Writings from the Dirt Road

A lot of my friends have filled out this list from the BBC. So, I thought I’d give a shake at it.

Here’s how it works:

1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2. Italicize those you intend to read.
3. Mark in red the books you LOVE. (A long with others, I’m boldly italicizing ones I love.)
4. Reprint this list in your blog.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible - I guess I have to love it, don’t I?
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - I feel so validated. I thought I was obligated to love this book, but I’m finding out all my friends hated it, too.
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - The complete works?? Eh. No.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald One of the few books I was compelled to read in high school that I actually liked.
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - Did. Not. Enjoy. It.
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding - Did. Not. Enjoy. It.
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert - Seen the movie. Sting was in it! Counts? No?
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens I have a confession to make. I got halfway through this and gave up and read the Cliff’s Notes. Pretty sure I failed that test in World History.
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding - Seen the movie. Adriene has the book. Not sure it really is a “classic?”
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville - Maybe someday.
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson - Read “A Walk In the Woods” by Bryson. His tone and demeanor in the book really turned me off on him. Not really interested in reading more by him.
75. Ulysses - James Joyce - Perhaps? I’ve heard good things about it.
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery That was a LONG time ago.
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare - I’ve also read Andy Coan’s adaption where he turned all of the characters in the story into my fraternity brothers!
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - Saw the play. Counts? No?

I’ve come to release that a lot of my favorite bands from my college/high school years that were, sadly, confined to the CCM ghetto are quickly fading away. Many of my younger friends have no idea who these bands are or what they sound like, so I’m creating a series of posts to educate the young listener.

Who Are They?
The Violet Burning is a rock band that formed in Long Beach, California. The band has essentially become the primary project of Micheal Pritzl, the vocalist and guitarist of the band. Other members of the band have changed frequently, but Pritzl remains the sole constant in the band. Unlike many Christian bands, The Violet Burning draws influences from unlikely bands such as The Verve or The Cure as well as more common influences such as U2 and Smashing Pumpkins. The Violet Burning has remained essentially independent of the music industry, Christian or mainstream, releasing albums and touring on their own. Much like The Psalms, individual songs by the Violet Burning portray hope or despair, but taken as a whole, also much like Psalms, the body of work reflects the Christian who wears his heart on his sleeve.

Brief History
The Violet Burning emerged from the Vineyard Church music scene in 1989 and released their first album Chosen a year later. The band released Strength in 1992. Both albums are reflective of late 80’s/early 90’s music and are very upfront in their declaration of Christian faith. Afterwards the band went through a dark period professionally and personally. While some demos were recorded, the band was dormant until 1996 when Pritzl pulled in the assistance of guitarist Andrew Prickett (The Prayer Chain) and drummer/percussionist/producer Steve Hindalong (The Choir) and released an album originally titled Lipstick and Dynamite Wonder, but the label balked at the album title and released it as the self-titled The Violet Burning. The album dredged the depths of despair and hopelessness and might well be one of the saddest and bleakest Christian albums ever released.

The experience proved cathartic and in 1998, The Violet Burning reemerged with the more hopeful album Demonstrates Plastic and Elastic which incorporated more electronic drumming. In 2000, the band re-recorded several songs from their earlier albums with a slower tempo and more relaxed feel and released it as I Am A Stranger In This Place: Experiments in Vibe and quickly returned to the studio to release Faith and Devotions of A Satellite Heart a worship album that has enjoyed some popularity in worship circles, particularly in the Vineyard churches. Both albums feature female vocals by Melissa Barnett accompanying Pritzl’s vocals.

Pritzl then joined the independent album label Northern Records, headed up by former members of The Prayer Chain, for subsequent releases. In 2002, Pritzl took a break from the band to release a more electronica sounding solo project under the name The Gravity Show. Many of the songs from the album, Fabulous Like You have been folded back into The Violet Burning in their live shows. In 2003, Pritzl reunited with Andrew Prickett, longtime bass player Herb Grimmaud Jr., and Sam West (Stavesacre) to release This Is The Moment, an album of decidedly shorter pop songs. A year later, Pritzl released acoustic versions of many Violet Burning songs as a solo project titled Hollow Songs. The band released a live album in 2005 titled The Loudest Sound of My Heart and in 2006 released their most recent album Drop Dead

Where Are They Now?
Presumably, still alive and kicking. Of all the bands I’ve covered so far, The Violet Burning remains the most active, though they haven’t toured extensively since 2006. Micheal Pritzl joined 77’s singer/guitarist Michael Roe to tour as a duo titled “Roe vs. Pritzl” during 2007. The duo has recorded an album worth of songs together, but no release date has yet been given. Also, during 2007, The Violet Burning released many songs online through their website, including demos from various eras of the band and an entire Christmas album. The band has posted European tour dates on their website and Pritzl has mentioned he has other projects in line to work on, but no further information has been given to date.

