Dave's Top Eight

1. Jerry Reed...Revisited by Darrell Toney (reviewed 6/07) (5 Stars)
2. Sounds Like Sunday by Janet Paschal (reviewed 5/07) (5 Stars)
3. True To The Call by Kingdom Heirs (reviewed 3/07) (4 1/2 Stars)
4. Revival by Gold City (reviewed 10/06) (4 1/2 Stars)
5. Get Away Jordan by Ernie Haase & Signature Sound (reviewed 2/07) (4 1/2 Stars)
6. Breakin' Chains by Three Bridges (reviewed 5/07) (4 1/2 Stars)
7. Big Sky by The Isaacs (reviewed 4/07)
8. Skywriting by Mercy's Well (reviewed 7/07)

Click title to purchase at CBD.com...click artist name to read Dave's Review. A CD will automatically fall out of the Top Eight after twelve months if no CD surpasses it before then.

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November 17, 2005

Sampling XM's SG channel via DirecTV

To be totally honest, I was initially peeved to see XM Radio offering the Southern Gospel channel enLighten via DirecTV while not giving their loyal paying customers the channel via XM satelite service directly. When I got past my first gut reaction, though, I was very pleased to see Southern Gospel made available to such a wide array of potential listeners. Most DTV customers have the service so they can watch TV, obviously, not listen to the radio...but many people are at least curious enough to flip thru all the channels from time to time just to see what's there. This is a VERY GOOD THING both for Southern Gospel as a genre and the cause of Christianity.

I know some people pooh-poohed the value of enLighten when it first launched, but I pointed out on my blog at the time that the big deal about a Southern Gospel XM channel was in the potential of what it might become. Now that potential is becoming a reality, and hopefully those who wondered why there would be such hoopla about a Southern Gospel channel on XM are finally seeing the cause for celebration. Places that have never heard of Southern Gospel before now have a high fidelity channel available via DTV, with music quality that's on par with the most respected brick and mortar SG radio stations. It's also non-stop.

I listened to Enlighten via DirecTV for 30 minutes or so earlier this evening around 9:45 PM (EST) and again for another 30-40 minutes around midnight. It sure sounds a lot better via DTV than it does over my XM online service. My only gripe was that the vast majority of the songs I heard were slow...running about 7 to 3. Fortunately, all but one of the songs I heard were of decent quality, but I think they need to pick up the pace if they expect to grab a listener's attention while they're channel surfing with a remote in hand. Hopefully, I just caught them during a couple of slower sets that aren't really the norm for the channel.

One thing that's very nice about the programming is the way they play a lot of songs that aren't necessarily "hits." Heavy rotation is great for commercial radio, but not for continuous music like this.
posted by David Bruce Murray @ 2:59:00 AM


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