Goodbye Oscar Peterson

R.I.P.

The gift that keeps giving!

We're signing off for a couple of days (probably). We'll put up some more Christmas songs on the featured playlist on the right (you can play them over your computer Christmas morning!), and leave you with a song we blogged earlier this year: The Gift That Keeps Giving by the Super Furry Animals. Here is the holiday-themed video for all of you (Be sure to watch til the end!). Happy Holidays!

BOUREE

Listen to BOUREE by Jethro Tull.

A few weeks ago I fielded a request from a longtime reader to post some Jethro Tull, namely Bourée (one of Tull's earliest hits and a signature tune of the group). Because it's so (relatively) well known, I demurred, saying there's no real point in having this blog if we're just posting something you can get on the radio, etc.

That was that. It was? Well, a couple of weeks later, I was gathering together some Christmas music to post, and I came across mention of a Jethro Tull Christmas album! It's only a few years old, includes seasonal material, including newly recorded versions of their old stuff. For whatever reason, Bourée is considered Christmas music (Ian Anderson originally adapted it from a minor Bach piece for lute), so here it is. Happy Christmas!

Photo: Charcoal Oven Hamburgers.

THERE'S NO LIGHTS ON THE CHRISTMAS TREE, MOTHER THEY'RE BURNING BIG LOUIE TONIGHT

Listen to THERE'S NO LIGHTS ON THE CHRISTMAS TREE, MOTHER THEY'RE BURNING BIG LOUIE TONIGHT by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band.

I'm not really sure this is even a Christmas song, but I've always wanted to post a Sensational Alex Harvey Band track. I read somewhere that Bon Scott only listened to two singers, Elvis and Alex Harvey. And while I don't hear a huge amount of Elvis in early AC/DC (not saying it's not there), Bon Scott's voice (and his imitators like Brian Johnson, the Upper Crust, etc) can be a near carbon copy of Alex Harvey's. It's quite uncanny!

SAHB's songs are theatrical in a way that don't always translate to record, but their highs are pretty high and their lows are pretty interesting. There's No Lights isn't really either, but it's still worth your time this holiday season. What else are you going to listen to today? Below the fold is a live performance of the song, including a little snippet of a mulletted John Peel.


Photo: Will Rogers Theater.

You'll Never Walk Alone (But You'll Lose To Chelsea)

Listen to YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE by The Kop Choir (In-Studio Version).

Shame to miss out on a two-legged Merseyside derby... or is it?

Citizen journalism!

Bus Gets Smashed By Evil Trump Soho

By How Long It Takes
Published: December 19, 2007

HUDSON SQUARE - Shortly before 9 a.m. this morning, the evil Trump Soho reached down and smashed up an innocent X6 bus that happened to be passing by.

Not content with rending the fabric of the historic and picturesque "Hudson Square" neighborhood, Trump Soho construction project seized on an opportunity to degrade and demoralize New York's famed public transportation system as well.

According to one eyewitness to the accident (whose account is obviously biased towards all things evil and Trump), the bus ignored verbal warnings and orange pylons to cut across Spring Street in order to reach its route up the Avenue of the Americas. The trip was cut short, however, when a crane load being lifted off a parked tractor trailer swung around and hit the bus, fracturing several windows and denting its frame. The eyewitness said, "He was too much in a hurry, now he's goin' nowhere!"

More photographs from the scene below the fold.

SANTA LOOKED A LOT LIKE DADDY (DADDY LOOKED A LOT LIKE HIM)

Listen to SANTA LOOKED A LOT LIKE DADDY (DADDY LOOKED A LOT LIKE HIM) by Buck Owens and the Buckaroos.

This one's been a favorite of ours for years, in fact if any of you have ever come around chez nous at Christmastime you've probably heard it many times. The title and the performer tells you about all you need to know. Except also that it was recorded around 65, so Don Rich is playing on it, superbly.

***

No need to do a separate Arsenal post, just wanted to add that yesterday's match was as entertaining as I've seen in awhile. People that say we don't have strength in depth are crazy. Maybe not as crazy as me, who had this secret thought (at least until Boro) that our second team could win the league. Maybe not, but they are all very good.

