Sunday 12/29/24
It's still the Christmas season and I haven't had time to get up some things I'd like to get up, so will be tending to a bit of that over the next day or two.
When I was seventeen, my parents went to Borders at Christmastime and got me that silver-colored box set of Proust's In Search of Lost Time--though it is called Remembrance of Things Past in this (Moncrieff/Kilmartin) edition. At the counter they said something about it being for their son, and the cashier made a remark along the lines of "poor kid"--as if my parents had decided it was high-time I start to reading and were inflicting this massive thing upon me--and my parents said, no, he asked for it for Christmas.
Was pleased yesterday to find a pdf file of Alexander Vvedensky's 1938 play, Christmas at the Ivanovs'. He was a member of the Russian avant-garde group OBERIU. This has always been a tricky work to locate.
I have been trying to find the full sixteen-volume set of Ralph Waldo Emerson's journals, but without luck. On Christmas, though, I did locate and download the ten-volume set from 1910. There's a two-volume edition from the Library of America. I prefer to avoid going the unabridged route, though, even if it's something like Richardson's Clarissa, which doesn't lose anything with what's usually taken out. But I have various reasons for reading something.
Meet Me in St. Louis has both a great Halloween scene and a plethora of great Christmas scenes. This is rare from a film.
I like Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime." It does what it's meant to do. An example: Once when I was a boy, my father had to run into a store to pick up something. It was dark and he was going to be quick. We had probably been out for a while and made several stops. I remained in the car with the heat on and the radio playing. "Wonderful Christmastime" came on. This was right at the holiday. People were getting their last minute things, either for that night or for Christmas itself. There weren't a lot of cars in the parking lot. It was snug in the car. I liked hearing the song. It fit with that. Which is what I mean by it does what it's meant to do.
An album people got--well, cool people who'd thought to ask for it--at Christmastime 1964 in England: Five Live Yardbirds, which was released that December. A lot of bands talked about having their first album be a club set--the Beatles and George Martin considered making their first LP a recording from the Cavern--but the Yardbirds actually did it and it's a great album, a pioneering album, and a pioneering guitar album, though it people talk about Eric Clapton like he wasn't anything special until he joined the Bluesbreakers and we should just dismiss his fretboard work with the Yardbirds. One of the first great live rock and roll albums. One of the first live rock and roll albums period. Seems like a big deal, no?
It is perhaps because Star Wars toys were once such a big part of Christmas that Star Wars feels movie to be watched around Christmas. The first one, which has a Christmas type of spirit to it, I'd say.
I've noticed that people bring up The Lord of the Rings often at Christmas. The films are just junk to me. I could never care about such things. A cross of bloat and low-hanging fruit. That's not cinema to me. My interest pertains The Lord of the Rings doesn't go much further than the 1981 BBC radio production, featuring Michael Hordern. Also, Harry Potter, in which I could not have less interest.
I saw this online debate--by which I really mean stupid saying stupid things--about whether Cheers was a sports bar or not. Most people can only think about anything through the lens of their own lives. What's in it and around them. The bar in Cheers was definitely a sports bar in 1982. You couldn't get much more sports bar-sy than that. This was a time when there didn't need to be--not like there needs to be now, but you know what I mean--ten TVs on a wall. There could be one--and it needn't be large--and people gathered and rooted for their team. A few pennants and the like would be on the wall. Not everything had to be screaming in your face.
The bar was owned by a recently retired Red Sox pitcher who also tended bar there. The main waitress--Carla--wore a Red Sox apron. Whom the Patriots should draft was discussed. Players from the various Boston teams turned up at the bar. Things were once allowed to be organic. to happen naturally. Not everything was contrived.
Many people tried to sound smart in giving some would-be lesson about the clientele of Cheers. You either have to be from Boston or know how Boston works to understand the make-up of that clientele. The bar is at the edge of Beacon Hill. Beacon Hill means money. A lot of the people who went to Cheers on the show were monied. But you also had a lot of people who weren't, who were passing through or worked in that area. Like Cliff Clavin, mailman. And that made for an interesting and believable mix. These people came together to a spot for a very human need. Or needs. We all overlap in some ways, and Cheers was that overlapping made visual, dramatic, and comedic.
I was watching the 1982 Christmas episode, "The Spy Who Came in for a Cold One" the other day, which is really an episode about loneliness and seeking community. It's not an out and out Christmas episode, but we know the time of year at which it happens and that matters. The opening shot is highly effective: the camera pulls back in soft focus from a wreath hanging on the door inside the bar; the focus gets sharper, and we think, "Ah, the home and hearth at holiday time," only this home and hearth is, as Diane would put it, a hostelry.
This first season--which takes place entirely in the bar--is one of the great achievements of American television. It's close to perfect. It stands apart from all other seasons of the show. Which is why, as a Bostonian ex-drinker, I'll be writing a book about that season.
The first season of Newhart is somewhat similar to Cheers in that it captured local flavor which had resonance beyond that enclave. Had general human resonance. Instead of a Boston bar, we have a New England inn. After that first season, Newhart started to get broad. It lost its incisiveness. Eventually, it was both broad and absurd. Mentally slapstick-y.
The show's Christmas episode from its first season, "No Room at the Inn," makes us feel at home at this place that is not our home. That's an aim of Christmas--to make people feel that way and to keep that going--to have it be the way--throughout the rest of the year. All of the time. Think about that key idea in A Christmas Carol--he kept Christmas in his heart all the year round.
