5 "Must See" Christmas Entertainments

And just like that it’s Christmastime again. Okay it took a year since the last time…but it doesn’t seem that long, does it? The season is a celebration…of the Christ child’s birth…of the wondrous bonds of love and friendship that inform our lives…of gifts given freely and accepted gratefully…of food and drink…of music (the subject of an upcoming entry)…and, in those rare down moments, of enjoying some of the classic entertainment of the season.

Now personally I don’t need to see yet another adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (if you’re so inclined pick one of the dozens of movies, plays, or “very special episodes” of TV shows and have at it.) I don’t need to sit through It’s a Wonderful Life again either (it’s a fine movie…probably a wee bit darker than you remember if you haven’t seen it in a while…but I’ve had that particular experience enough for the time being.)

There are Christmas entertainments that I can…and do…watch happily every year.

The five "must see" Xmas entertainments:

1) A Charlie Brown Christmas: still the gold standard of animated Christmas specials even after 40+ years.

2) Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas: not that over-stuffed movie from 2000 but the magical animated special with the voice of Boris Karloff and the unforgettable singing of Thurl Ravencroft (see the classic "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" below.)

3) A Christmas Story: the endearing and delightful trip down nostalgia lane with Ralphie and his quest for the best Xmas present in the whole wide world (a Red Ryder bb gun, natcherly :-)

4) Miracle on 34^th Street: the 1947 version with Edmund Gwenn and young Natalie Wood (the 1994 version is okay but it’s overlaid with a bit too much seriousness and cynicism when compared to the ’47 winner.) Avoid the colorized version this movie looks grand in black and white.

5) A Wish for Wings That Work: a personal favorite that wasn’t an especially big hit featuring Opus (the penguin from the great Bloom County comic strip) and his quest to be able to fly (with “help” from the ever-addled Bill the Cat.)

Those are 5 great ways to make you smile after a hard day of Christmas shopping (or while sitting around after that last slice of pumpkin pie has made walking not something you have much interest in…)

Thriller

Happy Halloween :-)

Come Darkness, Come Light: 12 Songs of Christmas

‘Tis the season for many things…including and especially new holiday music…and that can be a lovely thing indeed. Mary Chapin Carpenter’s new Christmas album is a soothing, stripped down, reflective affair featuring three musicians Carpenter herself (with acoustic guitar and her luminous and honeyed vocals), Jon Carroll (on piano), and co-producer John Jennings (on everything else…including bass, acoustic and electric guitars, drums, percussion, accordion, piano, and harmony vocals.)

The 12 songs on the disc…a mixture of original songs, found songs, and traditional songs…are soothing, reverent, and moving. From the opening “Once in Royal David’s City” to the love song “Hot Buttered Rum”…from Carpenter’s lilting title song to the bittersweet “Bells are Ringing” (co-written with Jennings…see below) to the closing with the traditional “Children, Go Where I Send Thee”…there is not a misstep on this fine collection.

Come Darkness, Come Light would be a lovely soundtrack for a cool winter’s evening…perhaps snuggled by a fire while sipping hot cider…it’s a sweetly mellow Christmas collection and a most welcome addition to my ever-burgeoning collection of holiday CDs.

Disney's Monster Mash

A version of "Monster Mash" set to clips of classic Disney monsters and villains. Very cute.

U2 - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

From A Very Special Christmas.

A Charlie Brown Christmas as performed by the cast of Scrubs

A Charlie Brown Christmas Performed by the Cast of Scrubs

Happy Turkey Day :-)

Monster Mash

Happy Halloween from Bobby "Boris" Pickett and some classic movie monsters
(and your pal here at Neverending Rainbow :-)

America The Beautiful As Performed By Ray Charles

Happy Birthday, America.

More MKW Blogstuff: Bread and Roses

Holiday Music

Okay, bear with me here (this will be kinda long and unabashedly geeky.) It’s December. Thanksgiving is gone and Christmas is a few weeks down the road. I love Christmas and, more on point here, I love Christmas pop music. I don’t know why…I’ve stopped trying to understand it and I just go with it. A burgeoning subsection of my CD collection (60+ titles as of last count) is filled with Christmas CDs…almost every year (including this one) I find at least one or two to add to the ranks.

