MOVIES: Can someone tell me the true meaning of Life Day?

And here's what they'd be dancing to! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNi2oxH37vo

MUSIC: Songs Of The Day: Christmas Music From Devo And Monty Python

TELEVISION/VIDEOS: Holy Stockings, Batman!

MUSIC: My Most Played Songs On My IPod This Christmas

This is from me, and is NOT some reprinted material. And this is the last Christmas post until after Thanksgiving! I promise! - OlderMusicGeek

Not that I know if any of you care, but here's a list of the songs that were played the most on my iPod.

I must say a few things first. Since I couldn't get my external hard drive with all my Christmas music fixed, I got the music from where I could find it. Some songs had duplicates, and should probably be higher on the list.

Also, my daughter used my iPod a few times, so that affected the count too.

But anyway, here they are....

#10 (big tie) Angels We Have Heard On High - Mannheim Steamroller, Christmas Time On Waltons Mountain by The Waltons, Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses, Christmas Song - The Raveonette, Christmas Time Again - Bad Manners, Deck The Halls - Mannheim Steamroller, Deck The Halls - Relient K, Do They Know It's Christmas - Band Aid, Everything Is Gonna Be Cool This Cool by The Eels, Frosty The Snowman by The Jackson 5, Good King Wenseclas by The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Handel's Messiah by Relient K, Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Claus Lane) - Elvis Presley, I'm Getting Nothin' For Christmas by Smashmouth/Rosie O'Donnell, Jingle Bells by Wilson Pickett, Joy To The World - The Butties, Joy To The World - Mannheim Steamroller, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! - The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Mary's Boy Child/Oh My Lord - Boney M, O Holy Night (techno version - don't know who did it), Merry Christmas I F***ed Your Snowman by Showcase Showdown, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer - Burl Ives, Rockabilly Christmas - Big Bad Voodoo Daddies, Santa Baby - Eartha Kitt, Sleigh Ride - Christmas Grass, Sleigh Ride (The Latin Project Remix) - Ella Fitzgerald, Twelve Days of Christmas - The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Up On The Housetop - Jimmy Buffett, Winter Wonderland - The Brian Setzer Orchestra, Winter Wonderland - Christmas Grass, Winter Wonderland - Phantom Planet

#9 (still big tie) All I Want For Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey, Christians And The Pagans - Dar Williams, Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) - Darlene Love, Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) - Death Cab For Cutie, Christmas On The Bayou - Micheal McDonald, Frosty The Snowman - The Charms, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Bright Eyes, Hark - Torch Song, Jolly Old St Nicholas/Up On The Housetop - The Dave Williamson Big Band, Merry Christmas Baby - Otis Redding, Merry F***ing Christmas - South Park, Santa's Beard - They Might Be Giants, Silver Bells - Twisted Sister, Sleigh Ride - Ella Fitzgerald, Sleigh Ride - The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Sleigh Ride - TLC, White Christmas - Tina Sudandh

#8 (yes, still a big tie) Auld Lang Syne - BB King, Cool Yule - Louis Armstrong, Do You Hear What I Hear - Elmo/Rosie O'Donnell, Happy Holidays You B******s - Blink 182, Jingle Bell Rock - The French Impressionists, Linus And Lucy - Vince Guaraldi Trio, O Come All Ye Faithful - Twisted Sister, Reggae Christmas - Bryan Adams, Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree - Cajun Gold, Super Sunny Christmas - Redd Kross, We Wish You A Merry Christmas - Relient K

#7 (four-way tie) Christmas Bop - T Rex, Deck The Halls - Ted Nugent, I Want A New Baby For Christmas - The Smithereens, Jingle Bells - Lisa Loeb

#6 (three-way tie) Angels We Have Heard On High - Relient K, Rock And Roll Christmas - George Thorogood & The Destroyers, We Three Kings - Book Of Love

#5 (four-way tie) Amazing Grace - The Dropkick Murphys


Feliz Navidad - Davie Allan & The Arrows



Good King Wenseclas - The Roches


I've Got A Boner For Christmas - Nerf Herder
WARNING: EXPLICIT lyrics!


