If it's the holiday season it's also the holiday party season. We'll just say that certain economists and certain scientists - could be anyone - fought heroically and did their ancestors proud, but fell by the wayside. Our Grinch-like college introduced a limit of two free drinks rule to the holiday party this year, but the denizens of Bleak House, refusing to surrender to authority or common decency, stepped forward with a Mad Mission Pre-Party to redeem the holiday party (official song: Patty Griffin, Mad Mission). It may have been a brilliant idea, although there doesn't seem to be a lot of support for that notion at the moment.
Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Karn Evil 9 2nd Impression
I'm continuing my theme of posting on whatever song I'm thinking most about that week, mainly independent of what's going on in the world or the season (although, obviously, these factors impact the songs that are playing in my mind that week). The passing of Greg Lake, coming only months after Keith Emerson's suicide, got me thinking about the band Emerson, Lake and Palmer. First off, I have to admit that I was probably the only teenage boy, at least the only teenage Hoosier boy, who would listen to ELP's Karn Evil 9 at ear-splitting volumes to ramp up for high school basketball games (you can tell why I was so successful with the ladies). Yes, I was a very big ELP fan when I was younger, although they're also a band that faded away and I had not listened to any of their material in literally decades. They were definitely pretentious and way over the top (I've always felt that Spinal Tap was a jab at them as much as anyone), but, hell, it was the 1970s; it was the high point of the auteur and that cut both ways. Emerson, Lake and Palmer was a strange band. On the one hand, I would argue that they, in a three piece band, probably had as much pure musical talent in one place at one time as just about anyone; sort of a more modest rock equivalent of the groups Miles Davis routinely put together, most notably for Kind of Blue. However, while Davis was always spot on in his vision of crossing musical genre boundaries, ELP missed far more than they hit. Essentially, they just didn't write very good songs; at best they were overdone, at worst they were just silly - which is why I suspect that they eventually disappeared from my turntable. I remember reading a review from a critic one time who pointed out that the songs were lacking, but that they were fantastic musicians and they just played the shit out of the songs live, so in the end it worked out. And I think that's pretty spot on. I think they were at their best when they took a work such as Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition or Aaron Copeland's Fanfare for the Common Man and just blew it out. I have fond memories of them for no other reason than I think they formed a bridge for me to classical music and to a lesser extent jazz. They tried to cross boundaries and expand the nature of rock music, and I can't be too critical that they didn't do it as well as Miles Davis did for jazz. If nothing else, they tried to do something different. And, truthfully, a lot of the charge of ELP being pretentious may tell us more about American anti-intellectualism than the band's well-documented excesses.
With all that I'll propose Karn Evil 9, 2nd Impression. I'm guessing the 1st Impression is the most famous section, both for the fact that it found a way to slide from the end of one side of an album to another - and because Chris Berman has made an entire career out of saying, "Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends." The 3rd Impression features the battle and the computer treachery at the end (again, it was the 70s) - and ends with the synthesizer humming from one ear to the other, which for a fifteen year old was crazy cool. In between is the ignored 2nd Impression, which is mainly just the trio jamming without any overblown lyrics, which is, as I've said, what I think they did best anyway.
My final thought is about the sad end of Keith Emerson. He suffered a nerve injury to his hand and it limited his once extraordinary talents, and also made him almost overwhelmingly afraid to perform because it might let down his fans. Those very same fans began to troll him online and accused him of quitting, and he eventually, at least according to his long-time girlfriend, grew so depressed that he blew his brains out.
Kathy Seiler
Oooooooh.
Mistakes were made.
I write this before dawn the
morning after the work holiday party. And while we were
limited to 2 free drinks, the bartenders put them in BIG glasses and I opted
for the almost 100% alcohol variety of cocktail. So the two drinks I had
pre-party... plus the two drinks at the party (and not enough water) have
resulted in a pounding brain. I'm a lightweight when it comes to my peers in
the ability to poison my liver category, so I'm sure many of them are laughing
at me right now. But I suspect their heads might hurt a little this morning
too. And at least my final grading is done.
