“Today, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation announced ABBA, Genesis, Jimmy Cliff, The Hollies and The Stooges as its 2010 artist inductees.”

Can you guess who I am most excited about?

It was a toss up between ABBA and The Hollies (under appreciated.)

I have always like ABBA’s upbeat songs and melodies.  Plus, a musical was made of their songs in “Mama Mia” which we saw in London. Surrounded by Scandinavians in the theater we were standing at the end waving our arms and singing, “Dancing Queen.”  I died and went to bubble gum pop heaven.  You can sing along with ABBA here in the privacy of your room.  Just do it!

Graham Nash of the Hollies went on to play with another favorite – Crosby, Stills and Nash.  Talkin’ ’bout my generation here. Defined those days in college when I bought big round pressed vinyl albums. “Carrie Anne” one of my faves.

Some day I am going to spend a day in Cleveland and tour the Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame.

Have any favorite songs from either group?

What a day!  At the start a person walked into my office with an envelope.  They asked me to open it.

Inside was a check for $3,500.  It was toward a new piano for the sanctuary.  Knocked me off my track.   I was speechless.  What a blessing!

So, they got it started with the choir already saving $$$ for a piano.  Maybe there is someone out there wanting to close the deal and give some of God’s treasure for the cause to complete?

I know you are out there.  Let the praise begin!

Its been DRY here in Sheboygan.  So I thought you might like to remember what rain sounds like. Check out this cool video – turn up your speakers!  Have you ever sung in a choir?  What type of Choir music do you like?

Here’s an example of a choir on the cutting edge of culture!  Go for it Bill K.  Bring something like this to Zion – we all can’t wait!!!

One of my favorite music videos of all time…

One of my favorite “crooners” has always been Tony Bennett. He can really lay down a lyric.  On his 80th birthday he recorded an album of duets with pop singers entitled, Duets: An American Classic.

I downloaded all 19 tracks from Amazon for $9.99.  What a deal.  Then I loaded them into my Samsung MP3 player, put the headphones on and fell asleep listening to the incredible duets. 

I can only describe this album as velvet, the color burgundy, Spring rain, candle-light and cocktails, mellow and hand-holding-happy.  And Tony did this at age 80 and he still can hold his own against younger voices!  I hope I can look as good as him when I’m 80.  What a man.

So if you are looking for some classic American tunes to mellow you out after the sun goes down you might like this mix from rocker Bono to soulful Stevie Wonder.

Below is a YouTube Duet with Stevie Wonder. I dedicate it to my wife of 33 years, Kathy:

Tina Samples is a worship leader at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Windsor, Colorado, and a trained music therapist. Not every visit she makes is to a calm hospice room. For example:

A nurse saw Tina enter the hospital and ushered her to a patient’s room. The man was in respiratory arrest, and the nurse hoped Tina would be able to stabilize his breathing. To do this, music therapists first match the beat of the music to the heart rate. Next, the musician lowers the beats. Often, the heart rate follows.

It was real dramatic in the room. You could feel that whole tense moment of him in respiratory arrest and it wasn’t looking good at all … (His wife was) crying. Her husband was really heaving, trying to get a breath in. His body was shaking because of the respiratory arrest.

Tina finished one verse of “Amazing Grace” when the wife looked over the bed at Tina. With an intensity that couldn’t be denied, the wife blurted, “Sing ‘Jesus Loves Me.’”

“It was the most precious moment,” Tina said. “I looked over at the patient. In his anxiety, suffering and struggling to get a breath, in the middle of all of that, he could still sing with a word here or there, ‘Yes, Jesus loves me.’ And tears came flowing down his face. It was amazing because at that moment, he knew he was facing death and could say, ‘Jesus loves me. This I know.’ He passed away being sure and assured of his relationship with God.”

While ministry to the dying may not be every Christian’s calling, there is no doubt of the blessings to people who are God’s hands — and God’s song — at the end of life.

—Claudean Boatman, “Penetrating lostness: A ministry to the dying and the living,” July 14, 2006,

The hymn , “And Can It Be,” was written by Charles Wesley, the younger brother of John Wesley, founder of Methodism.  The full verse can be read here.

In the scope of his life Charles wrote over 5,000 hymns.  On Easter we’ll sing one of them: “Christ The Lord Is Risen Today.”   What compelled Charles to write so many hymns of faith?  His conversion.