#4 Homo Christmas - Pansy Division
WARNING: This song has VERY explicit lyrics!


#3 One Christmas Catalogue - Captain Sensible


#2 (four-way tie) Deck The Halls - Twisted Sister


Have A Merry Christmas - Heavy Beat Crew


I Won't Be Home For Christmas - Blink 182


"Merry Christmas" - Face To Face


#1 Deck The Halls - The Roches

A link to all my Christmas posts

Merry Christmas or whatever holiday you're celebrating!
MY CHRISTMAS INTERNET RADIO STATIONS
OlderMusicGeek Radio - Christmas Edition
OlderMusicGeek Radio - Christmas Rock and Punk Edition
OlderMusicGeek's Christmas QuickMix
powered by PANDORA
But if you don't have Pandora, you can hear some of songs at http://www.playlist.com/oldermusicgeek

MUSIC: How An Obscure 80s Punk Band Created A Christmas Classic - Redux

I found the following story from NPR and am adding it to this piece I've already posted. - OlderMusicGeek



I found this while surfing the net. I edited it down. You can read the whole piece here. - OlderMusicGeek

How an obscure 80s punk band created a Christmas classic
By JOHN PETRICK
Thursday December 22, 2005

Struggling band The Waitresses dragged themselves off the road and into a Manhattan studio to record - of all things - a Christmas song on a hot August day in 1981. Little did they know they were about to create a classic - a song that would well outlive the band, the 80s and, sadly, the frontwoman who sang it.

"I go back and I try to think of what the original inspiration was. I think it was just very much that for years I hated Christmas," says Chris Butler, founder of the Waitresses and writer of the bittersweet, cool but sentimental Christmas Wrapping.

The song is as much about a harried lifestyle and trying to make connections as it is about Christmas. "Everybody I knew in New York was running around like a bunch of fiends," he says of Christmases back around the time he moved from his native Ohio to New York City and formed the Waitresses. "It wasn't about joy. It was something to cope with."

As talk-sung by late lead singer Patty Donahue, Butler's song depicts a hard-working single girl who resolves to sit Christmas out one year. This, as she laments her repeated and unsuccessful attempts to reconnect with a guy she met by chance the previous winter. But just as in A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life, a twist of fate and a little magical intervention restore our heroine's belief in the Christmas spirit, after all.

Their record label had asked each of its punk bands to write a Christmas song for a holiday album. "A Christmas album? On a hipster label? Come on. Never happened," says Butler, giving the raspberry. "They were extreme individuals," he says of the label's roster.

Then again, the band itself was once a myth.

While Butler was a musician playing, he wrote songs for a make-believe side group. "I came up with the name `the Waitresses' because it just sounded kind of New Wavey," he says. "It was all a big joke."

But when industry people in New York expressed serious interest in I Know What Boys Like, Butler quickly cobbled together a formal Waitresses lineup. Many of the musicians Butler recruited were Midwesterners who, like himself, gravitated to New York. Meanwhile, Donahue was still in Ohio.

A free spirit who was in and out of college when she wasn't working waitress jobs, she decided to come along for the ride. "I gave her my last 50 bucks, put her on the Greyhound bus, she kissed her boyfriend goodbye, and she decided to come to New York. What the hell?"

The Waitresses officially debuted as a real, fully organized band at Little Club 57 at 57 St. Mark's Place on Jan 3, 1981. Months of playing everywhere - and I Know What Boys Like still wasn't making much of a dent.

