The Grateful Dead - Workingman's Dead: The Angel's Share

 

This being the Day Of The Dead, I figured why not commemorate the day by posting some Grateful Dead?  I don't have any especial love for GD... but that hasn't stopped me from collecting hundreds of hours of their recordings over the years.  They're an essential American band, and as such deserve honor and respect - even from an obsessive music collector like myself!

Here's Workingman's Dead: The Angel's Share, a digital-only 2020 release of studio rehearsals and outtakes from The Grateful Dead's classic and celebrated 1970 album.  I don't have much else to say about it here, but Rolling Stone magazine had plenty to comment upon regarding it when this album was put out three years ago; here's their write-up, if you're interested.  

This is for all the Deadheads out there, and music fans in general.  Have a listen, and let me know what you think.  Happy November 2nd!

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Various Artists - Elvira Presents...

With October 31st just around the corner, and longtime horror hostess Elvira (or more specifically Cassandra Peterson, the actress who plays Elvira) in the news recently due to the revelations in her recently published autobiography Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark, I thought I might post a couple of her Halloween-related compilations.

The first Elvira music compilation came out in 1983, a couple of years after Peterson auditioned for and won the job of presenter for a revival of a popular Los Angeles-area weekend horror show featuring old scary movies called Fright Night. The program (renamed Elvira's Movie Macabre) featured her now-iconic character Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark, a saucy, sarcastic, 'Valley Girl'-type tricked out in heavily-applied horror-film makeup, a huge black beehive wig and a tight-fitting, low-cut black gown which displayed Peterson's ample chest.  Elvira not only introduced the decidedly Grade-B, -C and -Z films, she would often interrupt the flicks during the program to poke fun of their overall crappiness, in addition to making racy double entendres and jokes about her boobs. She quickly gained notoriety and popularity in the region, and parlayed that success to appearances on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show and other programs (like CHiPs and The Fall Guy) which brought her nationwide fame.

Her first release, Elvira Presents Vinyl Macabre - Oldies But Ghoulies (Vol. 1), was a quickie collection of Halloween/horror-related rock and pop hits and standards by the likes of Bobby "Boris" Pickett and Sheb Wooley, slapped together by Rhino Records in the early years of that label's existence. As such, Peterson/Elvira had little to do with or on the album, other than record a couple of intros/outros and appear on the cover in all her glory. Despite its relative generic October music presentation, today this disc commands high prices, probably because the record was never rereleased on cassette or CD.

The follow-up to this initial release was Elvira Presents Haunted Hits, put out in 1988. Actually, in some ways, this album serves as sort-of rerelease of Vinyl Macabre, as it reprises a number of songs that were on the first compilation (like "Monster Mash", "Purple People Eater" and "Haunted House"), while adding a substantial number of other holiday-related tunes, some rather popular and renowned. In case you're interested, here's the lineup:

1. Monster Mash - Bobby 'Boris' Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers
2. Haunted House - Jumpin' Gene Simmons
3. Ghostbusters - Ray Parker Jr.
4. Out OF Limits - The Marketts
5. The Blob - The Five Blobs
6. The Creature From The Black Lagoon - Dave Edmunds
7. The Purple People Eater - Sheb Wooley
8. The Addams Family (Main Title) - Victor Mizzy
9. Twilight Zone - Neil Norman & His Cosmic Orchestra
10. Welcome To My Nightmare - Alice Cooper
11. End Of Side One - Elvira
12. Beginning Of Side Two - Elvira
13. Halloween Spooks - Lambert, Hendricks & Ross
14. Dead Man's Party - Oingo Boingo
15. Little Demon - Screamin' Jay Hawkins
16. Horror Movie - The Skyhooks
17. I Put A Spell On You - Screamin' Jay Hawkins
18. King Kong - Big T. Tyler
19. Attack OF The 50-Foot Woman - The Tubes
20. I Was A Teenage Werewolf - The Cramps
21. Voodoo Voodoo - LaVern Baker
22. The Creature (From Outer Space) - The Jayhawks
23. Full Moon - Elvira
24. Martian Hop - The Ran-Dells
25. Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes - Lee Lewis
26. Elvira's Outro - Elvira

Elvira was a little more involved on this album; in addition to her commentary, she's even provided a full song to sing, "Full Moon" - a lightweight, synth-poppy confection that doesn't hold up well next to the other classics included here. But all in all, in my opinion, this is probably the best of the compilations released under her name, due to the breadth, scope and volume of fun Halloween music offered here. It was a bestseller for the label when it was released, and remains a perennially popular disc.

But the success of the ...Haunted Hits album seemed to lead to some unfortunate decisions/choices for the next Elvira compilation, Elvira Presents Monster Hits, released six years later. It appears that someone (either Peterson herself or the producers) believed that the big selling point for the earlier set was the increase in Elvira's voice and presence. So for this new one, the decision was made to ratchet up the "Elvira factor" - more than one-third of this short (28 minute long) album is centered on her. This includes two original songs, "Monsta' Rap" and "Here Comes The Bride (The Bride Of Frankenstein)" - both generally bland, worthless songs that do little more than take up space that could have been better utilized by including more classic and well-known Halloween songs.  The track list for this brief release is as follows:

1. Introduction - Elvira
2. Monsta' Rap - Elvira
3. Little Demon - Screamin' Jay Hawkins
4. Feed My Frankenstein - Alice Cooper
5. Monster Mash - Bobby 'Boris' Pickett
6. Nightmare On My Street - DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
7. The Addams Family - Joey Gaynor
8. Here Comes The Bride (The Bride Of Frankenstein) - Elvira
9. Outro - Elvira
   

Also note that this comp includes several repeats from Elvira's previous releases, making the existence of this one somewhat redundant.

