So far this season the team has scored 9 goals in three matches and the grand daughter has scored 7 of them! YES…I am a proud grandpa.
First goal of the day.
Prepared to launch another goal.
Second match of the day and once again the ball slips past the goal keeper as the lady in black scores again.
The defender becomes merely a spectator to the last goal of the evening.
The theme this week is your choice, so I am going to take this opportunity to share music that is close to my heart and soul, gospel/inspirational music. The very purpose of gospel music is to honor the God of all creation and rejoice that heaven is the eternal destination of believers.
The Bible gives us the history of mankind. Genesis tells us where we came from and Revelation tells us where we are going. The truth is man has a soul and that soul will spend eternity somewhere. All of us are going to step into eternity some day and the only question is, “Are we prepared to step into the everlasting and where will we spend eternity.” Scripture tells us that those who refuse to believe that Christ is the only Son of God and will not accept Him as Savior will spend eternity in a place called hell. Those who acknowledge that Christ is the Savior, repent of their sinful behavior, and seek His forgiveness will depart this life and step into eternity to a place specially prepared for them by Christ Himself. In the third verse of the fourteenth chapter of the book of John, Christ tells the disciples, “…I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.” A few verses later Christ declares, “I am the way, the truth and the life, and no man comes to the Father except through Me.” So by the mouth of the Savior Himself, there is only one way to heaven, and that is the truth. The unique thing about the truth is that it does not require us to believe something in order for it to be true. The truth is the truth, whether we believe it or not. God has provided us with the gift of eternal life and salvation through Jesus Christ and the choice is ours to accept that gift and spend eternity with the Creator and the promise that we will never shed another tear! Okay, I’m through preachin’ now. I’m going to let the most uplifting music in the world take it from here. Have a blessed week.
Lucy, our American Cocker Spaniel and house princess, makes us say “Aww” on a regular basis. She is smart, funny, energetic, and always wants to know where her two humans are located. She prefers that we are in the same room so she can keep an eye on both of us with minimum effort. From her favorite chair in the den, she can keep track of activities in the front of the house too. Yes, Lucy is an awesome 2 year old cocker spaniel.
It has come to my attention that I have completely blown this week’s theme. I’m not even sure where I got the following theme, but I can assure you I didn’t make it up. Oh well, it’s posted and comments are coming in, so it’s too late to retract the content now. I’m just going to chalk this one up to a “senior moment.”
I honestly thought that the musical theme this week is body parts. Well, that could go a lot of different directions but the first thing that crossed my mind was the mind. There is Georgia on My Mind and Always on My Mind that come from classic country music and this song, Do I Ever Cross Your Mind. One of the first “vinyls” that I ever purchased was the classic Modern Sounds in Country Western Music by Ray Charles and I was a Ray Charles fan from that moment on. One of his last releases was a duets effort titled Genius Loves Company and one of my favorite tracks is Ray and Bonnie Raitt singing “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind.
I have several favorite female vocalists. Linda Ronstadt, Trish Yearwood, Carol King, Karen Carpenter, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, and the ladies of Heart are among my personal favorites. One artist that seems to get overlooked in the list of favorites is Anne Murray. While this is a signature Willie Nelson song, Anne had a hit with “Always on My Mind”.
Too much stress on the mind can cause headaches and heartaches and it appears that some people are a walking around looking to be an intentional heartache in someone else’s life. One of my favorite country artists of the 90’s was Dwight Yoakam. Dwight and Buck Owens championed the Bakersfield Sound in country music which brought a little hillbilly and a little rock and roll into mainstream country. While this may not have been a huge hit for Dwight, I love this video.
Okay, okay, let’s close this out with another Ray Charles classic, from his appearance on Midnight Special in 1976 “Georgia on My Mind.” Have a blessed week.
A couple of weeks ago I featured one of my hometown’s favorite sons, Leon Russell. While I love a lot of rock music, I guess my tastes have always leaned a little toward the blues side of the genre. I like the keyboard and guitar work usually found in blues music and there is no substitute for a little gravel in the voice. So today I am featuring another voice from my late sixties favorites. Today we will hear from Mr. Joe Cocker. One thing I have noticed about the music from the late sixties is that major artists seemed to be willing to collaborate on each other’s albums. If you read the credits on Joe Cocker albums you will find musicians like Leon Russell, Eric Clapton, Dickie Betts, Billy Preston, Jimmy Page, Rita Coolidge and Paul McCartney playing back-up roles. I suspect that doesn’t happen as often any more because of contract obligations. Joe started his musical career singing covers of Ray Charles and other blues artists. Several of his hits were cover songs. Paul McCartney said that Joe turned “With a Little Help From My Friends” in to a blues anthem and Paul was forever grateful. Joe hit the U.S. music scene with his appearance at Woodstock in 1969. Some of you younger readers may have to look that up. So, let’s get this party started “With a Little Help From My Friends”.
One thing you will notice that is a carry over from the blues influence is that the songs have a tendency to be longer than the typical top 40 radio hits. This next video comes from late in Joe’s career. You can tell that Cocker has returned to his blues roots and this is the sound that most Joe Cocker fans came to hear.
Another classic blues song that I have heard sung by Delbert McClinton and others gets the Cocker makeover and the results are showstopping.
