Showing posts with label
Xmas Music for People Who Hate Xmas Music.
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Showing posts with label
Xmas Music for People Who Hate Xmas Music.
Show all posts
It’s Christmas Eve, friends, & I have a short post for you today, along with one of my favorite Christmans songs, one that never fails to bring a small tear to just one corner of my eye!
The song is of course the Pogues' great "Fairytale of New York" from their If I Should Fall From Grace with God album. The Pogues are without question one of my favorite bands ever, & the song seems so perfect for an aspect of the season: the dreams countered with disillusionment, all delivered with thrilling & heartbreaking voice by the great Shane MacGowan & the late, great Kristy McColl. Of course, the accompanying music is superb—the Pogues could really play!
But here we are, Christmas Eve! Whether or not a given Christmas season has seemed stressful to me due to obligations, financial worries, loneliness or any of the other myriad woes that can assail us this time of year, Christmas Eve has often seemed a peaceful & magical time. While I lived in San Francisco, I went on epic walks on Christmas Eve to watch the lights & ride the streetcars—back then you could ride the streetcars with a monthly Muni pass! In Idaho, I often performed music on Christmas Eve—usually in churches, which is odd I suppose, since I am a distinctly non-churchy fellow. But these & other, earlier rituals have always proved a balm to me.
This year I’ll be dining & visiting with friends this afternoon & evening: very grateful for that! People in Portland have been so generous in taking me in to their circles & helping me in so many ways as I've made a new life here in rather straitened circumstances. But all of you have been wonderful, & all my friends are near to my heart today.
& with that, I leave you to your holiday, with all my best wishes for a true Christmas of peace & goodwill. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, I wish you the happiest time in whatever festival you do celebrate to mark this season of passing from darkness to light.
Much merriness to you, friends!
The holiday is really almost upon us of course, & I must say it’s been an odd one for me, living on my own after a number of years of sharing holiday traditions in a relationship. It’s lonely at times, tho mostly I consider myself fortunate—indeed, in a real sense of the word, blessed—to have so many dear friends with whom I can share the time, whether they’re friends here in Portland or friends scattered not only thru this country but in others as well.
The holiday has been simplified for me, that’s for sure. I bought exactly one gift, which was for my mom—95 & still maintaining back in Massachusetts. I did “splurge” on some Christmas cards, which I enjoyed sending & which helped me feel like I was acknowledging the holiday in a way that meant a lot to me—again, getting back to the friends who’ve so enriched my life.
Speaking of friends, some local friends loaned me the small tree that you see in the photo above, as well as the decorations. That also meant a lot to me—the tree is perfectly in scale with my celebration this year, & I enjoy it daily. As far as other holiday festivities go, I’ll be attending a Christmas Eve dinner party, which I’m really looking forward to—some great folks involved—including great cooks!—& have decided that I’m going to watch (for the umpteenth time, but who’s counting) Chaplin’s Modern Times on Christmas Day itself—one of my very favorite films. It sounds pretty nice to me.
I’ve loved today’s song for many years. Bob Dylan’s New Morning album has always struck me as a somewhat overlooked gem in his oeuvre; admittedly, “If Not For You” was a hit, but all in all, I think the album hasn’t received the attention it deserves. Songs like “Sign on the Window,” “Time Passes Slowly” & “Day of the Locusts” are really powerful compositions, both lyrically & musically, & the album has a definite sound—lots of piano on this one. While writing this post, I was looking thru the list of outtakes for New Morning—it’s quite long—& was fascinated to learn that Dylan recorded both “Yesterday” (yes, that “Yesterday”!) & “Ghost Riders in the Sky” for possible inclusion on the album! Wow.
Anyway, “Three Angels” is a beautiful recited piece—complete with the “angel chorus” at the end. I’ve never been sure whether I liked how he ended the song lyrically—it seems a bit pat to me—but the rest of the lyrics are very strong.
Robert Frost’s Banjo will have posts right up thru Christmas morning, so stay tuned for your holiday listening & reading pleasure.
Enjoy!
Happy Thursday folks! I’m here with another installment of the series Xmas Music for People Who Hate Xmas Music, & I changed the song title slightly so as not to scare away people that fall into that class. In fact, today’s selection is the great Joseph Spence’s singular interpretation of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”
If you’ve never heard Joseph Spence, you are in for a major eye-opening. To my mind, he was one of the most inventive guitar players you will ever hear—& I’m not alone in that assessment. Ry Cooder famously proclaimed:
It started with Joseph Spence when I was a little kid. He was one of my all-time great inspirations. When he did those bass runs, I didn’t understand it. I was so mad all the time.
