Discography - Week 33

Yes, it's time for another thematic week as part of our Discography music discussion.  After a series of lengthy and detailed high level meetings with the excellent Dave Wallace (or maybe the exchange of one email) it was decided that we're going to kick off the holiday season with our favorite songs.  There are so many great songs suggestions this week, and it made me wonder: how many holiday songs are there?

Oh, and in responding to the blog post, as we always do, be sure to share your all-time favorite Christmas gift.

Jack Schultz

Peter Auty, Walking in the Air

As Dave Kelly and I agree on our favorite Christmas songs (I listen to Charlie Brown’s Christmas year-round), I’ll move to an alternative selection.   When my daughters were very young, they were fans of a picture book called The Snowman, by Raymond Briggs.  In it, a young boy builds a snowman on Christmas Eve. The snowman comes to life and whisks him to the North Pole (much more time-efficiently than on The Polar Express—air travel is safer and a better value) to meet Santa.  It was later adapted as a half-hour animated short in the U.K.

While watching the cartoon in the early 90s with Melissa and Emily, I was taken by the beauty of the song “Walking in the Air”, performed by choir boy Peter Auty.  I find it to be subtly spiritual and meditative, both on its own or as part of the show.  Days after watching it, the song stayed with me.  I get a lift whenever I hear it.  I credit this song with bringing me to terms with the fact that I like choir music in small doses. 

I’ve had so many great gifts over the years, but one that I have fond memories of is a hockey game (kind of like foosball, but played from the ends of the table instead of the sides) that I got when I was 10.  I became proficient enough to successfully compete with my older brother and his friends when they came home from college, which was pretty heady stuff for a 10 year-old. 

While we’re torturing Paul McCartney for the lapse of taste that is “Wonderful Christmastime”, can we also punish whoever invented electric football?  Never has a toy that looked so appealing on the shelf turned out to be such an unmitigated disaster. 

Kelly Thomas

Thanks for inviting me to this list, Gary, and howdy to all I've been reading but haven't properly met yet. 

Christmastime when I was a lass meant the HiFi was on every evening, either the radio tuned to a station that played carols or the turntable piled high with our favorite Christmas LPs. This was my mother's favorite and I still tear up when I listen to it: Tennessee Ernie Ford, Silent Night.

Tomorrow marks 40 years since she died.  My dad loved the goofy songs, like this Spike Jones classic, All I Want for Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)  He still got a kick out of them years later when he came to live with us, the Alzheimer's unable to dim his long term memory of the lyrics..  

Christmas Eve was my paternal grandparents' wedding anniversary.  They would spend Christmas with us and always celebrated with a champagne toast, arms entwined, then give each other a big smooch.  I've kept this tradition going in my own family.  

Favorite gift is a toss up:  Either the transistor radio I got in the mid-60s, and went to sleep listening to pop songs like Herman's Hermits "There's a Kind of aHush," or the wooden shoes my father got me from his Dutch business partners.  Wore those damn things to classes my freshman year at ASU, clomping down the concrete malls, feeling quirky and cool.  Dork Supreme!  

Bob Craigmile

This song is (besides South Park's Merry Fucking Christmas, and The Rugburns "I hate Christmas" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiF8wKobF68, which echoes the holiday sentiment that it's hard to find good cocaine on xmas day) my favorite isJoseph Spence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk5ufApUArQ

At first I just thought it was funny, but this guy has a serious fan base as a folk musician.  

Now on to the present. It's really a tough choice because I had so many disappointing  "crushing little Bobby's soul" type scenarios that resulted from buying gifts at the Rexall Drug store two days before Xmas.  Never getting what I asked for ("Sears is sold out of the drum sets"), etc.  But there were some gems in there.  Hot Wheels Rod Runner was one I actually played with a lot in 1969 and 1970. http://www.ebay.com/itm/1969-Hot-Wheels-Rod-Runner-Set-with-Track-Hot-Turn-Curves-Joiners-Speedometer-/231844214844

As to Jack's recollection, I asked for, but of course, never had, the vibrating electric football game, but friends did, and it sucked pretty bad.  My poor demented parents bought me an electric football game too:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF-ywS31wMM

It is much worse than the little guys buzzing around on the vibrating game board...

Miranda Tavares

Happy Music Blog Day, everyone, and welcome back, Mike and Gary! I admit to scanning today's post to know ahead of time whether I was duplicating someone's pick, but I have not actually read anything yet, so I will sing praises (and complete the additional assignment) later today. 

