Well, it’s that time again; time for me to write something inspiring for the community or at the very least… waste your time. While I’m writing this, I’m once again installing Star Wars Galaxies. I’m not doing it because it’s the best MMO in the world. It falls far short of that. It all comes back to the fact that it is Star Wars and despite how botched the game is/was/will be on November 15, 2005 when their new massive update happens, I am so hopelessly addicted to Star Wars in general, that I just can’t stay away for long. I guess this is where the spiritual tie-in comes: I am hopelessly addicted to Star Wars, but I can’t honestly say the same about Jesus. I should be. I want to be, but I am constantly screwing up.

I’ve been a Christian now since… well… eighth grade. I think I was about thirteen then. That means I’ve been a believer for over 17 years now. That’s very hard to believe… at least for me. I never had a huge conversion experience either. I wasn’t the “bad” kid. I was good, but imperfect and still very sinful and lost as far as my direction was concerned. I won’t go into it all, but I just wasn’t the mass-murderer turned Christian missionary like Paul. I was and still am, just an average guy who Jesus for some reason thought was worthy of being called part of his family.

Jesus felt that so strongly that he willingly gave his life up on a cross known that while I would choose him, others would not. He was totally sold out for me and for everyone else on this planet. You simply cannot become any more sold out than him, unless you give up your life and then you might at best simply match his commitment.

So… here I am… reinstalling Star Wars Galaxies to feed an addiction to a fictional universe after having watched all 6 movies who knows how many times, suffering through the made for TV Ewok movies a few times, watching the cartoon shows, collecting toys and reading well… close to 70 novels. I am so totally sold-out for Star Wars, but I am so far from being totally sold out for Christ.

Well… that was depressing. 

Issue #10

Welcome to Tastyfresh Issue 10! We are now officially in double digits. This time around we have a few reviews a couple of articles and a BUNCH of interviews for you. Here’s the quick run down:

We have interviews with Joseph, head of Next Dimension Muisc and Dave Copeland of Demulcent Records. Both are here to share with us a bit about their labels and what we can expect to hear from them in the future. Ms. Cocolove literally had to beg me to get an interview with… well… me. I feel weird doing an interview for the very magazine/site I run. It just seems like a conflict of interest, but at least I’m upfront about it. We also have interviews with a Proton Music remix contest winner Joel Armstrong of the Peg City All Stars and two of the runners-up Gerwin Koudijs and Tim Holt of His Boy Elroy. As a late addition, we even managed to get the interview with !Q! of Uberzone that has been in the works for... well... a year now and it was well worth the wait.

Article wise, we have the second part to Shana Gray’s series about how to start a local scene. This time around she retells a bit about how she got involved in carving out her own corner of a scene in Toronto. Cindy Tucker gives us a follow-up article to what many of us both witnessed in the forums and contributed directly to: her trip to Germany this summer. She also gives us some practical insight into what it means to truly step out in faith. We also have new comer DJ Dual Core taking us back into the 80’s and very early 90’s with a recounting of how the CCM scene slowly evolved to make room for Christian EDM. He’s calling it “The History of Christian Dance Music: Issue #0” Lastly, Pat D brings us the Drop of the Month with a bit about how to maintain confidence as a DJ even when the crowd is not reacting to your set as you had hoped.

In the reviews this time we are covering the UK DJ Worship act Aorta’s new EP: Love, Hope, Future from Rubik Records. We also have a review of the new Paul van Dyk mix CD, The Politics of Dancing 2, which includes a slamming remix of Shiloh’s Dream On. Lastly we have New Order’s new Jetstream EP.

Missed Reviews

There one last thing I want to mention real quick. I am personally not happy with the number of reviews we are able to bring you here at Tastyfresh. Every week hundreds of new records are released. It’s true that few are Christian, but we have never limited our reviews simply to what Christians release. Because there are so many things that could be reviewed each week, most of which we do not get serviced or even find out about in time to coordinate with the labels for reviews, the fact that we only have a half-a-handful of reviewers, and the fact that everything that gets reviewed depends on me to edit and put into HTML, and finally the fact that the zine only is published every other month, there is no way we can possibly offer a decent selection of good reviews. This really bugs me.

I can tell you right now that there are no fewer than five reviews that didn’t make this issue simply because of time and editing issues. I personally want to offer my apologies to CocoStreet, Terrance Parker, and Steve Jeffery as I was unable to work in reviews of their releases. If anybody gets a chance to grab Rubik Records Liquid Sessions Vol. 2, do it. That is 60 min of pure jazzy UK D&B bliss. It’s effeminately a 9.5 out of 10. Likewise, Coco and TP deserve a very high 8 if not a 9 for their collaborative Let God Arise single on Chosen Few Records.

I also should have reviewed all of the Deepsky and Marc Mitchell’s Lost in the Moment since so many Christians submitted quality remixes. Joel Armstrong deserves a good TF review as well for his Serenity track. There were even more releases we simply missed either because we didn’t get the information about them in time, have the people to review or have the time to edit and publish them.

So why am I telling you this? It’s not to make us look bad, the lack of reviews do that just fine on their own. The reason is that I am going to look into ways to take the publishing out of my hands and place it more in those who earnestly want to do reviews for the zine. In fact, I’m thinking about pulling the reviews out of the zine so they can exist on their own and be published more frequently. This won’t happen for a few months however as I am still trying to balance other issues, so just know that it is coming and one day, I promise you that we will do better in our reviews.

Sincerely,
Dave R
Webmaster, editor, guy with an ego problem.