you have no soul.
Money Lyric: Well I chased him through them county roads/Till a sign said “Canadian border five miles from here”/I pulled over the side of the highway and watched his taillights disappear
17. Brilliant Disguise–Bruce has always zigged when people expected him to zag and this romantic follow-up to the gargantuan selling USA is the epitome of that. Here we see The Boss growing up and looking beyond the road.
Money Lyric: Tonight our bed is cold/I’m lost in the darkness of our love/God have mercy on the man/Who doubts what he’s sure of
“Is it me baby or just a brilliant disguise!”
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16. Fade Away–This is a deep cut off of “The River.” I’ve always loved the notion of refusing to go quietly.
Money Lyric: Now rooms that once were so bright are filled with the coming night
15. American Skin (41 Shots)–This is Bruce at his most unapologetically political. I still get chills every time I hear this protest of a senseless killing.
Money Lyric: Well, is it a gun, is it a knife/Is it a wallet, this is your life/It ain’t no secret (it ain’t no secret)/No secret my friend/You can get killed just for living in your American skin
14. If I Should Fall Behind–I love this song because of the palpable emotion I felt when watching Bruce perform this song with the E Street Band back in 1999. That night the song became more than just another love song but a touching tribute to the band that made him who he is. It was as if Bruce was acknowledging that his greatest musical moments would always come from the partnership of those fellow musicians. This video is from the same reunion tour I saw. Watch the interaction with the band here singing along.
Money Lyric: If I should fall behind/Wait for me
13. My Hometown–No matter what I was doing as a high school student when this video came on MTV with Keith Richards sitting in I was drawn to the screen. Nobody encapsulated the heartache and hopelessness of this era like Bruce.
Money Lyric: Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows and vacant stores/Seems like there ain’t nobody wants to come down here no more/They’re closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks/Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back to your hometown
12. Used Cars–Another song from Nebraska this one deals with his childhood watching his father deal with the humiliation of being poor. It’s an indelible word picture. Alas, there seems to be no video of Bruce performing this tune.
Money Lyric: Now, my ma, she fingers her wedding band/And watches the salesman stare at my old man’s hands/He’s tellin’ us all ’bout the break he’d give us if he could, but he just can’t/Well if I could, I swear I know just what I’d do/Now, mister, the day the lottery I win I ain’t ever gonna ride in no used car again
11. Promised Land–This classic is from what I believe to be his greatest E Street release, Darkness on the Edge of Town. This is Rock and Roll the way it is intended to be played.
Money Lyric: Well there’s a dark cloud rising from the desert floor/I packed my bags and I’m heading straight into the storm/Gonna be a twister to blow everything down/That ain’t got the faith to stand its ground/Blow away the dreams that tear you apart/Blow away the dreams that break your heart/Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted
10. Rosalita–If I have to explain why this is in my top 10 then you just aren’t a Springsteen fan.
Money Lyric: Tell him this is last chance to get his daughter in a fine romance/Because a record company Rosie just gave me a big advance
9. Dancing In The Dark–The song that propelled Bruce from Rock and Roll greatness to super-stardom. It still rocks. And this was when Courtney Cox was still making good TV.
Money Lyric: You sit around getting older, there’s a joke here somewhere and it’s on me/I’ll shake this world off my shoulders, come on baby this laugh’s on me
8. My City of Ruins–This song was written prior to 9/11 but took on its greatest significance after that date. Still one of his most powerful lyrics ever. It took on even more added meaning in post Katrina New Orleans.
Money Lyric: Come on rise up! Come on rise up!
My City of Ruins
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7. Darkness On The Edge of Town–Pure greatness.
Money Lyric: Well everybody’s got a secret Sonny/Something that they just can’t face/Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it/They carry it with them every step that they take/Till some day they just cut it loose/Cut it loose or let it drag ‘em down/
6. The River–Do yourself a favor and get a hold of the spoken word intro to this from his 1975-85 live set. It brings the heartbreak of this song into stark relief.
Money Lyric: Then I got Mary pregnant, and man that was all she wrote/And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat/We went down to the courthouse/And the judge put it all to rest/No wedding day smiles no walk down the aisle/No flowers no wedding dress
5. Badlands–Yet another cut off of Darkness, this track kicks off with a rollicking keyboard and doesn’t let up until the end. A flawless tune.
Money Lyric: For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside/That it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive/I wanna find one face that ain’t looking through me/I wanna find one place, I wanna spit in the face of these
4. Atlantic City–The first video of his I ever saw from the first album of his that I bought. A moving depiction of the demise of a once great town and how that trickles down to honest hard-working people.
