Guitar baggage, mystery worship, and a rocking boat
Tags : Movies, TravelCategories : Church, Guitar, Movies, Travel |
Greetings from sunny tropical Queensland, where aside from missing my wife and kids I am suffering from serious guitar withdrawals. I can’t find any station on my TV where I am staying except ‘Max’ and have had the radio in my hire car alternating between my iPod, some new CDs I got, and the local country FM station (Kix – the Best Country in the World!) – why doesn’t Perth have a country music station?? seriously one of the worst things about Perth… anyway I digress… so yeh, I’m listening to lots of interesting music but have no guitar to play – very frustrating!
I seriously think that the airlines should allow guitarists to take one guitar in addition to their usual baggage allowance.. would make for a much happier, more melodic travel experience. How bout it, QANTAS?
When I got my first Fender from Nashville I flew with it half way back around the world to Perth, but at that point I was able to just count it as one of the kid’s pieces of baggage. Sadly I have no kid with me this time so no baggage allowance to co-opt. I shall have to think of some cunning plan to bring a guitar for my next 2 week trip here…
I did visit one of the local ACC churches here on Sunday : here’s my ‘mystery worshipper’ review. Smallish church but the music was good. Lots of energy courtesy of the excellent young guy who was worship leading and the youth who were moshing in the first couple of rows. The band was simple – they didn’t play any super complicated licks (except the bass solo in Salvation is here), but they were really tight and it was a nice mix (my only complaint would have been I couldn’t hear the girl plying lead guitar). Overall I took out of it that you can have a really quality sound without doing anything too complicated if you have a tight band who knows the songs, a good mix, and a 
dynamic worship leader who can really take the music in the right direction. I liked that they also (in a couple of songs) left space for people to worship freely, although even that was fairly brief and the worship leader had his finger on the pulse and the band followed him diligently. So nice to have a great worship experience away from home. I think it is valuable for us as worship leaders and musicians to visit other churches from time to time and get a feel for what others are doing.
Anyway I should turn out the lights… getting late here in Qld and I have another day of biostatistics awaiting me tomorrow (actually make it today now… zero hours). Just one last plug if you want to listen to some classic music – I just watched the movie ‘The Boat that Rocked’ – not bad for a laugh.. think Austin Powers meets Titanic and you’ll be on the right track. I can’t say I can recommend it as a good wholesome Christian movie (don’t say I didn’t warn you) but if you want a fun movie with some awesome old 60’s music… check it out.
And on that note I’m signing off. Keep on rockin’
