Monday, December 25, 2006

No Reason For the Season

I promised I wasn't going to do an "I Hate Christmas" post yet again this year... I lied. I'm pissed off right now and this is cheaper than therapy. I'll warn you now that this isn't going to be funny, witty, or probably even interesting. It may even offend some of you. I'm sorry if that's the case. It wasn't meant to and you're advised to stop reading now.

Still here? Don't say I didn't warn you...

"How can you hate Christmas?" I hear almost daily during the month of December. "No one hates Christmas!"

I am called Scrooge and Grinch and every other cartoon iteration of a miserly old curmudgeon that is seen 6000 times a day on cable TV from Thanksgiving to New Years. I'm told that Cbristmas is a time for joy, caring, giving, and love.

Bullshit.

Let me fill you in on what Christmas is to me...

My first bit of "Christmas cheer" began today, at the annual Christmas dinner with my dad's side of the family. I never see these people during the year because they don't really like me all that much and, to be honest, I don't have the time or the inclination to try to change their opinions.

There are at least 400 children on this side of the family, with each of my cousins dutifully having 12 or so each, so the house resembles a den full of monkeys shot up with Ecstacy. No problem. I'm good at ignoring people and there's football on today. I settle down to watch the game and try to stay below the radar.

No luck there...

Unfortunately, several of my family remembered the fact that I am not a loyally slavish supporter of our state's local parole group, er NFL franchise, and quickly spread this news to the rest of the family. Suddenly I was the leper. Instead of quietly watching some football, I was suddenly everyone's favorite "trash talk" opponent. Every time their team completed a pass, kicked a field goal, or even took the field, someone insisted on throwing some crap in my direction, despite the fact that A) they weren't playing against a team I follow so I had no investment in the game and B) even if they were I don't assign my entire psychic well-being on the fortunes of a football team and wouldn't get this riled up if they were. Still, everyone insisted.

Everyone except my father, that is.

My dad decided that taunting me about football teams I couldn't care less about wasn't getting the proper rise, so proceeded to drag out all of the news he's read or heard about the failings of my place of business. Fair enough. I don't run from that, despite the fact that all of the "failings" happen in the major urban sections of my business and have nothing to do directly with me.

Unfortunately, this was also not getting enough of a rise from my dad, so he had to make sure I knew that my entire business was a failure, everyone who worked there was a failure, etc. To take a quote from Todd Snider "I knew what he meant when he said I suck. But he wanted to go on and on about it... So he did..."

Then came the food...

I've learned something in my almost year and a half of dieting that I would really like someone to do some research on. If you're overweight as I am, people will insist on making disparaging comments anytime you get within throwing distance of the desserts.... Unless, that is, you're dieting. Then they insist, forcefully, that you eat not one but all of it. My dinner conversations now go like this;

"Try the Death by Chocolate cake!"
"I can't, it's not on my diet."
"Aw, one piece won't hurt you."
"Yes. It will actually. I'm trying to keep my diet up even during the holidays."
"Oh, just try a spoonful!"
"No, really. I've gotten over my sweets cravings and I don't want them back."
"But you HAVE to have dessert on Cbristmas..."
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Everything after that was a blur. Gifts were exchanged. More inappropriate food was offered. The home team won the game. I know this because, even after I left the television to get away from the homers, they followed me to make sure I knew that their quarterback had successfully thrown the ball or their kicker had kicked it. There were further insistences that my method of putting food in my family's mouth was disgraceful (for those of you who don't know me, I'm a social worker, not a bookie or a loan shark or a prostitute if you were wondering). Since my wife had long since joined the homers who were standing outside my emotional walls with pitchforks and torches, I tuned the whole thing out and looked for my opening to leave.

Still wonder why I hate Christmas? Read on, dear souls.

Tomorrow I get to run the gauntlet with dinners at my mom's family and my wife's family. At my family, I will be mostly ignored, which I'm ok with actually. There won't be any "I'll be Home for Christmas" type of joy at my arrival, but I likely won't be labelled a whore either so that washes. The homers will be out in force at this location as well, but without a game to chaw on, I should be able to deflect them handily.

From there I will go to my wife's family. My every move will be weighed, measured, judged, and computed to see if I am worthy of their little girl. The answer will come out "no". People will be loud. Arguments will occur. Northern food strange to my southern palate will be served. I will probably be told at least once that that isn't how things were done back in Syracuse. I may be asked about my reproductive intentions with their daughter. And I'll drive. A lot.

