Obituary: James Brown

Coldblooded by James Brown, from the semilegendary album Hell.

Live long in our hearts, Brother Rapp.

Track 21: Silent Night/Thanks

Silent Night by Phil Spector/various.

We'd like to ask a truly great music producer to thank you on our behalf. I think Phil expresses our sentiments at your kind listening much better than we could.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to All!

Track 20: Run of the Mill

Run of the Mill by George Harrison.

This is a track that's been coursing through my head and stereo for months now. It is a perfect expression of George Harrison's lyric and melodic sensibilities; much more so, in my opinion, than his Beatles-era experimentations (a few of which can be heard in the Inner Light/Here Comes the Sun track posted EARLIER).

This song is simple and majestic, in Harrison's quintessial style. To me, it's about telling your loved ones what you feel about them, but also about telling the world what it needs to know about those things beloved to you that have no voice of their own. The sentiment of this song is as simple as its melody, and as complex as its syncopated phrasing.

Om shanti.
Photograph by Richard Avedon.

Interlude: The Wish

The Wish by Shakti.

Alapana, Raga, Tanam, and Pallavi in Raga Keeravani, Desh Tala.

Warning: This is a long-ish piece (18 minutes plus), so download time will be extensive. By the standards of pieces in this oeuvre, however, it's relatively short.

Mayur: Dedicated to my Wizard of Oz giftgivers: My mother, who gave me a heart; my father, who gave me a brain; and Kate, who gives me courage.

Track 19: Fortunate Son

Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

This track is from a live performance in Tucson in 1970, when things were not so different for some of our young people than they are now.

Dedicated to Jim Webb and his candor, er, "lack of civility."

Photo of Marines in Falluja, Iraq, Summer 2004.

Track 18: Debris

Debris by the Faces.

We had to have one song about shopping...

although this song is also less obviously about some other things: Struggle, advice, and experience.

Photo of Portobello Road Market by Afra Afsharipour, November 1993.

Interlude: Peace - A Theme

Peace - A Theme by King Crimson.

Mayur: King Crimson gets an awful rap for their prog-rock leanings; I always liked them for their technical versatility and sheer adventurousness. Moreover, I think they're much more minimalist and inclined to prefer tight song structure to displays of random virtuosity than "prog" usually suggests.

Watercolor by Kate Conway.

Additional note of explanation...

Dear All,

Just a note as to how to get the tracks, since I realized not all of you may be used to this format.

The actual file links for the tracks can be found immediately BELOW the photo for each track. They're indicated by a different font color (usually gray or light blue).

To hear a track directly off the site, you need to have QuickTime, Windows Media Player, or (better still) a third-party music software player like MediaMonkey. Simply left-click the track and follow the instructions given by your software and/or browser.

A better approach is probably to save a track for future listening, or to open it in your preferred music program directly off your hard drive. To do this, right-click on the track (ctrl-click for Mac users) and follow the instructions to "Save to Disk."

Thanks!

Track 16: There's No Lights on the Christmas Tree, Mother

There's No Lights on the Christmas Tree, Mother by the Sensational Alex Harvey Project.

A holiday ballad for, er, troubled times.

Track 15: Christmas Time Is Here Again/Here Comes the Sun

Christmas Time Is Here Again and
Here Comes the Sun - The Inner Light (Transition)
by the Beatles.

"Love," the recently released album of remixed, stripped-down, or tarted-up Beatles songs, is a fascinating listen, whether one loves or loathes it. Some songs sound like half a Beatles song ("Because"); others remind one that a Beatles song often sounds like fifteen simpler pop songs put together ("Lady Madonna"), and still others create an entirely new musical effect out of two core strains of music, while paring back everything else in the song. The above is one of those; it sidesteps any assault on the purity of the originals by stripping out many of the familiar listener's cues for each song and by altering the track speed a bit (slowed down for Here Comes the Sun, speeded up for the Inner Light).

Track 14: The Holiday Song

The Holiday Song by the Pixies.

In a time in which even 12-year-olds seem to be going riot grrl, punk songs seem a bit less out-of-place for the holidays, don't they?

Mayur: This track is decidely more punk and less bouncy pop-like than more familiar Pixies tunes; it's very much driven by Frank Black rather than by the group as a whole. As a consequence, we thought that, like Flowers in December, it might provide a tonal antidote for all those Christmas-carol harmonies.

Snagged from backstage by Mayur, Summer 2004.

Track 13: A La Turk

A La Turk by Taraf de Haïdouks ("Honorable Brigands").

From melancholy to uproarious in just two tracks!