I understand the physiological
mechanisms of hangover and regularly tell my students how it works and how to
reduce theirs. Alas, I didn't follow my own medical advice. I would say I
regret nothing because I had a rollicking good time last night, but my headache
is suggesting otherwise. Couple this with the fact that my daughter started
texting me at 4:35am today, and I've never considered trying the
"hair of the dog" cure as much as I am now. But I won't. I'm pretty
sure.
So, in honor of last night and
how I feel this morning, I serve up John Lee Hooker's One Bourbon, OneScotch, One Beer
Phillip Seiler
I grew up in a sprawling split
level custom built by my parents in 1965. I never considered my father an
audiophile but he had the foresight to have two sets of speakers wired: one by
the sound system in the family room and one quite a bit away in the cabinets of
the formal living room. This was also the room my mother set up the card table
with the annual Christmas puzzle(s). As a kid, I spent countless hours eating
Chex mix, putting together a puzzle of a victorian Night Before Christmas or
the Twelve Days of Christmas and listening to one side of a record album over
and over and over again. John Denver and the Muppets Together was a regular
favorite, which we have happily covered to some extent, as was this weird
frontier Christmas album from Bing Crosby “How Lovely is Christmas” that I am
sure one of us kids bought for Dad as a present thinking it was Bing Crosby and
Christmas and Dad would love it. But for sheer nostalgia and kitsch there was Twas The Night Before Christmas by Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians.
Kicking that whole mess off was this version of Jingle Bells.
Released in the mid-50s and instantly recognized as from that soon to be gone
era, it features his full chorus and some standout soloists who I refuse to
google this fine, snowy Saturday morning.
(Sometimes you just have to admit you don’t know and actually don’t care.) I
was the youngest of four kids so I never remember a time we listened to this
record earnestly, instead it was always with that mocking superiority of
children and how uncool the stuff their parents had was. “Here that jingle?
Makes me tingle! Fiiiiine!” Yeah, we would dance around and pantomime and
generally just be annoying kids about the whole thing. But damn if it doesn’t
sound like Christmas to these aging ears.
While not on this track, one of the other from the album features three female singers ala the Andrews Sisters and I love that in the song, one of them flubs a line and it is there in your headphones to experience: listen after listen. I grew up preferring recorded music to live. But over time I have really grown to appreciate how much messier and more fun live music or an imperfect recording can be. And while this version of Jingle Bells has no flubs (that I can hear), it is very imperfect and I love it all the same. Thanks Dad for bringing music into my life.
While not on this track, one of the other from the album features three female singers ala the Andrews Sisters and I love that in the song, one of them flubs a line and it is there in your headphones to experience: listen after listen. I grew up preferring recorded music to live. But over time I have really grown to appreciate how much messier and more fun live music or an imperfect recording can be. And while this version of Jingle Bells has no flubs (that I can hear), it is very imperfect and I love it all the same. Thanks Dad for bringing music into my life.
Gary Beatrice
The Replacements, Little Mascara
Thirty years after its release and I still think The Replacements' "Tim" is as brilliant as a rock album is going to get. It is the album in which The Replacements transitioned from speed/thrash/punk to a top notch guitar and lyric driven alternative band. If you listen to the four albums that preceded "Tim" you might consider Paul Westerberg a decent songwriter but nobody could have anticipated the songwriting leap he would make here, a leap that, if anything, enhanced the band's musical energy, at least for a short time. "Little Mascara" is both the band and Westerberg at their best.
"Little Mascara" is about a young divorcing couple, and surprisingly given The Mats almost complete lack of interaction with women at this time, the song sympathizes with the young mom
For the moon you keep shooting
Throw your rope up in the air
For the kids you stay together
You nap 'em then you slap 'em in a highchair.
