Bob Ayala: Joy By Surprise - A Heard It For The FIrst Time Review

I know a lot about contemporary Christian music (CCM)  and a pretty good amount about the history of CCM/ Jesus Music.  Bob Ayala was a CCM Pioneer. While these first two sentences are correct, I just heard about Ayala today.

 I am in a number of FB CCM groups and someone mentioned his 1976 debut album Joy By Surprise.  Spotify is my go to for finding music like this but they only had one Bob Ayala album  or Bob Ayalbum if you will, and it wasn't Joy By Surprise.  I was able to find it on You Tube and have shared it below.  My plan is to listen to it now and give you a quick as I'm hearing it review.  

The album is about 33 minutes long and has 10 songs. Joy By Surprise begins with Stephanie, With Love which is a nice consoling song about a girl who loved and lost.

 The next song  Do You Know Him? starts with a description of God "He is a poet in the wind a sculptor  of the sky line. " 

Nice guitar work and some good front ground la la las which are very typical of this  time frame.  

 Try And Keep The Pace 

Opening lyrics: You were always haunted by the girl you hated standing in your mirror.  The little I read about Ayala stated a  couple Keith Greenesque qualities. These qualities are on full display in this song.    This song also reminds me of more positive less satire look at the issues Randy Stonehill explored in cosmetic fixation and Barbie nation. 

 To The Ancient of Days seems to be the most famous song from this album according to notes on the FB page and the You Tube comments.  One commenter stated he could not listen to it with out thinking of Narnia, this is not too difficult for an album whose cover art is the singer encountering Aslan.  These songs are quick but they have good production value and I can imagine listening to them again and again,

Peace  is the next song and starts with the sounds of the outdoors at night.  The lyrics continue that theme with a nice guitar accompaniment. The person who shared this album on You Tube stated "that the music drifts further to the middle of the road than one would like".  Speaking for myself, this one likes the middle of  the road just fine.

1/2 way through the album as we pause to turn the record over I'll say that so far I like it.  The songs are quick but they have good production value and I can imagine listening to them again and again.  

I enjoyed Silent Witness,  which seems to be a love song from an unbelieving husband  to his  believing wife. There was a really good lyric in the beginning that I couldn't write down quick enough.  I look forward to hearing it again on a subsequent listen.  

 Joy By Surprise, the title track has a Don Francisco country twang to it which I quite enjoyed.  The lyrics also reminded me of C.S. Lewis a) because Lewis's autobiography is called Surprised by Joy and b) since some of the lyrics talk about scales being removed which is so very Eustace Clarence Scrubb. 

 The Song of Joseph is next and while there are many Joseph's in the Bible,  This one is definitely about Mary's husband.  I found it the most uneven of the songs I've heard so far.  Of course this is just one listen in, and often songs have a way of surprising me after multiple hearings.

 Lord is the penultimate song on this collection.  Where Joseph's song is an Advent song, Lord, is a Good Friday song.  The music is slow and sad and helps you imagine Jesus carrying his cross on the way to  Calvary. If it wasn't obvious before that this was a1970's album this song brings that idea home with an sledge hammer masquerading as an exclamation point.   

 

To end an album with  a song called New Beginnings is kind of different.  It's a good song and is very Michael Cardish with the vocals and the orchestration.  

A couple of final vinyl thoughts that I'd like to spin.  I recognized the names of a couple musicians on the album.  First there is  Billy Batstone   who wears lots of hats,  singer, songwriter, worship leader, bassist, guitarist and of course becomes Captain Marvel when he say Shazam.   Then I read about the drummer Al McDougal and I was thinking that name sounds very familiar.  Then I realized it was probably Alex MacDougal who used to drum for Daniel Amos.  Sure enough he has is credited in Discogs for his work on this album.  

I like this album and kind of want to finish this review quickly so I can listen to it again.  One of the blogs I read mentioned him in early 2020 as still being alive. Apparently in the Fall of that year he passed away while visiting his sister perhaps due to some vertigo issues he had been experiencing.  It was kind of strangely sad discovering he died nearly 5 years prior to my discovery of him.  In a sense I wish I discovered his music earlier, but in another way it's kind of nice to discover old music that's new to you.  

Wordless Wednesday: Memories from our 2023 trip to Greece. First Night In Athens

Wordless Wednesday is brought to you each week by Comedy Plus.  Click here for more Wordless Wednesday.  

Cold Topics: President Obama's Message for America's Students

A lot of times when you do a blog you find yourself commenting on whatever the hot topic of the day is. If you are not a posting daily, it is very possible that by the time you get to the topic, it is no longer hot.

I always thought it might be interesting to go back and look at a formerly hot topic and review it after it had long gone cold.  

If we go into the way back machine to September of 2009, back when this blog was less than a year old and still called Home School Dad, we can discover a topic that was very hot at the time  that has since gone cold, but still has some relevance today.  

On September 8, 2009 President Obama spoke to  students in Virginia and the speech was telecast to students all over the country.  For some reason this created quite a stir.  

I remember not  understanding what the hubbub was all about and watching the speech with my students (children) at the Izola Becker Home School.  Some time has passed and now the  K-12 students who may have watched the event at school are all at least 2 years out of high school by now.  Students who were seniors in high school will be having their 15th hisg school reunion, and my youngest daughter who was 3 at the time of the speech is now a Freshman in college.  

Here is the then "controversial" address:

 

Click here for a transcript of his speech.

Click here for an Albert Mohler post decrying the controversy

Click here for politico's take on the controversy

Click here for a blog post stating why it was a conservative speech.

I was interested to see if I could find out more about Tim Spicer, the student who introduced Obama.  It turns out that in addition to being involved helping students and school districts in low income communities, Spicer was a contestant on Season 46 of Survivor.

There we are, our first edition of cold topics.  I was either going to call it that, or perhaps hot topics for procrastinators.  Once today's  news becomes yesterday's olds we may have another edition.