Photo: Carlyle Motel (2).

OUT ON THE ROAD FOR CHRISTMAS

Listen to OUT ON THE ROAD FOR CHRISTMAS by Red Simpson.

Red Simpson is, Dave Dudley excepted, the voice of trucker country music. That may or may not mean much to you, but it makes Out On The Road For Christmas a quintessential trucker Christmas song.

There's a really, really great profile of Red Simpson that WFMU put up earlier this year. I highly recommend you go read it. I'll just share one anecdote from the article:

The oft-told story goes that after a gig in the early seventies a real life truck driver approached Simpson for an autograph. Expressing his admiration for Simpson's musical treatment of his daily drudgery, the trucker asked Red how long he had been trucking. The fan was shocked when Simpson explained he had never been in the cab of a rig in all his life. Feigning disbelief the trucker awkwardly stumbled as he asked Simpson "... then why would you write so many songs about trucking?" Red Simpson confidently answered, "Money."

Money. Isn't that what the holidays are all about? :)

[Note that this copy of the song includes a snippet of unrelated dialog at the end. Can't remember why that is.]

Photo: Coronado Plaza on Route 66.

SANTA CAME HOME DRUNK

Listen to SANTA CAME HOME DRUNK by Clyde Lasley and the Cadillac Baby Specials.

If there's any field of music collecting that has really been changed by the internet, it must be Christmas music. Used to be you'd have to scrounge around for the same three or four tapes you bothered to pick up. Maybe one or two novelties or obscurities here and there, but for most people it wasn't worth the effort or expense to get very much of music that you're only going to play once a year.

And while that's still true to a degree, there are some people that take the time to dig around for really great (or strange or shocking) Christmas music, and now it's so easy to find this time of year. If you read any music blogs, everyone always puts up their favorite tracks, and pretty soon you've got a real stable of Christmas horses.

The point is, we've got a few years of Christmas music collecting now, so this week we'll share some notable examples.

Today's is my personal favorite. I don't know anything about it or Clyde Lasley except what's on the tape. A ramshackle blues shuffle, about, you'd think, Santa Claus out on a bender drinking all sorts of gins and whiskeys. It gets pretty hard to follow Lasley's story though. But I have done it, and the best thing about it is it's not even about Santa Claus! Santa drops out after the first couple of lines and only reappears at the end. The rest of it is complete non sequiturs with names of liquors thrown in here and there! Awesome.

Photo: Beverly's Pancake Corner.

No more ceiling project!

Notwithstanding so much help from all sorts of people to whom we are really grateful, we still managed come in with a pretty amateurish painting job.

The edging, in particular, is apparently the work of someone who cannot, um, edge. But, it's allover now bar the cleanup. Thanks for everyone's help!

You'll Never Walk Alone, But You'll Lose To Manchester United

Listen to YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE by Child.

This post originally read "You'll Never Walk Alone, But Uoull. Listen to SONG here." Philip provoked me into trying to post the song from Corner Bistro on beer number eight, but I didn't have good enough HTML fingers on the iphone.

So here's the second attempt. It's by Child, and it's the most over the top version I have of the song. My apologies to Liverpool fans for the the delay. You were really bad and could probably use the cheering up...

Now available: Everybody's Saying Music Is Love!

Our full holiday mix of classic South American pop music is now available for download. Click here or on the picture on the right. Artwork and everything is included. Happy Holidays!

