Yesterday, I led a Presbymergent conversation group for those interested in exploring the intersection between the Emerging Church and the PCUSA — it was an interesting chat in light of all the recent proclamations of the “Death of the Emerging Church.” There was certainly much life to *our* conversation!

This morning, I led morning prayer with the assistance of my little Ukulele and the Book of Common Worship. What an interesting pair…

And, in about one and a half hours, I’ll be leading a workshop called “Open Source Education in Emerging Congregations.” We’ll explore Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, Linux, and Second Life — not just as “tools” to use in ministry, but more importantly as ways to understand how emerging generations think, interact, engage, and live out their calling.

The workshop starts at 2:00pm CST and goes until 3:30pm. You can follow the conversation on twitter via hashtag #APCE10x — and if you’re logged into SecondLife, there’s a wee small chance that we might be stopping by the 1PCSL Chapel around 3:00 or so, time permitting. Oh, and you can find my notes, and various links for the presentation on my wiki here.

I’ve been a loyal fan since I was in high school — when I played the song Always With Me, Always With You so many times I wore out and broke my cassette tape (I realize I’m dating myself here) Surfing With the Alien album.

I have to admit, though, some of your albums (the new CD versions I bought as soon as CD’s became popular) had been gathering a little dust on the shelf. But when I heard the new Coldplay song Viva La Vida, and heard people saying Coldplay stole it from you, I dutifully took out Is There Love in Space, dusted it off, and listened to If I Could Fly again. I do admit, they have a lot of similarities. But mostly, I was just glad for an excuse to listen to you again–I even got on the web to see what you’re up to these days. In that sense, all the publicity around your song and Coldplay’s is a good thing.

But then I read that you were suing them. And that’s where you lost me, “Saint” Joe (suing your neighbor is equally as unsaintly as stealing from him). Because I’m not sure what suing another music group will ever accomplish, except for making you look bad. Here’s what I mean:

When Coldplay first landed on my radar, I heard their song Clocks on the radio and immediately thought it sounded almost exactly like a song I wrote and recorded years ago with my high school garage band, right down to the repeating triplet piano part (which in our version was voiced by background vocals). Now, in my case, it’s obvious that there’s no way Coldplay could have possibly copied the song from us, as we only made a handful of demo tapes of the recording for our family and friends. But it does show how two separate musicians can come up with remarkably similar chord progressions and even riffs independently. When I heard Clocks, my only reaction was “Yeah, they must have good musical sense, ’cause I did that, too!”

So unless you think they deliberately sat down and said “Hey, how can we turn this Joe Satriani song into our own song” (which I think is highly unlikely, given the originality of most of what they do) I’m left asking myself why on earth you would want to sue them? Is it for the publicity? Because you’d have that even without suing them. Is it the money? Because the best way to make money as a musician should always be by writing and performing great stuff, not worrying about what “other” people are doing, and certainly not worrying about songs you wrote five years ago. Or worse — are you one of those musicians who thinks you have sole, eternal ownership of a certain way some notes are arranged on a piece of paper? I hope not, because if those sorts of musicians are successful (and I count Lars Ulrich as foremost among these), it will signal the end of creativity and growth in the music industry, not a new beginning.

I really, really hope you’ll consider backing down from your lawsuit, and recognizing Coldplay’s song for what it is: a good song that owes a debt not to you, but to whatever inspirational muse you’re both in debt to. And I hope you realize that before you lose too many fans in a new generation that overwhelmingly and unstoppably has radically new views on copyright and music ownership.  If you want to be around and relevant in the future, take a page from Radiohead’s playbook — not Metallica’s.

Despite all this, I’ll still probably go see you in concert if you’re ever in the New Jersey area. But now I’ll probably be a lot more hesitant to take my son — a burgeoning 4-year-old musician in his own right — with me. I’ll still listen to your albums, but I’m not sure how much money I’ll want to spend on them, when you seem to want to collect money in a different way. And when someday my son asks me the inevitable question about who I think is the greatest guitar player of all time…I don’t know what I’ll tell him. Because to me, greatness is about more than just technical skill. Great musicians are the ones who, in addition to precision and creativity, acknowledge at the end of the day that we don’t own the music. It’s the music that owns us.

Sincerely, but no longer yours,

Neal Locke

At 2:14 minutes in, watch her start conducting… (and dancing, and singing)

But before I feel really sorry for myself, I must note the irony of the situation, and the hundreds of Sunset High School students who  — if any of them still actually read this blog — would be cheering right about now and saying, “Now you know how it feels, Mr. Locke!”

So yeah, I was a bit of a jerk when it came to issuing tardy passes in my days as a high school teacher.  And yeah, I guess what comes around goes around.  I’m ok with that.  Tomorrow I’m taking the early bus.

On the class front, I’m actually starting to enjoy the study of Greek.  Having majored in English, learned French as a child growing up in Belgium, and studied Anglo-Saxon just so I could read Beowulf — I must have a thing for languages, or at least I’m able to convince myself that I do.  We’ll know tomorrow — our first quiz  is over the Greek alphabet, and conjugation of verbs in the Present Active Indicative.  And twelve vocabulary words (mostly verbs).  I’d type them here, but I haven’t quite learned to do Greek characters on my keyboard (anyone?).

I’m far less confident about another thing I’ll be doing tomorrow — playing French horn as part of an ensemble for our first chapel service of the summer.  Not sure how I got wrapped up in that.  Yes I am; I searched out the music director, told him what I played, and volunteered to help in any way I could [what a total band geek!]. I’m playing horn on two songs, and piano on one.  I did practice, and my mind played the horn part perfectly.  My fingers and my embouchure were slightly less cooperative, though.  But I enjoyed the brief diversion from things academic, and might be inclined to make this music thing a habit.

This afternoon, after studying with a few friends, studying on my own, and practicing tomorrow’s music in a practice room, I wandered down to the bus stop to catch my ride home.

And I missed the last bus home.

Again.

And Amy had to come pick me up.

Again.

On our anniversary, no less.

This song centers around a man who has been a mentor, pastor, friend, and inspiration to me for most of the past decade: Philip Lotspeich. It’s a true story (but aren’t all folk songs?) about some of the crazy things he put his neck on the line for as both a minister and as someone just trying to live up to the radical, counter-intuitive, and often dangerous example set by that Jesus guy we talk so much about.

I think the song lives up to my emerging philosophy of folk music, especially principle #4. As with all my songs (and everything I write) this is published under a Creative Commons license. Anyone is free to download it, copy it, share it, re-mix it, re-record it, change it, sell it, mash it…whatever. Music is a gift. Share it. But most of all, enjoy it.

You can also find it (and my other songs) in these places:

• Reverb Nation
• MySpace Music
• The Open Source Internet Archive
• My Facebook Profile
• On my Wiki (The Lyrics)

1. A Simple Song to Help Stop the War
2. Why Can’t You Be Like Me
3. Golden Door
4. Imperfect Love Song
5. Poorest Man

There’s an option to add a review to each, if you’re so inclined…

I’m also working on recording some of my arrangements and expansions of well-known hymns — when I’m done, I’ll put them all in album format, and call it Hymns and Heresies.