Oh yeah. In between those times, I will be bombarded with television images of people who are happier than I. I will be told by at least five people to remember the "real reason for the season."

Problem is, I don't know if there is any real reason...

If there really is a God (something I'm less than 90% sure of anymore) and if he even cares what humans do anymore (something I'm less than 50% sure of), I can't imagine that he looks down at the people spending money they don't have for stuff they don't need to give to people they don't like, at the grandmothers bashing each other in the skull for the privilege of paying $600 for a video game system that will be obsolete in two years, at the people swearing at each other in traffic, arguing as families always do, at the folks getting completely piss drunk to deal with the stress, and says "Boy, those guys sure do a good job of celebrating my kid's birthday."

Here in the town where I live, two rival churches are running large ads in the local paper debating whether you can even get into Heaven without taking a bath with the preacher. They're spending the church donation funds on this. They aren't feeding the hungry, as Jesus taught. They aren't helping the sick, as Jesus taught. They're engaging in a giant penis waving contest.

If there is a God, and if he is watching, I have to believe he's ashamed of our entire race and probably rethinking that whole dinosaur extinction thing at this time of the year.

People wonder why the suicide rate goes up around Christmas. I don't. I know all too well...

And that's why you continue to get "I Hate Christmas" blogs from me on a yearly basis.

Hooray!

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Musicians You Never Heard Of... But Should

It's been a while since I wrote anything here. I'm not sure even the three people who used to read it have endured my lapse, so this may be for nothing. But I'll give it a try.

Since I can't bear to write another word about how I hate Christmas and since the whole season depresses me too much to write anything funny, I'm going to stick with something I can write about even in the December funk... Music.

So, for your reading pleasure, I give you ten musicians that you really should listen to, but probably haven't. For whatever reason, most of these guys have gone under the radar, and it's a shame. So, if you want to give me a gift for Christmas, go seek one or more of these guys out and expand your horizons.

These bands run the gamut from folk to metal to world beat. There probably isn't anyone in the world but me who would actually like listening to all of them. But if you dig a bit, there's likely something you'll get into.

On to the list...

The Trailer Park Troubadours/Antsy McClain
Genre: Americana/Rockabilly
Recommended Album: Way Cool World/Time Sweetened Lies
The best live act on Earth. These guys put heart, soul, and sweat into every concert. They're the band I've seen more than anyone (I stopped counting at 15 times, and that was four years ago). They're best known for their comedic songs like "Skinny Women Ain't Hip", "I Wish I Had a Clapper for Your Heart", and "Prozac Made Me Stay" but singer/songwriter Antsy McClain's true talent lies in his ability to write quirky and often melancholy love songs from a point of view that no one else has even considered. In "Primer Grey Impala", he muses on a women he sat beside briefly in a Waffle House, piecing together from clues in her demeanor and dress that she just left a bad relationship. He watches, admiring her from afar. "If I were a braver man, I'd sit down by her side. Try to find out what it is, she hides behind those eyes. What it is she's running from, why it is she waits..." In "Inspector 372" he combines his keen sense of humour with a rather sad angle as a traveling salesman who never has time to settle down finds an inspection tag in his jeans and creates a fantasy of the "lonely inspector" who did the job. Go see these guys if they're in your area (and to my California readers, they often are) or at least go to their website and get an album. You won't regret it.

Todd Snider
Genre: Americana/Folk
Recommended Album: Near Truths and Hotel Rooms Live
Todd is probably the "best known" of my unknown artists. His most recent album, "The Devil You Know" made Rolling Stone's top 50 albums of the year. But it hasn't translated into Nickelback-like sales. While the selfish part of me certainly enjoys the intimacy of seeing Todd in little clubs (and I have several times), he just deserves more. He is, quite simply, the best young songwriter in America. He's the heir apparent to John Prine, and no surprise since Prine is his mentor and Todd released three albums on Prine's "Oh Boy" record label. Where Snider excels is in telling compelling stories about ordinary folks. In "Just Like Old Times", from his newest album, he tells a tale of a drifting pool shark who has a chance reunion with his high school sweetheart while looking for "some company in the local Scene, I saw an ad that just had to be you." How do you make the reunion of a bum and a prostitute poignant? Listen to the song and you'll know. As he says in the song, so many of his characters "don't want to throw a fishing line in that old mainstream."

