Lifehouse, Switchfoot, and summer fests, oh my!

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I decided at the last minute to spring over to the Lifehouse show in Seattle the other day. Surprisingly, they weren't sold out and I was able to grab a nice spot in the front row. Knowing where the band had been since "Hanging By A Moment" stopped climbing the charts, I was expecting to bump into some screaming teeny-boppers, religious fanatics, and fans of the TV show "Smallville". Well, apparently the teeny-bopper type is more of Lifehouse's fans than I thought. Oh well, I had a fun time even if I did have to hear a few more "OMG JASON WE LOVE YOU YOU'RE SO HOTT!"'s than I would like to. Opening act Rocco DeLuca put Lifehouse to shame, being both the more talented band and the band with the better stage presence. Seriously, this guy comes on stage with a dobro, a bassist, and two drummers and rocks out with a middle-eastern vibe. Lifehouse played most of my favorites by them and brought back some great memories of when I used to enjoy them much more than I do now. Their back-up guitarist stole the show, but they still put on a solid performance. Here's a rough set list, a song or two may be out of order:
Come Back Down
Blind
Days Go By
Take Me Away
The End Has Only Begun
Sick Cycle Carousel
Breathing
Only One
You and Me
Just Another Name
Am I Ever Gonna Find Out
Better Luck Next Time
Undone
Spin
Everything

Somewhere in Between
Hanging By A Moment

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Also, I've got some news from the Switchfoot camp. They've delayed their album again (September 13th now), but a tracklist (complete with track lengths!) is now available:
1. Lonely Nation 3:45
2. Stars 4:20
3. Happy Is A Yuppie Word 4:51
4. The Shadow Proves The Sunshine 5:04
5. Easier Than Love 4:29
6. The Blues 5:17
7. The Setting Sun 4:24
8. Politicians 3:28
9. Golden 3:36
10. The Fatal Wound 2:44
11. We Are One Tonight 4:42
12. Daisy 4:18

Oh, and if you haven't heard their latest radio single, "Stars", you can stream it here.

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I've been trying to keep up with live coverage of both Cornerstone and Creation East this week. I'm pissed that they cut out all of Switchfoot's show again, but what did you really expect from CMRadio? I've been recording the stream, but what I listened to yesterday from Relient K's show sounded pretty sweet. I've dug up some great news on Cornerstone on Technorati. They have WiFi at the fest this year, and you know what that means - bloggers! Here are some blogs providing good live coverage of the event: What's On My Mind, static on the radio, Confessions of a Flabby Ironman. If you really want to check out the official (read: crappy and far from live) live coverage, they're doing a podcast and posting some pictures. Rumor has it they'll have videos too, but "live videos" in JPUSA-speak is "60 second video clips in a crappy format several weeks later". Let's hope they post clips of all the "cool" bands soon.

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Festival Time!

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Some news from the tollbooth that caught my attention: Both Cornerstone festival and the Creation East festival will be featuring "live" coverage online this year. For those of us nerds who actually enjoy listening to music festivals (yes, even CCM-fests) online, this is great news. CMRadio.net will be broadcasting "Creation Radio", which is a mix of prerecorded music, speakers/preachers, interviews, news and concerts. Last year they cut a few of the more well known bands (Not airing shows from Jars of Clay or Switchfoot was not a good idea), but I'm hoping they'll air more this year. Some bands playing this year that my readers might be interested in include Switchfoot, Taylor Sorenson, Caedmon's Call, Relient K, David Crowder, and Phil Keaggy. For a full schedule and more details on the festival (which begins next week) click here.

Cornerstone festival's approach is based on podcasting. I'm assuming they'll run pictures and short video clips afterwards like they've done in the past as well. They have more bands than they know what to do with showing up, but who knows what'll actually make the podcasts? The page for the "live" podcast coverage is at http://www.cornerstonefestival.com/podcast/ .

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On a lighter note, here's a list of the albums I rated for the "Second Guess the Critic" game along with what I rated them (ordered by which album was rated each week we played):

Jars of Clay - Redemption Songs ***
W0rmSiGn - Big In Japan ***
Arcade Fire - Funeral *****
Low -The Great Destroyer ****
Lifehouse - Lifehouse **
Pedro the Lion - It's Hard to Find a Friend ***
Zilch - Platinum **
Michael Miller - When We Come To ****
Portishead - Dummy ****
Bill Mallonee - Perfumed Letter ****
Tess Wiley - Not Quite Me ****
tobyMac - Momentum **

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...and on a personal note, I picked up the Sundays' debut album and Whatever and Ever Amen by Ben Folds Five this morning.

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Computer troubles, An article, and Steve Taylor

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Well, expect to hear less around here. I'm experiencing some computer troubles, and last I heard from the other two people who allegedly can post here, one's looking for a new laptop and the other's out-of-state for a bit. Actually, rumor has it Kari's gotten engaged. I guess that's big enough news to mention here even if it is off-topic. Oddly enough, wanting to spend more time with her boyfriend is the main reason she said she's not up for attending press conferences at Creation East this year. Well, not good for us I guess, but great for them! Enough of my whining. I'm probably going to get a new e-mail address here, in addition to trying to finish the file transfer to the new server when we all get back from our computer issues/summer plans.