The back cover:

The full tracklisting:

SIDE ONE
1. Persons and Faces : We All Together
2. El Pino y la Rosa : Los Shakers
3. Mañana : Totem
4. Jerusalem : Ana y Jaime
5. Te Recuerdo Amanda : Victor Jara
6. Everybody on Monday : Laghonia
7. Maybe I Know : Monik
8. No Tengo Idea : Almendra
9. Siempre Tu : Los Shakers
10. Navidad En El Peru : Coral Infantil Colegio de Chiclayo

SIDE TWO
11. La Pata y el Pato : Climaco Sarmiento y Su Orquestra
12. Mi Cueva : El Polen
13. Profecia : Vox Dei
14. Meshkalina : Traffic Sound
15. Green Paper (Toilet) : Pax
16. It's OK : Telegraph Avenue
17. La Quebra' del Aji Corre Que Te Pillo : Los Jaivas
18. Estamos Seguros : Los Delfines
19. Stone : Texao
20. Lo Más Grande Que Existe es el Amor : We All Together

More facts and figures:

-- In the end we picked from about 500 tracks. We picked songs from Peru (especially), Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, and Colombia. We also considered songs from Venezuela, Paraguay, and Bolivia. We didn't consider Brazil because that's a whole different kettle of fish!

-- We All Together, Laghonia, and Monik are related acts. Different iterations of much the same personnel.

-- Monik's Maybe I Know is a faithful cover of Lesley Gore's 1964 hit. I think that the cover improves on the original, which is a little sterile for me.

-- The cover art is taken from all the different photos posted on the blog over the last year.

-- The refrain "Everybody's Saying Music Is Love" will be familiar to those of you who attended the wedding in August.

-- The sound quality is pretty mixed. We apologize for the tinny mp3 vinyl rip sound on some of the tracks, but these songs simply aren't available around here in any other form. It's sequenced to be not too jarring.

-- There's one Christmas song on the mix. The song title gives away which one that is!

-- There's one other song that's not really in a pop/rock idiom: La Pata y el Pato, a cumbia from Colombia. Think of it as a short, sweet palette cleanser.

-- The first half is more pop, second half more rock.

-- If you're on Facebook you can join our blog group. To be honest I don't know what the purpose is either!

-- There's really only one ballad on the mix, Te Recuerdo Amanda, Victor Jara. It might be his best-known song. It's also one of the most beautiful songs out there.

-- Vox Dei is the longest track at seven and a half minutes. It's also the prog-iest.

-- The last track has been featured on the blog before. But since I got that song from another blog, and that blog had the name slightly misspelled, I hadn't been able to get a good recording of it, until one day I realized it wasn't "Los Mas Grande" but "Lo Mas Grande"! It's fixed on the mix.

MI CUEVA

Listen to MI CUEVA by El Polen.

El Polen was an acid folk group from the Andes. Boy were they. Mi Cueva lays it all out: quenas and antaras (what sounds like the pan pipes), charangos (what sounds like the ukulele), and an unmistakeable hippie sensibility that connects over time and space.

Mi Cueva sounds superficially like Simon & Garfunkel's El Pasa Condor (those pan flutes), but this is heavier, deeper, and more interesting. I love how it builds and blossoms into those gorgeous vocals. I think it shares the same beauty and sensibility as Bros by Panda Bear (which may be a stretch but is definitely a mutual compliment).

Photo: View of Villarica through a car window and the trees.

NO TENGO IDEA

Listen to NO TENGO IDEA by Almendra.

I've learned through the last few months that I'm not the hugest fan of Argentinian rock. As far as I can tell, the scene is all about brittle guitar soloing and needlessly fussy arrangements. (Either that, or a massive massive Stones fetish, which is how it sounded to us when us when we visited. As one blogger puts it, "few bands from Argentina these days overcome their OMG Rolling Stones = teh awesome phase." Check out that link for proof.)

Anywayz, I do know with some confidence that Almendra is one of the most important Argentinian rock groups, and I've got most of what they recorded. Some of it is very good, some of it is not to my taste (see above). But I love No Tengo Idea for a very specific reason, and that reason is, it sounds almost exactly what you would imagine the Kinks would sound like if they decided to do a Victoria or Lola-era jam with Spanish lyrics. Seriously, doesn't that sound like Ray Davies vamping along? I think this is a very funny observation.

Photo: View from Acela.

If only every day were like this...

The ceiling? Finished but for the drying. Christmas shopping? All done. The Arsenal? Back to winning ways. So, while you go visit Kate and Mayur's Christmas blog, I'm off to buy a lottery ticket!