Tuesday, December 16, 2003
If You Want It
I have stopped spending the whole month of December trying to find the most perfect possible presents for people on my list. Instead, I go out on one night and buy something for everybody and hope that it gives them at least a small bit of pleasure, and tonight was the night.
I couldn't resist browsing the Christmas CD racks on my various stops. The pop and country flavors du jour, whoever they are in any given year, flood the racks with disposable discs--and so do some dinosaurs. I notice Jethro Tull is out with a Christmas album this year, which takes them about as far afield from Aqualung and Thick as a Brick as it is possible to be. (The album does includes the superb "A Christmas Song" and "Ring Out Solstice Bells," however, which the group recorded back in the day.) For so-called classic artists, a whole Christmas album is generally a give-up move, although reviews of Tull's album have been positive.
I also noticed this one. It's not a joke. It's a real album. He doesn't actually sing, but he did write a couple of the tunes. It's like what would happen if Andy Williams ran for the Senate, which I guess wouldn't be so weird now.
Last week, I gave you five holiday albums to search for and play before Christmas Day has come and gone. Tonight, you get five singles, in no particular order.
1.-2. Yeah, one way to look at them is as warhorses nobody really needs to hear again. But another way to take them is as indispensable components of American popular culture. "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby and "The Christmas Song" by Nat King Cole are still priceless and essential after all these years.
3. Someday at Christmas/Stevie Wonder. So deceptively simple, yet one of Stevie's best records, seasonal or otherwise. It sounds like a nursery rhyme, but you find yourself hooked as Stevie unfolds his vision of a utopian Christmas to come. And then he breaks your heart:
Someday all our dreams will come to be
Someday in a world where men are free
Maybe not in time for you and me
But someday at Christmastime
"Someday At Christmas" brings me nearly to tears every time I hear it, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. And on this Christmas, the lump it leaves in the throat is particularly large. Said sentiments thus lead us to . . .
4 "Happy Xmas (War is Over)"/John Lennon and Yoko Ono. This was my favorite holiday song until Lennon was murdered just before Christmas 1980, and for years after I couldn't hear it without getting angry. Those years are past now, and I don't love this song like I used to, but I still couldn't imagine the season without it. It always seemed a bit odd to me that cynical old the-Beatles-are-more-popular-than-Jesus John Lennon would embrace the jolly season, yet he did it with the properly bemused attitude, placing the significance of Christmas where it seems to belong: on what happens inside those who celebrate it, and how that could change the world.
5. Merry Christmas Baby/Charles Brown. Brown first recorded this sometime during the 1950s, and rerecorded it many times thereafter. His duet version with Bonnie Raitt on A Very Special Christmas Volume 2 is absolutely righteous, and about as cool as it is possible for a single piece of music to be.
Tomorrow, more politics. Tonight, as soon as I post this, Christmas cookies.
I have stopped spending the whole month of December trying to find the most perfect possible presents for people on my list. Instead, I go out on one night and buy something for everybody and hope that it gives them at least a small bit of pleasure, and tonight was the night.
I couldn't resist browsing the Christmas CD racks on my various stops. The pop and country flavors du jour, whoever they are in any given year, flood the racks with disposable discs--and so do some dinosaurs. I notice Jethro Tull is out with a Christmas album this year, which takes them about as far afield from Aqualung and Thick as a Brick as it is possible to be. (The album does includes the superb "A Christmas Song" and "Ring Out Solstice Bells," however, which the group recorded back in the day.) For so-called classic artists, a whole Christmas album is generally a give-up move, although reviews of Tull's album have been positive.
I also noticed this one. It's not a joke. It's a real album. He doesn't actually sing, but he did write a couple of the tunes. It's like what would happen if Andy Williams ran for the Senate, which I guess wouldn't be so weird now.
Last week, I gave you five holiday albums to search for and play before Christmas Day has come and gone. Tonight, you get five singles, in no particular order.
1.-2. Yeah, one way to look at them is as warhorses nobody really needs to hear again. But another way to take them is as indispensable components of American popular culture. "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby and "The Christmas Song" by Nat King Cole are still priceless and essential after all these years.
3. Someday at Christmas/Stevie Wonder. So deceptively simple, yet one of Stevie's best records, seasonal or otherwise. It sounds like a nursery rhyme, but you find yourself hooked as Stevie unfolds his vision of a utopian Christmas to come. And then he breaks your heart:
Someday all our dreams will come to be
Someday in a world where men are free
Maybe not in time for you and me
But someday at Christmastime
"Someday At Christmas" brings me nearly to tears every time I hear it, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. And on this Christmas, the lump it leaves in the throat is particularly large. Said sentiments thus lead us to . . .
4 "Happy Xmas (War is Over)"/John Lennon and Yoko Ono. This was my favorite holiday song until Lennon was murdered just before Christmas 1980, and for years after I couldn't hear it without getting angry. Those years are past now, and I don't love this song like I used to, but I still couldn't imagine the season without it. It always seemed a bit odd to me that cynical old the-Beatles-are-more-popular-than-Jesus John Lennon would embrace the jolly season, yet he did it with the properly bemused attitude, placing the significance of Christmas where it seems to belong: on what happens inside those who celebrate it, and how that could change the world.
5. Merry Christmas Baby/Charles Brown. Brown first recorded this sometime during the 1950s, and rerecorded it many times thereafter. His duet version with Bonnie Raitt on A Very Special Christmas Volume 2 is absolutely righteous, and about as cool as it is possible for a single piece of music to be.
Tomorrow, more politics. Tonight, as soon as I post this, Christmas cookies.