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Considering how much Christian music gets covered here, I thought this was a noteworthy article. It's called "Why On Earth (Or Elsewhere) Am I Enjoying Christian Rock?" It's really fascinating how diverse the people behind "Christian" music are, and how they're beginnning to attract more people out of the stereotypical-young-evangelical crowd.

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Speaking of Christian music and stereotypes about it.... I feel a need to plug Steve Taylor. Some of you probably recognize as a CCM pioneer who's put out quite a bit of material. Some of you probably are more familiar with his production work (See Sixpence None the Richer) or his writing for the Newsboys. In addition to that, I'm happy that someone opened up Christian music to good satire (Would we have been able to have Five Iron Frenzy or Relient K without Steve? I doubt it). Of course, now that I check on the site with his mp3s that I usually use, I see that the song I was thinking of (the 1982 classic "I Want To Be a Clone") is not available as a free download anymore because iTunes is selling it now. Dangit, I know I'm not the only nerd who's introduced some younger CCM-fans to Steve through that song. Well, rather than try to pick a second favorite, I'll just post the link to the main download page for Steve Taylor's music. Those of you who're Sixpence nuts like myself will want to make sure to stop by the page with the tribute album to Steve on it. Man, I forgot that Starflyer 59 and Fleming and John are on that too. Good stuff. I always have a good chuckle at the medley that DigHayZoose put together for that album. I have no idea who the heck they are, but any band that can make a random chunk of a song by Mortal feel like it belongs in a larger medley is cool in my book.

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CW04-Beta (Return of the Creation West reviews)

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Well, it's not quite the whole site yet, but we have most of the Creation West 2004 coverage up again. It's kind of a "beta" version, since I need to work out a few kinks yet (some pictures make the layout stretch, some links are broken, and a few pictures are broken). I figured something is better than nothing. I'll be re-posting some of the other album reviews and concert reviews soon, and then there'll be some reviews of more recent CDs and events. If you find any specific problems with the Creation coverage, leave a comment on this entry about it. (There is one mp3 link in there too, if you can dig it up.) You can read the Creation West 2004 coverage (featuring Switchfoot, Cool Hand Luke, Jars of Clay, and more) here.

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On a more personal note, I've picked up a few new CDs recently besides that Sam Ashworth album I mentioned the other day.

• 77s - Tom Tom Blues
• Caedmon's Call - self-titled
• Steve Taylor - Liver

Yeah, I know, more "Christian" music. Deal with it. That 77s album is actually really good, and the Caedmon's album isn't half bad either.

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Sleeping At Last

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Ok, so there's this little group called Sleeping At Last that I've been checking out lately. They did a tour with Switchfoot a few years ago, and before that they had some hype because Billy Corgan was into them. I'm not entirely sold on them being good, but it's not really a bad listen either. Anyway, their indie release, Capture, is now available for downloading. You can check it out at their website. I'd comment more, but I haven't listened to this yet. Rumor has it this is pretty good though.

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Sam and Matt

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Last night I went to see Sam Ashworth and Matt Slocum at the Q Cafe. They played nearly all of the songs on Sam's new album and also "I Won't Stay Long", which Sam wrote for Sixpence None the Richer's self-titled album several years back. Matt's not sounding much like Sixpence anymore, he's playing the acoustic guitar and the dobro now instead of the electric guitar. His signature style is there though, and it's still solid music. I gave a listen to Sam's album last night after the show too and it's pretty good. Back to the show - Sam and Matt wound up opening because of another event that one of the girls from the intended opening act (vocal trio Late Tuesday) was at. Because of this, Sam and Matt played for about 45 minutes while their "opening act" played after them for another 45 minutes. Late Tuesday was alright but made a few embarassing mistakes. It's a good thing that in a small coffeehouse, we can just laugh that off. Good show otherwise though. Not one of the best I've seen but it was worth it to catch up with Sam and Matt and get some albums signed. I also got to meet up with a few people I know from the Over the Rhine orchard. I'll try to have a full review of this (and possibly even audio!) up sometime soon. I've been moving files over to the new server today and we should be fully up within the week. Oh, and here's a setlist for last night's Sam and Matt show:
Look Back
If She Needs Me
Children Leap
Bridget
All Your Life
I Won't Stay Long
Loved One
talking about the dobro
World On Fire
Eleanor
All About Me
Another Day

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X & Y

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You know, I've never really understood what the big deal was about Coldplay. I have a copy of Parachutes on my shelf that I pull out once in a while when I want to try again at "getting it". I kind of like "Clocks", but it sounded to me like "Speed of Sound" was lame rehashing of "Clocks" - which took a little out of both songs for me. Well, now they have a new album coming out - and until just now, I didn't really care too much. I've been tipped on to a streaming copy of the new album at MTV's "The Leak". I've only listened to a few songs so far, but I'm starting to think that X & Y could be the first Coldplay album that I can actually enjoy. That'll be nice. It sounds like they're trying to stop being just "the poor man's U2/Radiohead" and started trying to grow up a bit - they do sound a little like the big boys once in a while, but for the most part it seems like they're really coming into their own here. They also get points from me for taking a few hints from Cool Hand Luke and adding some more ambient sounds and tasty beats to their material. Oh, and the album comes out next week, on June 6th. I have a feeling this'll be the "cool" CD to have for a bit....anyone know of any good sales coming up for this one?

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