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Remember when I said in my review of the Uncloudy Christmas compilation CD how there was a cover of a WHAM song on it? 
Ouch! The tune I mistook for a GEORGE MICHAEL-ANDREW RIDGELY remake is, in fact an original. It does, however, remind me-as it might you-a whole heap of a lot of the holiday hit by the aforementioned half-homosexual English boyband. My aoplogies to all who were slighted. 
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Hasn't THIRD DAY become to cCm what MANA' is to Spanish-language popular music? Both started out as fairly hard rocking acts for the times their first albums hit and evolved into as much of an epitome of mainstream pop (by a rock band) for their respective markets. 
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Wouldn't contemporary Christendom benefit from the commentary of a lass brash, if not aparently vulgar, as LILY ALLEN? Just think of who she could slag first! With all due godly graciousness, of course. 
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With the forthcoming release of KURTIS BLOW's first album in about 20 years, and first as an explicitly gospel rapper, could enough interest in his old Mercury Records back catalog be generated to produce a more generous anthology culled from it that the one released in the mid-1990s on which his supremely fun debut single, "Christmas Rappin'," was included in edited form? 
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Is it me,  or is there-apart from goths and hairspray metal revivalists-a distinct lack of sartorial fabulousness and, from what I can surmise, showmanship among most avowdely Chrstian rock bands? How about taking a couple of cues from PANIC! AT THE DISCO, or at least BREAKFAST WITH AMY, and give us some spectacle, boys (and the few girls among you beside the Barlow sisters)? It doesn't have to, nor should, eclipse the message of the music, but how about the occasional something for our eyes as well as our ears? 
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Remember that FRAY and MUTEMATH concert I told you I might attend? Apart from being mistaken about the bands' respective lead singers' hairdos, I was surprised that a  band with such a laidback stage presence as The Fray would have a borderline-manic act such as MuteMath open for them. 
In reference the blurb above this one, Isaac Slade and his piano pop/Americana/neo-psychedelic could stand to provide more of a circus with their musical bread. Paul Meaney and his pack of electro-prog-reggae rockers have the sights about as toight as their sounds, what with Meaney's keyboard acrobatics...literally. 
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Does T-BONE BURNETT ever despair at how critically acclaimed he is as a producer of other people's albums that sell in the multiple hundreds of thousands to multiple millions while his last three solo outings (over the course of 19 years) have done approximately a cintilla of that kind of business? 
Even if he doesn't get terribly blue about it, I have an idea to up his sales. He should record a gospel album. Burnett comes from an Episcopalian background with a tradition of rich hymnody. Were he to apply the same inventive production style that he has employed for his last album and the latest he produced for his ex (shame, that), LESLIE/SAM PHILLIPS, and maybe gather a smattering of eclectic duet partners for an album of 12-15 songs with maybe a couple of originals thrown into the mix, think of what he could do.
Not only could he be assured of the respect of the general indie market crowd going (justifiably) gaga for SUFJAN STEVENS and DANIELSON, keep the loyalty of the Americana/alt' country crowd who don't seem to have abandoned him, and, what with cCm's recent semi-facination with hymns, score a Christian adult contemporary and/or inspo' radio hit or three. If that doesn't give the guy at least a gold record... 
Maybe the first two scenarios are likelier, but getting him to sing some strictly sacred repertoire could take some of the curmudgeonliness out of the guy. And that's not so bad a goal, either, het?
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Has the great and due-for-a-new-album BUDDY MILLER ever been informed that his remake of MARK HEARD's "Worry Too Much" was used at least once as bumper music for conservative talk radio host (and kinda' -TEA' LEONI-look-alike) LAURA INGRAHAM? Apart from the possibility he's reading this, that is.
And considering the tenor of his thoughts regarding politics in interviews from around the time the album containing that Heard homage, what might Miller think of his work's use in the aforementioned manner? 
Either way, get back in the studio soon, would ya, Buddy?! How about a duets album with your sweetheart of a wife, JULIE?
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Shouldn't UNIVERSAL RECORDS' division for limited edition reissues, HIP-O SELECT, compile all of THE MIGHTY CLOUDS OF JOY's disco-licious '70s albums (including the one they made at the decade's end for EPIC RECORDS) in one delightful box set, perhaps with a bonus CD of remixes by current talent in and out of the sanctified dance community? 
Of course it should! Albums such as Time and Kickin' have been out of print far too long and were instrumental to the level of R&B and pop (and cCm) crossover appeal the urban edge of soul gospel has acheived nowadays.  
And you're reading a column by someone who would love to interview the Clouds' lead singer, JOE LIGON, for that box set's liner notes...and his long overdue master's thesis if you want complete honesty. You'd be dears to leave that last bit out when you wrote Hip-O Select on my behalf to affirm the good idea I already gave the company, OK, loyal readers? 
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Separated at birth?:praise&worship gal DARLENE ZSCHECH and Harry Potter authoress J.K. ROWLING
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What songs in the back catalog of LARRY NORMAN and other retired, ailing, deceased (not that Norman is yet) and otherwise classic cCm artists could be licesned for TV and radio ads to supplement their income in their waning years? If lapping from the trough of Madison Avenue is good enough for the otherwise seemingly anti-conformist STEVE EARLE and JOHN MELLENCAMP (whom someone should tell that his pompadour, as seen in his interview onThe Daily Show, doesn't really become him), certainly it's suitable for the granddad of Christian rock, et al, yes?
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Singing "Blessed Be The Lord" in church this morning, I thought, "Just how long is the list of  Christian market rock bands, not to mention merely Christian-comprised bands such as CACTUS WORLD NEWS, who owe an direct, irreducible debt to U2?" 
"Blessed Be" band TREE63 and DELIRIOUS owe so much of what they do sonicaly to to those Irishmen that they might do well to pay them some in royalties, eh? Since they don't need that extra money, maybe it could be used to help cure AIDS...and evangelize its sufferers.
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If whoever has won the CHEVROLET -sponsored contest to win a dinner with RICK WARREN is reading this and hasn't supped yet with Mr. Purpose Driven, could you do me the little favor of asking him whether he'll preach Law and Gospel without expurgation nor fear of incrimination should he make it to  NORTH KOREA, a country where the official religion is worship of national leader KIM JONG IL (owner of a worse 'do than Mellencamp's), as he has expressed interest in doing? And get back to me about it? Tempting as it is, I won't even ask you to bring up his LEBANESE exploits. 

Jamie Lee Rake