LISTENING TO CALLIE CROSSLEY'S show when she hosts Mike Wilkins and his annual compilation of really strange Christmas pop music.
It’s our annual spinning of holiday tunes with our own Mike Wilkins, radio engineer for PRX and GBH’s The World.
All this hour, GBH’s intrepid holiday music collector shares his new finds of old songs that are quirky, weird and sometimes way out there.
These are not the traditional carols you'll hear from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or even new favorites like Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” Nope, for his annual collection of songs you never heard, Mike has once again rescued vinyl one-hit wonders from the forgotten bins of overlooked B-sides, and highlighted a few new tunes that might become classics.
This season, for his 32nd year of jinglebell melodies, Mike’s collection goes back to basics — sort of. This is Mike’s musical holiday gift bag, “Sack O' Songs,” a Yuletopia recording.
On this one Bert and Ernie sing the Hollywood Christmas song I hate more than any other, including Rudolph.
Way back forty or more years ago one of my goals was to get through the season without hearing anything sung by Sinatra or Pressley, this year I added Santa Baby to the list I hope never to hear again. I can't say that these will make a list I hope to avoid but it's only because I doubt I ever will hear them again. A couple of them I don't think I'd mind hearing again, though. It's not The Chipmunks and Canned Heat.
"Run Rudolph Run" by Chuck Berry. You're such an ignoramus you probably never heard it, but they don't get any better.
ReplyDelete"without hearing anything sung by Sinatra or Pressley." Wow, I had no idea that Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley was a recording artist.
Yeah, whatever.
DeleteThis was about the compilation Mike Wilkins does, he doesn't much do the tried and tried and tried and tried like you do, he goes for the obscure and not heard to death. Of course you wouldn't get that, you hate new experiences and avoid having them just as you avoid having new thoughts.
So you've never heard the Chuck Berry song. No surprise there. :-)
ReplyDeleteYou figure that's important, don't you. What a vapid life you lead. I don't think I could stand inhabiting such a tedious mind.
DeleteSince it wasn't part of the compilation Mike Wilkins issued for this year, it is irrelevant to the topic of post and it's nothing I really care about. I'd trade knowing anything Chuck Berry had to say on it for the one about what Grandma's cooking for Christmas which is included in the compilation. Or the commentary of both the great Callie Crossley and Mike Wilkins.
"you hate new experiences"
ReplyDeleteHere's a clue, schmucko -- you don't know the Chuck Berry song, so if you heard it on the radio this weekend, it would be a new experience for you.
You're just dying to have me say I believe I first heard that cooky cutter Chuck Berry number probably on WTSN from Dover, NH when I was young enough to not really be paying attention so you can accuse me of lying. You probably figure that in the late 50s and early 60s radio that far from NYC was done with tin cans and string, such a big city provincial as you are. No one could possibly have missed most of Chuck Berry from back then because it was played incessantly on top-40 radio. Pretty much everything he did sounds the same so what difference would it make?
DeleteI never heard any of the songs that Wilkins and Crossley featured, I know that for a fact. Not that I especially care if I heard most of them again, pop music is like kleenex, you use it and don't keep it, though I wouldn't be surprised if you don't keep used ones in the rolled up sleeve of your night gown that you wear around all day.
"You're just dying to have me say I believe I first heard that cooky cutter Chuck Berry number probably on WTSN from Dover, NH when I was young enough to not really be paying attention so you can accuse me of lying. "
ReplyDeleteOf course you're lying. For starters, the idea that you were listening to Top40 radio in 1959, when that record came out, is ludicrous. I should add that the song itself never charted higher than #69 back in the day, so there's not a snowball's chance in hell you would have heard it when it was new. I should add that I -- who have forgotten more about rock n roll and related vernacular musics than you ever knew -- was unaware of the tune until the late 60s and early 70s when it started to be widely covered.
But please -- lie some more. :-)
We've been through this before, Simps. It's remarkable considering that you're so deep into the nostalgia thing but, as I told you once before in a related and trivial matter, ONCE A RECORDING HAS BEEN ISSUED FOR RADIO PLAY IT CAN BE PLAYED ANY TIME AFTER THAT RELEASE. That is especially true of, you know CHRISTMAS SONGS THAT TEND TO GET PLAYED YEARS AND YEARS LATER. For example, one of the most played and streamed Christmas song this year is Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree as recorded by Brenda Lee in 1958.
DeleteWTSN from Dover, NH along with WBZ from Boston were the two stations that played in my house pretty much all during the late 1950s and early 1960s, both of them played top 40 shit, which is why I know so much of the pop music of that era. It's from WBZ that that damned Lou Monte Christmas Donkey song is etched in my memory. You don't know the first thing about life in Northern New England in that period or any other. Nor do you seem to be very familiar with the properties of AM transmission. You are pretty silly.
Also -- learn how to spell "cookie."
DeleteI know you never mastered 3rd grade dictionary skills but try looking it up in a dictionary, "cooky" is a perfectly standard spelling of the word. Merriam Webster for example starts
Deletecook·ie | \ ˈku̇-kē
\
variants: or cooky
plural cookies
Merriam Webster never sold a cooky in a grocery store.
DeleteGet back to me when Nabisco publishes a dictionary.
DeleteThat's sort of the point, asswipe. :-)
DeleteSo your point is that a biscuit manufacturer is more competent in matters of orthography and etymology than one of the most respected publisher of dictionaries in the world. That's not a point, it's obtuse.
Delete"Pretty much everything he [Chuck Berry] did sounds the same so what difference would it make?"
