What is The Reason For The Season?

My childhood memories of Christmas are much different than the holiday that is celebrated now. It was about getting together and sharing. I remember carolers coming around and everyone standing in their doorway to listen to them. People baked cookies, gave them hot drinks and waited for an encore. I always wanted to do that but it had already started to fall out of fashion by the time I was eleven. We still caroled, but we were carted around on the back of a flatbed truck that was covered with hay. Nobody worried about insurance issues and nobody fell off the truck.

Nowadays I can't remember all the words, they've just become jingles that you hear in the background of tv shows and movies, nobody sings the whole song anymore. Rudolph is all right, but Hark the Herald Angels Sing could really rock if you had enough people and somehow We Three Kings of Orient Are became We Four Beatles From Liverpool Are. We were so innocent back then.

I miss the cookies and the warmth. I miss hanging out with people who were excited and happy about the holidays, where you went to people's homes and enjoyed their hospitality and learned about their traditions and they came to your house. The world actually felt more peaceful for a few weeks. It was awesome.

Now, it's nonstop commercialism. It starts slowly at first, just a few decorations start to appear, a few holiday looking serving dishes show up in the store and then by Halloween, bam! full steam ahead. Anything that can be sold has a commercial, there is no other explanation for the chia pet and its many incarnations.

Advertisers resort to subtle and not so subtle exhortations to buy something for everybody you know or have some type of contact with so you won't feel guilty for forgetting someone who might buy you a gift. By the time they get around to advertising diamonds during sports events, it's become a nonstop lollapalooza, a frenetic shopping extravaganza. And there are still the buy a car and put a ribbon around it so they know you love them commercials to suffer through. Like the people who can afford to buy a Jaguar are watching television.

Once Christmas became the season that retailers made their profit for the year, that was when it became the war on Christmas. The battle shouldn't be about whether one should say Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays (both are appropriate), it should be about what happened to the sentiment that used to accompany it. Goodwill toward man and all that. A time to celebrate with family, friends and great food, to create memories filled with smiles, laughter and warm moments.

Not fighting for parking spaces or the last "got to have" item on the shelf. And it certainly isn't about how much money you spent.

Debsweb.

Blast From The Past

In honor of IIRTZ's blogiversary, which was yesterday, this is part of a post I wrote when I still had a sense of humor and was slightly creative. Before everything worked out the way I was afraid it was going to.

Besides database manipulation there is also the Rollerball method to control the public. Distract and entertain the masses. Keep them from thinking about what is going on in the world. Don't show real news. Flash! Pop! Damsel in Distress! There is nothing to see here. Move along. Don't look behind the curtain. Follow the yellow brick road. A typical watercooler conversation might sound something like this to those people who don't watch television on a regular basis.

During the Amazing Race for Law and Order, the Desperate Housewives realized after Crossing Jordan that Smallville's weapons of mass destruction had once again disappeared Without A Trace. Meanwhile Joey vacations on his ranch fantasizing that by wearing everyday Scrubs his Friends will come back to Primetime and he will be King of the Hill on That 70's show, Once Again. Las Vegas has reduced that Fear Factor to Medium, since according to Hardball it is a Cold Case that Larry King and Inside Editon won't touch .

A Crime Scene Investigation of Grey's Anatomy ensued after a Dragnet revealed Criminal Intent when Meet The Press entered The West Wing and found a Dead Zone. Where's Gannon when you need him. It used to be Joe but I think it's Jeff now. Meanwhile Two and a Half Men want to be a Rock Star and the two Gilmore Girls are playing House as if nothing is wrong. The Average Joes are striking back at the Special Victims Unit and I Want to Be a Hilton, not really. The Bold and The Beautiful teamed with The Young and The Restless for 60 Minutes on the WWF before they went to General Hospital for treatment. Big Brother is just starting to realize that the Empire is in serious need of the ER, while According to Jim, the King of Queens and My Wife and Kids are off Trading Spouses with George Lopez.

Now this isn't everyone's idea of 7th Heaven, but we can't all be a Monk and live like a lowly Apprentice. The Daily Show might recommend an Extreme Makeover of the upcoming E-Ring, not a Nip/Tuck, but this is a Less Than Perfect solution when what Amurica really wants is The Shield to Rescue Me from Over There in 24 so we can return to Everwood to pass the Days of Our Lives with All My Children.

Behind the O.C all is not yet Lost! The polling Numb3rs reveal that with Hope and Faith the Arrested Development of Veronica Mars can be fixed with 8 Simple Rules to ensure that there will be at least one Survivor among the 4400 who will be able to say that What I Like About You is the Stargate you built so I can join Battlestar Galactica and battle enemies that don't believe in the one true god. Revelations.

Wow, some of the show are still on. Mostly the bad ones.

How I Learned to Start Worrying...

With the Prezdint invoking images of nuclear holocaust and B-52s with nuclear warheads flying overhead, this might be the week to dig up Dr. Strangelove (full title: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) and watch it, especially if you've never seen it, and maybe even if you have.