In years to come, Rhino would release a couple more Halloween compilations under Elvira's name, all to gradually diminishing returns: Revenge Of The Monster Hits in 1995 and Elvira's Gravest Hits (an 'best of' (*eye roll*) album devoted almost solely to tunes crooned by her) in 2010, along with Heavy Metal Halloween in 2009. But these have done little to decrease the fame of Peterson's signature character; Elvira remains popular and active to this day.

Anyway, here for your spook-tacular pleasure are two discs to make your haunted holiday complete:

• Elvira Presents Haunted Hits, released in 1988; and
• Elvira Presents Monster Hits, released in 1994

Both were put out by Rhino Records.

Enjoy, and have a wonderful, safe and happy Halloween! And as always, let me know what you think.

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Various Artists - Elvira Presents Haunted Hits: Send Email
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Andy Gill (Gang Of Four), 1956-2020

Sad news:  Andy Gill (shown pictured at left with bandmate Jon King), the founding, stalwart and only constant member of the various formations (and reformations) of post-punk giants Gang Of Four, died over the weekend at the age of 64.  Here's his obituary from The Guardian:

Andy Gill obituary

And from the same source, here's a excellent overview/tribute to his art and influence; I can add nothing of substance to this superb writeup:

Andy Gill: Gang Of Four's genius guitarist who burned a route out of punk

I got into Gang Of Four way back in the early '80s, when a friend of mine loaned me his vinyl copy of their debut album Entertainment! To say I was blown away by it is an understatement... I LOVED every single song on that album, and after I got my own copies (successively on vinyl, cassette and CD over the years), I played them to death! At one time, "Anthrax" was my favorite song; I once told a story in an earlier post about how I coerced a short-lived alternative radio station in Norfolk, Virginia to play it during weekday rush-hour drive time... quite possibly the one and only time Gang Of Four was ever broadcast in that area.

And years later, when I was in my own band, made up of middle-aged finance executives (the full story of which I have yet to tell), playing rock and pop standards, I somehow convinced those guys to include a cover of "I Found That Essence Rare" on our playlist - the drummer Bill used to refer to it as our "punk set"!

After an equally great follow-up album, 1981's Solid Gold, the original group lineup began to splinter, with bassist Dave Allen leaving the band to form Shriekback, replaced by Sara Lee. The first release with this new bassist, 1982's Songs Of The Free, signaled a subtle shift away from the jagged, scabrous, Situationism-influenced bent of their earlier music and into a more commercial sound, a move signified by the centerpiece song on the album, "I Love A Man In A Uniform".

Still, there were enough good tunes on this release (I especially loved "Life! It's A Shame" and "I Will Be A Good Boy") to satisfy fans of their signature sound and attitude - including me. And I remained a Gang Of Four

devotee even through the following year's widely-panned album Hard, recorded by a trio of Gill, King and Lee in the aftermath of original member drummer Hugo Burnham's departure.  Hard was a blatant bid by the band for wider radio airplay, and it failed miserably, with Gang Of Four devolving into little more than a disco-influenced funk band. The remaining members called it quits the next year, undertaking a "farewell tour" through the spring and summer of 1984 (I'm still disappointed in myself for skipping the opportunity to see them on that tour).

However, that wasn't the complete end of Gang Of Four; various members got back together in the following years in various iterations to make new band recordings. Gill and King collaborated on 1991's Mall and 1995's Shrinkwrapped (the latter being more well-received than the former, although in my opinion, neither were up to the standards of the group's first three releases). Finally, in late 2004, the original lineup of Gill, King, Allen and Burnham reformed, and spent most of the next year touring the world. I saw them that summer when they played The 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, finally seeing one of my

old favorites live; they were, of course, excellent. Later that year, the reconstituted band released Return The Gift, rerecordings of songs from their earlier albums - an interesting, but somewhat unnecessary product. Afterwards most of the band members immediately scattered, although Gill and King continued working together until 2011.

In the following years, Gill kept the Gang Of Four flag flying, with different and various members, and issuing new releases (2011's Content, 2015's What Happens Next, and most recently last year's Happy Now) from time to time. I saw the group for the last time just about a year ago (the same week I saw Martin Phillips and The Chills at a nearby venue), when they played at a small club in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was good to see Gill up on stage again, but the show made me long for the original sound and the original band, as I heard them all those years ago.

So here, in memory of and tribute to Andy Gill and his seminal group, Gang Of Four, I offer up the following:

• Their first release, the Damaged Goods EP, put out by Scottish indie label Fast Product on vinyl on October 13th, 1978 (this disc features the original version, with different lyrics, of "(Love Like) Anthrax");
• The 100 Flowers Bloom two-disc compilation, a mixture of demos, album cuts, live versions and remixes, released on Rhino Records on November 3rd, 1998.  This one has been a long-time go-to source for Go4 music for me!; and
• The Peel Sessions Album, a collection of all three of the group's appearances (in 1979 and 1981) on BBC1's John Peel Show, put out on Strange Fruit Records in 1990.

Enjoy, remember, and as always... well, you know; I always enjoying hearing from you all.

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Various Artists - Woodstock - Back To The Garden: The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive (38 Discs)

Fifty years since Woodstock... what else can I say that hasn't already been said in the run-up to this historic anniversary? With the reams of memories, commentaries, scholarly dissertations, criticisms, accolades and contextual perspectives published and broadcast over the past couple of months, there is simply no chink of daylight left for a small-time music blogger like myself to add any fresh thoughts or new ideas regarding this seminal, semi-mythical event.