And I love how in the first two verses the crying protagonist (with a little mascara left to dry) is presented somewhat meekly:
"All you ever wanted was someone to take care of you"
But the final verse is likely closer to the truth
"All you ever wanted is someone Daddy's scared of."
I highly recommend Trouble Boys, a band bio released earlier this year, for anyone interested in The Replacements. It is not a feel good book; it argues, reasonably in my opinion, that The Replacements would have rivaled REM if not for their aggressive self-destructive ways, not just in their alcohol and drug abuse but in their rampant mental illnesses.
Thirty years after its release and I still think The Replacements' "Tim" is as brilliant as a rock album is going to get. It is the album in which The Replacements transitioned from speed/thrash/punk to a top notch guitar and lyric driven alternative band. If you listen to the four albums that preceded "Tim" you might consider Paul Westerberg a decent songwriter but nobody could have anticipated the songwriting leap he would make here, a leap that, if anything, enhanced the band's musical energy, at least for a short time. "Little Mascara" is both the band and Westerberg at their best.
"Little Mascara" is about a young divorcing couple, and surprisingly given The Mats almost complete lack of interaction with women at this time, the song sympathizes with the young mom
For the moon you keep shooting
Throw your rope up in the air
For the kids you stay together
You nap 'em then you slap 'em in a highchair.
And I love how in the first two verses the crying protagonist (with a little mascara left to dry) is presented somewhat meekly:
"All you ever wanted was someone to take care of you"
But the final verse is likely closer to the truth
"All you ever wanted is someone Daddy's scared of."
I highly recommend Trouble Boys, a band bio released earlier this year, for anyone interested in The Replacements. It is not a feel good book; it argues, reasonably in my opinion, that The Replacements would have rivaled REM if not for their aggressive self-destructive ways, not just in their alcohol and drug abuse but in their rampant mental illnesses.
Dave Wallace
Fab Four, What Child is This?
Fab Four, Jingle Bells
One of the more bizarre, and
ambitious, Christmas albums I've ever heard is by the Fab Four, a Beatles
tribute band. Showing a love for the Beatles and Christmas music, the Fab
Four take traditional Christmas songs and adapt them to Beatles melodies.
I can see doing this for a song or two, but an entire album? 20
songs?!! Crazy! Yet, more often than not, it works. It's also
impressive how they pick styles from all parts of the Beatles career. If
you're an Amazon Prime member, the album is available for free streaming, and I
encourage you to check it out. It's really very clever and a fun listen,
especially if you're a Beatles fan. Two of my favorite things on the
album are, not surprisingly, sung to the tune of two of my favorite Beatles
song - What Child is This? sung to the tune of While
My Guitar Gently Weeps and Jingle Bells sung to the
tune of Tomorrow Never Knows.
Bob Craigmile
Leo Kottke -- Medley
Here I am at long last writing
about Leo Kottke. I've been listening to him for nearly 40 years and this
medley just kills me like it did in my bedroom in 1978 listening to it.
It starts so quietly with the Crow River Waltz. So gentle and sparse and
bordering on the sacharrine. It moves along like a river indeed, steadily
lulling you with its waves.
Then he moves into Jesu, Joy of
Mans' Desiring. This was probably my first hearing of Bach (not even in
my fundy church did we hear him). It's a great move, as the tempo and
attack are increasing, but it's Bach, so restraint is called for.
Jack Fig--again Bach(!)-- ends
the medley and the constraints are gone! Full speed ahead! It's a
machine of a song, especially in Kottke's hands. Keep in mind this is one
guitar. No overdubs! It's the fast and the furious with a real instrument,
no fancy tricks of technology.
I should mention too that LK is
fucking hilarious; go see him if you can. (yes a lot of tuning)
Miranda Tavares
Christmas in the room, Sufjan Stevens
I love this song. It's not at all
my normal taste, but, as I have previously stated, I love all kinds of
Christmas music (I love Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas time, remember?).
