Lewis Greer, David Benoit, Terilyn Joe (emcee), David Pack, and Charles Marsala (host, emcee, and Mayor of Atherton) before a Heart of Silicon Valley benefit concert

Back near the end of 2001 I met a fellow named Jeff Pollock for lunch. A mutual friend had introduced us electronically, so when we met in person for the first time our conversation was fairly wide ranging as we searched for common ground.

We found it pretty quickly in music, something we were (and are) both passionate about. Jeff shared with me that he and some others had been kicking around the idea of doing house concerts in order to raise money for relief efforts for the attacks of 9/11. As we talked further, he asked me if I'd like to be involved in that.

I thought to myself, "Let's see. Doing good through good music. Yeah, I think that's a fit!" So I got involved and actually became an official co-founder of Heart of Silicon Valley.

Since then HOSV has helped raise more than $200,000 for non-profit organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area by mounting about 17 events. We've had a lot of extraordinary help, generous contributions of time, money and resources from individuals and businesses, and we've presented some amazing music.

Just a couple of weeks ago we put on a concert to benefit PACE (Pacific Autism Center for Education), and the performers were David Benoit and David Pack of Ambrosia fame. Either one on their own would be a headliner, but together they were really incredible. I wish I could have captured some of that for you, but the beauty of the music was only part of the story.

Both of the Davids were great crowd pleasers and very entertaining, but that evening they shared not only their talents and the fruit of years of working hard at what they do, they also shared their hearts. (The same could be said for the side men who played with them, bassist Trini Sanchez and drummer Jeff Olson.) These are artists who love to do music and also love to do good with their music.

That's a big part of the heart of HOSV, and it is at the very core of Do Good Music.

So let me encourage you to support those artists and do all you can to be like them. You may never be able to play piano like David Benoit, sing like David Pack, or write like either one of them, but whether you can or not you can do this: you can make good music and use it to do good. And that's good music.

I was doing a little surfing tonight when I came across this article from the Washington Times. Much of it is about something, I'm sure, but the most interesting part to me was a quote from Christa Farris, editor at CCM Magazine: "Christian music should set the bar for other music, but right now it's in a rut."

I've heard it said that a rut is just a grave with both ends kicked out, which of course implies that being in a rut is kind of like being dead. We don't have to go that far, but clearly being in a rut is a bad thing.

Now I don't know what the date of that article in the Washington Times was, but I'm thinking it was late August, somewhere around a month ago. But in my experience it might have been any time in the last, oh, 15 years and had some grain of truth to it. And "contemporary Christian music" is only about 35 years old.

That doesn't mean I think all Christian music is bad, much as it may sound like it, but it does mean that I think a lot of Christian music lacks that je ne sais quoi which makes it stand out from the crowd. In fact, back in the '90's (and that was clear last century) a friend of mine who is an excellent musician claimed he could spin the radio dial, come across some music, and tell you in less than 10 seconds if it was Christian music -- even without any lyrics being sung.

So what do you think? Is Christian music in a rut?

I don't know why, but when good things happen in our lives we tend to accept them as normal. When bad things happen, we consider ourselves victims of bad luck, God's wrath, Satan's attacks, or just a lousy life.

One place you can see that played out many times in a day is on a golf course. Let a golfer get a bad bounce and he'll wax eloquent about it for hours in the 19th hole. But let him get a good bounce and the only one who will report it is the "victim" who lost the bets.

Nationally we are the same. A lot of bad came out of the attacks on the World Trade Centers, Pentagon and the intended attack on the White House using a plane that is known to us all as United Flight 193. Nearly 3,000 people died almost immediately. Families lost husbands, fathers, wives, mothers, daughters, sons, cousins, aunts, uncles. Companies lost important and loved workers. Some companies themselves were virtually destroyed. Rather than go on, let me just acknowledge that the losses were wide spread and devastating, and many still suffer because of what happened that day.

But not every part of the aftermath of 9/11 was painful or negative. Only recently a movie was released which chonicled the heroic activities of some of the first rescue workers who arrived after the buildings were hit and before they collapsed.

Within a month after the attacks my wife and I were walking in downtown Palo Alto and came across a beautiful art exhibit that was made up entirely of art expressing some feeling about 9/11. And I personally know at least six people who wrote songs of encouragement, prayer, and hope within a very short time after 9/11. Other songs which had already been written took on new meaning and helped people deal and heal.

A song my partner and I wrote called Even That that had been recorded by a delightful and excellent singer named Laurie Kinsella fell into that category. She was asked to sing at a couple of different events which were created specifically around 9/11, and she sang that song. (We heard later that, because of Laurie's performance, that song actually made it to the White House.)

