Here is Lewis on his "pre-conversion" to Christianity via good books:
"Indeed, I must have been as blind as a bat not to have seen, long before, the ludicrous contradiction between my theory of life and my actual experiences as a reader. George MacDonald had done more to me than any other writer; of course it was a pity that he had that bee in his bonnet about Christianity. He was good in spite of it. Chesterton had more sense than all the other moderns put together; bating, of course, his Christianity. Johnson was one of a few authors whom I felt I could trust utterly; curiously enough, he had the same kink. Spenser and Milton by strange coincidence had it too. Even among ancient authors the same paradox was to be found. The most religious (Plato, Aeschylus, Virgil) were clearly those on whom I could really feed. On the other hand, those writers who did not suffer from religion and with whom my sympathy ought to have been complete—Shaw and Wells and Mill and Gibbon and Voltaire—all seemed a little thin; what as boys we called ‘tinny.’ It wasn’t that I didn’t like them. They were all (especially Gibbon) entertaining; but hardly more. There seemed to be no depth in them. They were too simple. The roughness and density of life did not appear in their books.... The upshot of it all could nearly be expressed in a perversion of Roland’s great line in the Chanson—‘Christians are wrong, but all the rest are bores.’" -CS Lewis

Here is my question: is art produced by Christians (I'm thinking of music and writing mainly) still "rough and dense" these days--or is it quite "tinny?" If yes to the first, who do you have in mind? If yes to the second, why the reversal?

I have recently acquired a turntable--this has been one of the happiest things. I am a lover of music, and like anyone born after 1980, by the time I was allowed to purchase music, we advanced from the archaic vinyl disc and "moved on" to tape. Further, by the time I "got into" music, tape was usurped by the more "compact" plastic disc, only with a laser instead of a needle. Now, Apple has fooled us into thinking music is a bunch of 1's and 0's -- and thus to listen to music in our current age is to listen to a computer signal.

Well, let me tell you what a joy it is to pull out a clumsy plastic disc, lay it upon a perfect circle, lift the needle and lay it gently upon the outer fringes of the disc.

So I have been internally compiling reasons I think listening to records is better than listening to cd's/mp3's. I decided to make the list here. So here it goes.

1. Album art - quite nonexistent with digital music (and the little box on the video iPod hardly counts!)
2. Records sound better - there is something more immediate, full, and spacious about vinyl. It is simply a false lie that digital music is "cleaner" and better quality. No, friends, digital music is flat.
3. Experience - Listening to a record requires time. It slows you down--it forces involvement on the behalf of the listener. It requires so much attention, the music is never relegated to "background music," a place I think music was never intended to go. (think about music lovers who feel awkward just sitting around a computer listening to music--we were meant to just listen to music; the digital music phase simply makes this awkward.)
4. Imperfection - this does not run counter to reason #2. In our digital world, we have falsely assumed that music must be overproduced, clean, and "flawless." It is is a false assumption. We live in a fallen world, where beauty and ruin exist side by side. To create art, and thus view/listen to art that doesn't account for this reality is shallow and deceptive. Why do you think people like Ryan Adams/Johnny Cash over Jimmy Eat World? Records have imperfections, thats all I'm saying.
5. Time - You can actually watch the music play as the needle moves down the groove closer to the center of the disc. This is far better and realistic than a digital time-piece telling you the "track" and "time" of the song.
6. There is no such thing as digital - Dr. Pratt helped me understand that even "digital" signals are analog -- just really really fast analog. We live in an analog world, nothing in life is "1"or "0". Our lived reality is not that clean, hard, and fast. Dare I say digital is hurried, compressed, and worse sounding analog.
7. You can't steal from a musician - It's quite easy to steal a musician's lunch by not buying their art, but making a copy in a digital world. This is impossible and undesirable in a vinyl world.
8. Bigger is better - We want to make everything smaller-who says that is a virtue?
9. Community - You can't carry your turntable with you everywhere earphones in tact, and thus pretend the shared world around you doesn't exist. Instead, with vinyl, everyone hears the music--and very often you simply invite others over to listen to records (they even make backpacks to carry records).

10. The record store - support your local record shop. Enough said. I know capitalism does what it does, but it pains me to see these local shops die because of a website with digital storehouse of music.

The Hold Steady = Rock Music