Other notable admirers of Spence include Taj Mahal, John Renbourn, Olu Daru & Woody Mann. In his all-too brief Allmusic biography, Mark A. Humphrey states, “he was a folk guitarist's Thelonious Monk,” & as a fan of both men’s music, I’d have to say that is a truly fruitful comparison.
Spence lived in his native Bahamas thru his entire life—born in 1910 & passed away in 1984. His guitar playing—which to the best of my knowledge was all done in the “drop D tuning” (meaning that the lowest sounding string is tuned down from an E to a D), is extremely intricate, featuring Cooder’s aforementioned bass runs acting as counterpoint to the melody & melodic improvisations on the guitar’s treble strings. Now it is true that Spence’s guitar is not “in tune” by Western standards—he didn’t tune to A=440 (which is the Euro-American standard for playing in tune), & even given that the base criteria for tuning is a bit off, there’s a slight but noticeable disjuncture in tuning between the bass & the treble strings, & especially involving the third string, which would be tuned to a G (G below middle C for those who care about such things.) However, one thing about Spence’s tuning that has been pointed out & confirmed: his tuning was always consistent. He didn’t tune this way because he was incapable of hearing the correct pitch, but because this was the correct pitch to him. In fact, the pitches that we use for notes in Euro-American tuning are dictated by equal temperament tuning, which essentially is a tuning that means you don’t have to re-tune an instrument every time you play in a different key (as was the case with earlier tuning systems.) In fact, equal temperament dictates that one has to “split the difference” on the pure mathematical proportions between notes, so in fact some intervals that we hear as correct, musicians from other cultures would hear as being “off.” This is especially true of the major third—i.e., the note “mi” in the do-re-mi” scale.
But enough for musical relativism! In addition to Spence’s rather amazing guitar playing, his singing is also unique—in fact, the casual listener may focus more on this idiosyncratic vocal style than anything else. In essence, the words of a song seem only of passing importance to Spence; instead he hums, does a sort of guttaral scatting & overall includes all manner of vocalized effects almost as another counterpoint to his guitar playing. Those of us who are older, remember the 60s expression “blow your mind.” Joseph Spence will, indeed, blow your mind.
You will never hear “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” like this, I promise. Enjoy!
It is Christmas season isn’t it? Yes: December 8th, just two days past the Feast Day of St Nicholas, the Greek/Turkish Bishop who has somehow morphed into the red-cheeked & portly elf of unfettered capitalism.
Christmas is an odd season for those of us who live by the Christian calendar but are—like myself—agnostic/secular humanist or just more or less non-religious rabble. Because while the holiday is most certainly religious in origin, what it’s become in the States at least has very little religious content, but instead huge content related to “getting & spending,” to countless pleas to sentiment, to any number of “feel-good” stories from the blatant to the subliminal that seem to prime us for parting with significant amounts of money, while at the same time expecting our friends & family to do the same.
But make no mistake: while I may point this out, I’m as susceptible to the charms of the season as the next guy or gal. I’ve always enjoyed the decorations & all the small traditions that grow up in a life regarding this holiday: watching a certain movie, always including a certain dish for Christmas dinner, always buying a beloved partner a particular type of gift, & so forth. Most of us could compile a list.
& this list might include what may be the most pernicious aspect of theseason: the insistent holiday muzak track that assaults us in every single retail outlet, from grocery store to pharmacy to boutique & beyond. Now, I should note that I don’t necessarily dislike the songs themselves; after all, I’m a working musician (at least when there’s work to be had!), & I’ve played a good number of these songs myself—in general, this season is a good one for getting gigs whether for cash or at least “singing for your supper.” But the aerial bombardment of holiday muzak: this is truly pernicious.
In the past, I have posted holiday music on the blog, versions of holiday songs played by yours truly on various instruments. I toyed with doing that again this year, but I decided against it, in part because I decided I didn’t feel like adding to the soundtrack of holiday standards.
But then it occurred to me there’s something a bit strange—even phony in a way—for a blog that’s set-up like Robert Frost’s Banjo to pass the holiday season by without comment. In fact the Christmas season is very much on my mind, tho I expect my observation of it this year will be much different than in most past years. I’ll write more about that on the next two Thursdays. & at the same time I’ll post a song that is related to the season without being in any way part of the usual soundtrack.
Today’s song is—of course!—by the great Tom Waits from his amazing 1978 album Blue Valentines. While the song only mentions Christmas in its title, the litany of wishes, dreams, disappointments, losses & lies found in its lyrics seem to mesh perfectly with the season, as does Waits own compassionate if bemused view of the song’s prostitute narrator. The music meanwhile is vintage 70s late 70s Waits: beautiful jazz chords put forth thru a tasty piano accompaniment.
A great song in every way! Enjoy!