Money Lyric: Everything dies baby that’s a fact/But maybe everything that dies someday comes back/Put your makeup on fix your hair up pretty and meet me tonight in Atlantic City
3. Born To Run–It feels wrong putting this song all the way down at number 3. It’s the tune that first introduced me to the greatness of the greatest rocker of my lifetime. But, as great as it is, it’s not my favorite Springsteen song. But it’s oh so close. And oh so perfect. I never knew who Wendy was but I sure wanted to marry her.
Money Lyric: The highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive/Everybody’s out on the run tonight but there’s no place left to hide/Together, Wendy, we can live with the sadness/I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul/Someday girl I don’t know when we’re gonna get to that place/Where we really want to go and we’ll walk in the sun/But till then tramps like us baby we were born to run
2. Land of Hope and Dreams–I first heard this song in 1999 when Bruce closed the Staples show with it. To me this is his most hopeful, most redemptive and most faith filled song. It’s a Christ message wrapped in that vintage E Street sound.
Money Lyric:
This Train…
Carries saints and sinners
This Train…
Carries losers and winners
This Train…
Carries whores and gamblers
This Train…
Carries lost souls
This Train…
Dreams will not be thwarted
This Train…
Faith will be rewarded
This Train…
Hear the steel wheels singin’
This Train…
Bells of freedom ringin’
1. Thunder Road–Specifically the 1975 version that was on the live set. This song, to me, stands as the quintessential Springsteen song: the specific girl, the cars, the hopelessness, the feelings of inadequacy and longing, and ultimately the hope of something better out there waiting.
Money Lyric: The whole thing.
Thoughts
The top 10 list will be here this afternoon. In the meantime here are some thoughts from some of my recent reading.
From Gary Wills’ Head and Heart: American Christianities
America has defied predictions that secularization will dry up religious devotion. Separation of church and state did not endanger this religiosity but protected it. There are many sources of this strong historic fact–other streams than that of the Puritans. But they set much of the style for American religiosity, its biblical rhetoric, its sense of vocation. The jeremiad, that self-castigating sermon based on the sense of American mission, continues down through our history–in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, In William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold Speech, in Martin Luther King’s oratory. It was apparent in the millennial hopes of the Great Awakening and the chiliastic imagery of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” It shows up in the hellfire sermons of the revivals, in the question “Are you saved,” in “testifying” and “witnessing” to personal conversion. Our political conventions take some of their ritual from the revivals.
Again from Wills on American Individualism:
But the aspect of the Puritan heritage with the deepest impact was what Herbert Hoover would call “the American system of rugged individualism.” The Puritan’s introspection, their self-examination, the private conversion experience that set off soul from soul by God’s election, the minute scrutiny of the stages of conversion–all this made the individual prize his or her singular experience. Tocqueville discerned something like this when he introduced the new word individualsime into the analysis of America: ‘Individualism is a considered and tranquil trait that inclines each citizen to separate himself from the crowd of his fellows, withdrawing into the conclave of his family and friends so that, having formed a little society of his own, he gladly lets the larger society go its way without him.’ One coming to that passage directly after studying the Puritans could well imagine that it was meant to describe New England, where the individual withdrew into a private experience of being saved and then joined the elect circle of “visible saints,” separating himself from the unregenerate world, which had to wallow along toward damnation apart from him and his. And that private experience of being saved was like the personal assurance that would later be called “self-confidence” by Emerson–the highest virtue in his eyes.
From The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America by Susan Faludi:
In the years since 2001, we’ve been on a circus ride of impractical policies and improbable “protective” politics predicated as much on the desire to reinstate a social fiction as on the need to respond to actual threats. The enemy that hit us on September 11 was real. But our citizenry wasn’t just asked to confront a real enemy. The arrest and prosecution of our antagonists seemed to be only a part of our concern. We were also enlisted in a symbolic war at home, a war to repair and restore a national myth. Our retreat to the fifties reached beyond movie tropes and the era’s odd mix of national insecurity and domestic containment. It reached back beyond the fifties themselves. For this particular reaction to 9/11–our fixation of restoring an invincible manhood by saving little girls–was not so anomalous. It belonged to a long-standing American pattern of response to threat, a response that we’ve been perfecting since our original wilderness experience.
Thoughts? Agree? Disagree?
Today is my first day in the office marking the true beginning of my work as minister for the Agape Church of Christ.
As I sit here surrounded by boxes on my wife’s laptop I can’t help but feel a little bit overwhelmed. That, to me, is a great feeling.
Meeting with the shepherds has been a blessing. They want to proceed just like we would with a church plant and utilize some of the training we received this summer toward that end.
The question is: where do we start? What are the initial things that have to be done? How do we best impact this community? How do we be relevant and in tune with the culture without sacrificing theological depth?
