Christmas 2009

My favorite Christmas record, maybe Santa will bring me the picture sleeve....

Rockets Redglare as Santa Claus, Christmas Hangover Hop, '91.

Why is it that at Christmas time, when you really need to lose yourself in TV, the worst movies are on? Everything else is re-runs. If station programmers had half a brain they'd save all their weirdest, whacked out stuff for Christmas week and the week after and get the alienated crowd, which I'm sure is huge (that's why Christmas day is the biggest day for movie theaters). Since I don't have kids, I'm allowed to hate Christmas, which I do. New York City is jammed with morons rushing around, pushing and shoving, no one looks happy. Everyone will be in debt until next August for crap no one needs. I didn't post Christmas discs this year, I'm still sick of them from last year, anyway, there's tons old Christmas rock'n'roll, country, blues and R&B onn the airchecks at the Hound aircheck site, I think the best one was in '93. You can no longer download individual songs, only entire shows, mainly because it was getting rather expensive to maintain the thing. I figure everything that's there is up somewhere else anyway, or most of it, besides, it's been up there for years now and anyone who cares has already gone through itall. Unfortunately since last year's two part Christmas disc posting was taken mostly from airchecks, the song links no longer work. Sorry, but nothing good lasts for very long in this life. Besides since the sound quality ain't so good since it comes from cassette recordings from WFMU's always (in NYC) dodgy signal.

I think I'm sort of in shock that the decade's already over and nothing seemed to happen except everyone died, and the world I knew just seemed to vanish. I blame the worst president ever, but if he wasn't so bad we would have finally gotten a black one. So I guess something good came out of it. Too bad he (Obama) is going to get blamed for the entire mess he inherited. Poor guy. I feel sorry for him.

The whole world I knew disappeared, even the cities I loved-- New York and New Orleans are barely recognizable. The world just seems like a much meaner, uglier place.

They say that crime is going down, but I don't believe it, they're just manipulating the statistics.

If crime's going down, why are two million people in jail? I don't understand the kids today,

why do they want to join gangs and shoot each other? Is it all that bad music, bad movies, ugly clothing, bad jobs, bad drugs and really bad hair cuts? I guess I'd want to shoot somebody too if I was nineteen years old. I came to New York with $200 in my pocket. What would I do if I was just leaving home in this day and age? I have no idea.

The only thing that got better was TV--- we've had some great ones-- The Wire,The Shield, The Sopranos, Big Love, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry Sanders (ooops, that was twenty years ago? My time flys....), Breaking Bad, etc. And great big, HD flat screen TV's to watch 'em on. Orwell in reverse. You wait, it'll end. They're already threatening to raise cable prices by 300%, which would bring my bill to around $500 a month. I hope they don't stop making books.

Awwwy, I don't mean to be a scrooge, I'll leave you with one tune, my favorite Christmas record ever: Canned Heat & the Chimpmunks-- Christmas Boogie. That seems rather stingy, here's another Christmas present for you all, from WFMU's Rock Rock'n'Soul Ichiban blog page, Bo Diddley, live 1959, you just gotta hear his version of Night Train! I guess it's okay for me to give it away here since they gave away my Great Lost Hasil Adkins record (which turned out to be a good thing since they set up a faster connection). Despite a slightly distorted sound on the vocal mike, it's a really great record. It's nearly as good as Bo's Beach Party (Checker, 1963). Evidently, someone pressed up a few copies of this 1959 frat party gig in the early seventies, I've never seen the actual LP, or even knew about it. I wish the garage jam tape from the old Bop comic book would get released. If you never saw the story, this kid invited Bo to his house to jam with his band, around 1963 and the next day Bo and Jerome showed up and played all day with these kids, they taped it and the still tape exists, but Bo's manager wouldn't let it come out, he was too busy pushing Bo's rap record and horrible jams with Ron Wood. Now that Bo's gone, what's the harm of releasing it? Some day it'll come out, I just hope I'm still around to enjoy it. Whenever I think of poor Bob Quine, I think, the little guy waited his whole life for the Link Wray Cadence LP, and then it comes out six months after he dies.