This is like the 80's power rock music.

Did you ever notice how Christian music lags behind mainstream music by about 5-15 years?

What happens is there is a new music trend, at first it is devil music because it is more popular than religion with teenagers and it is enouraging them to take drug and have sex(hormones apparently have little to do with it). This stance is popular with the parents of teens. Then it's  if you can't beat 'em join 'em. And so hard rock, acid rock, rap, grunge, metal, etc... all become acceptable forms of Christian music after it they are already widely popular.

Hell they've got Christian Reggaeton and Christian gangster rap now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRne8by7nOQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8icjwtToyg

I wonder when they grab their crotch is that considered masterbation and a sin?

Nah... I'm just talking about "Contemporary Christian."  Gospel is excellent

They're Christians?  It doesn't say so on their Wiki page.

Yah, you really ought to remember that wiki is only useful as a starting page and not as an actual authority. In this case however, the bass player happens to be His Excellency the Reverend Sir Joey DeMaio, Grand Cross Knights of Malta, Medal of Merit of the Order, Minister of Youth for the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta, Federation of the Autonomous Priories.

Ever since the time of Napoleon, the role has been all pomp and ceremony but on technical grounds, he is one of the highest ranking officers of the Roman Catholic Navy.

Oh Hamby!

I was not even trying to lay a trap here but you found one anyway. Having found it you put you foot in and wiggled until it went off. Please reread my earlier post. I never claimed that it was “good christian music”.

My hero. Oh wait, this is about religious music. TOO BAD.

I think James LaBrie is some kind of semi-religious something.  There's that song about the spirit carrying on, and for some reason, I think he wrote the lyrics.  I dunno if Petrucci is religious or not.  I know he's a fucking demon of a guitar player.  I find his playing much easier to listen to than Joe Satriani or Steve Vai.  I know that much.

Hmmm... bashing your own again?

Will, you really do seem to have some serious Canada issues going on.  Anyway, a couple of things to make clear.  First, saying that Petrucci is easier to listen to than Satriani or Vai is a LONG way from saying he's a hero.  Personally, I like any song by Dream Theater.  Any one.  The second one... I'm tired of it.

Second, Vinnie is made of cool.  I saw him play with Sting, and even that sterilized jazz-pop genre couldn't stop the flow of cool.  Vinnie is just... cool. 

I don't really know what to say about Neil.  He's one of those dudes that I want so badly to like that I probably have no way of maintaining objectivity.  I'll admit it.  I like his lyrics.  I think he's found a lot of ways to say really cool things to a lot of angst-ridden teenage boys, and that's good.   Sometimes we adults forget that Rush is music for teenagers.  Yeah, it's melodramatic and over the top, and the lyrics aren't going to pass for great literature, but they hit the mark as far as the target audience goes.

I don't understand how anyone could dislike John Petrucci.

Anyway. Have some apocalyptica.

Because this video makes me laugh inside.

That's so true.  Sting has pretty much hired the best available talent for every solo album he's done. 

This dude played on Soul Cages.  (You have to get through the first 55 seconds to get to the coolness.  Wait for it...)

Oh, I'm very well familiar with it.  There is much love.  (I'm particularly fond of the live video from that tour, where Paula Cole sang Sinead O'Connor's parts.)

Piano, primarily, but I can work a bass pretty damn well, too. 

What is the difference between a drummer and a drum machine?

You only have to punch the information into the drum machine once. 

The machine keeps good time and doesn't try to fuck your girlfriend.

Correction: ... and isn't fucking your girlfriend.

Man. Guitar players and singers are always so jealous because they get lots of hugs, but the girls always want to do the drummer. Huh.

Also, you guys are just bitter because there are only maybe a couple dozen really good drummers in the world, and the rest you could replace with a computer program.

But those good drummers ... man, they make the track sound SO GOOD. Damn them!

How many guitar players does it take to cover a Stevie Ray Vaughn tune?

That would be all of them.

How do you get a guitar player to play softer?

Put sheet music in front of him.

How do you get a pianist to play softer?

Take the sheet music away.

What did the sound engineer say to the singer?