-MT

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Merry Christmas Baby

I've known what song I was going to do this week even before I knew the theme. Although I am a fan of most of Jesus's teachings and try to adhere to them, I am a confirmed agnostic. Therefore I do not celebrate the birth of the son of God. But I love Christmas. Love it. It is truly my favorite time of year. I cannot come up with any words that explain it better than those of the immortal Frank Cross: It's the time of the year when we all act a little nicer, we smile a little easier. We cheer a little more.  For a couple of hours out of the whole year, we are the people that we always hoped we would be. 

Christmas is often referred to as the Season of Giving, and I find that description pretty apt. Life gets in the way, and often we focus on the day-to-day aspects of living: what to make for dinner, how to handle a problem at work, whether to broach a concern with a friend or family member. Even after factoring in our regular charitable donations and random acts of kindness, our focus is largely on ourselves. Christmas reminds us to focus on others' needs for a while. Maybe we don't quite put others' needs above our own, but we at least raise them up to be even. And we love it! It feels fulfilling! It gives us purpose, and satisfaction, and we walk around afterwards smiling and patting ourselves on our backs. Christmas reminds us that helping others feel good makes us feel good. We're built for it. When times get bleak, the one thing that keeps my hope afloat for the human race is that we are hard wired to get off on helping each other. As much as being a total dick can feel good (and oh, it can feel so good. Phrasing?), helping someone feels even better, and that feeling lasts longer. All the bad things that happen in the world can be attributed to people forgetting that simple, integral fact. Christmas is an annual reminder: Be excellent to each other, for you, in turn, will feel excellent. 

So why pick this song, which touches not at all on everything I've just rambled on about? Because this song is the above-described pat on the back. This song encompasses why so many people are fans of this Season of Giving. Baby was nice, Baby took good care of him, and now he is elated. And he's sharing it with the world. And I have no doubt that, as a result, Baby is grinning from ear to ear, heart swollen larger than the Grinch's in the last act. 

I like this version out of the oh so many for a litany of reasons. It's Bruce, it features Clarence as the music on the radio. But mostly because it's the first version of this song that I ever heard, and even as a kid, vaguely believing in Santa and wholly oblivious to the darker side of what life could offer, the happiness in this song struck a chord in me. I've listened to about ten other versions, but none come close to blaring true bliss like the E Street Band.

Merry Christmas, all. You elate me every Saturday morning. You are the music on my radio. 

Nate Bell

Nate's pick--Carol of the Bells

Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Carol of the Bells

Original version, Carol of the Bells

Mr. Mackey version from South Park, Carol of the Bells

For many reasons, I love Christmas.  Similar to M, it is a time where many people are happier, kinder to each other, and thinking of another.  It's a time where people are often truly charitable, and stop to think about those less fortunate.  People think about giving, and trying to make others happy.  I myself have really enjoyed playing Santa Claus over the years, and the fun in trying to surprise someone with a gift they truly like is extremely rewarding.

So, I love many, many Christmas songs.  We have an enormous library, from the mocking and profane to the classic, from Larry the Cable Guy to Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole.

Still, my very favorite is Carol of the Bells.  It is all at once, joyful and majestic.  It can be played with frantic energy or softly lulling.  I find it strangely moving that is vaguely sung as a round.  It's traditional and classic, but most often it's still done in quick tempo, setting it apart from many "classic" Christmas songs.  I have seldom heard a version of it that I don't like, and I find myself humming it all through the season.

Not even the South Park parody version of the song is irreverent, which is quite an accomplishment.  This is a song that I enjoy completely for its own sound, without any specific memory or emotional tie to the lyrics.  I may stand out for being a more mainstream and traditional pick for this week, but I do hope it lifts someone else's spirits as well.

Gary Beatrice

Blind Boys of Alabama and Mavis Staples, Born in Bethlehem

I love Christmas but I generally don't listen to a ton of Christmas music. Typically I don't pull out our collection until the week before the holiday.

For the past decade or so I've strongly preferred the old Christmas classics from the pre-rock era, especially if it's broadcast on an AM radio (searching for a truer sound). Chief among this is Sinatra's I'll Be Home For Christmas. The sentiment always got to me, presumably a young man serving his country, missing his sweetheart at holiday time. He will be home, but then the crushing reality "if only in my dreams".

But I'm not completely immune to Christmas music performed in a modern style. Perhaps because The Blind Boys of Alabama and Mavis Staples are both artists who perform spiritual music year round, I find their Christmas music especially compelling. "Born In Bethlehem " rocks the house down, and would be the highlight of a Blind Boys live performance even in mid July.

