Notes
Michael W. Smith laid the foundation for his career back in the mid-1980s with a strong appeal and focus on the youth of America. Perhaps it should surprise few that this latest release, This Is Your Time, appears headed in that direction. Whether it's the return to Smitty's keyboard-driven, high-energy pop (thanks to coproducer Bryan Lenox, who also worked on Smith's Go West Young Man) or the lyrical preoccupation with young people finding their way in a troubled world, the release takes a page from some previous glories. The title track is the most gripping, a moving tribute to those students slain at the Columbine High School tragedy. Some of Smitty's best work here comes in the quieter pieces, such as "I Will Be Your Friend," "She Walks with Me," and "Anna." And again, he can rev it up with the anthemic "Hey You It's Me" and "I Still Have the Dream." But other than the pensive "Everybody Free," we see few signs of the mature and seasoned songwriting from the magnificent Live the Life release. One has to wonder why Smitty broke off the path to brilliance. --Michael Lyttle
Entertainment
The entertainment industry has grown and evolved over the years with music and cinema taking a new form through the ages and so have the technologies that fuel it. Gone are the days of eight songs on a cassette and VCR players with merely two hours of entertainment recorded on a single video cassette. With the advent of computers came digital data storage and hence the birth of DVD/CDs.
Quiet a step back in matters of physical form as these new generation audio/video storage devices hold an uncanny resemblance to the records that preceded the cassette generation. DVDs and CDs today are an everyday household entertainment storage device which has come a long way since the first records and cassettes were distributed commercially.
Notable advantages of DVD/CDs have to begin with the amount of storage space available. These days its possible to burn multiple movies on a single DVD and as far as audio goes if its in a highly compressed format such as .mp3 a single CD can accommodate multiple music albums. These discs are easy to handle, light and portable with no moving devices unlike the tape generation however they are delicate and a scratch on the DVD/CD surface could cause a disruption in the information being read by the player.
DVD/CDs were initially invented to provide high quality audio/video data to a user with the ability to regulate its production however this soon fizzled away with daily household computers gaining the ability to burn data in such formats. The race to curb piracy through such means has not hit a roadblock and DVD/CDs keep evolving with newer encryption technologies in a bid to curb unchecked replication of data spawning newer technologies like Blu-ray discs which seems to be yet another milestone on an unending road of innovation.
