C'est Noel, Part 10 (Tracks 26-28)

We've been examining each of the 35 tracks that comprise my latest holiday mix, C'est Noel!, with an eye toward offering some background on the whole lot before Christmas Day. Once the today's post is up, a mere seven tracks remain and we've got six days to chat about them, so I'd say we're in pretty good shape. As a reminder, C'est Noel will be available on my holiday music website only through the end of 2013, so be sure to check it out 'twixt now and then.

These next few tracks were selected to honor several gifted entertainers who died during the past year. It's a tradition I started a couple of years ago, and it makes me acutely aware of just how many talented folks are living, and aging, among us. Eight of this years tracks celebrate the lives of artists no longer with us – Tracks 26-32 and Track 35. Here are the first three:

Track 28
Just a Toy, by Annette Funicello (1961)

Annette Funicello

Most of her best professional work was done before my time, but I've always thought highly of Annette Funicello, who passed away this past April at age 70. From her earliest days in show business as one of the original Mouseketeers, to her post-adolescent years frolicking on the beach with Frankie Avalon and their friends, Funicello helped an entire generation of young Americans grow into adulthood. Painfully shy as a child, her parents enrolled her in a Burbank, California dancing school, where she was spotted by Walt Disney himself in 1955 and recruited for his new Mickey Mouse Club program. Disney maintained a close eye on her career, signing her alone to a film deal after the first group of Mouseketeers graduated from the program. In 1961, she starred in Disney’s production of Babes in Toyland, the movie that featured “Just a Toy,” which appears on this year's mix. Unlike so many other child stars, Funicello maintained her wholesome image throughout her life. Except for a brief stint as a spokesperson for Skippy Peanut Butter, Funicello kept out of the public eye for most of her adult years, raising three children and living a relatively modest and by all accounts happy life outside of Los Angeles. In 1992, she announced that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which she fought courageously, both privately and by raising awareness and money to fight the disease. She was a model Mouseketeer and a class act to the end.

Watch Annette and the Other Original Mouseketeers During Roll Call

Watch Episode 1 of the Mickey Mouse Club Serial, "Annette"

Watch the film Babes in Toyland (1961)*

*Annette sings "Just a Toy" at the 1:18:25 mark

Watch the Opening of Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)

Watch One of Annette's Skippy Peanut Butter Commercials


Track 27
Edith Greets the Carolers, The Cast Of “All In The Family,” featuring Jean Stapleton (1971)

Jean Stapleton

Best known for her portrayal of Edith Bunker, the simple, long-suffering, loving wife of America's best-known bigot, Archie (played by the late Carroll O'Connor), on television’s All in the Family, Jean Stapleton played a wide range of challenging roles in films and on stage and TV. Following her death this past May at the age of 90, she was remembered by fellow co-stars and others as a talented professional and a delightful colleague. Actor, director and producer Rob Reiner, who starred with Stapleton in All in the Family, said, "Working with her was one of the greatest experiences of my life." Sally Struthers, who played Gloria in the same show, said, "Jean lived so in the present. She was a Christian Scientist who didn't say or think a negative thing. She was just a walking, living angel.” The short clip I used in this year's mix typifies the Edith Bunker character Stapleton played – and, apparently, Stapleton herself. It’s taken from the episode “Christmas at the Bunkers,” which appears in full below:

UPDATE, 11.18.14:  It seems the video originally posted below is no longer available; however, this same episode can be streamed via Hulu by PRESSING HERE. Fans of All in the Family may also want to check-out the two-part holiday episode that aired during Season 7 in 1977, which posted two days ago HERE.

UPDATE, 4.18.22:  You might also try this link:  HERE.

 


If you'll notice, at about 22:05 Archie kicks off the same argument I posted about yesterday – namely, are Santa Claus and Jesus white, or black? Megyn Kelly doesn't seem to have moved the ball too much farther down the field than when Archie Bunker tried to field the issue in 1971 – 42 years ago.

Track 26
Holiday Greetings, by Lou Reed (1988)

Lou Reed

When I was 14 1/2 years old, I started my first “real” job as a junior kitchen assistant for the girls’ summer camp my grandmother and godmother ran for more than 40 years in Raymond, New Hampshire. There were five of us "boys" in the kitchen – three juniors and two assistants – plus the chef, and we regularly fed about 250 people, only 15 of whom were male. We worked 70 hours each week and the juniors were paid $25 per week, plus room and board, and I loved every minute of it. Hell, I guess it would have been a dream job for most guys my age. When I first heard that Lou Reed had died this past October, I suddenly remembered something from that wonderful summer that I hadn’t thought of in ages. The senior kitchen assistant had just graduated Andover Academy that year, and he was a big Lou Reed fan. I was considerably younger and liked Elton John. The other “kitchen boys” were “townies” from Raymond and liked mostly country and heavy metal music. They ragged on us something awful at first for our taste in music, although by the end of the first week I noticed we were kicking off most of our lengthy afternoon breaks by playing either Rock and Roll Animal or Goodbye Yellow Brick Road at full blast as we fell asleep on the roof of our tiny cabin. Music can bring people together, and it can expand people’s horizons. Lou Reed’s certainly did both that summer. It can also transport people backward in time, as Lou's timeless record just did for me. I'm grateful.