Cyndi Brandenburg

Dar Williams, The Christians and the Pagans 

Yeah, I have to admit it.  I'm one of "those" people who has a total
love/hate relationship with the holidays, surely exacerbated by the
fact that I am an atheist pagan Jew who hates to shop and resents
being forced into obeying any kind of temporally-dictated rituals and
traditions.  But I do love the cold, the snow, and the trees.  There
is magic to be found just in the looking, and so much love to go
around, that it's hard not to appreciate a season where we open our
arms and hearts to family, friends, and strangers alike.

This song pretty much captures the best of it for me, which inevitably
includes a bit of awkwardness tempered with some good ironic humor.
Plus, Dar Williams is just plain cool.

And then, there is this one, which captures it too (albeit in a
different way).  In addition to the requisite awkwardness and dose of
ironic humor, it brings back the best kind of childhood memories for
me.  As an adult, I also see that it teaches us something about
unconditional love and acceptance in this crazy and imperfect world.
You have to actually watch it to see what I mean.  Given its
surprising staying power, I couldn't resist adding it to the blog.

John Denver and The Muppets, Twelve Days of Christmas 

Dave Wallace

Darlene Love - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

As Miranda previously alluded to, I love Christmas music (even though, like Kathy, I no longer identify myself as Christian).  And I have pretty strict rules about listening to it - no Christmas music before Thanksgiving, but then I listen to it exclusively between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  So, for December, my posts will be solely about Christmas tunes.  My first choice is an obvious one but, IMHO, it's the greatest Christmas record of all-time off of the greatest Christmas album of all-time.  The Phil Spector Christmas Album is a classic, filled with terrific songs, and unsurpassed as a holiday album.  (Interestingly, the album tanked when it was first released on November 22, 1963; turns out that people weren't in the mood for buying Xmas music after that date.)  While the entire thing is fantastic, the sole original on the album proved to be its highlight.  One of the greatest singers in pop music history, Darlene Love nails the vocal, propelled along by Spector's Wall of Sound.  One in a long-line of melancholy Christmas songs, you can feel the pain in Love's voice as she begs for her lover to return home for Christmas.  When I started compiling a list of songs for this blog, this was one of the first songs on my list, and I've been waiting for months to write about it.

Love famously performed this song on the David Letterman show for years around the holidays.  Over time, the productions grew more elaborate (and more awesome!).  Here's a fantastic mash-up of a number of the performances; you can get a sense of how they evolved.

Dave Mills

Over the Rhine, Snowed In With You

For this week's theme, I'm going back the well I first drew from for this discography project: Over the Rhine. Actually, I'm choosing a whole album, rather than just a track, namely, their 2006 Snow Angels. For the past decade, it's been my family's go-to holiday album. Each year, one of the evenings of the weekend after Thanksgiving, my wife, daughters, and I dig out the holiday decorations, trim the tree, bake cookies, and play holiday music. And for the past ten years, this album is the first one we play -- usually multiple times. It's a delightfully rich album. Some songs are upbeat and festive, like "Darlin' (Christmas is Comin)," "North Pole Man," and Linford's piano homage to Charles Shultz and the Peanuts Christmas special. Others, though, like "All I Ever Get For Christmas Is Blue" and "Snow Angel" recognize the melancholy that often tinges the holidays. The track I've chosen here as a representative of the album as a whole, "Snowed In With You," is, to me, an absolutely perfect slice in the middle of the album's range. I love the mood of the song, they lyrics are sweet, and musically, it's perfect for slow dancing by the woodstove while the daughters are putting ornaments on the tree. We've got the album on vinyl, and the hiss and pop of the needle in the grooves adds even more richness to the listening experience.

Those of you who live in the Cinci area owe it to yourselves to go to their Holiday Homecoming concern at the Taft Theater. They end their touring season every year with a show at the Taft. This year, they're partnering with the Cincinnati Pops. It's December 20. Tickets are here: http://cincinnatisymphony.org/concerts-plus-events/pops-16-17/over-the-rhine-christmas-with-the-pops/  Go. You won't regret it.

Back when I lived in Ohio, they used to follow up their Taft show with a more intimate concert the next day. They'd usually play the Taft on a Saturday night, and then on Sunday afternoon, they'd gather at a run-down church in Norwood, called Saint Elizabeth's. Friends of mine from college are running a communal-living experiment in that neighborhood, and they own the building, renting out artist studio spaces and running other community-revitalization projects out of this huge old cathedral. For Over the Rhine's show, people from that community would make amazing food and pour a bunch of good wine, and about 100-150 people would gather to hear Karin and Linford play acoustic sets for a couple hours. All for 20 bucks a person. Amazing. Eventually, I guess Over the Rhine got too popular and the demand for that event got overwhelming, so they quit doing it. Thankfully, we were able to attend several times, and brought our daughters to the last one back in 2012. So now we have those memories to play along with the album each year. Good, good stuff.

