Unless you are a fan of the rock guitar or a big fan of Billy Idol you probably have not heard of Steve Stevens. Stevens was born Steve Schneider and is an American guitarist and songwriter. He can’t be all bad, we share the same birth year (1959) and same last name (Schneider). Stevens attended New York City’s prestigious Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts as a music major. He studied the guitar and graduated in 1977. He is most known for his performances and writing with Billy Idol during Idol’s rocket to fame in the eighties. He is also a well known session guitarist and played all guitars on the successful solo album for Vince Neil of Motley Crue. The Neil, Stevens relationship began in the recording of the successful single “You’re Invited But Your Friend Can’t Come” for the movie “Encino Man”. Steven’s previous solo albums “Atomic Playboys” in 1989 and “Flamenco A Go Go” in 1999 both received some critical acclaim and brief commercial success. Steven’s has worked with many artists from Michael Jackson on “Dirty Diana”, to Peter Criss. He is most notable for his guitar effects work like the ray gun sound on Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell”. He uses multiple devices and techniques to create the unique effect sound.
Author Archives: barrydean
Ray Boltz has come out of the closet.
I remember listening to Ray Boltz when my wife and I first discovered Christian music many years ago. He
sang some pretty moving songs like “Watch the Lamb” and “I Pledge Allegiance To the Lamb”. Thinking back I don’t recall how theologically sound the lyrics were, but he still had quite an impact on the Christian music world. Now he has “come out” as the homosexual society puts it, and says he is happy again. Oh how the heart can deceive us into believing what makes us happy is right. There is an informative and interesting article about Ray Boltz at The Washington Blade that sheds some light on this story.
How should we think about this? There is a simple illustration I can think of. I am unhappy about having to obey the traffic laws, especially when I am in a hurry to go somewhere. It would make me very happy if I could ignore those laws in those times that are not convenient to me. But the traffic laws have a reason, and that reason is to keep us all safe while we are driving. God has given us laws as well. Whether we like them or not they do exist. Unlike state laws, these laws from God are not negotiable or subject to legislative changes. I believe that some of His laws exist to keep us safe as well. Regardless of the reason they exist, God, the Creator, demands that we obey them. These laws have been revealed to us in his scriptures. As believers in Christ we can choose to obey them or not. But please don’t fool yourself into believing there will not be consequences or an accounting for the foolish decision to ignore them.
As for Ray Boltz, we should be praying for him and his family. We should also be praying for those who will stand up and not be passive while this kind of behavior continues to filter into the local churches. We should also pray that we would make this stand in love and for the ultimate repentance and restoration of those like Ray Boltz. This brings up a thought for consideration. Can you be a Christian and also be gay? Please consider reading 1 Corintians 6. In verses 9 and 10 of that chapter you will find:
9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
The apostle Paul goes on to write to the Corinthians in verse 11:
11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
The scriptures make it clear that believers of Christ have been washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of Christ. We should no longer practice those former things. That is great news. Only by trusting in the Christ, will you have the power to fight against those former sinful things. Amen?
The Palin Doctrine
While my lovely, and politically savvy wife is out of town visiting family I will post something along those lines. I found this at the blogger American Thinker. If you saw the interview of Sarah Palin by ABC’s Charles Gibson and you are a thinker you might enjoy the political cartoon below.
John Fogerty – Revival
Today I am back to do another music review after an absence of a couple of weeks. This week I am going
back in time. I am reviewing an album that was released about a year ago by an artist who has been making music since the Bad Moon Rising. John Fogerty was the primary song writer for the American roots rock band affectionately known as Creedence Clearwater Revival. The band, also known as Creedence or CCR, gained popularity in the late sixties and early seventies with a string of successful hits. Creedence founded a new genre within rock music called swamp rock. The band was formed with John’s two other school buddy’s Doug Clifford, and Stu Cook, and John’s older brother Tom. The three younger members used to back Tom Fogerty at gigs until they decided to form a band together. Tom was the original singer but John took over the lead duties as Tom later stated “I could sing, but John had a sound.” Creedence eventually broke up over leadership and direction in the middle seventies and John went solo. He recorded one record called “The Blue Ridge Rangers” with the Creedence label. Then began the struggle to get out of his contract with that original label. It wasn’t until the early eighties when David Geffen’s Asylum Records bought out his contract for an estimated $1Mil before Fogerty released another record. His next major hit came in 1985 with the song “Centerfield”. However he refused to do any old CCR songs while on tour. He received many complaints about this during and after his shows. Finally in 1987 he lifted his self-imposed ban to perform the CCR songs at the persuading of Bob Dylan and George Harrison who had joined him on stage. According to Wikipedia, the persuasion went like this “if you don’t, the whole world’s gonna think ‘Proud Mary’ is Tina Turner’s song”. Today John Fogerty performs the CCR songs along with his solo material.
Of hummingbirds and bees
This past Labor Day weekend my lovely wife and I took a trip south. Specifically to Hampton, Georgia and
then Chattanooga, Tennessee. We left Wahoo, Nebraska around 1am and drove 18 hours in shifts down to Georgia to visit my cousin Judy and her husband Howard (also know by family as Ole Weird). After a day or so of visiting in Georgia we headed back north to Chattanooga.
Our visit with Judy and Howard in Georgia was a wonderful visit filled with late night conversation, honey harvesting, and good old Southern hospitality. During our family reunion my wife developed an interest in bee keeping thanks to “Ole Weird” who is an avid bee keeper. So needless to say she was greatly excited at the prospect of helping him harvest some honey from his bees. I will let her share her experiences of that event from her blog.
Prior to Robin and Howard donning their bee suits to pillage the bee honey, we were sitting on their back deck talking and something very fascinating transpired. Howard and Judy have a couple of hummingbird feeders hanging from rafters above their deck. While we were talking several hummingbirds began to hover around the feeders. They were chasing each other off to get to the feeders and making quite a racket. I was amazed at how close they were getting to us. Pretty soon several more hummingbirds showed up and we had a nice buzzing and commotion going on. I got my digital camera out and tried to take some still photos. The birds were zigging and zagging in and out so much it was hard to get a still photo. So I got the idea to set my camera to video and recorded the video below. I held the camera while they basically swarmed in and out and around the deck. I only captured them in video for a little over a minute but you can hear them chirping and buzzing throughout it.
I was also amazed at God’s creation in the hummingbird itself. Here are a couple of things I have since learned about hummingbirds. Did you know that the hummingbird is the only group in the bird family that can fly backwards? The wings of the hummingbird will beat 15 to 80 times per second depending on the species. That is so amazing to me.
Later in the week I will post something about the visit with our daughter Amanda, her husband Reece, and our adorable granddaughters in Chattanooga.
Like a kid with a new toy
I found a new toy for my blog site and I want to show it off. It’s a polling widget. Since this is my favorite spo
rts time of the year (college football season) is almost upon us, I will kick this baby off with a Nebraska football poll. The Nebraska football team begins this year with brand new coach, Bo Pelini, and expectations are high in Lincoln, Nebraska. So my first poll will be a question about their wins this season. You will find the poll at the top right in my sidebar. Please vote and give me feedback on possible other polls to create.
Are we really in distress?

In the above picture please notice the first bullet point under “The Standards of Respect” for flag etiquette. The bullet point reads:
The flag should never be dipped to any person or thing. It is flown upside down only as a distress signal.
This partial list was obtained from usflag.org concerning flag etiquette. Now for my point. Please go to this link of my wife’s blog site and see an interesting article about the design of the pass credentials for the 2008 Democratic Party Convention. She’s just saying…









