Monthly Archives: December 2007

What a year for a new year

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by candle light

Originally uploaded by niimo

The final hours of the final day of 2007. This year has been a good one for me, on the whole. I hope it was for you as well.

There are a few New Year’s songs, and I thought of having a second countdown during the days between Christmas and today.

I used to like “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” Having been without romantic entanglements for a while though, I find the sentiment in that one feels less sweet with each passing year.

One New Year’s song that I like very much has gotten better with time. It’s “What a Year for a New Year” by Dan Wilson, front man of Supersonic. He’s a great songwriter — earned a Grammy for “Not Ready to Make Nice” with the Dixie Chicks — and a wonderful producer as well.

You can hear the song — and download it for yourself — on Dan Wilson’s MySpace page.

Enjoy your New Year’s Eve and Day. Stay safe and happy! I’ll see you on January 2, and with luck I’ll have finished migrating this site to a new blog and new URL, with fancy fun things to boot.


Here comes a big, fun, scary New Year

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As 2007 washes away and 2008 comes rolling toward us, we have the opportunity to choose what to do with this brand new year. What will we accomplish? How will we make the most of all these days?

Chris Baty, founder of National Novel Writing Month, invites everyone to the Big, Fun, Scary Adventure Challenge:

The Challenge works like this: All of us come up with a list of things that we’ve long dreamed about doing, making, or being. These can be hard-nosed acts of practical skill-acquisition, such as becoming a ninja and learning to kill people with one’s eyebrows. Or they can be fantastical notions such as going back to school and getting a degree in business administration.

The adventuresome path or paths you choose are completely up to you. Last year, some BFS participants used the challenge to complete a revision of their NaNoWriMo novels and write their first scripts through Script Frenzy. But many of us ventured farther afield. We finally learned to speak some Spanish (that was me). We took classes in watercolor painting, started blogs, and learned to tango. We mended fences with estranged family members, explored the Amazon in dugout canoes, hiked the Great Wall of China, and made daunting leaps from soul-snuffing jobs to careers closer to our hearts.

To take part in the challenge, you just need to post at least one big, fun, or scary goal for yourself in the BFS forum of the NaNoWriMo site. Then, come January 1, we’ll roll up our sleeves, pack a lunch and a change of underwear, and set out into the unknown together.

I think I will challenge myself to write humor. My writing heroes include Robert Benchley, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Woody Allen, but I don’t write anything like those guys. I think I’m moderately amusing in person, but when I write I trim the absurd, whimsical, and mean bits away. Those are the funny bits. I’m going to let myself write more that’s silly and stupid, and if I’m lucky I will end up writing at least a few things that are funny.

Will you take up the challenge? Do it! Sign up at the Big, Fun, Scary Adventure Challenge Forum.

A-choo

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No kidding.
Originally uploaded by A-Wix

I’ve caught some kind of contagion, and it has left me too sick to do much besides blow my nose and bemoan my existence. Looking at the laptop screen is making me wince.

While I’m away, please amuse yourself over at Germ Circus, where Jennifer has been seeking out the hilarity of germs. Actually, she has been writing humorously about germs, in all their seriousness. And mingled in there are some useful bits of information too.

I’m off to drink more fluids and sleep. Back when I’m less snotty.

Holiday Music Countdown: Number 1, let heaven and nature sing

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Merry Christmas! My musical advent calendar is at its end; here at last is my favorite holiday song.

1. Joy to the World (Whitney Houston and the Georgia Mass Choir)

Ultimate Christmas album cover

I love a good gospel choir. And I’m as susceptible as anyone to the "money note" moment of a modern pop song — you know, the moment when the key changes and the singer hits that big, top note, and you get a shiver down your spine? Think of Whitney Houston’s version of "I Will Always Love You" and the key change at 3:09, and you’ll know what I mean.

Ms. Houston is the queen of the money note, and she uses it to great effect in "Joy to the World," recorded for the soundtrack to The Preacher’s Wife. She also does a little scat-style bit, and she plays off the excellent singing of the choir. Altogether, they transform the classic, stodgy carol into an expression of exhilaration and joy.

There’s no video for the song, but you can at least hear it on this YouTube clip.

I wish to you and yours a joyful, peaceful holiday. Merry Christmas!