Mike Kelly

Robert Earl Keen, Merry Christmas From the Family

Let's face it- Thanksgiving is the better holiday.  There's no pressure, no religiosity to contend with, just food, people you presumably like and football games.  Christmas is a different story.  There's all sorts of formality, decorum, awkward reciprocations and crappy music that's supposed to get you in the mood to buy something.   Yeah, I know that I am far more negative in this post than I actually end up being on the holiday. After all, I went swimming in Lake Champlain last year and have put things that are still together in place for the better part of the last decade on Christmas Eve.  However, the reality is that there's a particular beauty in the loud days that doesn't get as much credit as the silent nights.   Life is real and doesn't stop just because everyone tries to pretend for a little while that it's something different.  

Enter the slice of life country songs that peel back the facade of all the things you typically see in a Lexus commercial - "make bloody marys because we all want one" sings REK and pretty much anyone who knows about the blackout between present opening and dinner agrees with him.  All sorts of strange family dynamics enter into the picture and people just figure out how to make this work- albeit with a margarita anodyne to get them through the day.  But really, it's a song of celebration.  It's a song that even though life doesn't look like a pre-packaged vial of perfection, there's even more beauty in recognizing things for how they are.  There's the hearts that beat bloody red and people who, although eminently flawed, are still capable of love and being loved even though their taste in fountain drinks and nicotine may not exactly match your own.   

Here's to life this holiday season. Love you guys. Thanks for being an awesome part of my weekend for the last 30 something weeks.  -- MK 

Kathy Seiler

I've got two Christmas-themed songs for this week. I could post about holiday songs for a whole year, so I'll be selective.  And the two holiday songs I chose are about...death.

I've spent enough holidays with family that were NOTHING like that happy family holiday commercial on TV where Phil pulls me away from the festivities onto the porch and gives me a ring with two diamonds in it because I'm just that special.  When we need to get away from our family during holiday gatherings, we usually end up loading the dishwasher together or walking a dog. And we vow never to do holidays with family again. Ha. 

On holidays like that especially, this song always comes to mind. And I'll be damned if I don't sing it REALLY loud every time I hear it. 

St.Stephen's Day Murders

The Chieftains with Elvis Costello (album: The Bells of Dublin - the entire album is a gem)

Some of my favorite lines:

And the whole family tree you neglected to bury

Are feeding their faces until they explode....

...Cause it's all we got left 

as they draw their last breath

And its nice for the kids

because you finally get rid of them (RID OF THEM!!)

in the St. Stephen's Day murders

I'd be willing to bet most of us have been in this place.

The other song I want to share isn't a holiday song at all, but one that I associate with Christmas. When the River Meets the Sea 

There was a Christmas special that John Denver and the Muppets did in the late 70s. I grew up watching the Muppet Show and while I've never loved John Denver's music or voice much, I've always respected him as an artist. And the Muppets are the BEST. The song is clearly about death and the peacefulness of transitioning out of life, although I didn't realize that until I was an adult.

Phillip Seiler

This week has been exceptionally hard for a variety of reasons. I have over 1000 songs in my Christmas music playlist. I am finding little joy in any of them this year. Kathy thinks I should write about, inarguably, the best Christmas song ever written, The Pogues Fairytale of New York. But to my mind that is a bit like writing about why the New York Yankees are baseball’s historically best overall team (and I say that as a lifelong Orioles fan.) Then she went and stole my number two pick, John Gorka’s Bells of Christmas Day so I clearly cannot take her advice for anything.

So what now?

I will avoid the great set of 80s Christmas send-ups (Captain Sensible’s One Christmas Catalogue, The Three Wise Men (XTC) Thanks For Christmas, They Might Be Giants Santa’s Beard, etc...). I will also avoid a host of beloved instrumentals as they lack the depth needed for this blog. Classics? Meh.

So I present for your consideration one of the most interesting voices of the last 20 years, Kate Rusby, Cold Winter. Kate Rusby is a jewel with a voice as clear and distinctive as any artist currently recording. I recommend you check out her full catalog. But I chose this song for its classic seasonal themes of winter and darkness. Christmas, for much of the world, does not involve cold, ice and dark. And yet so much of our seasonal music does. I find this interesting. I also love the juxtaposition of Kate’s clear, feminine voice with the cold landscape she describes. Should it surface Christmas nostalgia in me? I dare say not. And yet…

I am left, in the end, with both the realization that this song evokes an unexpected emotional response in me while also confusing my intellect. I wish I had some greater insight than that but sadly, I have only questions. And a great appreciation of a beautiful voice and instrumentation. Enjoy.