Both John and Charles Wesley decided to go on a mission to America through the Church of England.  They went to Georgia and utterly failed at sharing a faith that was not from “personal experience.”  He was demanding and dictatorial.  He wanted to baptize babies by total immersion three times and not by sprinkling.  A Woman fired a gun at him.

He came back to England depressed and discouraged.  Shortly afterward his brother John came back as well.  They heard a Moravian, Peter Boehler, was holding spiritual meetings.  And being  in a spiritual crisis they both went seeking something more from God.  It was customary to keep a journal at the time and Charles Wesley, 31, wrote on May 21, 1738:

“I now found myself at peace with God, and rejoiced in the hope of loving Christ.  I saw that by faith I stood.”

And on Tuesday May 23, Charles wrote in his journal:

“I began a hymn upon my conversion.”

No one is absolutely certain which hymn it was but historians believe it was, “And Can It Be,” based on the strong and vivid testimony of grace in stanza four:

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray;
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed thee.
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed thee.

Woke this morning to the  warmest Sunday of the season.  Streets are wet as the snow is giving up the fight and slinking away along the gutters, down the streets and into the rivers and lake and eventually back out to sea.

We had good attendance for the communion services and many visitors!  At the second service it was a delight to have people from Wheaton, Glenn Ellyn Illinois and Green Bay Churches!  They were all visiting on their ways back home whether south or north.  Zion is a good half-way spot between Door County and the Chicagoland area.  So as the word gets out we might become a nice rest spot for those Covenanters coming and going.

Last night I went along with Kathy to Two Rivers.  The Lakeshore Chorale was performing with the Manitowoc Symphony at St. Peter the Fisherman Roman Catholic Church.  It was a beautiful new facility that seats 800!  And the acoustics were awesome.  They performed Handel’s Messiah - part two and three, not the familiar Christmas part of Messiah but rather the Easter part.

Knowing I would have some time to kill before the concert I brought along Steve Martin’s autobiography, “Stand Up.”  I sat in the back of the sanctuary off to the side until I noticed people coming in.  Suddenly I was surrounded by many nuns in black habits.  I had to laugh because it would make a scene out of Steve Martin movie.  Big tall guy reading a book about a comedian in the back of a Roman Catholic Church and all the elderly nuns from the Convent decide to sit with him!  Are you chuckling along with me?  Think Sister Act III- God is the one with a sense of humor. The convent came to a Covenanter…

The concert was just brilliant and bright and you could hear clearly every word.  The singers worked hard to get it right.  Plus, the trumpet was from heaven – bright and pure and majestic.  That music really made my Lent!

I started taking piano lessons in first grade. I loved it except for the practicing.  My sister was also a pianist and I thought it was cool seeing her play the piano in her church accompanying the hymns and choir.  Practicing daily and running scales and exercises was hard work and discipline.  But I stuck with it all the way through High School.  My friend John and I in our senior year blew the class away at the “Talent Night” by playing a Ferrante and Teicher piano duet, their arrangement from the theme for the movie, “Exodus.” Man that dates me.  But we knocked it out and got the auditorium on their feet.  The closest I ever got to feeling like a Rock Star!  I remember after the event my swimming coach saying, “I had no idea you were a master at the piano.”  Yea, I’d get off of swim team practice, run through my piano assignments with blood shot eyes and drive to Grant Malme’s piano studio for a weekly lesson. He had two grand pianos and he was a good teacher and let me delve into popular and jazz music to keep my interest as I got older.  But the piano is not forgiving.  I let it go four years in college and never got back into it although I can pick up a hymnal and play through the tune.

Guitar is what I started to teach myself in High School.  I would listen to Peter, Paul & Mary records and Dylan too.   My two cousins, Randy and Jerry, were guitar players and they inspired me.  I bought a Mel Bay “Easy Guitar” book after my Ukulele died.  I’d try and figure out the chord progression on the songs on the records.  Sitting in my room and experiment on the guitar for a couple hours.  When I took my guitar to youth group – the girls liked it.  Bonus.  But alas, I never had the stuff to keep up with Clapton and B.B. King.

Anyway, teach your children to try a musical instrument.  They will appreciate performers when they attend concerts.  The pros make it look easy when it was hours and years of  sitting in their rooms by themselves strumming, picking 6 strings or playing the 88 keys.  Music – a gift from God.  And those who can play or sing it well – the greatest gift of all.