Holiday Music Countdown: Number 2, let your heart be light

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The final few of my favorite holiday songs. Last night we looked at the more cynical side. Tonight we tug on heartstrings. (Find previous holiday countdown posts here.)

2. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (Judy Garland)

There’s a nice history of the origin of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” in the entry on Wikipedia, including modifications to the lyrics before the song’s first recording and later, when Frank Sinatra found it not “jolly” enough.

Many artists have recorded this song, each putting his own style to it. I like Judy Garland’s original version best. For me, it’s the most touching, and the quiver in her voice adds just the right amount of tenderness and sadness but also a little hope.

Here’s the scene from Meet Me in St. Louis in which she performs it for the first time.

Holiday Music Countdown: Number 3, all the paper, tinsel, and the folderol

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We’ve nearly made it through the month-long countdown of my favorite holiday songs, and now we come to the best of the best. (Find previous holiday countdown posts here.)

3. Merry X-Mas (To Whom It May Concern) (Miles Davis with Bob Dorough)

Jingle Bell Jazz album cover

In 1962, at the age of 36, Miles Davis was already a music legend. Three years earlier he’d released Kind of Blue, his masterwork, on which he’d collaborated with many of the great players and arrangers/composers of the time to develop a new style of jazz — cool jazz.

Executives at Columbia, his record label, pressured him to contribute a song to Jingle Bell Jazz, a Christmas album that they were compiling of music from jazz artists in their stable. He called in Bob Dorough, an unconventional composer and singer, to write lyrics and sing — one of few vocalists to perform on a Miles Davis recording. Gil Evans would handle the arrangement.

According to Jack Chambers (Milestones), Davis complained to Dorough, “What the fuck am I supposed to play for them? ‘White Christmas’?” (cite)

The resulting tune was “Merry X-Mas (To Whom It May Concern).” Dorough’s bitter and disenchanted lyrics trip along through the song, while Davis’s trumpet swirls around and punctuates the points.

One of the fun things about the internet is that you can find amazing and detailed information, particularly about an icon like Miles Davis. For example, we can discover that the song was recorded on August 21, 1962, in Columbia Studio A in New York. The performers included the Miles Davis Sextet plus Bob Dorough. The recording was finished in 12 takes.

I wasn’t able to find the lyrics anywhere, so I’ve transcribed them here.

Blue X-Mas (To Whom It May Concern)

Merry Christmas.
I hope you have a fine one,
But for me it’s blue.

Blue Christmas,
That’s the way you see it when you’re feeling blue.
Blue X-Mas,
When you’re blue at Christmastime you see right through
All the waste
All the sham
All the haste
And plain ol’ bad taste.

Sidewalk Santa Clauses are much much much too thin.
They’re wearing fancy rented costumes,
False beards,
And big fat phony grins.
And nearly everybody’s standing round holding out
Their empty hand or tin cup.
Gimme gimme gimme gimme.
Gimme gimme gimme.
Fill my stocking up,
All the way up.

It’s a time when the greedy
Give a dime to the needy.

Blue Christmas.
All the paper, tinsel, and the folderol.
Blue X-Mas.
People trading gifts that matter not at all,
What I call
Folderol. Bitter gall.
Folderol.

(Instrumental)

Lots of hungry homeless children
In your own backyards
While you’re very very busy addressing
Twenty-zillion Christmas cards.
Now, Yuletide is a season to receive, and oh to give
And ah, to share.
But all you December do-gooders rush around
And rant and rave
And loudly blare.

Merry Christmas.
I hope yours is a fine one,
But for me it’s blue.

I’m more a pessimist than an optimist. If I were a little more of a cynic, this would be my favorite Christmas song. As it is, I love the way it cuts through the glitter of the season. And I love the music, still sharp today, and the wit of the lyrics.

Incidentally, if Bob Dorough’s voice sounds familiar, it may be because he composed and sang many of the songs for Schoolhouse Rock. Think back to “Three Is a Magic Number” — that’s Dorough at work.

Holiday Music Countdown: Numbers 5 and 4, with waltzing and romancing

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Another day clicks by and we draw ever nearer to Christmas — and to the end of the countdown of my favorite holiday songs. (Find previous holiday countdown posts here.)

