Bon Jovi Student Experience

Today has been a very long day but it was great. I woke around 4am and left Fultons house at 4:30 bound for RDU to fly to Atlanta. I landed around 7:30 and Marta'ed up to Tech to drop in at Theta Xi and drop off my bag. I went up to the student center to pick up my package and some mail. Then I was blown away by how amazing the Lord is as he has provided for my support for Bosnia.
After picking up my stuff and rushed back to the house before catching a train down to Philips Area. I had been given a great opportunity to experience how Bon Jovi tours work. Therefore I showed up around 10:15 and got VIP treatment by Mike Savas, the Head of VIP relations and Head of Tour Management.

We went through all of the amazing physical attributes of the set, stage, rigging, video, and audio. This stuff is really cool for all of us Engineers who were able to go because of my English teacher. Then he went into the managerial side of his job and all of the people in the crew. I cannot think much right now because I am running on 3 hours of sleep and have been up all day running all over the place. Our group also got tickets to the show and that was really cool because I had not ever been to show that big.

This day was amazing as we were able to learn a lot about the inner working of the most successful rock show of the past few years. The entire crew was very nice and they showed us some of the amazing aspects of the show that people(mostly drunk) don't really understand or appreciate. Shout out to my English teacher Phillip Auslander for getting us into this amazing opportunity to learn from the best in the business for performing rock shows.

Paul Shackelford

Rise Again - Needtobreathe

I have been reading a book about the arts and Christians role in creating culture. Steve Turner, the author, asserts a major critique that modern Christian art does not speak about real life. The art created does not sound genuine or have any ties to real life that people outside the faith can connect with. While reading the book I listened through this album and I think that this song does a great job of breaking the mold. The members of Needtobreathe are all outspoken followers of Jesus but very little of the art that they produce mentions Jesus or Christianity at all. Instead they craft creative music, written from places of pain and joy. "Rise Again" steps through pain that occurs in life as we see relationships stretched and torn. The bitterness of broken hearts and friendships is then contrasted with the truth that we will get up from this pain and rise again. "I can see us moving on, I can feel that coming on strong", the joy that comes after the

Twenty-Four - Jess Ray

Lately I have been listening to lots of music and podcasts while working and biking to work. I was feeling a need for some new music so I turned to NoiseTrade to check out some new artists. My favorite thus far is Jess Ray because of the honest lyrics, tastefully simple musicality and overall enjoyable listening environment. While on my flight back to Atlanta I was struck by this song at first because of the drums that propel this song behind the walking guitar. If I were to add drums to a track like this it would have been done in a very similar manner. Once I got past the drums I was awe struck by the simple power of these lyrics, take a read below and follow the link to her blog to listen. To me it was not written for an outward expression of hope or encouragement but rather as a inward proclamation to the soul. As the psalmist often choose to sing, this song speaks inward in a call to stand up and be reminded of truth all to often forgotten. As I gear up for the star

Alleluia - Jesus Culture with Martin Smith

Once again worship last night was Glorious! Had a great day just chilling with my SDP folks from last summer, went up the river and just talked about the past season of life and where the Lord is leading us into. Exciting and scary stuff but it was great to be back with some awesome people who speak some potent truth. Last night during worship was one of many firsts... For the first time in a long time I actually stood while I sang, for the first time in a long time I was singing from a place of Joy, for the first time in a long time I did not care how I worshiped my Lord I just worshiped. Well its not like these things have not happened ever in my life, but I just felt so much peace during worship. So I decided to throw the song that we just repeated for a long while up here, mainly cause I did not know the name so I was looking it up and now I am pumped, gotta buy this album! All the angels cry out, Holy is the Lord God All the earth replies, Holy are You Thi

Letters from Lilongwe

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