Good call, Jeff.

I’m 41. I grew up in Christian suburbia (Bainbridge Island), went to nothing but Christian schools through two years of college (in keeping with rebellious-teen spirit, I rejected all Christian music and embraced punk, classic rock, Goth and New Wave in bewilderingly equal amounts before settling into New Romantic singer-songwriters like Lloyd Cole, The Blue Nile). After transferring to Western in the mid-80s, I embraced alterna-Eighties like Husker Du, The Replacements, Mission of Burma, Echo and the Bunnymen, etc.)

By virtue of where I lived, I also got into Canadian music quite a bit, and artists like Bruce Cockburn and Tom Cochrane helped me settle into a singer-songwriter mode through the early 90s (Peter Himmelman, Dar Williams, Graham Parker, Warren Zevon, Robbie Fulks, Red House Painters, etc.) That led me to my “103.7 FM The Mountain” period in the late 90s … and then the Balkanization of music got to be so enormously splintered that no one radio station could keep my interest any longer, and I fell out of listening to new music for several years.

Recently, in rediscovering my Christian self somewhat, I’ve discovered some fine Christian artists whose sound runs along the lines of popular alternative today without outright mimicking or lick-ripping. There are plenty of treacly, crappy artists out there in CCR (Conetmporary Christian Radio), and there are some great artists who are marginalized because of their faith — or because their faith is insufficiently mainstream for conservative radio programmers. (And I don’t mean ideologically conservative … I mean, conservative as in unwilling to take risks outside of focus-group-approved material.)

No one artist bridges and encompasses every step of my musical journey like Jars Of Clay. They rock hard without being abrasive or unmelodic, they practice faith in their songs without overt preaching, and they can weave a dense tapestry of sound around a killer hook and crochet effortless great timeless songs like I’ve never heard before.

I don’t wear glasses (contacts rule), I haven’t driven a scooter since 1982 and I don’t wear black to the exclusion of all else. I’m gainfully employed, graying at the temples, scornful of Starbucks, usually vote Democrat … and am, well, just some guy.

And I love the Mariners with all my irreparably broken heart.

The only way we could be any more diverse would be to have a member of Al-Qaeda start blogging with us.

I hereby nominate this as Quote of 2006!

One of the two best gigs I’ve ever seen (out of several hundred mostly 1987 – 1998) was Sonic Youth playing Belfast in August 1990.

They’d just signed to Geffen and released Goo and were a week away from headlining Saturday night at Reading Festival in front of about 50,000 people, yet somehow they were playing in the Connor Hall in the bar of Belfast art college. This venue was slightly bigger than my living room. It was a fucking epic, two and half hour jam/racket. I didn’t care for Sonic Youth going into the gig and I came out loving them. I also kicked over Lee Renaldo’s mic stand. Sorry Lee.

Not that you’re wondering but the other best ever gig was Mano Negra at the Sheffield Leadmill a month later.

Recommened listening for 2006:
Fujiya and Miyagi “Transparent Things”
Micah P Hinson “Micah P Hinson and the Opera Circuit”.
I saw Micah Hinson playing support to Dave Bazan at the Tractor a few months back. He was quite a bit better than Dave.

Also, if you like Sufjan you should check out Danielson. Sufjan use to play with them when they went as The Danielson Famile. Danielson’s Ships is my album of the year. It’s not the most assesable ablum ever, but if you value creativity and originality in your music you might like them.