I believe it's the "semi-mythical" part about Woodstock that makes it so hard for modern-day writers to get a handle on the festival, what it was all about, and what it "meant". So much of what most people in this day and age know about Woodstock comes from fragmentary snippets (such as pictures of topless women dancing in the mud, Country Joe McDonald's infamous "Gimme an F!  Gimme a U! Gimme a..." chant, and of course Jimi Hendrix's electrified "Star Spangled Banner") displayed and broadcast constantly over the decades - images that I feel have served to morph the event from simply a gargantuan and well-attended rock festival into this shining, hippie-fied anti-war wonderland of universal hope and community, truly "three days of peace and love".

In conjunction with this, Michael Wadleigh's 1970 documentary film of the concert, while celebrated, presented only three hours of the three-day show... but it drew in contemporary audiences of the time and future audiences who hadn't been/couldn't have been in attendance at the original concert with a contrived sense that, by seeing the movie, they HAD been there, and they were feeling the same sort of glow from that time and place.  Of course, that "glow" had less to do with the overall vibe there, and a lot to do with Wadleigh's skillful film editing (it even got nominated for an Oscar in the Film Editing category, a rare distinction for a documentary). In his original four-star review of Woodstock, critic Roger Ebert (who should have known better) stated "The remarkable thing about Wadleigh's film is that it succeeds so completely in making us feel how it must have been to be there", adding in a later expanded review, "...how touching it is in this film to see the full flower of its moment, of its youth and hope."

So, there's a lot of legend and mythology surrounding Woodstock, which I feel skews the perception of the overall concert.  Music producers Brian Kehow and Andy Zax felt the same way regarding the show's legacy, apparently. Instead of presenting to the public only the parts of the festival that fit into the overarching "peace and love" narrative, Zax and Kehow decided to restore and reconstruct the ENTIRE concert, from start to finish, utilizing all available sources. The result of their decade-plus long effort is what I am presenting here today: a 38-disc, 432-track compilation of nearly every song sung, note played and word spoken from the stage in Bethel, New York from the evening of August 15th to the morning of August 18th, 1969, chronologically sequenced (the only tracks missing are two songs from Hendrix's set, "Mastermind" and "Gypsy Woman"/"Aware Of Love", which his estate requested not be included, and a song and a half ("Teenager In Love" and the first half of "Little Darlin") from Sha Na Na's performance due to a gap in the taping). In all, over 250 of the tracks present within this box set have never seen official release.

This set provides more of a "boots on the ground" perspective of the entire event; not just the highs and lows, but some of the more mundane instances and situations involved in the operation of a large rock concert. The many stage announcements included in this set really give you a sense of being there as a participant, and modifies the established view of how it was there over those three days. Pitchfork recently published an article on this set which describes this feeling and function much better than I ever could; here it is.

This is a gargantuan release, and as such was released in extremely limited quantities - only 1,969 copies (cute) of this set were produced, retailing for $800 or more. Two smaller sets containing selections from this box - the three-disc, 42-track Woodstock – Back To The Garden: 50th Anniversary Collection and the ten-disc, 162-track Woodstock – Back To The Garden: 50th Anniversary Experience - were released earlier this year and are more widely available.

But I got my hands on the source, the granddaddy, and thus I present it to you for your perusal and enjoyment (or at least for those of you without a spare $800 lying around...) - Woodstock - Back To The Garden: The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive, all thirty-eight discs, released by Rhino Records just last month, on August 2nd, 2019. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

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Poll Results - "Which artists are most worthy of 2018 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction?

I did a post on this subject almost six years ago, related to the then-incoming 2012 group of Rock Hall of Fame inductees. I figured that since the latest honorees for the upcoming year will be selected imminently, now was a good time to run this poll once again.

My previous RRHOF poll was focused on groups that had up to that point never received serious consideration for induction, with the intention of "proving" how worthy these artists were of this honor, in the hopes that the selection committee would eventually see the error of its ways. But frankly, in the years that have passed, that "due consideration" for singers/bands that may have fallen through the cracks hasn't materialized. My record on this hasn't been good. Since 2012, Hall & Oates, Stevie Ray Vaughan, ELO and Yes are the only bands from my 2012 list that have subsequently been inducted. I still think that it's a crime that Los Lobos, Roxy Music and Todd Rundgren haven't so much as been considered for enshrinement... but I stand by my original assessment; in terms of quality and volume of output and related critical acclaim, these artists more than possess the bonafides to be legitimate RRHOF inductees.

For this latest poll, I figured I'd just use the announced list of artists under consideration, and let you all choose from it.  Here are the results of your selections:

8 votes: The Zombies
6 votes: The Cars, Link Wray
5 votes: Dire Straits, MC5, The Meters, Nina Simone
4 votes: Kate Bush, Depeche Mode, The J. Geils Band
3 votes: The Eurythmics, The Moody Blues, Sister Rosetta Tharpe
2 votes: Bon Jovi, Judas Priest, LL Cool J, Radiohead
1 vote: Rage Against The Machine, Rufus feat. Chaka Khan

To determine a objective 'solution' to such a highly subjective question as this, I once again turned to John Sellers' 2007 book Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life. As I wrote back in 2012:

For me, the best part of the book came in the back, with a series of appendices added by the author. And in one of them, I believed that I found the solution to my problem. In this section. Sellers conducts a mock debate with himself, over the relative 'coolness' of one particular band over another. To resolve this question, he actually comes up with an obsessively detailed equation, involving many factors and variables, that measures "exactly how much your favorite band rocks". These variables include the quality of an artist's entire oeuvre, their 'image', and an "X" factor, with the music quality factor accounting for the majority (2/3rds) of the overall score.

