Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time

     Feliz Navidad! Or as Pee Wee Herman would say Feliz Bla-bi-blah. Hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas time. My Christmas has been good music-wise. I received two record store gift certificates, the remastered vinyl Yellow Submarine from my son and a copy of McCartney's Tug of War from my daughter. I'll probably use the gift certificates to get some GbV 7"'s that my friend Dave ordered for me and the live Rush 1974 album. I wish there was a radio station that played those old Beatles Christmas shows. Maybe I'll check the Youtubes later. I do find it amusing though that Lennon and McCartney were the greatest songwriters of all-time, but they wrote the two worst Christmas songs ever.
     I'm not really a big fan of Christmas music. It probably has to do with having to practice for Christmas concerts all those years when I was in the band. I like Elvis' It's Christmas Time, Charlie Brown Christmas, Squirrel Nut Zippers Christmas and the Polyphonic Spree's holiday album. I've always meant to check out other records by Vince Guaraldi, who did the Charlie Brown Christmas. It's very Bill Evans-ish, which I love, but I don't know what his other stuff sounds like. I'll have to put that on my list of things to listen to this year.
     This year at work, we had to listen to some truly horrible Christmas cd's. Rod Stewart, Michael Buble (Mike Bubble), Travolta and Olivia Newton-John and Cee Lo Green. By the way, when did Cee Lo Green go from being the other guy in Gnarls Barkley to being shoved down my throat everyday? Just wonderin'. I remember Christmas in 1998 when I was a music manager with my current employer. I received a carton of Christmas cd's and the jewel cases were all smashed up. So I did what anyone else would do, I opened them up and played them instead of the crap they sent us to play. So we played Oscar Peterson, Squirrel Nut Zippers and a bunch of space age bachelor pad Christmas cd's. It was awesome!
     Thanks for indulging my random thoughts about Christmas and music today. I hope everyone has a great holiday season and 2013 (guess the Mayans weren't so smart after all). Peace.