In a nod to Mr. Barth I have just subscribed to the local paper.
I have a ton of ideas when it comes to setting a vision for this place. But let me ask you, my faithful readers, if you were beginning a new and fresh ministry what would you do? Joe and other church planters, let me hear you.
What should a young church focus on in the early days? I’d be anxious to hear you ideas and see how they mesh with what I am thinking. And, hopefully, those members of Agape that are reading this will feel led to respond as well.
I plan on using this space on Monday’s to talk specifically about the work of the church using this as my template to discuss what we are called to be.
Look for the return of top 10 Tuesdays tomorrow with the 10 greatest Springsteen songs of all time.
In the meantime, give me your feedback.
We finally got our phones turned on here at the new crib so we have internet access. Tomorrow I begin work in my new office setting it up. That will lead up to my first official Sunday a week from today.
I finally feel like I can catch my breath. Here’s a re-cap of what the last week has been like for us.
Sunday–We finished up the important packing. I took the big two back to the Disciples of Christ congregation because that is where they wanted to go. I was extremely disappointed with the sermon. It was on prayer and the points were patience, persistence and passion. I guess I expected more than alliteration.
We spent a large part of the day bidding farewell to friends in the Waco area. On Sunday night we went back to our old congregation. It was a fine farewell where I thanked the church for the past three years and bid them God’s blessings. We were
extremely hesitant to go but knew it was the right thing to do. We had found out on the Friday before that the Sunday evening service would be a short devotional followed by a congregational meeting about the future of the congregation. THAT was awkward.
The main reason that we were hesitant is because our closest friends while we were in Waco did not talk to us over the last few months beyond pleasantries. They went to being vocal supporters of ours to not even saying goodbye to our children before we left. Our kids loved them and they were hurt that they didn’t get to see them before we left. But it was obvious that there was no desire on their part to continue the relationship. That hurt the most.
Monday–But moving day was about new beginnings. We woke up to a perfect day for moving: upper 40s, windy and pouring down rain. I got a great deal on a moving truck. But as it slowly filled it became obvious that it was not big enough. So, after filling up the truck I went to U-Haul to see if they could hook up a trailer to a Budget truck. Luckily we were able to get the largest trailer hooked up. By the time I got back home with the trailer, however, the movers were gone and it was just me and Tracy doing the last bit. But guess what? The trailer wasn’t enough either. We finally got away from Waco about 4:00. We had a hotel in OKC that we stayed in. It was a long drive for me because the truck would typically hit 65 only on long downhill shots.
Tuesday–After a short night of sleep I got up and drove the truck the rest of the way to Ponca Village. At noon there were a large number of our new congregants there to unload. It was all done in about an hour. Then we had a few stick around to get beds put together and other bits of arranging finished. At 4:30 I got in the mini-van with both of the back seats removed and headed back to Waco to get the last bit of our stuff. At 5:30 the front left tire blew out on me on I-35. I could have waited two hours for a wrecker or change it myself on the side of the road. I opted to do it myself. That is typically no problem but it was just on the other side of a hill so it was a little disconcerting to see all of those vehicles pop out of nowhere at 75 plus miles an hour inches away from me. I was finally able to get back on the road about 8 and I drove all the way to Waco getting to my hotel about 1:30.
Wednesday–I spend the morning getting everything loaded up, the house cleaned and ready for the landlord, and some banking work done before heading back. I arrived in Fort Ponca around 8:00 Wednesday night. I decided to buy a Sirius radio for the drive home (seriously, we are not going to have Ponca Junction radio as our only choice) so I was blessed with NFL talk and the Bruce channel. They actually played the Staples concert I saw The Boss give back in 1999. See ya, XM.
Thursday–Another full day as our two oldest children both started school. We were nervous how they would do but, after scrambling to get them to their two respective campuses, they both fell in love with their teachers. After that I went to urgent care. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I woke up Sunday night with a pain in my side. I have Shingles. Isn’t that a fitting end to the most stressful six months of my life?
Friday and Saturday–Lots of unpacking. My dad came to help and we got most everything done.
Sunday–I got to sit and hear a great sermon and class from one of our members. It’s been a blessing to be here already. We finally got online and I can turn my attention to a new work.
We have been so tremendously blessed this week, even in the midst of all the things that went wrong. We have never been more embraced by a church family so quickly. The pace, attitude and spirit of the congregation is such a great fit for us. They genuinely seem to be glad that we are here. Our hope and prayer is that this is our last move. That we have finally found our home and our place and from everything we have experienced so far that seems to be the case.
I’m sure I’m forgetting stuff but I’ll fill in the gaps as we go along. Any questions about our move?