In they came from the road in August 1981, exhausted, discouraged and not exactly in the Christmas spirit. Butler wrote Christmas Wrapping in about a week, put together from what he calls his "riff pile" - cassettes with bits and pieces of songs he wrote, for a rainy day. Some of the lyrics were written in the cab, en route to the studio. He credits his fellow musicians with adding brilliant flourishes to his basic musical arrangement. And, of course, he credits Donahue - the least experienced band member with the highest visibility.

"This is what she brought to the party: She was very smart. She was very funny. She was a very good actress. Great sense of humor, great timing. This was not the world's greatest vocalist, but she could get inside these lines and act them out, with a cigarette, and be my kind of favourite 1930s tough broad in all those Depression-era movies. She could do that kind of tough, tough, been-there, done-that, you-can't-fool-me kind of woman."

Two days of recording, and Christmas Wrapping was in the can. Back out on the road they went, forgetting all about it - until it started getting radio play come Christmas season. It was a weird way to have a hit.

"We had to play the song up until, like, June. And we had to capitalize on it - `Hi, this is our new album. We're the people who did that song back at Christmas,'" he says. "I am an official one-hit wonder. Except I have two half-hits: The Christmas song, and I Know What Boys Like, which never quite broke through but never quite went away."

Though they were seemingly gaining momentum, what happens next isn't quite the magical happy ending of Christmas tales. "We ran out of gas," he says about working on their next album. "We had a huge deadline. Huge pressure. And she (Donahue) said, `The hell with it'."

Then in the mid-90s, this Christmas tale comes to an even less happy ending.

"I found out she was sick, through a friend. I immediately called her. We kind of kissed and made up. I asked if there was anything I could do. We had a couple of phone conversations." Donahue died of lung cancer on Dec. 9, 1996, at age 40.

And as for Christmas? He has a bit of a different perspective on it, now. Especially when he's rushing around doing errands and suddenly hears his song on the radio, after all these years.

"Who'd have thunk it? Yeah. Holy cow," he says of its longevity. "Miracles do happen. It's MY Christmas miracle. And it slaps me around and says, `Lighten up. It's Christmas'."



A link to the original article

Merry Christmas or whatever holiday you're celebrating!
MY CHRISTMAS INTERNET RADIO STATIONS
OlderMusicGeek Radio - Christmas Edition
OlderMusicGeek Radio - Christmas Rock and Punk Edition
OlderMusicGeek's Christmas QuickMix

powered by PANDORA
But if you don't have Pandora, you can hear some of songs at http://www.playlist.com/oldermusicgeek

MOVIES/VIDEOS: Santa's Five Scariest Moments On Film

I don't remember how I found this, but it's from Esquire. - OlderMusicGeek

Santa's Five Scariest Moments on Film
December 19, 2008 at 12:45PM by Daniel Murphy

Like most fairy tales, the story of Santa Claus is fairly frightening. Here’s a guy who lives in the North Pole, impervious to the cold, insulated with fat, cloaked in garish red, and surrounded by brainwashed little men whose sole mission in life is to construct toys without asking questions.

He is a recluse, spending 364 days each year obsessively compiling a list of naughty children, passing judgment on prepubescent boys and girls. Meanwhile, impersonators across the globe draw said boys and girls toward strip malls to sit on their laps and recite their hopes, dreams, and desired electronics.

One day each year, though, Saint Nick leaves his icy refuge to break into your home. He flies with the assistance of nine antlered bucks who land on your roof so he can climb down your chimney undetected. In a particularly odd twist, he subsists entirely on cookies and milk.

Face it: If not for the redeeming fact that Santa comes bearing gifts, he would be the stuff that horror films are made of. Horror films like these.

Silent Night, Deadly Night

When a young child watches Santa carjack and sexually assault his mom (not the real Santa, of course), he grows up believing that he has the power to judge who is naughty and who is nice. Apparently, the kid in the sled did something naughty, like “flaunt his wicked tobogganing skills.” But what’s with his friend at the bottom of the hill? I mean, come on, show a little emotion, will you?