ReplyDeleteYou mean his songs had three chords? Like, you knpw, the Blues? Wow. Keep digging, schmucko. :-)
Oh, it's way more than just his deficient harmony, pretty much every song he ever did fell into about three, maybe four patterns of harmony, melody and rhythm. It's why he could pretty much tour alone with his guitar and plug into whatever local backup band that got hired to front him, they would certainly have known his shtick and it never varied. As he got established he probably narrowed what he did. Rock is already a deficient commercial form, he got it down to as little for him to do as his audience would lap up. And he was an A#1 jerk. Even for rock stars he was an a-hole.
DeleteYou see, Simps, I don't have to pretend that he was any better than he was. He probably could have done more but he knew the idiots who were his fan base wouldn't follow anything more complex. Rock is first and foremost a music of sameness and unchallenged expectations. It is what gets left when you take the most interesting parts of the blues out of it.
"And he was an A#1 jerk. Even for rock stars he was an a-hole."
DeletePlease -- explain why that is true. And if it involves his jail sentence, you can go fuck yourself, given that the judge and DA that was responsible for that were unbelievable racist scumbuckets.
Oh, there are plenty of other people around who have said what an asshole he was, everything from pizza delivery boys to musicians who played with him. I didn't bring up his crime record. If I'd wanted to go there I would have.
Delete"Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree as recorded by Brenda Lee in 1958. "
ReplyDeleteAnd -- unlike the Berry song -- was a huge hit at the time, which is why it got played on oldies stations ever since. Sweet fucking Jeebus, you don't know shit about shit, let alone pop music history.
Weak as second brewing from teabags. Green tea bags.
Delete1. I wouldn't have heard it from an "oldies station" because I stopped listening to pop music about 1967 before I ever heard of one of those. I hated it the first time round why would I listen to it.
2. I heard it on the radio when I was pretty young, as I said Chuck Berry's crap all pretty much sounded the same but I do remember that.
3. By the way, he didn't write the song, it was written by that Christmas shit song factory Johnny Marks, no doubt mastering the Berry style in about two minutes to know how to write a song for him to sing.
The point about Brenda Lee's Rockin' Around hit (also by Johnny Marks, as I recall) was that your argument that I'd have had to hear Berry's recording of Run Rudolph in 1959 stupidly overlooked the fact that it could have been played any Christmas season any year after that. Christmas programming was full to the top with things other than hits. I don't think Dominick The Christmas Donkey was a bigger hit than Berry's crappy disc of that song.
" Rock is first and foremost a music of sameness and unchallenged expectations. It is what gets left when you take the most interesting parts of the blues out of it. "
ReplyDeleteChuck Berry was one of the greatest blues men who ever lived. As were the people, like Willie Dixon and Otis Spann, who played on his records. Good fucking grief, you're am asshole.
Oh give me a friggin' break. He might have been able to play the blues, it's his rock recordings I'm talking about and those are the opposite of inventive or varied. He extracted every last cent of of moolah out of formula.
DeleteNow, don't you wish you were still getting paid to write so you could steal that line?
I love making you go all righteous and pious about unimportant shit like this. It's hilarious.
"It's hilarious."
ReplyDeleteWhat's hilarious is you proclaiming your ignorance and lack of taste for all the world to see.
For example "rock is what gets left when you take the most interesting parts of the blues out of it. "
Oh yeah. Like "Sgt. Pepper." And "Pet Sounds."
Seriously -- even if somebody tried, they couldn't make a stupider claim. Kudos, schmucko.
Oh yeah, Like "Sgt. Pepper." and "Pet Sounds"
DeleteYeah, like those. I'd rather listen to Francine Reed any day.
"It was written by that Christmas shit song factory Johnny Marks, "
ReplyDeleteNo, actually, it wasn't. Berry wrote it, but because -- you know, the music business at the time was crooked and corrupt -- a white guy took credit for the song because the publishing was where you made your money.
YOu know, like Alan Freed claiming author credit for Chuck's "Maybelline."
You're saying that Johnny Marks stole other musicians work? I'd like to see your source for that. From what I've read it looks like Chuck Berry was the only one to claim he had the . . . um, "credit" for it and all of the other covers of it credited Marks and his co-writer. Maybe it was Chuck who was claiming something he didn't create. Marks could write in other styles, as is clear from the variety of his other songs which seem to be written for the style of the person who first recorded it. No doubt Berry could hammer out his signature riffs on a guitar and perform his theatrics but he wasn't a varied song writer.
DeleteI'm a little surprised you'd accuse Marks of being a song stealer. But I'm used to you doing anything to convince yourself you've won an argument you've lost.
Oh -- so Alan Freed actually did co-write "Maybelline"? Interesting.
Delete"From what I've read it looks like Chuck Berry was the only one to claim..." says the shithead who studied under Dr. Otto Yerass.
I know it's hard for you to remember things but YOU ARE THE ONE WHO BROUGHT UP ALAN FREED AND "MAYBELLINE" NOT ME. I didn't even mention them, it was nothing I used as an example or referred to. I know it wouldn't stop you from claiming I had but that's just because you're an habitual liar.
DeleteThis jogged my memory so I looked up something I half-remembered. Chuck Berry's juvenile hit "My Ding-a-Ling" for which he claimed authorship of was actually something he stole. As it says in Grunge
DeleteBerry's recording is a cover — "My Ding-a-Ling" first hit wax in 1952, courtesy of bandleader Dave Bartholomew, who is also the song's credited writer. However, Berry took full credit for composing it in its 1972 release, even after having already covered it as "My Tambourine" in 1968.
I think he probably did the same thing with that dumb Christmas song. No doubt the Beatles and others ripped off stuff from Chuck Berry but he apparently had a history of doing it too. I don't recall Johnny Marks being proven to have done it.