Now, admittedly, a lot of the variables that Sellers comes up with are silly and/or tongue-in-cheek ("If the band members have costumes, -10 points, unless that band is Kiss, in which case, +75"; "Every lyric equal to or better than 'Her love’s a pony'?"). But the section regarding music quality was pretty straightforward. So, for lack of a better alternative, I decided to use this formula . . .

Once again utilizing album critiques/evaluations and band information found on the Web to fill out the equation, I came up with the following scores/rankings:

1. Depeche Mode (21,666,673,119.72)
2. The J. Geils Band (763,142,823.87)
3. Nina Simone (449,476,239.00)
4. Kate Bush (178,819.12)
5. Radiohead (178,689.19)
6. The Cars (7,543.01)
7. Link Wray (6,320.52)
8. Rufus feat. Chaka Khan (3,782.72)
9. The Zombies (3,457.49)
10. LL Cool J (3,397.41)
11. Eurythmics (3,335.00)
12. Sister Rosetta Tharpe (3,145.84)
13. The Moody Blues (3,042.90)
14. Rage Against The Machine (3,014.33)
15. Dire Straits (2,285.30)
16. Judas Priest (2,082.24)
17. MC5 (1,870.13)
18. Bon Jovi (1,561.35)
19. The Meters (1,292.95)

If you care to review it, the full scoring/evaluation spreadsheet I created is here. 

Again, from my 2012 post:

- The most important consideration driving this band quality formula, the factor that raised scores the most, is that the band/artist had to have put out a high percentage (of their overall output) of critically-acclaimed studio albums over an extended period of time. For example, Los Lobos has released a total of fourteen albums in their 36-year history; two-thirds of them are considered 'good' or better, with five ranked as 'brilliant'. On the other hand, all four of The Smiths' studio albums were acclaimed, with 3 considered 'brilliant' . . . but The Smiths were only together for four years total. In this equation, longevity counts.

So, my interpretation of the above scores is as follows:

0 - 1,999: Better luck next time
2,000 - 2,999: Meh . . . with enough sympathetic judges, you might sneak in
3,000 - 4,999: The "Milton Berle Corollary" *
5,000 - 9,999: Fully deserving of induction
10,000 and higher: Should be mortal locks for the Hall

By this (mostly) objective analysis of artist output, I predict that Depeche Mode, J. Geils, Radiohead, Kate Bush and Nine Simone are all but certain to get Hall of Fame nods this year, with The Cars and Link Wray also having an excellent chance of being selected, based upon the number of bands the committee is willing to let in all at once this year.  On the other hand, The Meters, MC5 and Bon Jovi have next to NO chance, as their output can in no way be considered RRHOF caliber.

Those are my predictions, and I'm standing by them!

* * * * * * *

(Two months later...)

* * * * * * *

Wellsir... it appears that I was somewhat 'off' in my predictions... I guess it goes without saying that "objectivity" and "subjectivity" are two different things. My analysis above was a dispassionate assessment of each artist's "worthiness" for Rock Hall induction, based upon the scope and quality of their work as determined by independent consensus.

However, here's who actually made it in this year:

Performer Category:

• Bon Jovi
• The Cars
• Dire Straits
• The Moody Blues
• Nina Simone

Award for Early Influence:

• Sister Rosetta Tharpe

[Well, I DID call Nina Simone... and I kinda called The Cars. So I guess I got one and a half (out of five)...]

Overall, I'm not completely enthused with this year's honorees; as shown above, there were many, many more bands and artists who, from a quality and longevity measure, were WAY more deserving of induction than most of this lot.  With that being said, I really don't have much to complain about here; most of these artists were at least borderline cases, according to the

formula. The only selection I really have a problem with is Bon Jovi - in my opinion, this band shouldn't even be in the same league with most of the ones being considered this year. For them to get in before Kate Bush, before Radiohead, before even J. Geils, is a travesty. Needless to say, I'm not a big fan. And I'm hard-pressed to see what sort of indelible mark Bon Jovi has made on popular music... other than a skidmark.

And so much for that.

Anyway, in honor of this year's Rock Hall inductees, I offer to you all Just What I Needed: The Cars Anthology, a career-spanning two-disc compilation of the band's hits, jointly released by Electra Records and Rhino Records on November 7th, 1995.

I'm not offering up any hard-to-find Cars bootlegs here - just a straightforward "best of" collection. Yeah, I guess you could say I didn't put much effort into this post... just as the Rock Hall of Fame selection committee seemingly failed to put any effort into this year's selections. But at least by now you know that I'll make up for this lackluster post with my subsequent offerings; we'll see if the RRHOF will do the same in years to come, start to think outside of the box and consider artists solely on their merit and not on the Hall's potential to commercially exploit them.

'Nuff said, other than enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

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* - This is reportedly a true story about comedian Milton Berle and his reputed infamously huge penis, although the version below isn't verbatim: Berle and Jackie Gleason were sitting in a steam bath in downtown Hollywood one day, when a man walks in, confronts him and says, "Uncle Miltie, I've heard too much about your legendary Hollywood schlong. I think mine's bigger. I want to compare!" The man whips off his towel and reveals a substantial, impressive member. Berle takes a long glance at it, sighs, sets his cigar down, and proceeds to unwrap his towel. Jackie Gleason quickly interrupts and says, "Miltie, show only enough to win!" (Berle later said: "It was maybe the funniest spontaneous line I ever heard").

Various Artists - Punk Rock Xmas

More Christmas stuff . . . generally speaking.

