Winter Jam 2008

Yesterday my uncle and cousins were heading over to Greensboro for Winter Jam 2008. Never one to miss a cheap concert I happily tagged along. We arrived in Greensboro, ate lunch and set ourselves up in line. Line? You may ask, yes line. See, the tickets were only $10 except it was open seating, which is code for: mad rush through the doors for good seats, so we of course wanted to position ourselves near the front of the line which meant we got in line about 4- 4.5 hours before the concert started...Yes, feel free to think I am nuts I hear it quite often. :)

Anyway we stood, leaned and sat in line for multiple hours then had a 10 minute rush of adrenalin as we fought 18,000+ to people find seats, then sat for about another 30 minutes before the pre-show started. As you can see, lots of siting, which in turn made my feet fall asleep, quite irritating! There were about 10 different acts/groups but the main five were, Mandisa, Newsong, Barlow Girl, Skillet, and Mercy Me which was pretty good for $10 if I do say so myself.

During the pre-show there was this group called "pureNRG" no offense to them but I am going to rant a bit here. (Just skip down to the next paragraph if you want to avoid it) First off, using the letters "NRG" does not spell energy (which was how it was pronounced) and does not give you coolness points. Second, dancing around the stage lip syncing is just ug, (yes I know that is not a word but that is how I felt) Finally the members of the group were 14, 11 and 12 and maybe it is just me but seeing a bunch of kids dance around a stage to popish Disney channel music is not exactly something I am into. One more thing, talking into the mic after dancing is not the best idea if all you can do is breathe very loudly and get out one or two words at a time while gasping for breath. The other smaller acts were ok nothing worth writing about, as for the larger acts....

I was probably the most impressed by Newsong, they have several songs I like but I had never seen them in concert and I thought they were very good live. They have this one song, "Arise my Love" readers may or may not have heard it but the harmonization in the song, to see them doing it live is worth seeing. If you have not heard the song you can hear it on youtube here though it does not really do it justice, it is one of those songs that is just better live. Barlow Girl was actually a bit of a disappointment, the only reason I could come up with as to why was their stage presence just seemed to be a bit off, it might have had something to do with them having to do a shorter set because of all the groups but for whatever reason they just did not seem up to par.

Mercy Me was their usual self, one thing I have always liked about Mercy Me is while they care about performing well they don't make themselves the focal point of the performance, but rather God. If they hear the crowd singing praises they will stop singing, even stop playing and it will just be the crowd worshiping a cappella. I can't really explain what it is like, unless you have been to a Christian concert where there is more emphasis on worshiping our Lord then performing you probably don't know what it is like, but eighteen thousand people all singing "I Love You Lord" a cappella is probably the closest I will ever get before I die to the type of worship we will experiance in heaven. I get chills thinking about how amazing it is going to be.....ok back to the concert.

I have to admit I am not a fan of Skillet, actually they sorta bug me, but I figured to hear Mercy Me I could handle Skillet. If you don't know who Skillet is they are a rock band and well, that is all there is to say. They also seemed to be somewhat full of themselves which is something that really bugs me with some Christian artists. I have no idea what their lead singer's name is but when he is telling people to "rock out" I just don't feel that is appropriate.

There was not really any mention of God in terms of "rocking out" it was just like, "I want you guys rocking out so hard that you will wake up tomorrow with a neck ache from head banging" I personally think there is something theologically wrong with suggesting you give your body, the temple of the Holy Spirit, a neck ache because you were "head banging" to Skillet...But that is just me :p I don't have a problem with folks jumping up and down and dancing, while praising the Lord but it has to be done in the right spirit... I also wonder at what kind of witness it was to folk who were there who were unsaved....

Anyway, I could go on and on, like I have mentioned before music is something that I could write quite a bit about, I actually have a huge post typed up about it but I think having to read it would probably scare away everyone who reads this blog. So how about some pictures, while I have issues with Skillet I have to admit their pyrotechnics during their show made for some pretty impressive photographs.
One of Newsong:

Newsong and their Cello/Guitar dual

Forget lighters, this is the 21st Century folks we have cell phones! :p

Skillet.... as you can see, the lead singer is taking his own advice and was banging his head something fierce. The other dude liked to jump around a lot, must have been too much coffee before the show...

Flames

and more flames

Yeah the flames were rather impressive.

One blog note, I am heading out of town with my dad, so unless my sisters post the blog probably will be a little dead for a few days. Everyone have a good week. :)