The first of our Christmas-criminal tunes...

Photo of Istanbul, Summer 1996.

Track 12: Miyaabele

Miyaabele by Baaba Maal.

A song about community spirit, by one of the greatest male vocal artists in the world. If anyone wants to buy us tickets for Christmas...

Track 11: Flowers in December

Flowers in December by Mazzy Star.

Much as we might prefer otherwise, more than a few people find the holidays more melancholy than festive. Even if it were not so, a little musical space in the packed throng of major scales and four-part harmonies that fill most Christmas music never hurts.

Mayur: I largely associate Mazzy Star with the background mood music playing at the bars I used to hit a decade ago, but a few of their songs have a sense of restraint coupled with emotional punch that I'd otherwise associate with a serious, mature folk artist like Dylan. This is one of them.

Photo of geranium species "Stephane Grappelli."

Track 10: The Nearness of You

The Nearness of You by Stephane Grappelli.

A reminder of how good the standards can be when executed with technique and wonderment.

Photo of Stephane Grappelli by Andre Kertesz.

Track 9: Christmas Time Is Here

Christmas Time Is Here by Vince Guaraldi.

Mayur: Dedicated to Victoria, who inaugurated the holiday season in our apartment each year with loads of Guaraldi piano music.

Track 8: Run Rudolph Run

Run Rudolph Run by Chuck Berry.

The above image is, of course, from the classic (and pretty silly) 1964 TV movie Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The actual JPEG, however, was clipped from www.scaredmonkey.com, a right-wing blog, where the reindeer's name is consistently misspelled "Rudolf." Hmm...

Track 7: This Christmas

This Christmas by Donny Hathaway.

For the festive!

Photo of the Place des Vosges, Paris, France on New Year's Eve 2004.

Track 6: Dying of the Pines

Dying of the Pines by the Gourds.

Mayur: Strong echoes of the Band. Released in 2005, but I only got it this year, and it's my favorite folk song of 2006 (this despite some of the excellent alt-folk released this year).

Besides, we figured that a song featuring angry people on airplanes would strike a chord with those of you who have to fly back during holiday prime time.

Photo of pine farm in Fryeburg, Maine.

Track 5: I'm Going Home

I'm Going Home by Arlo Guthrie.

Looking forward to some high-quality R&R at the Rounds's this Christmas!

Photo of Edward Conway, Sr. (Papu!) by Kate Conway, Bridgton, Maine 2005.

Track 4: Out on the Road for Christmas

Out on the Road for Christmas by Red Simpson.

Ray Charles said that the best thing about country music is the stories it tells. This one is positioned as a story, to be sure, but it's the combined humor and pathos of this one's tone that we like best.

Photo from Mayur's and Jyothi's trip to Munich, winter 1981.

Track 3: Christmas in New Orleans

Christmas in New Orleans by Louis Armstrong.

We wish this were mere hyperbole, but it's really simple fact that everyone in the federal government and the press (except Bob Herbert at the NYT) appears to have forgotten all about New Orleans. We hope that in time, the city returns to its former glory. In the interim, the Red Cross and numerous local organizations run by low-income people and people of color take lots of donations at Christmastime!

Photo from New Orleans Cable Car Transportation Service website.

Track 2: The Christmas Song

The Christmas Song by Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Mayur: This is one of the best songs ever.

Kate: Please shut that off NOW!

Photo taken at the Fields', Sparta, NJ, August 2006.

Track 1: Christmas Jingle

Christmas Jingle by Marc Bolan, a/k/a T. Rex.

An artifact from those halcyon Radio Days...

I hope our "show" fulfills this promise.

The Mix!

This blog differs a bit from the standard music blog format in that the following 22 tracks are thematically-linked (to the Holidays, of course!) and were placed in order, although we don't expect that you'll necessarily listen to them that way.

For the complete collection, right-click HERE and save to your hard drive. (This will take a while!)

A note of explanation

Dear Family and Friends,

This year, we have decided to update our traditional year-end holiday CD mix to the methods of the modern world. Just as print was pronounced dead a number of years ago, it seems that file-format music is tolling the death knell for both CDs and music mailing. We hope, therefore, that this format may be a bit more durable and reach a few more people than a possibly-lost-in-the-mail, no-doubt-never-put-onto-your-iPod, or more importantly never-listened-to-in-order CD mix.

So here's a little Christmas music from us to you!

Mayur notes: I am shamelessly stealing this distribution idea from our good friends Bill and Amy, who have a much more complex, planned-out, and beautiful blog at THEIR OWN SITE.

Check it out!