Don't Open Till Christmas

Oh the Brits and their dry horror. Santa gets a spear through the back of the head and all everyone does is politely stand about 'til one mulleted bloke gets so worked up he hits the bar with his fist! How ghastly!

Santa’s Slay

First of all, great title. Second of all, this film is one Nic Cage casting call away from being a truly great movie. A kickboxing Santa Claus blowing up children with dynamite presents? That’s novel. (Get it? Dynamite presents?)

EQUAL-OPPORTUNITY HOLIDAY EXPLOITATION SPOILER ALERT: Someone is about to get stabbed in the throat with a Menorah.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

Santa Claus tames the unruly black-faced Martians using only his jolliness! Except the Martians are actually pretty ruly, and Santa’s jolliness is more like creepiness. But that’s definitely black-face they’re rocking. Definitely.

Christmas Evil

Also known as You Better Watch Out and Terror in Toyland (because why have one title when you can have three?), Christmas Evil has a shockingly similar plot to Silent Night, Deadly Night, proving that there is, in fact, a market for the boy-traumatized-by-seeing-Santa-violate-his-mom-goes-homicidal genre. This version, however, has a bit more heart -- even if it is stabbed with a sharpened candy cane.

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MUSIC: How An Obscure 80s Punk Band Created A Christmas Classic

I found this while surfing the net. I edited it down. You can read the whole piece here. - OlderMusicGeek

How an obscure 80s punk band created a Christmas classic
By JOHN PETRICK
Thursday December 22, 2005

Struggling band The Waitresses dragged themselves off the road and into a Manhattan studio to record - of all things - a Christmas song on a hot August day in 1981. Little did they know they were about to create a classic - a song that would well outlive the band, the 80s and, sadly, the frontwoman who sang it.

"I go back and I try to think of what the original inspiration was. I think it was just very much that for years I hated Christmas," says Chris Butler, founder of the Waitresses and writer of the bittersweet, cool but sentimental Christmas Wrapping.

The song is as much about a harried lifestyle and trying to make connections as it is about Christmas. "Everybody I knew in New York was running around like a bunch of fiends," he says of Christmases back around the time he moved from his native Ohio to New York City and formed the Waitresses. "It wasn't about joy. It was something to cope with."

As talk-sung by late lead singer Patty Donahue, Butler's song depicts a hard-working single girl who resolves to sit Christmas out one year. This, as she laments her repeated and unsuccessful attempts to reconnect with a guy she met by chance the previous winter. But just as in A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life, a twist of fate and a little magical intervention restore our heroine's belief in the Christmas spirit, after all.

Their record label had asked each of its punk bands to write a Christmas song for a holiday album. "A Christmas album? On a hipster label? Come on. Never happened," says Butler, giving the raspberry. "They were extreme individuals," he says of the label's roster.

Then again, the band itself was once a myth.

While Butler was a musician playing, he wrote songs for a make-believe side group. "I came up with the name `the Waitresses' because it just sounded kind of New Wavey," he says. "It was all a big joke."

But when industry people in New York expressed serious interest in I Know What Boys Like, Butler quickly cobbled together a formal Waitresses lineup. Many of the musicians Butler recruited were Midwesterners who, like himself, gravitated to New York. Meanwhile, Donahue was still in Ohio.

A free spirit who was in and out of college when she wasn't working waitress jobs, she decided to come along for the ride. "I gave her my last 50 bucks, put her on the Greyhound bus, she kissed her boyfriend goodbye, and she decided to come to New York. What the hell?"

The Waitresses officially debuted as a real, fully organized band at Little Club 57 at 57 St. Mark's Place on Jan 3, 1981. Months of playing everywhere - and I Know What Boys Like still wasn't making much of a dent.

