All That I Want - The Weepies

This little song showed up in a JC Penney's commercial some years ago and I looked up the fok singing it. I liked it so much I bought it for 99 cents on the Internet. The song is an odd little Christmasy song by an indie group from Seattle called "The Weepies". It was this song that showed me what a powerful tool the Internet was. These guys did a song they liked. They put it up online and sang it in little venues around Seattle without the permission of any big record companies. An advertiser stumbled on it and they made some money on it and found some new fans including me!

I love the Internet. It's technological capabilities are breaking down the stranglehold that big companies have on music, books, and even movies and television. The Internet provides a platform for creative people to publish their work without having to get the approval of some stodgy old gatekeeper. If you think you've written the next "Hunt for Red October" or "Harry Potter", then you can just write it up, publish it yourself on Amazon and with a little hard work and marketing you can have yourself a hit. You can sing your songs and sell them online. You can even record your music in your living room with a modicum of equipment and produce your own CDs with printed labels or sell your music online as Mp3s.

So without further ado, here's the little song that taught me why the Internet is actually a good thing for real people and conversely, why big digital, record companies, movie companies and book publishers would rather the government control it. It makes keeping small upstart competitors from messing with their markets because it's easier to bribe 10 or 20 FCC staffers than it is to make 10 million customers happy.

So, I give you, The Weepies performing "All That I Want" live.






This song reminds me of another Christmas tradition up here in Washington State. If you ever watched Sleepless in Seattle, you got a peek at the community of houseboat dwellers along Puget Sound. Every year a bunch of folk load guitars and singers into kayaks and canoes and paddle among the houseboats singing Christmas carols. I just think that's inordinately cool. This would be a good song for that. The words talk about "carols on the water". Maybe that's what they were talking about.

Here's the recorded version if you want the Mp3 for your I-pod.

© 2017 by Tom King

I Like Life - Scrooge

Every Christmas Eve for many years we've watched "Scrooge", the Albert Finney musical version of Dickens' A Christmas Carol.  This 1860 story is credited with changing how Christmas is celebrated in England. Prior to Dickens' story of the redemption of a totally unlovable old miser by the spirits of Christmas, Christmas had become a season of debauchery with little of the spirit of the Christmas story in it. Some of the trappings of the old semi-pagan holiday remain, but remarkably transformed. In the United States, the story of old Ebenezer resonated with Americans too.

Charles Dickens was an amazing storyteller. He'd have made quite a living as a Hollywood screenwriter. The dialogue is snappy. The timing is perfection itself and the special effects in the story could have been designed for film. 

In the United States, the Christmas holiday was little more than an extra Sunday and a day off for Civil War soldiers. It was President Ulysses S. Grant who gave Christmas the nudge it needed to make it what it is today. It was Grant who pushed to make Christmas an official national holiday. The Clement Moore's poem and then the New York Times got into the act. Eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of New York’s Sun, and the quick response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897. The work of veteran newsman Francis Pharcellus Church has since become history’s most reprinted newspaper editorial, appearing in part or whole in dozens of languages in books, movies, and other editorials, and on posters and stamps.

With the New York Time's tacit endorsement of Santa Claus, the secularization of Christmas began to move forward. In reaction to what a lot of the churches felt was a bad trend, Christians began to press back by emphasizing the Nativity and the whole "peace on Earth good will toward men" spirit of Christmas. The result has been a national celebration that's one part fairy tale, one part religious observance and one part extended party.

This song expresses my own militant attitude toward Christmas. I like life and the Scrooges of the world may make of that whatever they wish. We have a time of year when people at least try to be nice to one another.  That said, here's "I Like Life" from 1970's "Scrooge".

This is Scrooge AFTER visiting with the three spirits.  Earlier he sings "I Hate Life". Before we go I'd like to included my other favorite song from this movie. Tom Jenkins the soup man leads a crowd singing "Thank You Very Much". Scrooge joins in not realizing that what they are thanking Scrooge for is dropping dead. It's a lovely song. Later after he recovers himself and is redeemed, he reprises this song in a more positive vein.