If You Bought Only One Album….
Of all the bands I’ve covered, The Violet Burning has been the most consistent in quality and has really only improved as they’ve gotten older. Chosen and Strength are classics, but have a dated sound. The self-titled album is a little dense to for a first impression of the band. Both Faith and Devotions… and I Am A Stranger In This Place are good, but not very representative of the band, unless you are seeing them during one of their worship sessions. I think I’m going to have to go with their most recent album, Drop Dead which sounds incredible. You can read a short review of the album by me here on this site.

Get Thee to iTunes! Or Make Your Own Mix Tape for 10 bucks
Unfortunately, it appears only four of the Violet Burning’s albums are available on iTunes, so we’ll limit the mix tape to just those albums, but there are great songs from other albums that will be missing here.

1.) Silver - self-titled
2.) Goldmine - self-titled
3.) Moon Radio (including the fade, which is a separate track) - Demonstrates….
4.) Berlin Kitty - Demonstrates…
5.) Oceana - Demonstrates….
6.) Radio Jesus Superstar - This Is The Moment
7.) Heaven Holds My Heart - This Is The Moment
8.) Do You Love Me? - Drop Dead
9.) Already Gone - Drop Dead
10.) One Thousand Years - Drop Dead

It’s not often that I get to go out to concerts anymore, but Adriene and the girls were out of town visiting her parents so I decided I needed to get out of the house for the evening. Fortunately, Paper Route was playing a show at the Masquerade so I had my plans set. This was a band that I saw at Cornerstone Festival a year ago. I have confess, they are a really hard band to describe. There are only four members of the band, but they play about ten instruments between them. In addition to guitars and keyboards, there are bells, a xylophone, electronic drum triggers, a slide guitar, and more littering the stage. The best description I’ve heard for them is “Americana meets electronica” and that doesn’t seem too far off. I guess they compare to the similarly named Postal Service.

I really wish more people were there Friday night to see this band, but the crowd was small. Maybe I’m on the cutting edge and more people will discover this band. One can only hope. Friday night’s performance was even better than the Cornerstone show I saw as they seem to have more stage presence and confidence on stage and the addition of a live drummer only added to the strength of the music. They played the songs from their new ep, Are We All Forgotten and some from their earlier self-titled ep. After listening to the new ep, I really see a jump in quality in their music with more diverse instrumentation and incredible vocals. They seem poised to gain mainstream attention really soon.

The night was augmented by a full lineup of bands. The first two bands were ok, but the pleasant surprise of the evening was a Nashville friend of Paper Route named Brooke Waggoner. She brought along friends on cello and guitars who were joined by Paper Route’s drummer. Her songs were lively and poignant all with a light sense of humor.

When I was younger, I didn’t hesitate to head out to some dirty, tiny club to see some band I’d never heard of, hoping to catch “the next big thing”, sometimes seeing a great show and sometimes seeing a bust. I don’t do that quite as much any more, but it was fun for one evening and maybe someday I can tell people about the time I saw Paper Route with 30 other people in a bar.

This is my fourth Peachtree Road Race and I have to admit, my slowest and laziest. I really didn’t train for it very much because up to about March or April there was just no free time to run with all the caring for babies stuff. But! They stopped eating all the time! And started taking naps! And I could run again!

The best part of this year’s run was that Adriene decided to join me. It’s a lot more fun to run these races with someone than being alone, especially at the starting line where you wait hours to actually start running. She even talked her cousin into running it with us.

Like past years, I wanted to take pictures, but didn’t want to drag my camera around so I bought a cheap little disposable camera.

Here we are at the starting line!

Adriene’s cousin called us while we were on MARTA heading down to Lenox to start and told us she had overslept. We told her that she could probably still make it if she hurried and sure enough, she showed up right as they called our numbers to move up to the starting line. She had already gotten her exercise before the race even started.

So, here I am. Running the Peachtree. I’m hoping all the blur in this photo implies that I was moving really fast…. at least try to think that in your mind.

Here I am nearing the finish line! Because of the drought in Atlanta, the race ended in a different location than Piedmont Park. Instead of finishing downhill into the park, it turned and went uphill on Juniper Street. I was…. displeased with the new uphill finish.

The best part of the race is getting the t-shirt! Adriene here shows off her shirt. Everyone in Atlanta knows what the shirt implies when you wear it. “Lazy people of Atlanta! I ran while you slept on the 4th of July! Regard me with honor for my desire to keep fit!”

Seriously, though, we had a lot of fun, even if we limped around the house that evening and the next day. It’s always a good fitness goal to train for and now we have to find our next goal. Savannah Bridge Run, maybe?

Derek Webb has released his latest album, The Ringing Bell through a new website delivery method called noisetrade.com

The concept is brilliant. You can obtain the album either by telling three of your friends about the album by including their e-mails or you can purchase the album and name your price, anywhere from $1 to $25. Webb believes that buzz about the album is as important as actual sales and he’s included some other artists and friends in the concept, too. It will be interesting to see how this works.

Click some samples above to hear some samples or read my review of the album.. Regardless, you have no excuse not to try the album out!