What if every Christmas people got together and sung:

"Away in a feeding trough, no crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus laid down His sweet head..."

(In vintage High School essay style) Webster's dictionary defines a manger as "a trough or open box in a stable designed to hold feed or fodder for livestock."

The angel appeared to Mary and told her that she would conceive and give birth to a son and that "He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever, his Kingdom will never end!" (Luke 1:30-33)

God humbled Himself and became human. He hung out with lepers and sinners and tax collectors, and it all started when He was born in a stable amongst farm animals, using a feeding trough as His bed.

And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. She gave birth to her first child, a son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them. (Luke 2:6-8)

The Prince of Peace slept in a feeding trough on his first night on earth. The savior that billions of people for two thousand years have asked to rearrange their life was born in the lowliest, most humiliating standards of living.

This Christmas we will sing, pray, take communion and listen to a sermon; We will have fellowship, laugh, tell stories, maybe cry a little; We will exchange gifts, watch old movies, stuff our faces with ham and turkey and stuffing, and hang stockings on mantlepieces. And I hope that somewhere in there, I can make the time to reflect on what it means for my life that my Savior began His life in the humblest of settings, that He lived His life as a servant to all people, and that the Son of God brought peace not with a sword, but by dying on a cross.

This Christmas, when I sing, I want to sing as if God Himself were in the room. When I take communion, I want to eat as if God and His Church were sitting down for a meal. When I pray, I want to pray as it God is actually listening. When I listen to a sermon, I want to hear what God Himself is saying. I believe that all of those things are true this week and every week and every minute of every day. One of the reasons I believe them is because this story didn't begin the way other stories of redemption, prosperity and peace begin. It didn't begin with the highest and the mightiest calling down orders from their ivory tower; It began with God Himself coming and serving and going through everything we go through.

I want to see God in the fellowship, in the laughter, in the stories. I even want to search for God in the traditions and rituals we've created for this season (even in the turkey and stuffing if He's there).

And I want to think about the advent themes of joy, peace, hope and love through the eyes of a newborn Savior, born in a feeding trough and praised by shepherds.

Merry Christmas everyone, see you after the holidays!

Labels: Jesus

Which brings us to my favorite list to think about, my favorite albums of the year.


15. Ghostface Killah - Fishscale
Most of the rap music I heard this year drowned in misogyny, skits and boring beats and lyrics. Fishscale had the skits, it had its share of misogyny (the main reason I rarely listen to it, and why it's at the bottom), a title that announced it's lyrical starting point, but it's got beats and wordplay right up there with the best rap albums of the last five years.

14. Ray LaMontagne - Till the Sun Turns Black
If Nick Drake was a woman and he had a kid with Van Morrison Ray LaMontagne reaches into the Van Morrison / Nick Drake bag of tricks and finds his own voice. This is my favorite album of the year for those introspective moments in life.

13. Beirut - Fulag Orkestar
I've heard it described as Balkan wedding marches, and that's accurate, but it doesn't capture the warm, vibrant and refreshing sounds led by New Mexico-to New York's Zach Condon. If I would've heard it earlier it might have been a top ten album.

12. Rodrigo y Gabriela - Rodrigo y Gabriela
This is your basic "Boy meets girl in a heavy metal band in Mexico, metal band breaks up, boy and girl discover mutual love of flamenco, folk, rock and Spanish music, boy and girl move to Europe, find growing buzz behind a mythical live show, find a producer that helps them get their live show sound in the studio, cut album, and watch said album debut at #1 in Ireland" story. Really fun, really exciting, creative music. This is the 2006 album I expect to grow on me the most in the coming years.

11. The Roots - Game Theory
The Roots parts have often been greater than their sum. The main draw has been hip hop with live instrumentation, and they are indeed one of the most talented bands working today. They have the ability to groove like Marvin Gaye, tear it up like Bad Brains and write songs that stick to the roof of your mouth like caramel. But their albums usually been all over the place - a handful of classic songs surrounded by a bloated amount of filler. And even the albums that are packed with classic songs and little filler never seemed to work as albums, merely as collections of songs.

With "Game Theory" all that has changed. The musicians remain at the top of their game, but this time they have something to say. The emcee Black Thought takes on the war, Katrina, white collar crime and more, the pace rarely lets up and the band delivers an album that flows perfectly (well, almost - that last track can be hard to get through) and is cohesive, a hallmark of my favorite albums. It's the Roots finally getting it right. Now if they'll add that trademark funk and soul back into their sound, maybe they could knock one out of the park.

10. TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
I had an on-again off-again relationship with TV on the Radio this year. One week I thought the album was brilliant and played it constantly, the next I thought it was overrated, incoherent and I didn't bother. But from time to time a song would pop up on shuffle ("Hours", "Province" and "Wolf Like Me" being the usual suspects) that made me rethink my renunciation of the band and redeclare their greatness, iPod style. Lather, rinse, repeat. This sounds like nothing else out there today - something like a barbershop quartet trapped in a mudslide, pounding on drums and yelling for help - and once it gets under your skin, all you can do is give in and pay attention.

9. Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
When my friends and I heard "Crazy" early this year, we all assumed it was going to be absolutely huge. We were right of course, and patted ourselves on the back as DangerMouse and Cee-Lo claimed the world's ear on behalf of geeks everywhere. But sometimes I wished "Crazy" wouldn't have been the most overplayed song of the year. St. Elsewhere is a creative and infectious album that I rarely listen to thanks to hearing "Crazy" over and over again. But it's still fantastic and sometime in March or April I'm sure it will once again be a staple in my listening rotation.

8. The DFA - Remixes Chapter One (and two)
The DFA (James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem and Tim Goldsworthy) made music meant for the dance floor accessible for the living room. Here, many of their numerous remixes from the last few years are collected in one place. Being a compilation, it probably doesn't belong on a proper list, but this was an album that I listened to over and over again for months. Even though each track has its own personality and were created without the intention of being an album, it somehow works as a cohesive album. Presumably to make more money, these were released as two separate discs, and I think the first one works better front to back. No matter what, it's worth checking out, whether your a rave guru or just a casual music fan with a car stereo.

7. Subtle - for hero: for fool
For my money, this was the best rap album of the year, featuring a man with an odd unique voice named Dose One. The band has performed together for years, and this current partnership is apparently going to yield a trilogy of albums. "For hero: for fool" is the second in this trilogy, and it works the way any middle feature should - it moves everything up a notch, it opens up tons of possibilities, it captures the strengths of the original, builds on them and adds new tricks that fit seamlessly with the old tricks. It's an album that requires multiple dedicated listens - each listen will unearth new depths of each song, and the album will slowly reveal itself as a modern day masterpiece.

6. Incubus - Light Grenades
For many years I've counted Incubus amongst my very favorite bands. I've loved every release, and Make Yourself is right up there with my all-time favorites. They've got my number - something they do, the way they write, the way they play, the way Brandon sings and others harmonize, hits my sweet spot. So I waited all year to see if this, finally, would be the seminal album the fanboys know Incubus is capable of making. They've got talent most casual fans don't know about, with roots in funk, rock, punk, soul and of course, power pop. Their live show is excellent, and they've all proven themselves to be capable improvisational musicians.

Light Grenades, then, is the next step in their ongoing evolution as a band. It's not the album I wanted it to be - too many cheesy lyrics, too many chances passed up, too much of Brandon O'Brien's loud, compressed, muddy sound. Most of it sounds tame and pleasant. Which is not to say it's bad - it's very very good mainstream pop that moonlights as power ballads. But this is a band that can pull off something no one else is pulling off. Witness the harmonies on "Pendulous Threads", the chest-slapping-as-percussion-instrument of "Paper Shoes", or DJ Killmore taking out his rage on a variety of pianos and jazz organs, most notably on "Rogues". Witness the best track At the Drive-In didn't make in the title track. Even the sloppy and unfinished pair of "Earth to Bella" tracks are as beautiful as ever.

But in the end, it's an uneven album with some truly uninspired lyrics, and a couple ideas that I think should've been fleshed out more ("Paper Shoes" is missing something, "Earth to Bella" uses the same lyric too many times, "Diamonds and Coal" shouldn't take the easy way out by substituting its chorus as a lyric just to fill the rhyme requirement). It's best moments point to a band that's capable of proving the nay-sayers wrong, and I'll be happily listening to it a year from now, at least in shuffle form.

5. Pearl Jam - Pearl Jam
If you liked Pearl Jam at any point in your life, pick this up and prepare to be taken back to the early 90s via the early-to-mid 70s. The lyrics are coherent and pointed, the arena-ready anthems are as good as ever, and everything comes together for a band that I was ready to put in the 'fond memories' pile. They've still got it.

4. Voxtrot - Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives EP / Your Biggest Fan (single)
It's not a proper album (they have two 5-song EPs and a 3-song single, but no full length yet), but for the price of a normal album you can own both of these mini-albums, so I'm coupling them together and charting them high.

