SOUNDTRACK: ULTRA LOUNGE: CHRISTMAS COCKTAILS Part Three: Yule Tide Cheer Through the Year (2005).
The final part of the Ultra Lounge Christmas set certainly sees them running out of steam. There’s far fewer songs and the total running time is nearly 20 minutes shorter. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some great tracks here.
CARMEN McRAE-“Baby It’s Cold Outside” a fun opening with some talking before the song between Carmen and Sammy Davis Jr. Davis is really silly through the song (and she seems to be laughing him). BING CROSBY-“Frosty The Snowman” wonderful. LENA HORNE-“Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town” a trippy opening in which Horne was “in the milky way.” Then the song kicks in—a fun version overall. Strangely she switches “bad or good” into “good or bad.” JOHNNY MERCER-“Jingle Bells” a fun hopping version with plenty of swing. There’s even extra lines (“there’s nothing new about jingle bells”).
WAYNE NEWTON-“Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” Female vocalists again (I thought Newton was a singer?), but nevertheless, it’s a fun version. NANCY WILSON-“That’s What I Want For Christmas” a pretty song, that I didn’t know before. I really dig Nancy Wilson. DEAN MARTIN-“Winter Wonderland” delightful, I do love the Deano. BILLY MAY-“Do You Believe In Santa Claus?” – Billy May’s deep dark rather scary voice presents this weird song. It’s funny and a little spooky what with the crazy way it ends.
PEGGY LEE-“White Christmas” this version is too for me. AL MARTINO-“Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer” this is a nice version, though. RAY ANTHONY-“A Marshmallow World” a lovely version of this fun song. LOU RAWLS-“Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” Rawls has finally won me over. I like this song by him. JULIE LONDON-“I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm” slow and jazzy but too slow for me. NAT KING COLE-“Buon Natale (Means Merry Christmas To You)” a fun song quaint and cute and one you don’t hear very often. JUNE CHRISTY-“Sorry To See You Go” I don’t know this song, it’s more of a New Year’s song. Swet and bouncy. Although not my favorite ending to the discs.
So that’s the Ultra Lounge mixes, easily my favorite way to spend a holly day.
[READ: December 24, 2014] The Barbarians
This was the final Baricco book I planned to read this year and it’s a good way to end the year–reflecting on the past but planning to move forward.
It’s nonfiction so I didn’t really know what to expect. But I certainly didn’t expect the story in the beginning of the book. Baricco explains that he really wanted this book to be translated into English (especially for the American market where he felt it would be particularly on target) but he couldn’t find anyone to publish it. And he didn’t want to go self publishing. He ultimately found a friend in New York, owner of Eataly who agreed to foot the cost. They did the work and then Random House distributed it.
So Stephen Sartarelli translated it. The book is a fun and interesting look at the barbarians who are ruining our culture and destroying our soul. But Baricco is very careful to point out that just because they are ruining things, it doesn’t mean that they are making things worse or doing it maliciously. He uses several specific instances in which the barbarians have changed something held sacred and made it, if not better, then different and often more enjoyable.
This book was originally written as a series of newspaper articles in 2006 (not sure exactly when). He says it was fun to see feedback as he was writing each installment (each “chapter” is about four pages).
The first sections are about wine–how the barbarians copied gorgeous French and Italian wines and made “Hollywood” wine, a quick and easy wine that tastes good. It removes all of the hard work and subtlety in “real” wine but it tastes good and has made wine a much bigger seller in general. Even the people who “rate” the wine with numbers (how crass) have made it much easier to buy wine–easier to find something good. This is obviously destroying the soul of real winemakers, but it is a bad thing overall?
What about soccer? Back in the day, there was one star who you could count on. He was the main scorer and was sort of the king of the team. Now it’s more total soccer in which everybody can do a lot of things. Baricco tells a very funny personal story about how he sucked at soccer but thought he was very good.
What about in books? Even though everyone complains that no ones reads anymore, sales of books have gone up yearly. We all miss the local bookstores with personal recommendations, but with things like Amazon, books that would never have been found by most people are readily available. Is that a bad thing?
In the next section he talks bout the origins of Google. I didn’t quite realize exactly how they came up with their plan for finding aids (this was written in 2006, don’t forget so it was all kind of new). I really enjoyed the way he looks into Google.
His next section is about classical music. The one big takeaway from this section–which really blew my mind (but is so obvious) is that people who were listening to Bach or Mozart were hearing these pieces for the first time and, more importantly, were probably hearing them for the only time. There were no recordings of these songs. Perhaps they could learn them themselves, but for the average person, you heard these songs once and that was it. [insert sound of mind being blown]. So opinions of these pieces were made based on this one listen–sometime only the first section. Evidently many people walked out on Beethoven’s Symphony #9 without ever even getting to the “Ode to Joy.” Mind blowing.
In the last section he gives a word and gives examples of how the barbarians have changed things. How they take from the Past what they want. All of The Past is the same for them and they pick and choose what they want–there’s no concern for order or consistency. Many find this unimaginable, but it also yields some really interesting new artworks and cultural connections.
The epilogue is set at the Great Wall of China. It apparently took two hundred years to make this wall (I didn’t realize that)–between the fifteenth and seventh centuries (which is not that long ago). The purpose was to keep the barbarian hordes out. But the barbarians were nomads, so they just wandered to the end of the wall and went around it.
The point is, you can’t keep out progress. You can moan about it and try to fight it or you can go along with it and see what it brings. Mostly you’ll be able to hold on to some of the old features, but new things are always there for us to discover. And that’s a pretty good lesson for the end of the year as well.
Happy New Year everyone!
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