In they came from the road in August 1981, exhausted, discouraged and not exactly in the Christmas spirit. Butler wrote Christmas Wrapping in about a week, put together from what he calls his "riff pile" - cassettes with bits and pieces of songs he wrote, for a rainy day. Some of the lyrics were written in the cab, en route to the studio. He credits his fellow musicians with adding brilliant flourishes to his basic musical arrangement. And, of course, he credits Donahue - the least experienced band member with the highest visibility.

"This is what she brought to the party: She was very smart. She was very funny. She was a very good actress. Great sense of humor, great timing. This was not the world's greatest vocalist, but she could get inside these lines and act them out, with a cigarette, and be my kind of favourite 1930s tough broad in all those Depression-era movies. She could do that kind of tough, tough, been-there, done-that, you-can't-fool-me kind of woman."

Two days of recording, and Christmas Wrapping was in the can. Back out on the road they went, forgetting all about it - until it started getting radio play come Christmas season. It was a weird way to have a hit.

"We had to play the song up until, like, June. And we had to capitalize on it - `Hi, this is our new album. We're the people who did that song back at Christmas,'" he says. "I am an official one-hit wonder. Except I have two half-hits: The Christmas song, and I Know What Boys Like, which never quite broke through but never quite went away."

Though they were seemingly gaining momentum, what happens next isn't quite the magical happy ending of Christmas tales. "We ran out of gas," he says about working on their next album. "We had a huge deadline. Huge pressure. And she (Donahue) said, `The hell with it'."

Then in the mid-90s, this Christmas tale comes to an even less happy ending.

"I found out she was sick, through a friend. I immediately called her. We kind of kissed and made up. I asked if there was anything I could do. We had a couple of phone conversations." Donahue died of lung cancer on Dec. 9, 1996, at age 40.

And as for Christmas? He has a bit of a different perspective on it, now. Especially when he's rushing around doing errands and suddenly hears his song on the radio, after all these years.

"Who'd have thunk it? Yeah. Holy cow," he says of its longevity. "Miracles do happen. It's MY Christmas miracle. And it slaps me around and says, `Lighten up. It's Christmas'."



A link to the original article

Merry Christmas or whatever holiday you're celebrating!
MY CHRISTMAS INTERNET RADIO STATIONS
OlderMusicGeek Radio - Christmas Edition
OlderMusicGeek Radio - Christmas Rock and Punk Edition
OlderMusicGeek's Christmas QuickMix

powered by PANDORA
But if you don't have Pandora, you can hear some of songs at http://www.playlist.com/oldermusicgeek

TELEVISION/VIDEOS: Pee Wee's Christmas Special

MUSIC: Me, My Daughter, Our Taste in Music and the Corruption of Her Friends

This is from me, not reprinted from somewhere else. - OlderMusicGeek.

The more I discuss music with my daughter, the more I worry about her.

She was telling me other day,that her classmates were saying that her outfit almost looked emo.

To which I replied, “Oh no!”

“What’s wrong with emo?!” she asked offendedly.

“Well, I don’t really know about the emo look, “ I admitted. “I just know the music sucks.”

“I kind of like emo. What’s wrong with emo music?”

“Except for the fact that it sounds like washed out punk rock, nothing.”

My daughter once again had her problem with her eyes rolling into her head.


And I realized, my daughter’s friends had corrupted her even more into their ways!

When she was a young thing before starting school, punk rock, alternative and electronica were her favorite types of music. And she would tell people that too.

Now, she likes top 40 and rap. And that popular rap, not the edgy stuff! I could respect her, if not agree with her, if she liked the edgy stuff!

As one of my friends on the internet said when I told him about this, “Those fiends!”


But there is some hope. She did say the other week, “I don’t hate bluegrass. I actually like it. It’s just not some of my favorite music.”


And back in December when I was playing my Christmas music, she asked, “Cajun Christmas music?”

“That’s right.”

She nodded her head in approval.

Wow, I thought, how many tweens have even heard of Cajun music, much less know it when they hear it. And appreciate it!

And if she can know and appreciate Cajun music, there just might be some hope for her!

