The only holiday album I can stomach hearing…

Well, not really.  I don’t hate Christmas.  (Though, I’m actually more of a Festivus guy.)  I do, however, hate a good deal of holiday music.  And I really despise the increasing commercialism of the holidays, which is now set to videos of stampedes on “Brown/Grey Thursday”, or “Black Friday”, or whatever other color the marketplace tries to foist upon a formerly wholesome holiday which once celebrated being thankful, and now celebrates credit card debt.

But that’s another topic for another blog.  This one’s about music, right?  And my above rant smacks of Charlie Brown’s frustration with the commercialization of Christmas, which conveniently leads me to the one holiday album I can bear to listen to not only during the holiday season, but all year long.

Vince Guaraldi’s soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas is undoubtedly my favorite holiday album, and quite possibly my favorite jazz album, period.  It’s tasteful, excellently-played, and perfectly captures a certain ennui I always seem to feel around the holiday season – that feeling an adult gets when they look back on holidays past, and think of all the family and friends who’ve passed on.

It’s also the only holiday album I’ll occasionally reach for throughout the year.  It’s not overly adorned with sleigh bells, or any other sonic crutches that alert you to the fact you’re listening to a HOLIDAY ALBUM!  Only the vocal version of “Christmas Time Is Here” meets that criteria, and can easily be excised from any post-December playlist.

And, what a song “Christmas Time Is Here” is!  The longer, instrumental version is simply one of the most beautiful compositions ever written.  An easy, breezy melody played with that slowly swinging, slightly maudlin vibe Guaraldi mastered so well.  This is the perfect soundtrack to a hot beverage, fireside…as nourishing to your mind and soul as that beverage and warm fire might be to your body.

Along the same line, there’s also one holiday song above all others that I don’t mind hearing over and over.

Karen Carpenter’s voice is just so warm, and there’s more of that ennui I spoke of earlier.  I’ve co-opted the lyrics for my own needs – the person or people she’s singing of yearning to be with, for me, are those deceased family and friends I miss every year at this time.

There are others by the Barenaked Ladies (including a real, non-novelty song for Chanukah, imagine that!), Harry Connick, Jr., Donny Hathaway and more that hit the mark for me as well, and I’ve compiled them, plus Guaraldi and the Carpenters into a Spotify playlist for you all:

 

For me, these songs wash away all of the Mariah Careys, the Elmo & Patsys, the Band Aids and Singing Dogs each and every year.

Merry Christmas, Darlings.

Michael Franks at B.B. Kings Times Square, 10/12/13

I got the e-mail back in April: Michael Franks was doing a rare NYC appearance at B.B. Kings in Times Square on October 12th.  On the on-sale date, I happened to be in Manhattan so I swung by the box office and grabbed two tickets.  October 14th would be my 13th Anniversary, so a perfect night of music was in the bag.  If the General Admission tickets were to be believed, I purchased the 3rd and 4th tickets for the 10pm show.

Night of the show, we had a lovely dinner and headed down to 42nd Street a little before the 9:30 door opening.  Now, B.B. Kings is closer to 8th Avenue.  We came down from 7th, and maybe a quarter of the way down the block (near “Spiderman: Turn of the Dark”) we saw the end of a long line.  No way this could be for Michael Franks?  Well, it was.  A pleasant surprise that he could still pull them in.  The stunned couple behind us on line said just that.

For those who need schooling, Michael Franks is one of the great Jazz/Bossa Nova singers still active today.  His voice is so sweet, his vocal delivery so laid back – he’s relaxation elixir.  Match that with lyrics that are equal parts snark, quirk and romance, and you can see why the long line.  Franks signed with Warner Bros. Records in the mid-’70s, and was immediately teamed up with three-fifths of The Crusaders as his band.  That set the template for his “sound” on The Art of Tea, and carried through Sleeping Gypsy which added Brazilian textures.  Burchfield Nines saw Franks move back East, trading the cream of L.A. studio cats for NY’s heavy hitters including Steve Gadd, Ralph MacDonald and Will Lee.

