Many reviewers rightfully excoriated the new ABC sit-com Work It . For example, there's Alan Sepinwall , James Poniewozik , Maureen Ryan , Todd VanDerWerff , and Alyssa Rosenberg , to name a few. Most of the focus was on how the show views women (insultingly), and I didn't see much about the racism of the pilot (lead character Angel Ortiz says, "I'm Puerto Rican. I'll be great at selling drugs."), but lots of good points were made about why the pilot episode was so terrible. But there was one thing I [...]
I've written many times on this blog over the years about the notion of Christmas as a bittersweet holiday. If you live in America, you are flooded with messages of materialism and familial merrymaking. You are told, through commercials and TV shows and the news, that you ought to be spending money on presents and gathering with your family in a warm glow of devoted love. But sometimes these things are out of reach. Some of us struggle with money. Some have problems with their family and friends. A traditional Christmas is not their fate. And [...]
As always, here's the recap post of all of this year's songs. (For information on these songs, take a look at the previous posts.) Little Marcy – C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S Soul Coughing – Suzy Snowflake Bing Crosby with The Andrews Sisters – Santa Claus Is Coming to Town — BUY The Puppini Sisters – Step Into Christmas — BUY Kiki & Herb – Opening [...]
There are Christmas songs and there are Hanukkah songs. And then there's the category of songs about the Jewish experience of Christmas. For example, there's the TV Funhouse video that appeared on SNL, " Christmas for the Jews ." And then you've got Dr. Dyke & The Cinnamon Cowboys expressing a view of Christmas in Los Angeles, as experienced by a lonely Jew. Dr. Dyke is the alter-ego of actor Kevin Berntson . A somewhat more sinister view is offered by Adam Goren. Back in the Nineties, Goren went from the punk band [...]
Tonight was the second night of Hanukkah, so I'm a little behind in posting some appropriate songs. In the words of my old joke, "…Hanukkah songs (a.k.a. Chanukah, Hannukah, Hanukah, Chanuka, Chanukkah, Hanuka, Channukah, Hanukka, Hanaka, Haneka, Hanika and Khanukkah — so don't worry, you can't spell it wrong)." First, an instrumental from Portland band, Calamity Jane, a legendary female punk rock band. It was made up of Marci Martinez on drums, Joanna Bolme on guitar, and sisters Gilly Ann Hanner on guitar and vocals, and Megan Hanner on bass. The band operated from 1989 to 1992, breaking [...]
The great American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow composed the poem " Christmas Bells " on Christmas Day of 1864. His wife Fanny had been killed in a fire three years earlier and his son Charles , a lieutenant in the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry, had been wounded in action during the Battle of New Hope Church the year before. The poem reflects his mood. You will recognize the opening, as the poem was later turned into a song. I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols [...]
There are a few running themes you've hopefully picked up on. Not to knock the Christmas canon (well, not just to knock it), but I've always been more interested in new Christmas originals. We've had something like 700 years of Christmas music and yet most people seem to keep going back to the same well over and over. When performers aren't doing the same popular ones, they're being daring by going with the same lesser-known songs that everybody else does when they're aiming for variety (see more details here ). Another point is [...]
A few years ago, there were two singers that I randomly discovered. I never really see them discussed and I always meant to promote them on this blog. I failed to do so. Do you still need to buy music for someone this Christmas? You would be well advised to purchase Alice Smith's 2006 debut album For Lovers, Dreamers & Me . It mixes a lot of genres: R & B, rock, jazz, blues, pop, reggae, cabaret, showtunes, and soul. I've seen people compare her [...]
Nowadays, if they think of Christmas music from the Sixties, young people are apt to think of The Beach Boys' Christmas Album or Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records or any of the Motown versions. But I think of artists like Perry Como, Johnny Mathis, Andy Williams, and Nat King Cole. Back when I was a kid, the Christmas music I heard was pretty lightweight. I wasn't listening to some of the fine seasonal offerings from Stax or Atlantic. I wasn't much of a rock or soul aficionado at all. [...]
Everybody probably knows Brenda Lee's 1958 single "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." It didn't actually become a big hit until 1960, but it's been heavily played ever since. It's a decent song, but it wears out quickly. Instead, I prefer two of her other Christmas songs. The B-side of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" was "Papa Noël," which celebrates a Cajun Christmas. It appears to be a variation of Hank Williams' song "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)," which was Lee's debut single in 1956. Also in '56, her second single was a Christmas record, "Christy [...]