I don't know if I need to elaborate much about this offering; you pretty much know what you're getting here. There are more than a few of these types of compilations out there, filled with noisy, shambolic renditions of traditional holiday songs or barely coherent Christmas originals performed by punk bands old and new. But in my opinion, this one's the best of the lot - at least, I think it is; it's actually the only one of these sort of things that I own. Someone sent this to me years ago, I can't even recall what year. During the year, I don't pay much attention to it - and every December, I try my hardest to ignore it, but I usually end up playing at least a couple of cuts off of it as the holiday approaches.

Here's the lineup:

1. (It's Gonna Be A) Punk Rock Christmas - The Ravers
2. Silent Night - The Dickies
3. Hooray For Santa Claus - Sloppy Seconds
4. Fuck Christmas - Fear
5. A Merry Christmas - The Greedies
6. There Ain't No Sanity Claus - The Damned
7. Homo Christmas - Pansy Division
8. It's Christmas - Bouquet Of Veal
9. Merry Xmas Blues - The Celibate Rifles
10. Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight) - Ramones
11. Deck The Halls - Metal Mike Alison And Julia
12. Feliz Navi Nada - El Vez
13. Run, Run Rudolph - The Humpers
14. Daddy Drank Our Xmas Money - TVTV$
15. Here Comes Santa's Pussy - The Frogs
16. Christmas Christmas - Mojo Nixon
17. Mr. Grinch - D.I.
18. White Christmas - Stiff Little Fingers

This disc contains some touchstones of the punk/Christmas music hybrid genre, including: "Daddy Drank Our Xmas Money"

by TVTV$; The Humpers' rockin', straight-ahead version of Chuck Berry's classic "Run Run Rudolph" (one of my personal favorites); Sloppy Seconds exquisitely stupid cover of an exquisitely stupid holiday song, "Hooray For Santa Claus" (from the 1964 film Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, widely considered one of the worst movies ever made); and what is quite possibly the definitive punk rock Xmas song, "Fuck Christmas" by Fear.

Again, what else can I say? If you like this sort of stuff, this post will be right up your alley. If you don't . . . well, give it a shot anyway, at the very least for the sake of a laugh and a short respite from the overload of sappiness and saccharine that usually defines the holiday season. Sometimes, you need to tell Frosty with his hat and Charlie Brown with his little tree to get lost for a little while!

So, for your holiday listening pleasure, here's Punk Rock Xmas, a compilation released by Rhino Records on October 10th, 1995. Enjoy, Merry Christmas, and as always, let me know what you think.

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Various Artists - Dr. Demento Presents: The Greatest Christmas Novelty CD Of All Time

I got back home fairly late last Friday night; I spent all of Black Friday with my children running up and down Manhattan, an annual tradition with us. I know that to many of you, it may sound like madness to willingly subject myself and my family to the inherent craziness of a major city on the biggest, most frenzied shopping day of the year . . . but I - we - LOVE New York during the holiday season.

There's nothing like Christmas in that city - the crowds on Fifth Avenue filling the sidewalks, everyone carrying boxes and bags from the high-end stores located up and down the street; the streets and buildings decorated with wreaths, trees, bells and bunting; the display windows of Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman transformed into amazing Christmas fantasies; the ringing of the bells near the Salvation Army donation kettles situated on every block; St. Patrick's Cathedral filled with visitors sitting in the pews or mingling amongst the votive candles; the pungent burnt smell wafting from the carts selling roast chestnuts and sugared peanuts and cashews; the steam rising in curls from the manhole covers (not so much this year - the day was unseasonably mild and pleasant) . . . just everything about New York on that day all but screams "The holidays are here!". I rarely if ever do any actual Christmas shopping while I'm there - frankly, there ain't that many deals to be had in the city's shops on that day. I go to New York on Black Friday mainly to eat, have fun, get myself psyched for the holiday season, and to carefully watch my kids as they gleefully go through places like the Times Square Toys 'R' Us and the old F.A.O. Schwarz (it is very weird not having that venerable toy shop around this year) to gather gift ideas for them for the coming holiday.

The kids enjoy the town as much as I do. I never spent any serious time in NYC myself until I was in my mid-20s; it was then that I realized how much I'd missed out by not experiencing all that the city had to offer until then. Since that realization, I've made sure that my kids got familiar with the city at an early age; I didn't want them to miss out for so long as I did. So since they were toddlers, I have taken them to New York quite often, usually a couple of times a year; there are a ridiculous number of things to do and see there, especially for kids - the stores, the parks and playgrounds, the museums and sights of the City That Never Sleeps. And over the years, my crew have developed their own distinct preferences and favorites in the city. They now know where the best playgrounds are in the city (specifically, the Union Square playground and the Billy Johnson playground in Central Park, with its long hillside granite slide).

They think that the Carnegie Deli is vastly better than its cross-street rival, the Benash Delicatessen, and they used to charm and impress the Carnegie waitresses by ordering their own chocolate egg creams like native New Yorkers (I hope that deli sorts out the ongoing mess with their utilities and opens its doors again sometime soon - the city isn't the same with them closed for the past six months now, and their permanent loss would be a terrific blow to what makes New York what it is). They'd rather spend an afternoon at MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum or the Strand bookstore than anywhere else. And they know what subway stop to take to get to the Soho Dean & Deluca, their preferred location of that city's gourmet grocery, where they purchase their favorites, landjaeger and colorful sugar cookies.

My Black Friday New York visits used to be all about the esoteric, commercial aspects of the city and the holiday season - that is, up until last year.