At first, I thought this was just a simple song about two people enjoying
Christmas together without all the accoutrements. I rushed home to tell Nate
(we have a giant, 6 gig Christmas list that I listen to largely at work, so I
hear more of it than he does) how I found this great song that summed up how I
felt about Christmas. Then one day I was feeling a bit more melancholy, and I
went home and told Nate, "Hey remember that great Christmas song I told
you about? Well, now I'm pretty sure it's one partner singing it to the other
partner on that partner's deathbed." So it took some of the enjoyment out
of it for me (after all, I had such positive, heartwarming, simplistic,
"all we need is us" feelings about it), but I still really liked it.
I had to google the lyrics for it to post about it, and it turns out...it's
whatever you want it to be. Sure, maybe it's one partner singing to another in
a hospital room on what is sure to be their last Christmas together as mortal
beings. Or maybe both of them lost the rest of their family, and they didn't
have the heart to do the traditional Christmas festivities, but they still find
a way to celebrate. Or maybe they are just eschewing the commercial trappings
of the season and focusing on each other. It doesn't matter. Christmas is
whatever you want it to be. Find what you love, what makes you happy, what you
live for, and focus on that. Christmas is there with you, in your room. What
you choose to put in that room is up to you.
Nate Bell
As our usual point/counterpoint,
my entry is is the lesser. something of of a "when she goes high, I
go low", theme. Well, by now the Noted Musicologists are used to
this pattern.
I find this send up to be a nice,
gentle prod at the "War on Holidays" theme. It's fun, but a
good-natured exchange. Respectful yet still hilarious. I am longing
for the days where we can disagree or have conflicting views but still be
considerate, and...dare I say it...even jolly? about our differences.
All to say, Happy Holidays,
whatever you may practice, enjoy your friendships, and enjoy your
differences. Happy Hannukah/ Joyous Kwanza/Merry Christmas/ Eid al-Fit/ Joyous Yule/Alban Arthuan.
Be well to each
other, enjoy the Festive, giving nature of this season, and always remember
that this entire commercialized exchange only validates a socially appropriate
way to stop being shitty to each other for a month or so. In that, I
don't care what tradition it stems from, or the base reason.
Merry
ChrHannuRamaKwanzaYule!
Dave Kelley
I am very much a traditionalist
when it comes to Christmas music. On the whole, I prefer the religious to
the secular and love most of the old school Christmas songs and carols.
Give me Nat King Cole over "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" every
day of the week and twice on Sunday. It would be easy for me to fill
this month's blog with "Silent Night", "Oh Come All Ye
Faithful", and "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear".
I hate to bore myself though, and being that vanilla would bore me to
tears. So.............
Jackson Browne and The Chieftains, The Rebel Jesus
As myself and others have pointed
out, even if you are not Christian or religious at all, it is difficult to
question the grace and beauty of much of Jesus's teachings. We live in a
country which is predominantly Christian, and the church has become very
intertwined with the most powerful institutions in our society. It is
easy to forget, or intentionally ignore, the fact that Jesus was very much a
subversive rebel in his time. He rejected much of the teaching of the Old
Testament and aligned himself with the outcasts and downtrodden of
society. He rejected the form over function morality of the official
Jewish faith at that time. Had he appeared with his message today instead
of 2,000 years ago, he would be vilified on FOX News, most country clubs, and
the incoming administration.
On the side of the Rebel Jesus."
I love the lyrics to this song. Especially the following:
"And perhaps we give a little to the poor
if the generosity should seize us
But if any of us should interfere
in the business of why there are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus."
"So I bid you pleasure
And I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the Rebel Jesus."
Kelly Thomas
Spent the
afternoon after submitting my grades reading the NYTimes, a true indulgence
with good coffee and three cats snoozing around me in bed. Read this and
figured it belonged on your reading list, as well as the song that inspired
it. Old hippie that I am, I loved Mr. Fogelberg's ballads back in the
day. And yes, this is a hokey song, but still touching for all the
reasons the author mentions. Merry HoHoHo, all!