There are countless Christmas CDs, of course, and they are definitely not created equal. The six discs I’m highlighting here are purported to be the “best”…what floats individual holiday music boats is too subjective to bother with that kind of hubris…but rather a half-dozen cool ways to embrace the musical season (you know you wanna…)

New this year is Joan Osborne’s very tasty Christmas Means Love, a soulful mix of traditional tunes and less reverent yuletide offerings (including the wonderfully sassy “What Do Bad Girls Get?”.) Apparently this one is only available at Barnes and Noble.

Also new is Diana Krall’s swinging, impeccable Christmas Songs featuring a lot of the usual holiday suspects (“Sleigh Ride”, “The Christmas Song”, “Christmas Time is Here”) presented in a relaxed, engaging set aided and abetted by the Clayton/Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. (Not sure why they went for the cheesecake cover but whatever works…)

From last year is the utterly delightful Barenaked for the Holidays by the utterly delightful Barenaked Ladies. It swings from straightforward renditions (including the wonderful “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings” medley with Sarah MacLachlan and a neat cover of “Do They Know it’s Christmas?”) and witty, tongue-in-cheek numbers (the opening “Jingle Bells” starts as a languid piano ballad but after a minute and a half it suddenly kicks into sprightly gear…and they include the “Batman smells” verse…how cool is that? And “Deck the Stills”, a short version of “Deck the Halls” using only the words “Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young” has to be heard to be believed.) There are also some cool original tunes.

Some of the best Christmas discs are compilations and the others on this list are three of my favorites.

First up is the 2-disc, 36-track set Now That’s What I Call Christmas!...no seriously, it’s a great collection. The first disc is filled with old school Christmas stuff…Nat Cole’s “The Christmas Song”, Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”, the Carpenters’ “Merry Christmas Darling”, the Beach Boys’ “Little Saint Nick”, Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”, etc…along with a couple of wild cards (“Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” and the Bing Crosby/David Bowie duet “Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth”.) The second disc is more (relatively) contemporary stuff…John & Yoko’s “Happy Xmas”, Band Aid’s “Do They Know it’s Christmas”, Bruce Springsteen’s great version of “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town”, etc….and features tracks by an eclectic lineup including Paul McCartney, Shaggy, Diana Krall, Britney Spears, Mannheim Steamroller, Boyz II Men, Harry Connick Jr., and ‘NSync.

Time-Life’s Jingle Bell Rock (from 1987…I have no idea if it’s still in print) features 25 tracks of classic pop and R&B. Two tracks each from Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Temptations, and the pre-wacko years Jackson 5 (a nice cover of “Someday at Christmas” and a cute version of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”) plus cool stuff from Elton John (“Step into Christmas”), Chuck Berry (“Run, Rudolph, Run”), Bobby Helms (the title track), the Beach Boys (“The Man with All the Toys”), Booker T. & the MG’s (“Jingle Bells”), Otis Redding (a majestic “Merry Christmas Baby”), and Donny Hathaway (the immortal “This Christmas”), among others.

And, last but not least, A Very Special Christmas, the first of what would become a series of discs benefiting the Special Olympics. There are some fine tracks on subsequent volumes but the first one is still the best. From Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band’s playful live version of “Merry Christmas Baby” to U2’s yearning “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”…from the Pretenders’ lovely reading of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” to Madonna’s playful vamp through “Santa Baby…from Whitney Houston going to church with a mighty "Do You Hear What I Hear?" to Run-DMC’s clever, show-stopping “Christmas in Hollis” everybody on the disc brought their A-game to the party (okay, so Bryan Adams is no Chuck Berry on “Run, Rudolph, Run”, it’s the thought that counts…)

As I said before, I love this stuff so if there’s some cool holiday music out there you think I may not have heard of I welcome you to let me know about it.

Happy Holidays, y’all.