Jenny said, when she was just five years old
There was nothin' happening at all
Every time she put on the radio
There was nothin' goin' down at all, not at all
Then, one fine mornin', she puts on a New York station
You know, she couldn't believe what she heard at all
She started shakin' to that fine, fine music
You know, her life was saved by rock'n'roll . . .

Listen to "No Lou this Christmas," by Tom Dyer and His Queen's Pajamas

Read About Lou Reed's Surprising Christmas Music Canon

Read Patti Smith's Beautiful Remembrance of Lou Reed in The New Yorker

We'll be back again soon with more.

Green Monkey Records Compilation Includes Holiday Tribute to Lou Reed

Green Monkey Records is a Seattle-based record company that specializes in punk and underground artists, and for the past five years they've been putting out a holiday music compilations each December. This year's release is called Merry Krampus, and it includes both edgy original songs and offbeat versions of holiday classics. The cut that immediately caught my attention is "No Lou this Xmas," by Tom Dyer and His Queen's Pajamas. It's a tribute to the great Lou Reed, who died on October 27, 2013.



Putting together these Green Monkey compilations involves a certain amount of luck, as the songs for each release are solicited by way of a public call for submissions. When the call goes out around October 1 each year, the producers never know what sorts of tracks will be sent in. If you ask me, this year's batch sounds awfully good. Oh yes, this year's proceeds will benefit MusiCares, an organization that provides financial support to musicians in need of assistance. Order your copy of Merry Krampus HERE.

Incidentally, the title of this album deserves a quick explanation, as it references a character who's unfamiliar to many of us in the United States. Krampus is a monster-like figure who serves in many European communities as the antithesis of Saint Nicholas. Where jolly old Saint Nick rewards good little boys and girls with presents and candy, Krampus's job is to terrify and punish the bad – usually by tossing them in a sack and dragging them off somewhere to be beaten with sticks. Delightful, no?

Learn more about Krampus from NPR Radio

Learn more about European holiday traditions  from David Sedaris, whose outrageously funny piece "Six to Eight Black Men" describes Christmas in the Netherlands

Thanks to Stubby's House of Christmas and Lie in the Sound.

Happy Halloween, Pumpkins

Halloween has never been one of my favorite holidays, although most people I know tend to really get into it. As a result, I find myself imbued with just a little more Halloween spirit with each passing year. I started Halloween costume contests at two of my previous law firms and they seemed to be among the most popular workplace events of the year. Lately, I've been filing away whatever interesting Halloween-related songs and audio I run across in anticipation of putting together a special Halloween mix one of these days. Until then, here's a sampling of Halloween music to help celebrate this most ghoulish of holidays tomorrow:

Listen to a Selection of Halloween Songs from the Jazz Age

Listen to a Selection of Halloween Songs from the 1950s and '60s

Listen to a Selection of Halloween Songs from the 1970s

Here are two versions of an especially moving song from Lou Reed's 1989 album New York called "Halloween Parade." It's about the festivities held in New York's Greenwich Village each Halloween, which regularly attract a large contingent of gay revelers, among others. Written at a time when gay men were falling ill to HIV at an unbearable pace, the song is an homage to some of the regular parade participants Reed knew from previous years who, although unable to attend the parade, are nonetheless not forgotten.

Listen to the studio version of Lou Reed's Halloween Parade
Lou Reed performing Halloween Parade with his wife, Laurie Anderson, in Paris:




Finally, here's a Halloween music playlist posted recently by Roger Wilkerson, who bills himself as "The Suburban Legend." His tumblr blog offers a most amazing blend of pictures, music and ephemera from the 1950s and '60s, and he adds delightful new stuff pretty much every day. Roger's Halloween mix is posted on PodOmatic, a service I'm not familiar with that claims to feature "millions of free mixes from the planet's best independent podcasters." If Roger's posting his stuff there, that's good enough for me! But you can listen to his mix from this very site by pressing PLAY on the app that appears below. (Thanks, Roger!) Enjoy yourselves tomorrow, and please don't eat all of your children's candy.