Dan Fogelbert, Same Auld Lang Syne
Cyndi Brandenburg
Good morning,
everyone. I know it is inexcusably late, which I chalk up to a week of chronic
distractions, end-of-seme
ster grading,
and holiday parties that just might have included the proverbial "one too
many." But by yesterday evening, all was quiet, so I sat on the couch in
front of the fire with a glass of wine and read Ta-Nehisi Coates' newest
Atlantic piece called "My President Was Black." I went to sleep with
an awful lot to think about, and when I woke up this morning, I decided to play
this song before trying to drag myself out of bed.
Al Green, Love and Happiness
Why did I never realize what a
great song this is, with such cool lyrics and now subtle bittersweet political
significance, perfect motivation to get up and at 'em even on the most dismal
of cold rainy mornings? I think its my new morning theme song.
Gary Scudder
Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Karn Evil 9 2nd Impression
I'm continuing my theme of posting on whatever song I'm thinking most about that week, mainly independent of what's going on in the world or the season (although, obviously, these factors impact the songs that are playing in my mind that week). The passing of Greg Lake, coming only months after Keith Emerson's suicide, got me thinking about the band Emerson, Lake and Palmer. First off, I have to admit that I was probably the only teenage boy, at least the only teenage Hoosier boy, who would listen to ELP's Karn Evil 9 at ear-splitting volumes to ramp up for high school basketball games (you can tell why I was so successful with the ladies). Yes, I was a very big ELP fan when I was younger, although they're also a band that faded away and I had not listened to any of their material in literally decades. They were definitely pretentious and way over the top (I've always felt that Spinal Tap was a jab at them as much as anyone), but, hell, it was the 1970s; it was the high point of the auteur and that cut both ways. Emerson, Lake and Palmer was a strange band. On the one hand, I would argue that they, in a three piece band, probably had as much pure musical talent in one place at one time as just about anyone; sort of a more modest rock equivalent of the groups Miles Davis routinely put together, most notably for Kind of Blue. However, while Davis was always spot on in his vision of crossing musical genre boundaries, ELP missed far more than they hit. Essentially, they just didn't write very good songs; at best they were overdone, at worst they were just silly - which is why I suspect that they eventually disappeared from my turntable. I remember reading a review from a critic one time who pointed out that the songs were lacking, but that they were fantastic musicians and they just played the shit out of the songs live, so in the end it worked out. And I think that's pretty spot on. I think they were at their best when they took a work such as Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition or Aaron Copeland's Fanfare for the Common Man and just blew it out. I have fond memories of them for no other reason than I think they formed a bridge for me to classical music and to a lesser extent jazz. They tried to cross boundaries and expand the nature of rock music, and I can't be too critical that they didn't do it as well as Miles Davis did for jazz. If nothing else, they tried to do something different. And, truthfully, a lot of the charge of ELP being pretentious may tell us more about American anti-intellectualism than the band's well-documented excesses.
With all that I'll propose Karn Evil 9, 2nd Impression. I'm guessing the 1st Impression is the most famous section, both for the fact that it found a way to slide from the end of one side of an album to another - and because Chris Berman has made an entire career out of saying, "Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends." The 3rd Impression features the battle and the computer treachery at the end (again, it was the 70s) - and ends with the synthesizer humming from one ear to the other, which for a fifteen year old was crazy cool. In between is the ignored 2nd Impression, which is mainly just the trio jamming without any overblown lyrics, which is, as I've said, what I think they did best anyway.
My final thought is about the sad end of Keith Emerson. He suffered a nerve injury to his hand and it limited his once extraordinary talents, and also made him almost overwhelmingly afraid to perform because it might let down his fans. Those very same fans began to troll him online and accused him of quitting, and he eventually, at least according to his long-time girlfriend, grew so depressed that he blew his brains out.
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| I mean, seriously, how can you not love an album cover designed by H.R. Giger? You can see how this led to the creature in the Alien film, also designed by Giger. |
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