The Cheers episode aired on 12/16/82, the Newhart episode on 12/20/82. Four days apart from each other. Different times. Smarter times.
I listened to the Suspense episode, "The Cave," from 12/20/1950. A boy gets a flashlight for Christmas and explores a cave with it with his friend, discovering a pirate ship therein, with a damsel in distress and a band of rogues.
Another album hip English music fans would have received at Christmastime was Cream's Fresh Cream in December of 1966. It's difficult to overstate now how exciting this sound would have proven at the time. There'd been nothing like it. Fresh Cream was a game-changer. The sound was heavier, fuller, louder. It had a heft to it that nothing had previously. There was a sonic thickness to Cream's sound that was new.
Elvis' "Milkcow Blues Boogie" was released in December 1954. This is a record that doesn't receive the approbation of the likes of "Mystery Train," but it's every bit the piece of work. Listen to this song now. What sounds like it? What have you ever heard that bears any resemblance to that recording?
I like music that came out in December or recordings of gigs from December because you can imagine yourself hearing that music and then a Christmas commercial would come on the radio or if you were at that show you would have stepped out into the night and there would have been wreaths hanging on doors and Christmas lights.
Oasis had a strong December 1994. The December 11 Wolverhampton gig and the BBC session cut three days later are dynamic recordings.
I watched the first three series of Brassic. What does this have to do with Christmas? I don't know--people are together and it's what I watched over Christmas.
Listened to the 1936 Columbia Radio Workshop presentation of Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince" and Orson Welles's version on Lady Esther Presents in part because I had just written something that beats the stuffing out of the Wilde work in terms of quality and I wanted to experience the gap.
The Welles broadcast aired 12/22/41, and while he never mentions Pearl Harbor and the war directly, the realities of both are felt throughout the program, which also includes a reading from the Gospel of Luke and a G.K. Chesterton poem in what Welles describes as a kind of radio Christmas card, an apt descriptor. Welles did Halloween well and he did Christmas well, too. His voice in this broadcast is like the swaddling clothes of the manger. I wonder how many people now have any idea what Pearl Harbor was. Welles was making The Magnificent Ambersons at the time.
I couldn't not listen to at least one radio version of Conan Doyle's "The Blue Carbuncle," and this year I went with the Carlton Hobbes/Norman Shelley BBC offering, these two being among my favorites to play Holmes and Watson.
I listened several times to the 1949 "Dancing Dan's Christmas" episode of The Damon Runyon Theater, which comprised fifty-two episodes. This adaptation begins by presenting information that the Runyon short story withholds until the end and we get this potpourri of Pinter, Blast of Silence, Ring Lardner, O. Henry, and Wodehouse. The Runyon style--and the radio series was faithful to it--utilized only the present tense--that is, even past events are referred to in the present tense--and the complete avoidance of contractions. This was actually in keeping with the argot with which Runyon was made familiar from gangsters, thieves, hit men, con artists, and assorted criminals in his (Broadway) corner of the world. A stylized language system they used. John Brown plays the narrator Broadway, who had no such name in the actual Runyon stories, but it's essentially the same character and Brown is very good.
While I didn't get anything, per se, for Christmas, I located and downloaded a lot of music, which included included a number of Bear Family box sets. A partial list:
Frank Sinatra: The Complete Reprise Studio Recordings
Chet Atkins: Galloping Guitar: The Early Years
Louis Prima: The Capitol Recordings
Bobbie Gentry: The Girl from Chickasaw County--The Complete Capitol Masters
The Shirelles: all thirteen albums of their discography from 1958 to 1967
Twenty debut albums from the likes of Elvis, Gene Vincent, Ricky Nelson, Wanda Jackson, Bill Haley, Duane Eddy
Del Shannon: Home and Away: The Complete Recordings 1960-1970
Marty Robbins: Under Western Skies
Freddy King: Taking Care of Business
Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos
Halloween Nuggets: Monster Sixties a Go-Go
Wes Montgomery: Movin': The Complete Verve Recordings
Connie Francis: White Sox, Pink Lipstick...and Stupid Cupid
Rockabilly Rebels: The 275 Greatest Rockabilly Rockers--A Seventieth Anniversary Celebration
Hank Ballard and the Midnighters: Nothing But Good
Link Wray: The Polydor Years and The Rumbling Guitar Sound of Link Wray 1958-1962
The British Invasion: History of British Rock
American Folk Blues Festival, 1962-1965
Art Tatum: Jewels in the Treasure Box: The 1953 Chicago Blue Note Jazz Club Recordings
The 225 Greatest Girl Group Songs: 1954-1970
Bud Powell: The Complete RCA Trio Sessions
All twenty three episodes (plus a rehearsal) of Alan Freed's Camel Rock and Roll Dance Party
Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (The Quadrophonic and Original Stereo Mixes Collection)
The Trashmen: Bird Call! The Twin City Stomp of the Trashmen
Bob Dylan: The Bromberg Sessions (1992-1993)
Ricky Nelson: The Last Time Around 1970-1982
Street Corner Symphonies: The Complete Story of Doo Wop, Vol. 1 - Vol. 15
Howlin' Wolf: The Complete Recordings 1951-1969
Jerry Garcia: Before the Dead
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