Best Show on Earth!

This past weekend I had one of the greatest experiences of my life so far (at least professionally speaking). We had two shows with Dave Matthews Band at Alpine Valley, which of course were sold out! I have been thinking about it almost non-stop for the past couple of days and am still blown away at what I got to participate in. I am including a video someone posted on You tube so you can hear one of the highlights of the evening. The video quality is really bad but the audio is ok. If you have ever seen DMB perform live before you know a little of how it felt for me to just be there, but for me to be able to mix side by side with their crew and enjoy such an amazing show is beyond description. This was by far the single greatest show I have ever been a part of and one of the greatest performances by both groups I have ever seen! Watch the video below and you can hear some of the colaboration between DMB and The Roots!

Special Guest: Molly Collins!

This is a special message from my daughter to her Nonnie! Hope you enjoy!

You want to be a rockstar?

I just saw this new video from Nickelback called "Rockstar." Check it out, there are some great subconcious references to characters in the media, not to mention what the entire song is about anyways! Take a look.

Continuation...

Earlier I posted something about how I really have come to believe you can't call yourself an adult until you have really looked back through your life and examined how you were brought up and come to grips with the many ways your parents failed you. That might sound kind of harsh and I in no way mean to insinuate that I have had horrible parents or that you should believe you had horrible parents so let me clarify a bit. Every child comes into this world protected to some degree by their parents. Now hopefully this protection lasts for many years and provides a lot of nurturing and love. We can look out at our society today and realize the success and failure of that protection quite easily. Nevertheless, we come into this world having nothing, incapable of performing anything and offering nothing of value except loud distinct cries and several dirty diapers here and there. As we grow up we are taught right from wrong, and instilled with the values that our parents deem worthy of our knowledge and attention. Whether you want to admit it or not that process is no where near perfection and is in fact quite the opposite. So there naturally has to come a point when everyone single one of us begins to realize who and what we are and why we are hear on this planet. For some of us that launches us to amazing heights while others sink to unimaginable depths. I for quite some time have shifted back and forth. Lately I have really been struggling with the idea of what my parents would call being a good Christian. I grew up in a Christian home, attending church every day the doors were open practically, and spent every summer at youth camps and mission trips. Being a "Christian," I was taught, looked and smelled and sounded like a certain children's fairy tale. I have awoken over the past several years to realize that in fact none of this is true. The walls of my perspective, given to me largely by my parents, have continued to stretch and stretch over the years, and this stretching has produced enormous amounts of pain and frustration along with seasons of tremendous joy! I love my parents with all of my heart as I'm sure most of you do as well, but now that I am a parent myself, I realize that all I can is my best and no matter how hard I try, I will fail over and over again! The same can be said of all of our parents and at some point we have to walk back through the pages of our memory and process those times in order for us to really become who we are meant to be. I firmly believe that our society will continue to reject the church as long as it is filled with people who blindly follow hollow leadership and refuse to test the things that are taught to us from very early ages. For me, this journey has been a hard one producing rough callouses and lots of aches and pains, but the beautiful thing I believe about it all is that the whole picture from cover to cover is a story of redemption, forgiveness, and love.

Sex God

I just finished a book called "Sex God," by Rob Bell. This is a must read for anyone period. It has some amazing observations about spirituality and sex and the connection between how we are created and the One we are created from! You must go read this book!

America's addiction to Pornography

A friend of mine sent this email that had this link to an article that Naomi Wolf has written about pornography and is featured in New York magazine. You can check it out here. It really is an amazing piece!

Lollapalooza 2007

I just got home this morning from Chicago, where Lollapalooza was taking place. The Roots had a late afternoon set time so I was there a little early setting up and making sure things would go smoothly for our show. I was lucky enough by chance to see the first act on our stage perform. I in no way was prepared for what I experienced! The group was called " I'm from Barcelona," and they were by far the most incredible band/group/circus/choir/entertainment I have seen in several YEARS!!! I can only do my best to describe to you what I saw and I'm sure I will not do them much justice, but trust me on this one, I still to this very hour am amazed at what I witnessed! When they first ran onto the stage I didn't quite know what was going on and thought maybe some fans had actually rushed the stage cause there were what seemed like at least 30 people running around. The only thing I could compare their entrance onto the stage to is something similar to the greatest pop bands fourth and final encore. I mean every single one of the 29 members attacked the stage and began to engage the crowd as if they had already been playing for 45 minutes. The leader and front man was an extremely awkward looking individual carrying an inflatable pool raft. He said a few words about how excited they all were to be there because their flight had been canceled and so aparently they had just barely made their show time. Then they began their first song titled "Tree House," and everyone was dancing around on stage doing hand motions to an incredibly catchy chorus. Now you have to understand, at first glance I thought these guys are a joke, but then after seeing how the audience was reacting to them and hearing how simple but hooky the song was, I started to pay more attention. Then at the climax of the song the front man jumped out into the audience and began crowd surfing with the raft he had brought out onto the stage. And so I was hooked! The rest of their set was amazing with no lapse of energy or any hint of slowing down they turned heads and managed one of the biggest audiences of the day as an opening act! It was shear genius. The simplicity and catchiness of their songs made it so that every person in earshot of the stage was sining along, including myself! You have to check some of these guys' videos out on youtube. Make sure you go and support this amazing group from Sweden!

New Flickr page!

Hey everyone go check out my new Flickr page! The address is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sixstepsmedia/. Leave some comments on what I've been doing lately if you have time!