…if you can.
🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPwDJM5ON0A
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
For some reason, John Gorka’s rendition is new to me. *shrugs* I guess I can’t have heard it all, eh? (This year’s Xmas music playlist is right at 40 hours long, now. Maybe I’ll stop… after cataloging and adding another 8 hours or so? Maybe. And maybe 40 hours is a good place to stop… for this year.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P64tdKrQiY4
Xmas w/George Shearing
The album this was taken from was remastered and reissued in 2010, IIRC. Good stuff.
The homage to Brubeck that starts the clip above is… tasty.
Break from Xmas Music for a PSA
Only six more shoplifting days to “Kwanzaa” (the fake “holiday” for Marxist racists).
We 3 Kings
I really do “get” the carbon fiber cello, given the location. Oh, I also enjoy the treatment of the tune. Going on one of my Xmas playlists (the one with lots of Wynton Marsalis Xmas music and such ;-))
Every Now and Then…
..or more like 3 or 20 times a day, I think, “And I actually married her!”
No, seriously: people who “know” us think she married a guy with a very strange sense of humor and sometimes express amazement that she can “handle” it, but that’s only because her even weirder sense of humor is kinda stealthed and only really comes out in the open in situations where she feels completely secure.
And that’s why I see it a LOT… and think, “Wow! I actually married her! Can’t keep up with her, but at least it keeps me on my toes.”
(The really amazing thing is that she actually married me, but let’s just let that one go for now, mmK? ;-))
Veni, Veni, Emmanuel
(Thanks for the tip, Kat)
Departure from the December Xmas Theme…
…for comedy gold from the doofus congresscritter who worried about Guam “tipping over” and “capsizing”:
Because “abnormal” is sooo much better than “midget”.
PSA re: 12-21-12
Just sayin’.
A (Sort of) Classical Christmas
With Helmut Lotti, so perhaps you understand the “Sort of” in parentheses in the post title. After all, while the guy is talented, he just doesn’t have the voice–or the musical chops as a whole–to pull off a “classical” anything. Face it, he experienced success too quickly as an Elvis impersonator in a rather loose European pop venue (“loose”?!?–I can think of no kinder term for a field where David Hasselhoff has experienced massive success as a pop music performer. Just sayin’). While he has a nice enough voice, certainly better than 90%-plus of successful American pop “singers,” he carries the atrocious “Elvis (crooner) scoop” into songs where it’s higly inappropriate, has some really unfortunate vowel production, 50s-60s pop consonants (swallowing his unfortunate vowels from time to time, for example, making them even worse), etc.
Too bad, really, since the arranging and instrumental performances are top notch, while Lotti’s vocal performances are just OK. Here’s a snippet for an example:
[audio:Helmut-Lotti-God-Rest-Ye-Merry-Gentlemen-excerpt.mp3]See? Not offensively sung, exactly, just mediocre. Good enough for many Xmas Eve services at small local congregations, but worth just a little more than I paid for it (I got the album as a free promo *heh*).
Here’s an example of a 34-year-old Lotti taking some tutoring from a 64-year-old Cliff Richard in 2003:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHTaPjVUtYw
I’m no big Cliff Richard fan (especially his histrionics), but he’s certainly got some chops, and it’s interesting to listen to how Lotti pretty much mimicked him, as best he could.