Our time in the city on Black Friday 2014 was fairly typical. We hit F.A.O. first, where my son undertook a lengthy inspection of the store's Lego inventory (he had his eye on the new Tumbler Batmobile - guess what he got under the tree that year?), followed by visits to the Apple Store, Little Miss Matched, the Hershey Candy boutique and Toys 'R' Us, with other stops in between. By late afternoon, I could tell that they were starting to wind down from their long day in the city, so we stopped for a long, leisurely dinner at one of their favorite places, the Oyster Bar at Grand Central Terminal.

My gang got their second wind after dinner, and expressed a desire to head down to Soho to patronize the Dean & Deluca there before we left the city for home. So we took the 4 train (Lexington Avenue Express) out of Grand Central down to Union Square, then changed over to the R (Broadway Local), since it stopped at Prince Street, right across the street from our destination. We all found seats in a half-empty car, and settled in for the short ride (Prince was the second stop after 8th Street-NYU).

The stop at 8th Street-NYU was uneventful, but as the train pulled away, I noticed a young woman who had apparently just boarded, dressed in what appeared to be some sort of red and green gown, a Christmas-y outfit, standing at the far end of our car. Whoop, I thought - here we go. I've been on enough NYC subway rides to smell a performance/donation shakedown coming, and sure enough, as the train picked up speed, without any preliminaries or introduction, she began to sing.

But her song wasn't just an ordinary Christmas carol; it was "Ave Maria", in a strong, clear, obviously classically-trained soprano voice. And her rendition of it was . . . well . . .

Do you recall that scene in The Shawshank Redemption, when Andy commandeered the prison loudspeakers and played "Canzonetta sull'aria" from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro for the inmates? If you don't, let me remind you of it again:

For a moment, as the girl's clear, strong "Ave Maria" filled that subway car, it was sort of like that scene in the film - just . . . goosebumps. To be in the presence of something so perfect and beautiful in the most drab and mundane of surroundings was a special event. It was difficult to resist the urge to lose yourself in the beauty of that moment . . .

And yet, resist I did. Cynic that I am, I simply regarded it as just another New York hassle - I ride the subway to get from Point A to Point B, not to be frickin' serenaded! I hunkered down in my seat, frowning to myself as the singing woman began slowly moving up the car, holding out a hat for donations from riders.

My children, however, were charmed and mesmerized by the woman's performance. My two oldest, both girls, are aspiring singers, and both participate in their school choruses and drama clubs. So I could tell they were pretty well blown away. They both began to reach into their wallets and pockets for their money, made up of weekly allowances I provide to them (plus a little extra that I gave them especially for our trip to the Big Apple) to spend on things that they pleased - little toys, candy and the like. They didn't have much, but enough to enjoy themselves with. I pursed my lips and grimaced slightly as my oldest daughter pulled out two or three dollars, but I didn't say anything - seemed like a little much in my estimation, but oh well. She was blocking my view of my younger daughter, so I couldn't see how much money she took out.

My oldest sat back to close her purse, and I looked over just in time to see my little girl handing the singer . . . a twenty-dollar bill.

As my body stiffened and my mouth flew open in shock and consternation, the young singer took the donation, smiled sweetly at my girl and paused her song to thank her profusely. I guess in some ways it was pretty heartwarming, and later on I recalled a couple of other subway riders seated nearby who were smiling on the scene . . . but all I could think of at the time was "Holy shit! She just gave that chick $20!", a goodly portion of the funds she had in her possession, her spending money for the Dean & Deluca delicacies she talked of purchasing. Fortunately, a few seconds later we arrived at the Prince Street station, and I quickly hustled my charges past the woman and off of the car.

I got the kids through the station turnstiles, then stopped and faced my little girl. I was pretty displeased, but with effort, I tried to keep any emotion out of my voice as I asked her "Why did you give that singer so much?" Without any hesitation, my daughter looked up at me and replied with a smile, "She was so pretty! And sang so well! I wanted to give her something to thank her - did you see how happy she was?"

I looked down at her, and saw the joy on her face from that moment on the train, an experience that was worth far more to her than money or merchandise. It was then that I 'got' it . . . and I stopped being mad. I smiled back at my daughter, and she took my hand as we climbed the station stairs up to the street. She and the other kids talked about that singer the entire time we were in the gourmet shop, where I bought them whatever they wanted and let them keep what remained of their funds.

My little girl taught me a lesson that day. Despite all of the in-store displays, newspaper ads, mailbox flyers and TV commercials urging you to "Buy, BUY, BUY!", and the hucksterism and crass consumerism that has become an integral part of the holiday season, Christmas is about giving back to the people who have made you happy during the year or for any portion thereof - a month, a week, a day . . . or perhaps even just for a moment. In some cases, the best Christmas gifts you receive aren't the ones purchased for you . . . and the gifts you offer are sometimes worth more to someone than the dollar amount you paid.

As noted in its title, this disc contains several major Christmas novelty songs, including one of my all-time favorites (the famous "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late))". It also includes many of my most reviled holiday tunes, including "Nuttin' For Christmas" (which, with every play, dredges up bad memories of horrible school pageants from when I was in 4th grade . . . no need to elaborate upon that here!) and what is in my opinion the worst Christmas song ever produced, Elmo & Patsy's "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer". But all in all, there's some good stuff here that should bring back some fond holiday memories and make you and yours smile this month. Here's the full lineup:

1. The Chipmunk Song - The Chipmunks
2. All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth - Spike Jones & His City Slickers
3. Jingle Bells - The Singing Dogs
4. Twelve Gifts of Christmas, The - Allan Sherman
5. I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas - Gayla Peevey
6. Nuttin' For Christmas - Stan Freberg
7. A Christmas Carol - Tom Lehrer
8. Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer - Elmo & Patsy
9. I Yust Go Nuts At Christmas - Yogi Yorgesson
10. Twelve Days of Christmas, The - Bob and Doug McKenzie
11. Green Christmas - Stan Freberg
12. I'm A Christmas Tree - Wild Man Fischer
13. I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus - Kip Addotta
14. Santa Claus And His Old Lady - Cheech & Chong
15. Christmas At Ground Zero - Weird Al Yankovic
16. Christmas Dragnet - Stan Freberg & Daws Butler

I hope that you accept this Christmas music in the spirit in which it is offered, and in some small way, it makes your holiday that much merrier.