Lou Reed, 1942-2013

The news of Lou Reed's passing, though not surprising, was a terrible blow nonetheless. Reed was a survivor. In fact, he was my favorite kind of survivor – the type of guy who not only kept on doing his thing, but was also continuously evolving and breaking new ground. He was fearless and he remained vital and involved in the world around him. He owned what he was and what he'd done, but he refused to be limited or confined by the past, including his own previous experiences. His style was refreshingly direct, and he used clear, unambiguous language to communicate. He had little time for nonsense, but one sensed an abounding capacity for compassion as well – the genuine and heartfelt compassion that is seemingly available only from those who have suffered themselves. As a songwriter, he left his mark early by pushing the boundaries of rock music until there was room for virtually any subject within the human experience … including, believe it or not, Christmas! Yes, for while it's true that Reed was never known for his holly, jolly outlook, there's a certain amount of holiday fare in the in the Lou Reed oeuvre, as the following examples clearly establish:

1. "Perfect Day" (1972), originally from Transformer
This beautiful song has a long and colorful history, and while it's not a Christmas song per se, it's come to be seen as one over time. It first appeared on Lou Reed's second post-Velvet Underground album, Transformer, which was released in 1972. In 1996, the song was featured in the controversial film Trainspotting. In 1997, it was used as the centerpiece of a major promotional and fundraising campaign by the BBC, and later that same year, it was released as a charity single in Great Britain to raise money for Children in Need. A video was released that featured contributions from an impressive array of performers including Bono, Elton John, Emmylou Harris, David Bowie, and Robert Cray, along with Laurie Anderson, who later became Reed's wife.  The song topped the British music charts for weeks, and raised over

£2 million for charity. As Reed himself noted, "I have never been more impressed with a performance of one of my songs." Here it is:

"Perfect Day" has also been covered by a variety of performers, including Duran Duran, who took the song up the British charts again in 1995, and Susan Boyle, who included it on her bestselling holiday album The Gift in 2010 and sang it for Prince Charles and his second wife during one of those command performances they always seem to be demanding. Ms. Boyle also performed the song for a crowd of plain old regular Americans at a show in Rockefeller Center in 2010:



Boyle was scheduled to perform the song on live TV for the America's Got Talent show that same year, but she was forced to drop out of the program at the last minute due to licensing problems. When he learned what had happened, Reed took pains to emphasize that he had nothing to do with the decision, and after arranging to get Boyle permission to perform the song, he volunteered to produce her music video version of it. I'm not that keen on any of Boyle's renditions of the song myself, but I like the atmosphere of the video, which was shot on the banks of Loch Lomond in Boyle's native Scotland:

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2. "White Christmas," performed live with Rufus Wainwright
I can't tell you for certain where or when, but Reed performed "White Christmas" with Rufus Wainwright on some stage somewhere, at one time or another, and here's the proof:




3. "The Cry of a Tiny Babe," performed live with Bruce Cockburn and Roseanne Cash
Canadian singer/songwriters Kate and Anna McGarrigle used to host a semiannual show called The McGarrigle Christmas Hour that brought together a wide range of performers to share stories and songs of the holidays. Much to the surprise of many in the audience, Reed showed up for one of the shows in 2008 where he joined Bruce Cockburn and Roseanne Cash for a wonderful version of Cockburn's beautiful song "The Cry of a Tiny Babe." Unlike most Christmas songs, this one looks at Jesus's birth through the eyes of his earthly parents:



4. "Xmas in February" (1989), from New York
New York is one of my favorite Lou Reed albums. Released in 1989, it paints a gritty and lifelike picture of our nation's biggest city just before the economic boom of the 1990s and Manhattan's subsequent Disneyfication. Reed's not shy about naming names in this one. The album effectively fingers a sizable group of co-conspirators whom Reed considers responsible for some of his city's ills. The song "Xmas in February" is a little different, however. It simply tells the bleak and bitter story of Sam, a short-order cook who returns home after being seriously injured in Vietnam only to lose nearly everything else in quick succession. It's an unrelentingly grim story that really doesn't have a whole lot to do with Christmas as such, but then again Reed never was much for touching reality up to make it look prettier. You can hear the song HERE, but Reed himself advised listeners to experience the entire record from start to finish, like a movie or a play, and that really does give you a richer picture. Try this link for that, or, better yet, buy the CD.

5.  "All Through the Night" (1979), from The Bells
Finally, one of Reed's most overlooked albums – The Bells, from 1979 – contains this odd number, which sounds like it was recorded on a hidden tape recorder at someone's cocktail party. The foreground conversation offers little of interest and effectively overpowers Reed's slow-moving narrative and, at times, even the music itself.  In this instance, nothing much is lost. The lyrics aren't particularly artful and the music sounds uninspired, too, but there are these lyrics: 

If Christmas comes only once a year
why can't anybody shed just one tear
for things that don't happen all through the night
Ooohhh mama, all through the night.

Not too much holiday spirit there, but the song itself is another piece of Lou Reed's reality. We've lost a great deal with him no longer sharing ours. He'll truly be missed.