On a Lighter Note (pun intended)...

[guest commentary by Brian C.]

For a change of pace, I thought I'd offer my own list of "top 5 neglected music resources":

1) Donna Cori Gibson is a Catholic recording artist with a phenomenal voice and great lyrics. Kathy and I have every album of hers; I was entranced by her musical setting of "Divine Mercy Prayers" (especially the sung chaplet). She has audio samples on her website.

2) Nick Alexander is a Catholic convert who's billed as the "Catholic Weird Al"; he has some wonderful (and really funny) parodies of popular songs, but with Catholic lyrics! (One that comes to mind is "Holy Thursday"--a parody of "Monday, Monday", where Nick and crew are actually more on pitch that the original artists! :) ) You can find audio samples at CD Baby (which is an excellent place to find audio samples of many hard-to-find CD's).

3) "We Want to See the World" is, to be candid, one of the first pro-life songs that I genuinely found to be beautifully written and performed, as well as well-worded. (Many pro-life songs are high on good intentions, but low on quality--I often groan inwardly, despite myself, when I hear about someone's "pro-life song"; but I found this one really impressive.) Best of all, this song is downloadable for FREE (see the link), in mp3 format, along with lyrics, and even a flash player version! The composer asks only that you spread it as far and wise as you can; so... what are you waiting for? Get to it! You've forwarded enough dumb things to your family and friends, I'm sure... so atone for it, and send them something that'll raise their pro-life quotient! :)

4) Aaron Thompson is a relatively new (and good!) Catholic artist who has some impressive songs (IMHO); the song Disturb Us really caught me...

5) Ascent is a new quartet of Catholic ladies who have a tight, rich harmony in their mix of contemporary songs; don't go to bed without at least hearing a sample (see above link)! You can buy the CD through Mediatrix Records, run by Mark Cabrera, a new Catholic producer who's stepped out in faith to produce solid Catholic contemporary music (putting himself rather deeply in debt in the process!), and who (IMHO) definitely deserves support!

Anybody else have Catholic, Christian and/or pro-life musical resources that you think could stand to be better known? Now's your chance...


UPDATE:

The weird link error to "We Want To See the World" is now fixed. Sorry about that. Silly typo ("word" instead of "world", in URL)...