For your listening pleasure, here's my first selection for this year's season, Dr. Demento Presents: The Greatest Christmas Novelty CD Of All Time, released by Rhino Records on July 31st, 1989. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.  

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Various Artists - Just Can't Get Enough: New Wave Xmas

Another one from the great multi-album Just Can't Get Enough New Wave compilation series put out by Rhino Records in the mid-1990s (I posted New Wave Halloween here a couple of years ago).  This is one of the final entries from that run, a holiday-themed set featuring some real modern classics.  They sort of stretch both the concept of "New Wave" and the specific period covered (ostensibly the Eighties) with this album, which includes a couple of songs from both the 1970s and 1990s, along with "Little Drummer Boy/Peace On Earth", sung by those two post-punk giants Bing Crosby and David Bowie (heh) . . .  But despite this uncharacteristic drift of Rhino's focus, all in all, it's still an enjoyable disc.

Personal favorites include "Thanks For Christmas" by XTC (disguised here as "The Three Wise Men"), "Santa's Beard" by They Might Be Giants, and one of the greatest holiday-themed songs of the past thirty years, The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York".  Pretty much everything on this album is a winner, or at the very least will make you smile with the various bands' off-kilter thoughts on Christmas.

I meant to post way more Christmas stuff this year . . . but I just got distracted.  Plus, I'm nursing a recent sports injury that's kept me from spending extended periods in front of the computer.  A thousand pardons, please.  I hope that this entry somewhat makes up for my dearth of holiday posts - although I'm well aware that putting out Christmas music on Christmas Eve is a little like trying to sell pumpkins on November 1st . . .  But no matter - at least it will be here for next year!

So, for your holiday pleasure, here's Just Can't Get Enough: New Wave Xmas, released by the good people at Rhino Records on October 15, 1996.  Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.  And Happy Holidays to you all!

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The Simpsons - Songs In The Key Of Springfield

Phil Hartman (1948 - 1998) died fifteen years ago today.

I remember in detail when and where I first heard about his death.  I was working for a financial services corporation in Irving, Texas, doing a stint in the collections department after being part of the corporate staff, doing work on the commercial lending side, for my first year with the firm.  The collections group was located about two miles from the main headquarters building where I used to work, in a location close by Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport.  Most of the folks there had worked there together a long time and were a pretty tight-knit group, so there was a lot of grumbling and resentment when I, the young hotshot from Corporate, arrived there to assume a job that at least half a dozen people there felt they deserved more.  Needless to say, my first couple of weeks there were not fun. 

But gradually, most of the people there began to warm up to me.  An important tool that worked in my favor was that, as a former corporate exec, I had been granted and was allowed to keep my unlimited Internet access.  Back in those days, I guess the company's thought was that if everyone had Internet access, all that employees would do was spend all workday screwing around surfing the Web (heh - that never happens nowadays, does it?).  So Web privileges were parsed out only to a fortunate few, mostly senior executives - and, for some reason, me.  This came in handy in my new position that March, during the annual NCAA basketball tournament, when I was able to provide up-to-the-minute scores of tourney games to the multitude of hoops fanatics (and office pool participants) there.  And I wasn't stingy about occasionally letting someone into my office to use Yahoo!  It's always little gestures like that, I've found, that turn people around.

I was sitting in my office on that early morning in late May, taking a break and checking out the news, when I came across the initial headline: "Phil Hartman Dead", with no further details offered at that time.  It was such an unlikely, unexpected, out-of-the-blue story that my mind initially dismissed it as one of those wild, unsubstantiated rumors that used to pop up as "news" in the early days of web reporting.  It was when the second headline popped up a few minutes later with the news of his death that I began to take it more seriously.  It took a while for the details to emerge; as in all murder cases, the circumstances were not pretty:

Apparently he and his wife Brynn had been having marital difficulties, a lot of which stemmed from Brynn's seething jealousy over her husband's success in light of her own failed acting career (well, that along with her rampant booze and drug problems - it seemed that she had a long-standing reputation in the industry and community as a total whack-job).  After another of their many domestic spats that evening, Phil's wife went out and remained out into the wee hours, slamming tequila shooters and snorting coke at a nearby bar.  She came back home at around 3 a.m., and without ceremony shot her husband to death point-blank while he slept in their bed.  Brynn then fled to a friend's house (leaving behind her two small children, who were asleep in the home during this entire incident), telling him about the shooting and promptly falling asleep on the guy's couch.  Initially, her friend didn't believe her story, but after finding the gun in her purse, he began to have second thoughts.  Brynn woke up about three hours later and dragged the guy over to her house, were he found Phil's body and immediately called 911.  By the time the cops arrived, Brynn had locked herself in the bedroom with her husband's corpse.  Before they could break the door down, she had shot herself in the head with a second gun.

