The week a CD is released to the public is called Street Week. Every CD sold that week counts towards the first week’s SoundScan total, reflected on the albums sales chart. A CD’s first week chart position is key to getting the attention of the media, retail and radio branches of the Christian music business, promoters and hopefully key to getting more help from all of them in the weeks ahead. He with the most “scans” is number one for that week, called Street Week.
Street Week always begins on a Tuesday and goes to the following Monday. However, there is a loophole, some small print, we took advantage of this time around. Street Week sales actually begin being tabulated at 5:01 PM Monday. Everything sold after 5 Monday is tallied as Tuesday sales. Don’t know why. But I like it.
In light of that we played our first Street Week show in Boca Raton (Mouth of the Rat) on Monday the 11th and sold CDs beginning at exactly 5:01. It was a solo show which made it difficult to pull off the new band oriented CD but the people of Boca Raton and the West Palm Beach area didn’t seem to mind. The great thing about playing new music is no one knows when it doesn’t sound like the CD – and no one knows when I flub a lyric – especially if I make a decent one up on the spot, or just anything that rhymes.
Thanks in huge part to West Palm Beach’s WAY-FM, the folks of Florida know my music and come to my shows even on Monday nights. And I don’t take that for granted. So the least I can do is stop by the studio and allow Brandt and Donna, the most attractive people in radio today, to mock me publicly for a couple hours…as long as they provide me with a chicken biscuit from Chic-fil-A and a Dr.Pepper. (notice the shiny aluminum wrapped goodness resting between Donna and me.)
Thanks WAY-FM for being truly entertaining great radio by any standard, Christian or not. And thanks to Donna, Brandt, everyone at Spanish River Church and the folks of Florida for making the first show of White Flag’s Street Week a success. Lots of concert-goers left with CDs in hand and more than 30 children were sponsored through Compassion International.
SHLOG.COM may get a little boring over the next few days but stick with it. If I run you off please give it another chance in couple weeks or so.
The artist life is very cyclical and mine is ramping up for the release of WHITE FLAG on July 12. So all this past week I’ve been editing video for the live shows the week of the release and today the band and I practiced intensely. I’ll go to bed early tonight so I can be on the radio first thing Sunday morning. Then Monday the concerts begin. I’ll be in Boca Raton, then Nashville and then....
You get the idea. So I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to say or how much I’ll want to say after saying more than I’ve ever wanted to say to one member of the media after another. I’ll be said out I think after a week of non-stop shows, interviews, meet and greets with “fans”, meetings with radio and retail powers that be and little else.
I’ll do my best to check in but consider yourself warned that SHLOG.COM may become quite the cyber ghost-town for the next several days.
Until the blitz ends…
SG
I have two Greek Orthodox friends who’ve injected into my faith parts of their own. They challenge me with their knowledge of the bible and church history and their commitment to their beliefs regardless of how boring or conspicuous it makes them seem to everyone else.
My brief time with these two men has piqued my interest in the earliest records of the Christian Church, in the teachings of the earliest followers of the Way, as they called it.
This morning I bumped into one of them again and one of the many things we talked about was how different a church service is today in America from a church service in the Middle East during the first three centuries. It got me thinking about what exactly Christianity is, where it comes from. Christianity, it turns out, is a Jewish Middle Eastern religion that originally embraced paradox (God is both wrath and love, life with God is easy and hard) and mystery (the book of Ephesians contradicts itself confusingly). Early Christians used Middle Eastern methods of communing with God as well, like the time Peter meditated while fasting and wound up hallucinating about a blanket.
I feel like something’s missing from my faith, from the theology or methodology. I don’t know what but I’m thinking this new interest of mine in the ancient origins of Christianity, how primitive believers thought, prayed and lived together holds part of the answer - or maybe just more questions we moderns haven’t thought to ask.
I’ll let you know what I discover.
On my way to the radio station this morning the conservative talk show host I was listening to was interrupted by the news of terrorist attacks in London. After my time in the studio I turned the radio back on in time to hear another talk show host interviewing a British journalist who witnessed one of the horrific explosions.
The radio pundit was encouraging the people of London to get angry and kill their enemies. He admitted that his response was immature and that his anger had overwhelmed him but continued to call for the deaths of the terrorists who were “waging a war on American values and religion.” He went as far as asking those in London to splash suspected terrorists with pig blood, knowing that a Muslim who comes in contact with the unclean fluids of the animal is damned to hell according to the teachings of their faith.
I feel today the way I felt years ago sitting on a tour bus on the way to Wichita Falls. The TV screen doused our brains in replays of hostilities against the citizens of New York continuously, foaming my sorrow and shock into rage and bloodlust. And as I swung from mourner to mercenary that September day I now realize the momentum swept me farther from the kingdom of God and closer to the ghetto of man. I realize now, regrettably, how little of my passion was expressed in or founded upon God’s words or His Son’s example.
So, once again I watch the enemies of life snuff out a handful of strangers I’m oddly bound to and missing. And once again my heart slouches, my face falls and my fist forms. But this time instead of patriotic rhetoric or holy war rally cries I’m taking care to listen most intently to the eternal, sustaining and true declarations of my King in hopes of being better anchored in this latest sea of emotion and press pounding. The words of the bible, especially those of Jesus, He and His people having lived so long ago under the thumb of terror with no physical freedom in sight, are my greatest comfort in the shadow of terror today. I hope they ease your anger and sorrow as well and help us to think like Christians more than Americans:
“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. I tell you the truth, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes. “A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.
Matthew 10:21-24
Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Matthew 5:39
When they hurled insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered he made no threats. Instead he entrusted himself to he who judges justly.
1Peter 2:23
Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
Luke 6:27-28
If you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even “sinners” do that.
Luke 6:27-28
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Matthew 5:44
Love your enemies, do good to them. Then your reward will be great and you will be sons of the Most High because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.
Luke 6:27-28
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:21
If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.
Proverbs 25:21
Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath.
Romans 12:19
Do not repay anyone evil for evil.
Romans 12:17
All who draw the sword will die by the sword.
Matthew 26:52
Forgive them, they know not what they do.
Matthew 26:52
I’m a DJ today, co-hosting the morning show at KSBJ in Houston - the station with the largest listening audience in the country. Yikes.
Tune in if you live in Houston or listen on-line if you don’t. I’ll be on the air from 6-9AM Central. More to come...after I take a nap.
Thanks to Matt and Turbo at WAY FM in Nashville for letting me use their studio this morning to broadcast from.
How’d I do? Discuss my DJ abilities or lack thereof and anything else on SHLOG.COM over on my message-board.