Dave Kelley

The Vince Guaraldi Trio, Linus and Lucy

I was all over the place when trying to decide which Christmas song to select.  Even though I am not particularly religious at this time, I tend to prefer the religious Christmas music to the secular.  I almost dropped the proverbial turd into the Christmas punch bowl by writing a long commentary about the holidays and the concept of home.  Then I realized that I really like you people and don't want to inflict that kind of pain on you at this joyous time of the year.  Hasn't the Grinch Who Stole the White House caused enough sorrow already?  

Like many people my age, I grew up with A Charlie Brown Christmas.  I loved it as a child, and I still love it today for reasons that did not exist when I was young.  It reminds me of my childhood and a time when I did not have to wonder where or what home is.  I just feel good every year when I watch it.

'Linus and Lucy" is just a great song.  I never get tired of hearing it.  There is really not much more to say about it than that.

On a side note, SimplyHaving a Wonderful Christmas Time by Paul McCartney is the worst Christmas song of all time and induces homicidal range in me.

Lastly, whatever holiday you celebrate, or if you observe no holiday at all, thanks to everyone for the music, the commentaries, and the camaraderie over the first 33 weeks of the blog.  God bless us one and all.

Gary Scudder

Henry Mancini, Carol for Another Christmas

I don't know when I first heard this song - probably on some compilation album that my parents owned - but it's been my favorite holiday song since I was a teenager.  It is sweet and beautiful, and appropriately elegiac.  The excellent Mike Kelly and I were walking through a cathedral last week discussing beauty, and I proposed that every single thing in the world was a combination of the beautiful and the horrible, and that true wisdom was the ability to differentiate between the two, and to celebrate the beautiful and to withstand the horrible.  Maybe this is why I find Christmas both wonderful and sad, because, in the end, it is a holiday that is as much about those who are not with us at that moment than those who are.  We are surrounded by ghosts.  Although Dickens, as you might guess my favorite author, is justly famous for A Christmas Carol, he wrote many Christmas-themed stories, and ghosts and goblins run amuck throughout them.  They form an appropriate metaphor for the unseen that accompany us at Christmas.  However, in the end, they're not malevolent spirits, and they simply want to be with us for Christmas, just as we want to be with them.  They're only alone - and we're only alone - if we forget each other.  Maybe this is why I love Carol For Another Christmas so much - it expresses the beauty and sadness of the season.

Here is one of my favorite passages from Dickens.  If you've been my friend for some time you've doubtless seen it, as it tends to make an appearance every few years on my Christmas email.

   "Therefore, as we grow older, let us be more thankful that the circle of our Christmas associations and of the lessons that they bring, expands!  Let us welcome every one of them, and summon them to take their places by the Christmas hearth.
   Welcome, old aspirations, glittering creatures of an ardent fancy, to your shelter underneath the holly!  We know you, and have not outlived you yet.  Welcome, old projects and old loves, however fleeting, to your nooks among the steadier lights that burn around us.  Welcome, all that was ever real to our hearts; and for the earnestness that made you real, thanks to Heaven! Do we build no Christmas castles in the clouds now?  Let our thoughts, fluttering like butterflies among those flowers of children, bear witness!  Before this boy, there stretches out a Future, brighter than we ever looked on in our old romantic time, but bright with honour and with truth.  Around this little head on which the sunny curls lie heaped, the graces sport, as prettily, as airily, as when there was no scythe within the reach of Time to shear away the curls of our first-love.  Upon another girl's face near it - placider but smiling bright - a quiet and contented little face, we see Home fairly written.  Shining from the word, as rays shine from a star, we see how, when our graves are old, other hopes than ours are young, other hearts than our are moved; how other ways are smoothed; how other happiness blooms, ripens, and decays - no, not decays, for other homes and other bands of children, not yet in being nor forages yet to be, arise, and bloom and ripen to the end of all!
   Welcome, everything! Welcome, alike what has been, and what never was, and what we hope may be, to your shelter underneath the holly, to your places round the Christmas fire, where what is sits openhearted! In yonder shadow, do we see obtruding furtively upon the blaze, an enemy's face?  By Christmas Day we do forgive him!  If the injury he has done us may admit of such companionship, let him come here and take his place.  If otherwise, unhappily, let him go hence, assured that we will never injure nor accuse him.
   On this day we shut out nothing!"

Charles Dickens, What Christmas Is As We Grow Older

And finally, as Dickens reminds us, "Therefore, as we grow older, let us be more thankful that the circle of our Christmas associations and of the lessons that they bring, expands!"  Thanks for being part of my circle, and bringing me into yours.