Merry Christmas and as Tiny Tim so aptly put it, "God bless us every one."

Merry Christmas - Tom

Riu Riu Chiu - The Monkees

I found this lovely little number by the Monkees last Christmas and put it on my Mp3.  It's a beautiful old Spanish Carol done acapella by the boys. They all have quite lovely voices and the harmonies in this carol are beautiful. I'd never heard this carol before. It was wonderful discovering a carol so beautiful that I'd never heard before.  Here's Riu Riu Chiu as done by the Monkees in what could be called an early music video. Actually, one of the Monkees, Michael Naismith was one of the first producers of modern music videos.




If anyone has any suggestions for little known carols, drop me a note. I'd like to discover a new carol this Christmas. The older the better....


Tom

In the Bleak Midwinter - Dan Fogelberg

Dan Fogelberg is one of my favorite singers. It's sad that his life was cut so short and he is truly missed. He did some wonderful renditions of Christmas songs and probably one of only two actual New Year's Eve songs in existence. He does a very reverent version of the classic carol In the Bleak Midwinter here. The melody is by Gustav Holst (best known for The Planet Suite) and the lyrics are by English poet Christina Rosetti.

He's got a lot more Christmas stuff on Youtube if you're interested.

O' Come O' Come Emmanuel - Enya

This haunting version of one of my favorite Christmas Carols is brilliant, as nearly perfect and reverently done as this song can be. The words are in Gaelic if I'm not mistaken, appropriate given the Brennan family are Irish. So without further eloquence on my part, here's Enya with O' Come O' Come Emmanuel.

An amazingly talented indie artist, Peter Hollens produces some incredible work based on Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and his style lends itself brilliantly to older carols like O' Come O' Come. This entirely acapella version is breath-taking.

Finally, the Piano Guys do their magic with cello and piano:

This song soothes my soul. It's a wonderful song for caroling too and all three versions have earned a place on my Christmas Mp3 list.

Text © 2017 by Tom King  Music © by the original artists

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

Lyrics by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vocals by John Gorka. You can't beat that combination. I've heard a lot of variations on this song, but my favorite is Gorka's. It's just a simple acoustic guitar and voice version - a little bit bluesy, but not overly so. It actually comes off as reverent and respectful. You really have to hear it. He captures Longfellow's poem perfectly.




© 2017 by Tom King

Carol of the Bells

This isn't my favorite version of "Carol of the Bells". I include it because I was named after the Orchestra leader, Wayne King - at least so my mother tells me. My first name belongs to my grandfather and my great grandfather and 29 other Thomases whom I've discovered hanging from the branches of my family tree.  We've all got individual middle names. There are only a few Thomas Juniors and one "the 3rd" that I have found so far, and a couple with "Thomas" as middle name. If I ever get any say so with my grandkids, I'm hoping to at least get one grandson with Thomas for a middle name.  Here's Wayne's big band rendition of Carol of the Bells:

Here's another version of this song I like even better, but I do like to listen to Wayne and his orchestra run a few big band versions of Christmas songs through the old record player. Here are the Piano Guys doing a medley based around Carol of the Bells (for 12 cellos).

Then there is this one which really does make me smile! Algonquin students do a flash mob version of Carol of the Bells with the help of Darth Vader and his electric guitar.

If you go to Youtube, there are dozens of versions of this song including some notable versions done as flashmobs.  There are versions with pianos, bells, voices as bells and even one version with kazoos.

One last version I'm adding to this is the incredible version done by Peter Hollens. This version uses 300 male voices including multiple versions of Peter himself. It's amazing.

Note that watching and subscribing to these indie artists on Youtube helps support them.

© 2017 by Tom King


PS:  One more. This one by Lindsey Stirling on violin combines dance and snow. This one surprised me. She gets focused on her fiddle as intensely as my friend Jaime Jorge. I need to find some carols of his if he's done any. I love musicians that get this deeply into the music.