Carols & hymns are the oldest of our traditional Christmas musical selections. They don't typically excite people, because they're not finger-snapping ditties. This is hardly surprising. It's not pop music, but usually really old church music. But that's the beauty of pop, taking some staid old standard and pepping it up for modern audiences. Here are two examples. One of my favorite instances of this comes from the Canadian band the Odds . From 1991, around the time of their debut album, here is their take on "We Three Kings" (a.k.a. "Three Kings of Orient"). [...]
TNT's The Closer ran their Christmas episode this week , focusing on a man who played Santa professionally. That figure is generally presented as the personification of the holiday, even though he's a relatively recent addition. The idea of a winter festival goes back to the Romans, but it took a couple thousand years to resemble our American holiday. Even though Saint Nicholas lived in the 4th Century, the version of Saint Nick that followed wouldn't be familiar to kids today. "A Visit From St. Nicholas" established a number [...]
As long as I can recall, certain things in life just struck me as funny. Sometimes that was from my skewed view of the world. Sometimes, from my laugh-to-keep-from-crying attitude. Sometimes, it's just naïvety; I won't get that somebody is actually serious about what they're saying. I refer you back to this post from 2005 , when I revealed that I thought that Rammstein's song "Du Hast" was hilarious. When SNL ran the " Kickspit Underground Rock Festival " video back in 2009, I thought it was one of the funniest, most ridiculous things they'd [...]
Lounge singer Kiki DuRane, accompanied by her longtime pianist Herb, first appeared in San Francisco in the early Nineties. The duo were the alter egos of Justin Bond and Kenny Mellman. Kiki & Herb are a tribute/send-up of old lounge singers, reminiscent of the cabaret culture of the gay scene, a punk rock treatment of singing standards, and a tribute to the art of living life in pain. In a 2002 interview , Bond explained the inspiration: When I was growing up I liked to watch The Carol [...]
Are you a fan of the close three-part harmonies most typically associated with performers like the Andrews Sisters and the Boswell Sisters ? Well, you're in for a treat. Take a look at this Wikipedia entry on "voicing" to read about open and closed harmony, as well as a discussion of the difference here . Suffice to say, closed harmony can sound very tight and intense. You'll find it with barbershop quartets, the Beach Boys or The Blind Boys of Alabama. The Andrews Sisters – Patty, LaVerne and Maxene – [...]
Here we go again. For the seventh consecutive year, I will be posting Christmas music here. After so many years, and with so much available music, it's hard to know where to start. But it couldn't hurt to start in the strangest place possible. Ventriloquists are interesting entertainers. You got Jeff Dunham, Shari Lewis, and Paul Winchell. You probably think of them in pairs, like Willie Tyler and Lester or Señor Wences and Pedro . How odd is it that Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy were a big hit on the radio. That's [...]
At this point, I won't even pretend I have any longtime readers, but about four years ago I would post occasionally about my love of the piano as used on pop music . There's just something about that sound that really grabs my ear. The instrument has an incredible range of harmonics. It has strings, but it's a percussion instrument. Essentially, it was invented as a combination the clavichord and harpsichord. Part of the sound comes from the force with which the keys are struck and part comes from how the strings are allowed to vibrate. [...]
For some time, I've been meaning to write a piece on "problem" movies, films that deal with social ills, such as racism or poverty. I was inspired to do so by much of the discussion this past summer of the movie The Help . Some of the criticism I read of the movie seemed less reflective of that specific work and more typical of all Hollywood movies that tackle social problems. I thought it might be simpler to ease into this topic by looking at one such movie, to see what [...]
One sub-category of scary movie is the horror anthology. Representative films include Black Sabbath (1963), Creepshow (1982) and Tales from the Hood (1995). Instead of telling one long story, as a novel does, you get several tales, like a collection of short stories. The more ambitious of these movies have an overarching story that ties everything together cohesively, usually with a twist ending or a shocking reveal. For example, five passengers on a train are each told their future; then it turns out they're all dead. The first horror anthology [...]
My biggest regret about Carnival of Souls (1962) is that I didn't see it earlier in life. In some ways, it is a schlocky low-budget horror movie. In other ways, it's like an art film. Its plot is simple: The automobile that a young woman is riding in plunges into a river and she is presumed to be dead. She later stumbles on shore from the water and soon takes a job in another city as a church organist. She is haunted by visions of a strange man and eventually meets a strange ending. [...]
The Pop View
Miike Snow – Paddling Out (Jacques Lu Cont Remix)