It was shocking news - so much so that I got up and left my office in a daze, and stumbled over to the first person I could find to tell them the news.  They were just as shocked.  It just didn't seem possible that something like this could happen to a star of his caliber.  At that point in 1998, Hartman's career was reaching a peak.  He was about to begin his fifth season as the lead on the NBC sitcom NewsRadio.  And through the late '90's he starred in a series of films, including Houseguest, Sgt. Bilko and Jingle All The Way, most of which were poorly received critically but financial successes at the box office.

But, of course, Hartman's greatest success during the 1990s came from his many guest appearances on The Simpsons, and the list of classic characters he left behind - Lyle Lanley (one of the greatest musical performances in Simpsons history - the "Monorail Song"):

Incompetent attorney Lionel Hutz (this is a weird color-free video, but still good):

 And of course, the immortal washed-up actor Troy McClure:

Saturday Night Live, the show that made him famous, did a tribute show in his honor that aired on June 13th, 1998, a couple of weeks after his death, showing clips from Hartman's six-year residency on the program.  They replayed some of his classics:  Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, The Anal Retentive Chef, Bill Clinton at McDonalds, etc.  One of the last things they played on that show was the following clip, "Love Is A Dream", directed by Tom Schiller.  Jan Hooks, Phil's co-star in this short, presented the piece, and couldn't stop crying as she did so.  After watching it, neither could I - in light of his passing, it is a perfect tribute, but it is devastating:

In a lot of ways, Phil Hartman's comedic work was sort of smarmy and overly broad, but it still had widespread appeal.  While he was never a big favorite with the critics, Hartman had fans of all ages, and to a man, everyone who knew of him was genuinely shocked and saddened by his death.  His friends in the industry knew him as a hard-working, 'normal' guy, seemingly unaffected by his fame and the trappings associated with it, and they were just as stunned as the rest of the public.  As Dan Snierson of Entertainment Weekly magazine wrote, in a column soon after the news broke, Hartman was "the last person you'd expect to read about in lurid headlines in your morning paper . . . a decidedly regular guy, beloved by everyone he worked with."  

The Simpsons was still going somewhat strong in the spring of 1998, the end of the show's eighth season.  And there were plenty of good and excellent individual episodes to come in the program's future seasons.  But I think that if you had to select the single point in time where The Simpsons moved from being classic, 'must-see' TV and started becoming standard, run-of-the-mill fare (or even worse), the loss of Phil Hartman's voice and characterizations is as good a place as any to mark the beginning of the decline. 

A year earlier, Rhino released Songs In The Key of Springfield, a compilation of some of the best musical bits from the show's first seven years.  There's some great stuff on here:  the entire "Oh, Streetcar!" musical episode (including the song ripping New Orleans that angered residents of that city); Tito Puente's outstanding (and authentic) mambo number "Senor Burns"; Beverly D'Angelo (as Lurleen Lumpkin) and her superb country number "Your Wife Don't Understand You".  But my favorite part of this disc is from the "A Fish Called Selma" episode, with the now-classic Troy McClure musical version of Planet Of The Apes:

Frankly, as good as the selections are on this album, there's not enough Phil Hartman on it.  And the public seemed to agree - this disc only made it to #103 on the Billboard Hot 200, significantly below its predecessor, the multi-platinum Top 5 smash The Simpsons Sing The Blues.  Still, this is an excellent overview of some of the great music that went into the show during the early part of its history. 

So, here it is for you to hear for yourself - Songs In The Key Of Springfield, released by Rhino Records on March 18th, 1997.  Enjoy, and while you listen, recall all of the great and hilarious Simpsons moments brought to you by the late, lamented Phil Hartman.  And, as always, let me know what you think. 

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Various Artists - Just Can't Get Enough: New Wave Halloween

More upcoming-holiday-themed madness for you - the final volume of Rhino's classic Just Can't Get Enough series, compiling New Wave hits from 1979 to 1985. Rhino originally released fifteen volumes in this series between June 1994 and June 1995, then in following years releasing discs containing New Wave selections based on particular themes (New Wave Xmas and New Wave Women, for example). I bought every one of these albums religiously when they came out back in the mid/late 90s, and own the full set.

The entire Just Can't Get Enough oeuvre is a must-have for any true connoisseur of Eighties music. Each and every disc contains not only classics from that particular period, but also have at least one or two New Wave obscurities, songs that may have flown under your radar back then. As such, each album is full of "ah ha!" moments, and this one here is no exception. There will be songs here that you immediately recognize (like Ministry's "Every Day Is Halloween" (in my opinion, the peak of the band's "pop" period, before moving on to their more groundbreaking industrial sound) and Oingo Boingo's "Dead Man's Party"), along with unfamiliar gems like the "Halloween"-titled tunes by Dream Syndicate, Sonic Youth and Siouxsie & The Banshees.

Rhino has no plans to release any additional compilations in this series, or for that matter to rerelease the original volumes (reportedly due to licensing issues). And frankly, they don't need to put out any new ones - for a nearly complete overview of the entire history of New Wave music, these albums are hard to top. And New Wave Halloween is a fine addition and fitting coda to this set.

So, enjoy your soon-to-be-with-us Hallowed Evening with some fine left-of-center music! Here's the album - as always, let me know your thoughts on it. Boo!

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Various Artists - The Best Of The Girl Groups, Vol. 1 & 2 (RS500 - #422)

This is a fantastic compilation of female pop, rock and R&B singers from the 1960s, both famous and obscure. Despite the album's name, it includes a number of solo artists, including Betty Everett, Ellie Greenwich, and a very early, superb song by Cher (produced by Sonny).

This is one of those "oh yeah" albums, where you're sure to hear something that you haven't heard in years, and go "Oh yeah! I remember that!" If you like that era and genre, these are the albums for you. Enjoy:

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