5. The Christmas Waltz (Nancy Wilson)

Christmas Cocktails Part 2 album cover

“The Christmas Waltz” is another beautiful song that not a lot of artists seem to take on. I can’t figure out why — unless the waltziness of it frightens them. It is indeed a waltz, “in three-quarter time” as the lyrics say. How lovely and timeless those lyrics are:

Frosted window panes,
Candles gleaming inside,
Painted candy canes on the tree.
Santa’s on his way.
He’s filled his sleigh
With things,
Things for you and for me.

It’s that time of year
When the world falls in love.
Ev’ry song you hear seems to say,
“Merry Christmas.
May your New Year dreams come true.”

And this song of mine
In three-quarter time
Wishes you and yours
The same thing too.

Frank Sinatra recorded a stellar version of this, and if you know the song you probably know it from him.

I prefer Nancy Wilson‘s interpretation. (Of course I don’t mean Nancy Wilson of the band Heart. I mean the song stylist, “Fancy Miss Nancy.”) You can find it on Ultra-Lounge’s Ultra-Lounge Christmas Cocktails, Pt. 2. Nancy’s version sticks to the waltz tempo a bit more, so one could dance to it if one wanted. I’m content to sit and listen to how her warm voice and crisp delivery capture the song perfectly.

4. Baby It’s Cold Outside (Dean Martin, Brian Setzer and Ann-Margaret)

Making Spirits Bright album cover

Why do I like “Baby It’s Cold Outside” so much? There are many reasons not to like it. It’s quite retrograde: Who today would say “there’s bound to be talk tomorrow,” “neighbors might think,” or especially “my maiden aunt’s mind is vicious”? One friend of mine called it “the date-rape song” because of the line “hey, what’s in this drink?” There’s talk of smoking, too. This is not a politically correct song in our enlightened times.

But I do love it. It’s a mini-musical of courtship. I love its flirtiness (“your eyes are like starlight now”). And it’s funny and sharp. “Think of my lifelong sorrow … if you caught pneumonia and died!” I know I’d laugh, and then I’d stay for at least a few minutes more.

Here’s the song’s original movie performance, from 1949′s Neptune’s Daughter. Yes, that’s Ricardo Montalbán serenading Esther Williams. Dig his swanky apartment with panoramic view and built-in, well-stocked bar, and her nifty fur cape.

UPDATE: The clip is no longer available, I’m sad to say. You can see a snippet of the number in the trailer for Neptune’s Daughter, along with a parallel version by Red Skelton and Betty Garrett from the same movie.

For recorded versions of this song, I’ve always liked Dean Martin’s, mostly because he’s such a smooth-talking charmer. The song fits his persona to a ‘t.’ The girl in the recording is nameless, just some studio singer. The way the song is produced she sounds like a chrous of girls, a whole roomful of long-stemmed babes that Dean is trying to date at one time — and apparently succeeding with.

An alternative is provided by the version with Ann-Margaret and Al Hirt. (Find it on Yule B Swinging Too.) Ann-Margaret is in full-on kitten mode, purring at Hirt’s velvety seductions. They’re not sparring at all; they’re both looking for ways for her to explain why she’s clearly not leaving.

And then there’s the Brian Setzer duet with Ann-Margaret on Boogie Woogie Christmas. I’ve come to like this one best. Ann-Margaret is a whole lot sassier and no less sexy, and Setzer is awfully ardent and persuasive. Who’d want to go out in the cold and leave behind someone so warm?

Holiday Music Countdown tangent: We need a little Christmas, and skating lessons

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Bit of a hard day today, so I will hold my holiday countdown post until tomorrow.

Fortunately, I have a treat to tide you over, sent to me by frequent commenter Erich Maria. It’s a video of Mitzi Gaynor singing "We Need a Little Christmas" — but it’s more than just that:

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From an email exchange between me and Erich:

EM: You would think they would have gotten some kids who could ice skate.

CC: That’s a riot! Do you think the kids are falling on purpose? Too funny.

EM: I don’t know, but 0:09 she claps her hands and the kids behind her fall down. Then at 0:17, she stomps her boot down, someone else goes down. Could be a coincidence …

Watch and decide for yourself!