White Christmas – Bing Crosby – The thing that is lost here, is this was released in the middle of 1942, the melancholia (from Jewish American Irving Berlin), makes more sense when you put it right up close to “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”: both songs suggest that they may all be white Christmases but it isn’t a sure thing by any stretch of the imagination – A+
Funky Ceili – Black 47 – Not the version you know, the earliest one they sold at their residency in a bar on 2nd avenue, the one with the extended ending where Larry is telling his friends in New York he has lots of girls and is on MTV and they should come and visit! Much more fun!! – A
What I am claiming, about all three songs, is they are death songs. It dreams of something that doesn’t exist and then ties the dream to our death. Good? More. Brilliant because it is instant nostalgia, we are missing what we are hearing, and dreaming of it happening as it happens.
Euro-metal extraordinaire Boerdi sounds like a drunken Cookie Monster as he belts out the tune “Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer’ coupled with the classic video starring Bing Crosby.
A child beater and a Nazi collaborator and they are still ten times better than most of our rock stars! Of course, the second half of that isn’t really true and maybe the first half will be revealed to be inaccurate soon. The thing is, just putting the voices to the side, folks don’t have this much star power any more – B+
It is a really cool thing to hear Marshall so far away from what he does and yet so completely into it, he holds the melody, a pretty one as well, though a little ethereal, and strengthens it with a natural confidence that follows the melody line, one easy to lose track off, to the end.
Here at rock nyc we do what we always do when we want to get close to somebody. We check out their IPOD (or do I mean Spotify lists) in the hopes we might gleam some insights into the leader of the Civil Rights movement.
You better not pout but da Bing is sure letting the Andrew Sisters do a lot of heavy lifting on this version, gives them the best word to sing on the track “With little tin horns and little toy drums, Rooty toot toots and rummy tum tums…” – B+
