The chorus to the Jimmy Buffett song, A Pirate Looks at 40, has always felt like it was written for me.

Yes, I am a Pirate, two hundred years too late.

No cannons go thunder, there's nothing to plunder,

I'm an over 40 victim of fate;

arriving too late, arriving too late.

Don't get me wrong! I've never wanted to be a pirate, nor do I believe in blind fate. And I'm not 40, yet! But...the point of the song is that the author feels like he was born at the wrong time; his vocation no longers exists and he feels trapped. This my friends, I can relate to. Which leads me to the point of the post.

My dayjob recently sent me to New Orleans for a week, which was nice of them, since I had never been before. I have no pre-Katrina comparisons, but it was a bit dirty, with a higher-than-normal homeless population. But it also has that pseudo-European charm that comes with age. I tried to stay off the beaten tourist path, but not too far off, or I would've just been beaten on a path. Visited several small clubs and listened a ton of great music, mainly jazz...naturally. What I found really interesting as a musician is that the vocation of "musician" is an actual blue-collar job in New Orleans. Walking down Bourbon or Chartre, or any street for that matter, you will find literally hundreds of restaurants and bars of all sizes featuring live music beginning at 6 or 7 running late into the evening. In cities I've lived in such as Seattle or San Diego you can make a meager living (if you're really good), but hardly enough to claim it as your real occupation. In New Orleans you can be a decent jazz drummer  or trombonist that works the swing shift (6-midnight) five nights a week at the same upscale restaurant. Who do you know that says, "I play the trombone" when asked what they do for a living? Like I said, it's a blue-collar job. They're not bringing in American Idol money, but at least the city offers opportunities for musicians to make money doing what they love, which I find encouraging.

This brings me back to my Jimmy Buffett quote. I often listen to a Baroque classical music channel through itunes when I'm reading, and it takes me back to when the church employed musicians and hymn writers, and contracted artists and architects to beautify their sanctuaries, and I feel like I'm "a church artist, arriving two hundred years too late..."

With the push for seeker sensitive and purpose driven and "relevant" missional churches all vying for a place at the head of the ecclesiastical table, is it any wonder that the role of the church artist has been diminished? Why employ artists to paint a mural or canvas if you're gonna meet in a theatre or school cafeteria? I'm not dogging churches that meet in these spaces. After all, I spent almost three years myself in an AMC theatre. But I know first-hand that with this comes certain aesthetic sacrifices, so paintings are replaced with powerpoint; the grand piano with the electronic, etc. And one of the results of the global rise of top 40 CCM hits is that a church can now rent "worship bands" that will come in for a couple hundred dollars and play the latest and greatest to Christians who like...well...the type of music that wins Dove awards in Nashville. How this music is missional or seeker sensitive is beyond me since only Christian sub-culture likes it (I'll save this for another post)?

Anyway, my point is that the music is so dumbed down now that any musician can play it, so unbelieving musicians sign up and play in these 4-hire worship bands, because it is an easy quick buck, and I don't blame them. I'd take $100 to strum three chords to [insert name of any popular worship tune here] for 30 minutes, go outside during the sermon and listen to the game in my car, only to come back for round two and play the same three chords for a couple more songs, collect my check and wait for the next community church to come a knockin, except I AM a believer and have a deep love and respect for the ancient craft of hymnody and don't want to see it degraded any further.

Alright, I guess that's enough complaining for now. Had to get it off my chest. I feel better after a little blogotherapy. Someone may retort, "Well for all your bitchin why don't you just move to New Orleans?" To which I would reply, "Have you experienced the humidity?" Nuff said. Peace.