blessingx

Hope you all had a great holiday. Anyone need a "charming" short video showing a visit by St. Nick and a cadre of Krampuses? https://www.instagram.com/tv/CmEggbbJ9xt/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Thanks for wishes everyone. Always great to see. Good day including a surprise meal (hate to make people work on holidays, but ya know) at Ruth’s Chris. Hope everyone is having a great Xmas.

For those old enough to miss SCTV Xmas specials…

It's a big one Ken. Hope it's a great day.

Stay safe and warm guys

A couple albums with the same title and many of the same family members - American Folk Songs for Christmas by Mike, Peggy & Penny Seeger and their families and American Folk Songs for Christmas by The Seeger Sisters. "Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953), distinguished musician, noted music educator and authority on folk music has assembled a collection of songs from the old-time Christmas, before Santa Claus came to America and neatly trimmed fir trees bloomed with tinsel." Also when Christmas was January 6th. Ex. Bonus track for the Dukes of Hazzard fans. Your wish has come true - Bo and Luke singing Baby, it's Cold Outside to each other.

Johnny Cash The Classic Christmas Album (he has a few similarly named holiday LPs) Ex.

With Mimi Parker’s passing last month, adding Low’s Christmas to the mix.

George Winston’s December Full album

Tracey Thorn‘s Tinsel and Lights ex.

Cunk on Earth

#londoniswonderful

The World’s Most Important Musical About the World’s Most Important Band The director Alex Ross Perry workshops his musical “Slanted! Enchanted!,” about Pavement. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/26/the-worlds-most-important-musical-about-the-worlds-most-important-band https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/dec/20/pavement-director-alex-ross-perry-to-make-ridiculous-real-fake-movie-about-us-indie-band

Kicking off Xmas week with the modern melancholic classic #xmas2017 by the short-lived Burkini Beach project.

If people need more encouragement, she’s on Rolling Stone’s Best Nashville Country Albums list https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-country-albums-1234581876/

I'm not so good at Rorschach tests, but those are vagina vortices, right?

On a trip back (time and space) to rural Ohio to visit family for Thanksgiving, I shot film for the first time in at least 30 years. Went with Ilford HP5+ (Nikon F4 and 50 f/1.8) and did my fair share of missing exposure. And I seemed to pick the comically bad lab to develop and scan, but all part of the process, I guess. These are nothing special, but said I'd post some shots in the other thread so here they are. A sampling of digital (Leica SL & CV 35, 50 APOs) at the end on the same trip too. As it was the longest gap of visits (pandemic!), it felt the furthest away from my current Silicon Valley suburban life. Plenty of emotions. Plenty of Trump signs. The digital...

I lied. One more, one more. I'll stop shortly as this is probably boring everyone else. There's a year old spiritual successor to Nilsson Sings Newman, though not Newman or Nilsson, all Monkees instead. Micky Dolenz's Dolenz Sings Nesmith Ex.

One more for you Mikey. Vodafone probably unintentionally references Nilsson's legendary drinking sessions and Newman's sexual realizations. And is that ending a little close to nuclear annihilation?

Oh fun. I Googled Williams and Newman which led to this article. “Considering that Randy Newman has been banned from the airwaves in Boston and at least three other cities, you might think that he had written a tender ballad about a child-murderer. Or a song that makes fun of law-enforcement officers. Or one that lampoons the Catholic Church or puts down the entire city of Baltimore. Or perhaps one that takes a crack simultaneously at three idols like Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein and the United States of America. As a matter of fact, he has done all of that and a bit more…” ‘Greil Marcus put it well in his book about rock, "Mystery Train," when he said that Newman's "songs contain an astonishing affection for every American from the middle-class couple wasting away in Florida to the rapist preying on their daughter." In the same paragraph, he summed up the destination our society prepares for art as complex and ambivalent as Newman's: "buried on an occasional FM radio or in the back of someone's record collection."’ Also lots of links to Short People.

Yeah, so many great songs. Strangely two about Ohio. It's probably my favorite of his, though I tend to think of him by track, not album, and there are so many good compilations (including my favorite box set of all time). Anyway, listened to Sail Away earlier today also and dug this review by someone with the username Robert Crumb. "Randy Newman's Sail Away. Not his best album, honestly. Sure, it's a fantastic collection of songs, each remarkably evocative and full-bodied; they play out like fine wine, swoosh it around in your ears, let me know what you think. But this isn't his best album. And that's no fault of this album, damn if it don't try to be the best album it can be. A million song writers would severely maim a gaggle of school children to write material half as clever, a percentage as human, as these songs are. More than anything, Sail Away is the kind of album that makes you think, "can it possibly get any more sublime?" And then you hear Good Old Boys." Then skipping Good Old Boys for a sec, listened to... Harry Nilsson's Nilsson Sings Newman Ex. Then I discovered there's a... Steve Hogg's Steve Hogg Sings Nilsson Sings Newman. So now playing... Ex. Who's going next meta step?

Randy Newman Land of Dreams Ex. Her own mother came To meet us at the station Her dress as black as a crow in a coal mine She cried when her little girl got off the train Her brothers and her sisters came down from Jackson, Mississippi In a great green Hudson driven by a Gentile they knew Drinkin' rye whiskey from a flask in the backseat Tryin' to do like the Gentiles do Christ, they wanted to be Gentiles, too Who wouldn't down there, wouldn't you? An American Christian Goddamn

But they sure knew how to make dynamic music videos.

Not as good as Wednesday, but here are Hall and Oats dancing to your birthday.

Been revisiting Hall & Oats this morning. Contrary to my memory, they don't have very many good songs do they? The beautiful Sara Smiles, She's Gone, and there has to be a third, right?