Voxtrot is a musical ambush, with all weapons firing. Once the guitar, piano, bass and drums kick in, they never let up until the final track on Your Biggest Fan. It's that track, "Sway", that brings it this far up on my list of favorites. It sounds like it would've worked fine sped up, but they allow it to perculate slowly, adding instrumentation as they go along that's subtle, does what it came to do, and then makes room for the next violin or piano swell. It's beautiful and it points to a band that's capable of making one of the all-time great albums. Now if they'd just release a proper album for us.

3. Cold War Kids - Robbers & Cowards
This is "not a Christian band" that met at an evangelical Christian college and tells stories of sin, repentance and redemption. The music is part-garage rock, part-fallen gospel choir, that sounds like the soundtrack of a revival breaking out in a barroom. Nathan Willett provides the vocals and piano, and his squeal is of the love-it-or-hate-it variety. The band sounds like it's taking their numerous instruments and beating them up, creating music that's alive and vivid. It's mostly a collection of their three EPs ( although there's good stuff left off of the album from those same EPs) and it's all re-recorded to give it a meatier sound. That all stops it from sounding cohesive front to back, something I hope they can pull off on their next release. Until then, I'll happily turn this one up to eleven.

2. Ned Collette - Jokes & Trials
This came out of absolutely nowhere. I downloaded an MP3 from CokeMachineGlow, that was relatively buried in the site, that would quickly become my favorite track of the year. With some birthday money, I splurged and downloaded the album from his site. See, Ned's from Australia, and his album isn't available in America. Luckily, he's got the whole thing available for download (at a high bitrate, if that matters to you) for a little more than 15 bucks.

On the surface, Ned Collette is a folk singer. But each song takes on a life of its own and runs away from the folk label with weird electronic elements, random synthesizer solos, slide guitars that don't sound like country, Velvet Undergound-ish dirges, choir-like moments that sound like his friends got together and sang in a circle, and Ned's deliberate, perfect voice. The arrangements are already the work of a master, and since this is his solo debut, I'm hoping there's a long career ahead for him to explore and create music to sleep in to, fall in love to, drive in the rain to, relax to, write to, live to.

Which brings us to...

1. The Black Keys - Chulahoma EP
The Black Keys are Dan Auerbach on vocals and guitar, and Patrick Carney on Drums. They don't use overdubs, so Dan's playing bass here as well. The music sounds full and warm. There's a primal quality to it, music to hunt and gather to. It's the best rack of ribs you've ever eaten: ribs that are so tender and juicy, they fall off the bone and fall apart in your mouth, swimming in the best barbecue sauce summer can buy. It's raw and dirty, it's spit-shined, not polished. There's not a wasted note on the album, and for a half hour each note seems more substantial than the last - they're songs that will work their way into your head and work you over until you're a pile of cathartic joy.

Released back in May to finish up a record deal before they moved to a different label, I thought this would be a nice diversion until they released their next full length later in 2006. It's a short collection of Junior Kimbrough covers, a Mississippi Delta blues guitarist with a unique, trance-like style that's hard to imitate and clearly a hero of the Black Keys.

It's only six songs. Six blues songs performed by two people. It's under a half hour in length and it consists entirely of covers. But it was the album I played and enjoyed the most in 2006, one that I will mark as indispensable in my music collection.

Labels: music

Here are my top 15 songs of the year. Although these are numbered 1-15 to represent which was my most favorite (1), the whole thing works (pretty) well as a mix in the same order.

Where an official MP3 is available, I'll provide a link (MP3) that you can right-click/save. Otherwise I'll provide the last MP3 blog I saw it posted at. And since the internet is allowing us to actually hear most of these, I'm going to forgo the commentary. Edit: I changed the order of these slightly after I initially posted them. Am I being obsessive? You be the judge.


15. "Cowbell" by Tapes 'n Tapes | MP3

14. "In the Round" by The Cardigans

13. "Lowlife" - Scanners | MP3

12. "Wolf Like Me" by TV on the Radio | Link

11. "Three More Days" by Ray LaMontagne | Link

10. "Crazy"- Gnarls Barkley

9. "Gravity's Rainbow" by The Klaxons | MP3

8. "The Fatalist" by Robbers on High Street | MP3

7. "Postcards from Italy" by Beirut (The first two minutes are good, but around 2:00 the song goes in a different direction and it's fantastic) | MP3

6. "Chicago" (Adult Contemporary Easy Listening Version) by Sufjan Stevens | Link

5. "Trouble" by Voxtrot | MP3

4. "Young Folks" by Peter Bjorn and John | MP3

3. "Ta Douleur" by Camille | MP3

2 . "We Used to Vacation" by Cold War Kids | Link

1. "The Laughter Across the Street" by Ned Collette (The last half of this song is out of this world) | MP3

Labels: music

My wife and I have been watching Studio 60 this season (which, now that it's stopped preaching at us every week and focused on the story and characters, is a really good show). Last week they had a Christmas episode which was beautifully done, especially the final scene, an extended musical scene featuring performers from the Tipitina's Foundation, an organization that's helping musicians affected by Katrina.