Posts about music on OlderMusicGeek's Stupid Stuff
Posts about music on OlderMusicGeek's Stupid Entertainment Stuff

In case you don't know what emo is, here's a video explaining it.

MUSIC and BOOKS: Some Christmas Stuff

This Christmas, I listened to a couple of great books and some pretty good music.

I strongly recommend The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore. To quote the Entertainment Weekly review, “This is, without a doubt, the greatest story ever told about fruit bats, zombies and miracles.” Basically, if Stephen King wrote a Christmas comedy, it would come out something like this tale, which features among other unique characters... 1 - a former druggie who got blackmailed into being a tourist town's only law enforcement, 2 - the wife of the former druggie who was the a star in the Kendra, Warrior Babe of the Outland movies and has quit taking her anti-psychotic drugs to have money to buy her husband a gift, 3 – Tucker Case, a former womanizing pilot who is trying to better himself and only doing a mediocre job of that, and also has a pet fruit bat that wears sun glasses, and 4 – an angel who announced Jesus' birth 10 years too late because he got caught up in a card game.

And I read Skipping Christmas by John Grisham, the book that the movie, Christmas with the Kranks, is based on. Can't compare it to the movie, cus I haven't seen it yet. And don't have much motivation to do it either. The book starts really slow. I would suggest skipping to the part where the daughter calls and says she's coming home, because that's really the point where it starts to get funny.

I also heard some great new songs this Christmas. Cyndi Lauper of Girls Just Want to Have Fun and She Bop fame has a fun romper called Early Christmas Morning.

And Ringo Starr has had a cd, I Wanna Be Santa Claus, out for a few years, but I only got around this year to listening to these two songs, Christmas Dance and Come on Christmas, Christmas Come On. The first one is a sweet tune about a young man trying to get a courage to ask the girl who he admired from afar to dance with him at, of course, the Christmas dance. The second is just an arena type rocker about Christmas. - Hey, when you have 2500+ Christmas tunes, you don't get to them all each year!


And I still love these tunes I heard the last couple of years! Nobody does such an unique version of this Christmas tune. I mean Ted Nugent and Twisted Sister can both really rock it out, but I still think The Roches' version of Deck the Halls is best! Something about that rocking acoustic guitar and those strange but lovely harmonies.


And their Good King Wenceslas is still my favorite version of that song!


And I can't say enough about my reggae Christmas tunes. Who would think people from the warm Caribbean could do such great versions of tunes associated with the cold and snow! But I strongly recommend Yard Style Christmas, Christmas Greetings from Studio One, The Reggae Christmas Collection and that 3-cd collection from the condom people, The Trojan Christmas Box.

A link to an excerpt of Christopher Moore's The Stupidest Angel

TELEVISION/VIDEOS: Christmanukkah Greetings from The Strangerhood

This is a Christmanukkah greeting from an internet show called "The Strangerhood". And I strongly recommend it - it is very funny! - OlderMusicGeek

MOVIES/VIDEOS: Some Christmas Videos

These are some Christmas videos on YouTube that I found and liked. - OlderMusicGeek

MUSIC: Moby's Take on Christmas

Moby, an extremely liberal Christian, has this interesting take on Christmas. I got it from his website which Spin led me too. - OlderMusicGeek

as for christmas, i hope that everyone has a wonderful christmas, regardless of how you choose to celebrate it (or not celebrate it).

i always hope that somehow we can see past the fun and awesome pagan trappings of christmas (trees, mistletoe, december 25th, candy canes, etc) to remember that on christmas we celebrate the birthday (even if jesus wasn't actually born anywhere near december 25th) of a man who wanted us all to be more forgiving, more compassionate, less judgemental, less violent, and less materialistic.

ultimately christmas is about celebrating the birthday of a man who wanted us to love one another and to look after one another regardless of our religious or political or ethnic or gender differences.

thanks, and merry christmas.
moby