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  • I fell off the face of blogging …

    I’m so sorry! I just fell off the face of the planet … wait. That’s not quite right. I was here. I was working and writing. I just wasn’t blogging, and I left you in the middle of our trip to Prince Edward Island. Shame on me!

    I’ve got loads of excuses, but instead of offering those, I thought I’d just dive right back in to the good stuff.

    We’ll return to our pictorial tour of PEI shortly, but today, I wanted to tell you a little story about two little videos. You see, it all started with this one, Marc Martel’s video audition for the Queen Extravaganza (a tribute tour to the music of Queen). This little video has been making the rounds on social media, and I caught wind of it last week via twitter.

    I was hooked.

    I’ve listened to it 2 or 3 … or 40 times. (And I’m not alone if the nearly 4 million views on YouTube are any indication.) If you’re not familiar with Queen’s music, I’ll just say that this dude sounds astonishingly like Freddie Mercury, the late lead singer.

    I was busy telling my boss about the video (we were working really hard at that moment, I’m sure) when my friend Mark Smeby stopped by the office and told me that Marc Martel of the Queen video is the same Marc Martel of the band downhere. Of course, I didn’t realize that the co-lead singer of downhere was named Marc, but I was sure familiar with their music. In fact, I’d linked to a video with one of their songs last Christmas. And I’ve had their album Ending is Beginning for ages. Just never really got around to getting into it.

    Thanks to the Queen Extravaganza, all of that changed over the last week. I dug back into my old iTunes account and discovered just how fantastic downhere’s stuff really is. May I offer exhibits A and B.

    But looking back wasn’t enough. I had to find out what they’ve been up to since that album. Turns out, they have a new one out called On the Altar of Love. And the first single off of that album is Let Me Rediscover You. Exhibit C.

    Whoa. Man, I needed to hear that. Ever feel like you hear a song that’s just echoing the cry of your heart? That’s me with this song. “Reveal to me the God I thought I knew.” Oof. Wow, I needed that this week. Hope you enjoyed it, too.

    And now I’m off to see if I can catch them on tour this fall.