They played the most beautiful arrangement of a Christmas song I've ever heard, "O Holy Night," featuring:

Troy Andrews, Trumpet
Kirk Joseph, Sousaphone
Roderick Paulin, Saxophone
Frederick Shepherd, Saxophone
Stephen Walker, Trombone
Mervin "Kid Merv" Campbell, Trumpet
Bob French, Drums

It's available as a free download at www.nbc.com/studio60, or you can right click/save this link.

Someone asked me a couple weeks ago if I was in the Christmas spirit, and since it was still more than 60 degrees outside in late November, I wasn't feeling it. But now that our tree is up, the weather outside is frightful and we're well into December, I'm officially in the Christmas spirit.

This season is special for Jesus reasons, but it's also special for all the joy it musters up inside of me. Something about it makes me feel like a kid again. It gives us a taste of what the world would be right if everything was as it should be. I like making lists, so I made a top ten list of all the superficial reasons I love the Christmas season:

(10) Driving around and looking at all of the houses that have been magnificently illuminated (I'll admit that this was better in Iowa.)

(9) Massive Nativity scenes (Like the ones in front of Churches or random houses that you can see a mile away.)

(8) All the Christmas characters (Including, but not limited to: Santa, the elves, the Grinch, Rudolph, Frosty and anyone featured in the Rankin-Bass cartoons.)

(7) Candy canes (The original mint kind, not the weird multi-colored ones. Strangely, I don't like regular old mints all that much.)

(6) Bundling up and dropping change in the Bell Ringer's jars (This is my favorite time of the year to go to the grocery store. Everyone's in scarves, gloves, coats, sweaters, shirts, undershirts and some form of a hat or earmuffs, and it's still frigid, yet we're all willing to stand around in the cold rummaging through our many pockets for loose change.)

(5) Taking a nap by a Christmas tree (We put up a tree this year, and it brings a boderline-supernatural sense of peace to the room)

(4) Downtown Chicago (The Daley Center Christmas Tree, all the other hundreds of trees, the horns, the lions at the Art Institute, the Marshall Fields/Macy's windows, the skating rink at Millenium park, the street musicians playing Christmas songs, Magnificent Mile lights, FAO Schwartz, carriage rides and all the rest. There's no place like Chicago during the holidays.)

(3) "It's a Wonderful Life" (I've seen it enough now that I can enter in at any time and I'll be a puddle afterwards. How can Christmas be Christmas without:

"My mouth's bleeding, Burt! My mouth's bleeding! Zuzu's petals...Zuzu's petals!"

"Mr. Gower cabeled you need cash, stop. My office instructed to advance you up to twenty-five thousand dollars, stop. Hee Haw and Merry Christmas! Sam Wainwright."

"A toast to my big brother George: The richest man in town."

"Happy New Year to you... in jail."

"George Bailey, I'll love you 'til the day I die. "

"This is a very interesting situation! "

"He's making violent love to me, mother! "

"You speak for yourself, Miss B. "

"I wish they were rabbits."

"Every man on that transport died! Harry wasn't there to save them, because you weren't there to save Harry."

"Ah, youth is wasted on the wrong people."

Case in point: As I was typing these quotes up, the tears started coming. Other than Shawshank, no movie affects me the way this one does. I miss when this was on 24-7 for weeks at a time. Watching it on DVD just isn't the same.)

(2) Snow (In December, I love snow. It gives me good vibes, it brings up good memories, I don't mind walking in it, the cold, the ice or even the fact that our already-feeble amount of parking spots just got cut by a third. In January, I might have a different reaction, but Christmas isn't Christmas without snow.)

(1) Christmas music (Whether in my home, at the store or on WLIT, I love Christmas music. I'm partial to the crooners, the Vince Guaraldi Charlie Brown Christmas music and good jazz renditions of old standards - the John Coltrane variety, not the Kenny G variety. But really any Christmas music puts me in an instantly good mood.)

What are your favorite things about Christmas? Any favorite tunes we should hear, movies we should watch or other Christmas stuff that makes you feel like a kid again?

Labels: Favorites, Other