And so it continued throughout the ’80s, where Franks battled those dreaded synthesizers and largely won, and into the ’90s where he went back-to-basics with the help of Jeff Lorber and Chuck Loeb, on through 2011’s surprise (dropped in our laps, really) Time Together.

So, how was the show?

Amazing.  Backed by Charles Blenzig on keyboards (really tasty and tasteful Fender Rhodes, Piano and Clavinet emulators), Sean Conly on upright acoustic bass, Karel Ruzicka on tenor sax, alto sax and flute (and generally on FIRE on all three), Willard Dyson on drums (sounding a LOT like the aforementioned Mr. Gadd),  and Veronica Nunn on co-vocals (and excellent scat solos bringing Anita Baker to mind), Franks strolls out with his hot tea and breezes right into “Nightmoves”, the first track on The Art of Tea, like it’s 1975 again in voice and energy. (Incidentally, if Bananarama released “Cruel Summer” today, they’d instantly have to cop to stealing the verse melody from “Nightmoves” and hand over some royalties.)

Franks then slid on through “The Lady Wants To Know”, “Under The Sun”, “Baseball”, and 2011’s “Now That The Summer’s Here” (fitting in seamlessly alongside the classics). “When The Cookie Jar Is Empty” was prefaced with a nice story about how Frankie Crocker made that a heavy rotator on WBLS – bringing to light what a truly visionary programmer Crocker was.  Just imagine that happening in today’s tightly-programmed radio environment.

Other highlights included “Rainy Night in Tokyo”, his ’80s radio hit “When Sly Calls” (inspired, we learned, by a record executive who always liked to call Franks to alert him how far DOWN the charts his records were heading…), “In the Eye of the Storm”, possibly his strongest vocal of the night on “Eggplant”, and an absolutely buoyant “Monk’s New Tune”.  And how else to encore, but with the song that started it all, “Popsicle Toes”.

Cliche as it might sound, Franks sounds exactly as he did back when, betraying the fact he’ll be turning 70 next year.  No discernible vocal grit to sour the sweet.  And how sweet it was.

Here’s a Spotify set to help you discover Michael Franks, if you haven’t already, or just to relive his greatest hits:

The “Remix Album”…Please make it STOP!

The “Remix Album”.

Or as I like to call it: the “Deceased Artist Cash-in Album”, or the “Vastly Inferior, Needless Re-do Album”.

There have been some godawful examples of what I’ve described for legendary artists like Bob Marley, Elton John, Johnny Cash, and now coming in October we’ll get one for Donna Summer.  Yes, I haven’t heard the full album yet, but I’ll let the samples that follow foreshadow the story on this one…

Now, I’m all for it if these modern remixes cause masses of people to go back and discover the original versions, but my feeling is that these sets do not further the artist’s legacy, but rather waters it down.  In my opinion, adding new layers of modern instrumentation to existing masterpieces doesn’t take much creative thought or effort, and doesn’t necessarily improve anything or add anything essential to the canon.

It takes a lot more effort and creativity to create a new version of a song from the existing multi-tracks using only what’s already there on the tape.  Remixers like the legendary Tom Moulton and John Morales, and new-jacks like Jimmy Michaels and Mike Maurro…they find hidden gems in those session master tapes – an unused vocal line here, an alternate keyboard solo there – and make new masterpieces that are true to the artist’s original vision.  No overdubs needed.

Want to hear what I think are remixes done right?  Here’s a Spotify playlist I put together containing samples from some good remix albums.  Below that are links to some remix albums not available on Spotify, but nonetheless essential!  Then some YouTube embeds of more essential remixes that you’ll need to, um, track down on your own… 😉

John Morales Presents: The M+M Mixes Volume 3

Dimitri From Paris: Get Down With The Philly Sound

Philadelphia International Classics: The Tom Moulton Remixes

Philly Re-Grooved 3: The Tom Moulton Remixes – More From The Master