Tommy Womack
Genre: Americana/Southern Rock
Recommended Album: Positively Na Na
Those of you who used to listen to WKDF in Nashville back when it's a rock station might remember Womack's name. Back in those days, he hosted a show called "Nashville Tapes" with his Government Cheese bandmate Joe Elvis. Government Cheese was a straight ahead club rock act. When Womack went solo, he moved more into the Americana direction. Like Snider above, Womack wrings all he can out of ordinary folks, but Womack's humour is more sharp than Snider's and he has a talent for twisting a phrase just the right way to get maximum punch out of it. In "I'll Give You Needles" he tells the story of two "mopwater junkies" who meet on occasion in the emergency room. At one meeting, the woman is pregnant and Womack offers to hook her up with an "under the table abortion" but warns her "you might get accosted by angels intent on giving you hell. They'll push and they'll pull and they'll scream and they'll shout and they'll kneel and they'll pray and they've been known to shoot... but they mean well." Later he tells her that "I've got better things to do with my day than watch you sit in the corner and bleed... but I'll give you needles, how many you need?"

Jason Ringenberg
Genre: Americana/Country
Recommended Album: All Over Creation
Ringenberg may also be a familiar name to those who listened to Nashville Tapes in the 80's. As the singer of Jason and the Scorchers, his band broke genres, blending country, metal, and punk in a way no one ever had. As a solo artist, Ringenberg has moved more toward his country/folk roots, although he can still rock out on tracks like "One Less Heartache in the World Tonight" and "Honky Tonk Maniac From Mars." But Ringenberg's best talent lies in his subtle storytelling. In "Bible and a Gun" he tells the story of an escaped slave who goes west, relying on his bible but also carrying a gun. At one point he says "to turn the other cheek, is the braver thing to do, I wish I had it in me, and they wish they had it too. For tomorrow when we meet, this story will end, and an ancient hollow grief, will be our only friend." Also a student of history, Ringenberg brings small historical moments to life with songs like "Erin's Seed", about the Irish immigrants to America who found themselves facing their brothers in the U.S. Civil War, and "Eddie Rode the Orphan Train" about a young man whose parents put him on a train from "Soho down to Arkansas" where people would gather at each stop and pick out children to take home, often to be used as free farm labor.

Tristania
Genre: Metal
Recommended Album: Beyond the Veil
Tristania hail from Norway, as most of the best dark metal acts do. They follow a fairly common trick, started by Celtic Frost, of employing both a "death metal" vocalist and an operatic female singer. But Tristania goes one step beyond, hiring a third baritone singer to round out the group. The contrast of the three very different vocalists is ear-grabbing. Musically, Tristania displays the technical skill required of this style of music but isn't afraid to experiment with acoustic guitar intros and other things not typically not heard in gothic metal acts. They're not everyone's cup of tea and they certainly don't "fit" with the above acts but with lyrics like "you dance in the halls of insanity, yet madness is, your amnesty... your vanity", they belong on my list.

Femi Kuti
Genre: African Beat
Recommended Album: Africa Shrine Live
I saw Femi Kuti as one of the opening acts at Nashville River Stages. He was stuck in between Blues Traveler and Bob Dylan. I'd never heard of him and had no expectations. I was blown away. He came on stage in full African regalia, complete with a huge band an a whole cadre of dancers. For the next hour, they combined catchy beats, driving percussion, expert dancing, and some very politically charged lyrics to entertain us all. If you're willing to expand your horizons, check him out.

The Jeff Healey Band
Genre: Blues
Recommended Albums: Cover to Cover
Healey had one hit in the 80's with "Angel Eyes" and then faded into obscurity. It's a shame. Healey is, quite frankly, one of the ten best blues guitarists alive today. His downfall, unfortunately, was what makes his sound unique; blind since childhood, Healey self-taught himself guitar by playing it lying in his lap like a steel guitar. The unique style of playing allows Healey to get bends and hit notes that are impossible for "normal" guitar players, but it got him labeled a novelty act and dismissed. While he's not the strongest songwriter in the world, he's in a genre where he doesn't have to be. Healey has made the best of the old blues tradition; taking blues standards and making them his own. From his smoking take on "Hootchie Cootchie Man" to his blues'd up version of Jimi Hendrix's "Angel", Healey satisfies all around.

This was fun. Perhaps I'll do it again sometime if it's well received. I've got tons of obscure music in my collection just waiting to be introduced to a wider audience. Until then...