"That sucked; come on in."

i have to side with will on this one.  it took my band FOREVER to find the right drummer, but now that we've got him, everything sounds soooo fucking good.  he's so in demand he's never been out of work, so it's pretty much a badge of honor that he wants to play with us.  as far as typical popular music (rock, country, etc.) bands go, i can't imagine anything more difficult to find than a good drummer.  when you do find him, he'll usually be a jazz drummer.

oh, and he's almost 60, single, and the amount of tail he gets is just obscene.  i've never seen him with a woman over 45, and they're always beautiful.  once i swear to god he ran off with a chick in her late 20's at most.

i understand you, hamby, even though we have no keyboard in our band.  our band leader is in fact our bass player, and he's the only one of us with classical training.  he usually ends up showing the lead guitarist what to play.  he's also firmly against a bass having more than 4 strings.  still, he's also guilty of doing the lead thing, and sometimes i just wish he'd stay low on the neck and keep the fuckin' time, since when i play i take my cues almost exclusively from the bass.

by keyboard player i'm assuming you're not talking about a frontman on piano, because ray charles, jerry lee, dr. john, fats domino, etc., all got major tail.  i also agree that drums are often superfluous.  i love the last few johnny cash albums that had no drums and used the bass notes on a piano like a percussive instrument.

i do have to say i've heard one very excellent 6-string bass player.  i'm not sure of his name, but he belongs to the little known welsh group ffynnon, who combine traditional celtic folk songs with a sort of jazz fusion sound.  they usually consist entirely of two-part female harmony, keyboard, and six-string bass.  they sing in welsh, english, breton, and various english country dialects.  as far as i know, they have only one album listed on amazon, but i've been a big fan of them since 2004.  worth checking out.

Well, nobody will get any argument from me on the rather low number of drummers worth playing with.

My band dumped our drummer because he was just not willing to act as part of a group. The last time we had one, well he claimed that he was in treatment for some condition that caused chronic pain. The problem we had was that seems to mean that he feels justified in taking large doses of something that slowed him down.

Too many times, I would get to his apartment to pick him up for rehearsals and he would not be willing to join us because he had taken his meds early and was not up to playing. When we did get him to show up, he would start out reasonably and then play slower and slower as his medication kicked in. Finally, he would call quits after about two hours.

So we finally dumped his ass and started looking for a new drummer. We still got together to play every Saturday and usually for about twice as long as when we had the druggie drummer. After a couple of months and a few attempts to get a replacement, we found that we had just drifted into a drummerless act.

That much being said, I have also had a couple of guitarists who just have this thing going on that they are somehow the best thing since I don't know what and everyone else has to bend over to accommodate them. I could tell you stories but they would go way too long for a short post.

Suffice to say that if you want to be in a band with me, you had better act like you are not the only person on the planet. That and you had best be willing to accept the fact that in response to every problem that I have faced over the years, I have accumulated enough gear that I can self produce and it is reasonably portable.

Hell, I have had sufficient issues over the years that I am willing to provide cabling if need be. That in response to the last guitarist I played with. He had what can only be described as a magical auxiliary dick. Basically, it was a pair of matching transformers. One converts a standard instrument plug to a balanced line, which would actually be fine for a long stage run of cable. However, he combines that with another that converts the XLR output back to quarter inch so that he can use a standard instrument cable to go to his amp. Combined, it was about eight inches long and it looked like a dick hanging off the back of his guitar. If you try to tell him just how stupid it looks, he will dig in his heels and claim that it is “electrically correct” to connect to an amp that way.

Gahhhh. I tried a Neil Peart fan after I got rid of the druggie. In his world, loud is the new accurate.

Musicians integrating with other musicians? You speak strange words friend.

One version of my band was me with a keyboard and guitarist. We were all playing with our small amps (like <= 30 watts). Then we let another guy connect with us and he showed up with a monster rig. A 300 watt head, two 3x10 cabs and an Ibanez axe with eight pickups and a Floyd Rose tremolo.

Not that there is anything wrong with that gear but if you want to play that stuff with other people, there are certain requirements. One of the big ones with him was that it was too much trouble for him to keep the hex key in his case. So everyone else had to tune flat because of the locking nut.

Another is that he had a drum machine that he played through his amp. Not even so much as a rack mount or table top box mind you. This was a little thing that would fit in a shirt pocket and would play the same four beats over and over. Trust me, that would have been annoying if it were backing the Ramones.

But seriously, I have pretty much ended up just playing in my living room because I am tired of dealing with that crap.

on a related note, our current bandleader is the only bass player i've ever allowed to play a fretless bass guitar with me, just because he really is fucking good.  i recall i once played a gig in a bar several years ago, while i was still in college, with just myself on acoustic guitar, a lead player on acoustic, and there was supposed to have been a bass player.  keep in mind we were playing mostly folk and country (kris kristofferson, townes van zandt, billy joe shaver, that kind of stuff), not jazz or anything like that.  i didn't know the bass player that well anyway (my buddy had recommended him), and he shows up with a fretless, five strings no less.  i told him not even to bother plugging in: i had my thumb and fingerpicks with me and i'd play my own goddamn bass notes.  and i did.  i mean, what the fuck?  i'd never bring my steel string martin and try to play a gig with manuel barrueco or some shit like that.