My point here is that good things can sometimes, and in fact often do, come out of very bad events. The Bible tells of Joseph saying to his brothers--the ones who sold him into slavery and told their father he was dead--that they meant it for bad, but God meant it for good.

So when you think of the attacks that were carried out on 9/11, acknowledge the losses, but be thankful for the good that was, and is, an important part of the aftermath. And keep writing and keep singing the songs that help us all with such times. That's good music.

Someone asked in a MySpace bulletin, "Where were you on 9/11/01?"

I was in the Red Carpet Club at San Francisco International Airport, having arrived at about 5 a.m. Pacific time, waiting to get on a plane to go to Nashville.

I noticed a group of people standing and looking at a small TV above the (obviously closed) bar, and out of curiosity I joined them. The first plane had just hit the WTC and no one was sure yet what was happening.

I stepped away from the TV to get a better signal on my cell phone and called my wife (who works for United Airlines and was in her office already at 5:30 a.m.) and told her what I knew. While we were talking I heard a gasp from the group at the TV -- the second plane had hit.

My own reaction to what was happening seems strange looking back on it. I had little thought of anyone actually dying, though hundreds already had. In my mind it was still early, only about 5:45 a.m., so the buildings must have been mostly empty. But of course it was 8:45 a.m. in New York, and the buildings were not empty. For some time -- probably 30 minutes or so -- I assumed my flight would still go to Nashville (through Chicago) because none of my plans had anything to do with the East Coast. I was concerned about how all this would affect my wife's day and work. Little did I know that it would ultimately impact her work in ways I couldn't even imagine, and that not only was I not going to make it to Nashville that day, but that airline travel from that moment on was changed.

It was chaotic at SFO, and when they finally told everyone to go home (about an hour later) people were still coming in who didn't know about the attacks. I stopped at the monitors on the way out and a man who had just arrived was looking at the screens showing all flights were cancelled. He was upset at his bad luck and wondered out loud what had happened. I told him that terrorists had hijacked at least two planes and flown them into the World Trade Center buildings. He couldn't believe it and was sure I was making it up. Others gathered around as I told him I couldn't believe it myself. Incredulity was everywhere.

My wife's office was (and is) in a United Airlines building near SFO, and she had dropped me off on her way in that morning. By the time SFO was shut down, her building had also been put into secure status, so I couldn't get to her. She was allowed to leave and was able to pick me up at an increasingly crowded airport. No one could get in and everyone inside had to get out. The streets outside the airport were filling rapidly with people, and within another few minutes were completely jammed.

I took my wife back toward her building, though of course I couldn't get her near the door she normally used because of the barriers that been hastily erected.

I made it home in about 30 minutes, listening to the car radio the whole way and watching television reports the rest of the day. I taped many hours of coverage, but have never watched those tapes since.

I'm not sure I ever will.

Next: responses to 9/11.

If you wanted to be cool back in 1625, the thing to do was to be a musketeer. In the 1950's, it was pretty cool to be a mouseketeer. Now, if you want to be so cool you're hot, you've got to be a marketeer.

Where the whole musketeer and mouseketeer fields were pretty limited and required either special skills or good connections, being a marketeer is open to almost anyone. So why not jump in?

Here's the scoop, and I'm writing this primarily for indie artists but it applies to all kinds of people, so pay attention even if you don't know a whole note from a donut hole. This is the age of the niche industry, and you are part of it.

Oh sure, there are still big companies around, but the amount of revenue and services provided by all the little guys far outweighs them. Now if you work for a big company and look around for a few days you'll find they have a marketing department. They might even have two, especially if they are a high tech company, but let's keep this simple.

In that marketing department are people who think about, pay attention to, and possibly even like marketing. They know how to craft messages, they understand demographics, they pore over tables of click-through rates and banner ad CPM costs and magazine circulations. They know which newspapers get picked up and tossed and which ones get passed on to secondary readers.

If you are like most indie artists I know, your marketing knowledge reaches its apex with "If you build it, they will come."

Except in the movies and extaordinary (meaning it does not apply to you) circumstances, that simply isn't true. So you either need to become a marketeer or you need to hire a marketeer, because without a little marketeering no one is going to know you exist. Even if you are the baddest base player or the most dynamite drummer in fourteeen states, if you don't do some marketing you'll simply become an outstanding starving artist.

There are millions of indie artists out there, and if you are one of them and want to rise above the crowd and get noticed by enough fans to put supper on your table, make sure you spend part of your time on marketing.

I'll post an article on the DGM web site about how you might jump in and some steps you might take to get into marketing. In the meantime, though, simply accept the fact that even the best products in the world are still marketed. Yours should be, too.