The dark humor of this film was at least partly derived from the possibility that the plot's bizarre scenario could actually play out in reality. For anyone who hasn't seen it, a B-52 with a nuclear warhead is sent on its mission, when the zany (but plausible) sequence of events brings the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to the brink, and can't be called back. The context back then was that Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D., doncha love it?) was the policy of the time. Except for the fictitious "Doomsday Machine", everything referenced in the film, from the B-52s to the "red phone" and the drunken, bellicose Soviet Premier, was part of our Cold War reality.

I was not just a Cold War kid by virtue of age; we lived in Dayton, Ohio, when nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was a major operations and R&D center for the Strategic Air Command. It seemed like there were always military aircraft overhead, and the occasional sonic boom, far from being an annoyance, was an exciting reminder that we were only fifteen years into the supersonic age. Although the evidence suggests that some of those planes overhead had nuclear weapons aboard, if anything, it was supposed to make us feel safer; the normalization of insane concepts like MAD was a primary feature of Cold War living, just like the acceptance today that the risk of a terrorist attack far outweighs any other concern.

From the AP:

According to the officials, the weapons are designed with multiple safety features that ensure the warheads don't accidentally detonate. Arming the weapons requires a number of stringent protocols and authentication codes that must be followed for detonation.

From the cockpit of the rogue B-52, you see the frozen Arctic landscape screaming by at 500 mph, only 50 feet below (to avoid Soviet radar), as the crew goes through the checklist of decoding their orders, going through it again when they realize it's an order to drop The Big One on a Russian city.

Major T.J. "King" Kong, pilot/mission commander (played by Slim Pickens): "Well, I've been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that's the stupidest thing I ever heard come over a set of earphones. You sure you got today's codes?"

From the AP:

"Nothing like this has ever been reported before and we have been assured for decades that it was impossible," said [Ed] Markey, D-Mass., co-chair of the House task force on nonproliferation.

From the film:

President Merkin Muffley: "General Turgidson! When you instituted the human reliability tests, you *assured* me there was *no* possibility of such a thing *ever* occurring!"

General "Buck" Turgidson: "Well, I, uh, don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir."

Meanwhile, back in the cockpit...

Slim Pickens as Major "King" Kong again: "Well, boys, I reckon this is it - nuclear combat toe to toe with the Roosskies."

Of course, by the time the situation in Moscow and D.C. is defused, the equipment on which they would have received their callback order has been rendered inoperable by anti-aircraft missiles...

Nowadays there would be some interesting parallels between the characters in our own American tragicomedy of the last few years and the film's characters -- several of whom were played by Peter Sellers, including Dr. Strangelove (who will remind many of Donald Rumsfeld) and the president (who, because he is the voice of reason in the film, should not remind anyone of someone, if you know what I mean).

And to piggyback on Tom's post from earlier today, the plot pits the NARL's against the RL's in a way that should send chills of recognition up any thinking American's spine.

Rent Dr. Strangelove and see it before you wake up one of these mornings to find we're living it. The propaganda runup to war with Iran starts this week.

Becker's Rest Cove '67

The Monkees - I'm A Believer
The Young Rascals - I've Been Lonely Too Long
Keith - 98.6
Procol Harum - Whiter Shade of Pale
The Fifth Estate - Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead
The Tijuana Brass - Casino Royale
The Choir - (And Now) It's Cold Outside

Living in a world with iTunes, ring tones, podcasts, streaming Internet radio, and satellite radio, it's hard to imagine depending on AM radio or a jukebox for exposure to new pop music. These are songs I will always associate with a particular jukebox, in a particular time and place, but also with what I've since learned was happening to pop culture that year.

Technically, for a month or so in the summer of 1967, my family was homeless. We'd left Mississippi, but couldn't move into our apartment in the NYC suburbs right away. So for a few legendary weeks, my mother, my brothers and I shared a small trailer, a tent, and a generous supply of insect repellent at a funny little camping ground near where my grandparents lived in Wisconsin, called Becker's Rest Cove. The center of social activity -- such as it was -- was a little recreation building with a canteen, a pool table, and a jukebox. A bunch of other songs would have been on the jukebox besides these I've listed, but I would already have been familiar with them, so those have other associations for me.

It's rare that cultural changes are as cataclysmic as they were between 1965 and 1969, and in 1967, those changes were in full swing. In San Francisco, the summer of '67 was "The Summer of Love". The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, often acknowledged to be the front edge of the cataclysm I'm talking about, was released. Jimi Hendrix started the year opening for the Monkees, and finished it a headliner.

For a while, in the time between Rubber Soul and The White Album, the Beatles were both the most popular group in the world and -- at least with us younger mass-pop consumers -- the ones pushing the envelope. Then the lesser-known influences that inspired them began to get their own recognition, and with the emergence of a musical and cultural underground -- aided by the emergence of "underground" (FM) radio -- critical acceptance and commercial success began to diverge. In the essential recurring irony of fashion, a form of cultural elitism became available to the masses, and that created a class distinction that could then be made between such "serious" artists as The Stones, Cream, Hendrix, etc., and other music deemed to be throwaway pop. It was about then that the term "Top-40" started to become a put-down.