One of my favorite Joe Cocker albums is “Organic” and one of my favorite songs from that release is “Into the Mystic”.
The last entry in this post is a song that speaks to a desire that most of us have. All of us would like to be understood and when we speak we may be thinking, “Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”. Have a blessed week.
Encore performance. No overview of Joe Cocker would be complete without “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.” As Elvis would say, “Thank you, thank you very much.”
Two heads are better than one!
The theme this week includes the words smoke, alarm, battery, and charge. For me the first tunes that popped into my head were “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” and “Smoke on the Water”. While the word battery is neither in the title nor the lyrics, my initial reaction to the prompt was “Start Me Up”. My mind drew another blank when trying to think of a song that featured the word charge. So I resorted to word association. Charge implied positive/negative which implies electric and that can only mean one thing… Electric Light Orchestra, right? Alarm left me in a similar place…so there was a group called Strawberry Alarm Clock back in the 60’s. I guess that will have to be close enough. Here we go.
Let’s start with alarm. Strawberry Alarm Clock was a group straight out of the 60’s hippie movement, except they didn’t look like real hippies and their music was a little too clean and contrived to be true to the true Haight-Ashberry crowd. You younger readers may have to look up hippie movement or “flower children” to get a better idea of what I am talking about. For lack of a better description this group might be classified as “Bubble Gum Hippie”.
Okay, let’s get back to smoke and some more serious music. Deep Purple projected an image much closer to the hippie/Woodstock crowd. Their music was also on the edge of what was described and heavy metal.
A group that has been active, popular and legendary in rock music for over 50 years is The Rolling Stones. They were among the first groups to put a hard edge to their songs. The Beatles were still in their boy band phase when The Stones came on the music scene. They started life as a cover band playing blues songs from other artists like Chuck Berry so their early music always had a little more bite to it than the Fab Four.
ELO’s biggest hit might be “Don’t Bring Me Down”, but while going through some of their catalog I found “Rock and Roll is King” and I really like it, so you get both today. Have a blessed week.
Recently we have had another round of cold weather. Last Thursday the daytime temperature dropped from 40 into the low 20’s with a few snow flurries. By Friday morning it was 9 degrees with a wind chill of zero so I re-loaded the bird feeders.
It’s always good to see cardinals in the neighborhood. There are at least three or four pairs that come to the feeders.
They prefer to feed when things are quiet. If the feeders are filled with other birds, the cardinals will either stay on the fence or go to the ground and feed on what the others kick out of the feeders.
Friday morning this youngster showed up on the back fence. Needless to say, there was not another bird in sight.
He hung out for 10-15 minutes before deciding that there was nothing of interest to him. This was the second appearance of a hawk on my back fence in a week and the third time this winter. I love birds of prey, but I’m praying he doesn’t consider my feeders as his personal hunting area. Still, I would watch hawks for hours, so he is welcome to return any time. Have a blessed day.
Lucy; “Come on dad, I’m trying to take a nap here.”
“You’re just not going to let it go until you get a photo are you? Okay, take the picture already.”
WooHoo…it’s freedom of choice week! Last time I had my pick I chose to feature Mr. Leon Russell. Leon was an iconic cog in a large wheel of talented piano players/keyboard artists in rock n roll music. So, today I am going to feature a few more ivory ticklers that you may or may not recognize. First up is none other than “Killer” Jerry Lee Lewis. Jerry Lee was one of the first “Wild Child” musicians in rock n roll, both on and off stage. He had two famous cousins, the Pentecostal evangelist Jimmy Swaggart and country music legendary piano player Mickey Gilly. Jerry Lee was the first keyboard player to get up off of the bench and pound the piano into submission. He, like Leon Russell was a major influence on Sir Elton John. While Lewis was a founding father of rock n roll, he was also a very good country artist, so I have selected one of his performances from the country side to feature here.
Who am I kidding? You have to see “Killer” in the beginning, when the whole world was asking what this thing called rock n roll was all about. It was all about A Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On!!!
One of my all time favorite keyboard masters was Ray Charles. Two of the first albums that I owned were by Ray. I also own one of his last albums, a duet compilation with various artists. Ray injected rock n roll with a heavy dose of the blues and the sound was awesome.
Next up is an artist that played in Ray Charles group before going his own way. Most bands have three guitars, lead, rhythm and bass, a drummer and maybe a keyboard. How many groups do you know that have three keyboards on the platform, a baby grand, a Hammond B3 organ, and electric keyboard? Billy Preston also had a horn section similar to Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago. It all made for a great sound.
I know, there was Fats Domino, Billy Joel, Floyd Cramer and others that I have left out, but no list of great keyboard artists is complete without Sir Elton John. I have been a fan of his since the beginning. I saw him twice in concert and they were the best concerts that I ever attended. The word “showman” just barely describes Elton’s talent and ability to connect with the crowd. The first time I heard “Your Song”, I was a fan and I purchased every Elton John album over the next decade. Elton is preparing for a three year farewell tour, but we will always have his recordings.
I saw Elton in the early 70’s and he rocked the house with Pinball Wizzard. This clip from his Vegas show is even more theatrical than his early efforts. Play on Elton, play on!
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