[This class distinction wasn't necessarily observed by the artists themselves. For example, according to Mike Nesmith of the Monkees, he learned about Jimi Hendrix from John Lennon, over dinner with Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton.]

The Monkees

I'm A Believer, written by Neil Diamond, was the best-selling song of 1967. With Little Bit Me, Little Bit You (also written by Diamond, and based on his Cherry, Cherry) and Pleasant Valley Sunday also charting that year, The Monkees were the best selling group of 1967, outselling the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined. Regardless of the fact that much of the great pop music of the preceding years was manufactured by middle-aged white New Yorkers in assembly-line fashion, using session musicians, the Monkees were among the first victims of the arbitrary class warfare that was unleashed when artists took things into their own hands (and played their own instruments). Years later, even after these songs have been recognized as little pop masterpieces, The Monkees don't have a single entry on Rolling Stone magazine's "Top 500 Songs Of All Time" (ABBA's Dancing Queen is number 171).

The Young Rascals had four U.S. top-20 songs in 1967. I've Been Lonely Too Long was the only one not to make the top ten during that year, reaching #16. Along with The Righteous Brothers, The Box Tops, etc., this white, mostly-Italian, NYC-area band helped popularize what became known as "Blue-Eyed Soul". They payed sincere homage to their Motown and Memphis contemporaries, with mixed results -- some of the Rascals' big hits have a kind of forced, ersatz soulfulness that doesn't wear well with time. Although it's less well-known, this record has a more genuine R&B flavor, and remains my favorite Rascals side.

Keith

98.6 was the quintessential "one-hit wonder", a harmless ditty whose hook was the idea that normal body function -- as indicated by normal body temperature -- could be maintained by successful romance.

A Whiter Shade of Pale was a hit in Europe, #1 in the U.K., and made top ten in the States. In retrospect, Procol Harum had more affinity with the emerging "underground" artists of the day, and this song will always be one of those bizarre Top-40 anomalies that pepper the historical charts (a topic for another Friday Random Ten, perhaps). Its two hooks were its vaguely classical chord progression, which was like descending a stairway in an Escher drawing -- you go down and around and end up at the top somehow -- and the fact that its lyrics were obscure, if not completely undecipherable. My sixteen-year-old cousin -- also staying at the campground -- had managed a summer romance with one of the locals, and I remember them slow-dancing to this song. Years later, after casually dismissing Procol Harum as a "one-hit wonder", I was corrected by a college roommate, through whom I eventually became a fan. At its best, Procol Harum's music balanced a blues-based muscularity -- provided by guitarist Robin Trower and drummer B.J. Wilson in the original lineup -- with the structured classical elements from pianist and singer Gary Brooker and organist Matthew Fisher, and non-performing lyricist Keith Reid's inscrutable, often melancholy, sometimes playful lyrics.

The Fifth Estate, a Stamford, Connecticut garage band, recorded Ding! Dong! The Witch is Dead after -- frustrated and cynical about the recording industry in general, and their own lack of a hit record in particular --

vocalist Don Askew vouchsafed the notion that any song, properly presented, could become a hit. Challenged to prove it with a song — any song — from The Wizard of Oz, Askew approached the group, and keyboardist Wayne Wadhams worked up an arrangement based partly on Michael Praetorius' dance suite Terpsichore. [source]

Unfortunately for the Fifth Estate, the novelty nature of their chart success relegated them to the either the glory or the ignominy of one-hit-wonderdom.

The charts of the mid-to-late sixties were sprinkled with instrumentals (Mason Williams' Classical Gas, Booker T. and the MG's, Paul Mauriat's Love is Blue), movie themes (The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly; A Man And A Woman), a string of hits by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and hit after hit written by Bert Bacharach. Casino Royale was all four at once, and remains a favorite of mine from that time in all four categories. It was a time when songs lived and died by their chord progressions, which were growing in sophistication (the venerable I/IV/V was joined by the VII -- e.g., B-flat in the key of C -- a lot of suspended fourths, and -- pardon my lack of training here -- whatever you get when you superimpose the V over the I), and the sound this arrangement pioneered found its way into everything from high-school band music to TV themes over the next few years. Although this only reached #27 on the national chart, Alpert and Bacharach would hook up a year or so later for a huge #1 vocal hit, This Guy's In Love With You.

The Choir

The Choir (not to be confused with the contemporary Christian-rock outfit of the same name) was an Ohio band that had significant local success with (And Now) It's Cold Outside. That it was on a Wisconsin jukebox testifies that it was nationally-charting single (peaking at #68), but it's been below most people's radar all these years. After that summer, I waited thirty years to hear it again (thank you, eBay). When members of The Choir joined Eric Carmen to form the Raspberries, this song became an obscure link between the jangle-pop of post-British-Invasion America and later power pop by AC/DC, The Smithereens, The Romantics, etc.

It's hard to say why the memory of those few weeks is so strongly associated with this handful of songs, except for the fact that at the age of twelve, I was soaking up the pop music culture like a sponge; and that these songs all existed as equals on that jukebox, regardless of their respective chart success nationally. It might have also had to do with being temporarily suspended in time and place for a few weeks, a jukebox the only hint of the outside world and the rapid changes that were taking place in it.