Mix ~ 2005 & 2006 Xmas Music
Here are the previous two annual Xmas Music mixes. Look for the new one (2007 Mix) next Saturday.
1. Ed Harcourt ~ In The Bleak Midwinter
2. The Arcade Fire ~ Jinglebell Rock
3. The Waitresses ~ Christmas Wrapping
4. Bright Eyes ~ God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
5. Death Cab For Cutie ~ Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
6. Sufjan Stevens ~ What Child Is This Anyway?
7. Diana Krall & The Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra ~ Jingle Bells
8. Jack Johnson ~ Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer
9. Rilo Kiley ~ Christmas Cake
10. Marah ~ Baby, It’s Cold Outside
11. Feist ~ Lo, How A Rose E’re Blooming
12. Smashing Pumpkins ~ Christmastime
13. Snow Patrol ~ When I Get Home For Christmas
14. James Brown ~ Funky Christmas
15. Ron Sexsmith ~ Maybe This Christmas
16. Low ~ Just Like Christmas
17. Johnny Cash ~ Blue Christmas
18. Belle & Sebastian ~ O Come, O Come Emmanuel
19. Sufjan Stevens ~ Once In David’s Royal City
20. Hem ~ Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
21. Joni Mitchell ~ River
22. Tom Waits ~ Silent Night
2005 Mix zipped up for your convenience.
1. Vince Guaraldi ~ O Tannenbaum
2. My Morning Jacket ~ Xmas Time Is Here Again
3. The Flaming Lips ~ Christmas at the Zoo
4. Michael Bublé ~ Let It Snow
5. David Bowie & Bing Crosby ~ Little Drummer Boy
6. Sufjan Stevens ~ Lo How A Rose E'er Blooming
7. The Trekky Yuletide Orchestra ~ All I Want For Christmas is You
8. Shirim ~ Kozatsky 'til You Dropsky
9. Princeton ~ Where's My Christmas Morning
10. Weezer ~ Christmas Celebration
11. Eartha Kitt / Henri Rene Orchestra ~ Santa Baby
12. John Denver & The Muppets ~ Twelve Days Of Christmas
13. Royal Guardsmen ~ Snoopy's Christmas
14. Squirrel Nut Zippers ~ Winter Weather
15. The Raveonettes ~ The Christmas Song
16. Ella Fitzgerald with The Frank Devol Orchestra ~ What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?
17. The Weepies ~ All I That Want (featured in a JC Penny’s commercial)
18. The Format ~ Holly Jolly Christmas
19. The Pogues ~ Fairytale Of New York
20. E ~ Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas
21. Brett Dennen ~ The Holidays Are Here (and we're still at war)
22. George Winston ~ The Holly And The Ivy
23. Tony Trischka ~ Auld Lang Syne
2006 Mix zipped up for your convenience.
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Xmas Music
Many of these songs/artists are available for your 25 FREE DOWNLOADS from eMusic
Posts
10 hullabaloos:
You = my hero.
Thank you for the amaaazing mixes. [:
You just made my day. Love these Christmas songs! Thanks for posting.
poetry by the duke below
Table of Contents
Symphonic War-kus ~ 1
Thoughts Inspired by Hawks ~ 4
Maxim from Christmas of ‘44 ~ 5
Not All Models Are Anorexic ~ 6
In Response to an Email from a Friend who quoted Rilke ~ 7
Hats Off ~ 8
Reflection ~ 10
My Country Bumpkin ~ 11
A Dollar for Your Thoughts ~ 12
A Murmuration of Starlings ~ 14
What We Got ~ 15
Acknowledgement Page ~ 21
Symphonic War-kus
A.
sunrise like house lights—
the stage, the battlefield
waits in peace
B.
instruments
of mass destruction
tune for the requiem
C.
maestro
storms the podium
with helicopter blade baton
D.
cocksure fingers
pluck plutonium chords
on war-horse harps
E.
disarming syncopation
flourishes in the desert—
the composer grins
F.
walls pulse—
shell-drums strike rhythms
like a failing heartbeat
G.
low brass blitzkrieg—
thunderous passages
written in blood
H.
from under rubble
faint cello cries
to a missing mother
I.
skeletons will become
cartoon-esque
xylophones
J.
dissonant seventh cords
resolve to the dominant
key of USA
L.
delicate flute fingerings
flutter across the sky—
lenient, unseen danger
M.
oboe ask a question—
clarinet responds with
eradicating staccatos
N.
tuba like drones
carry more damage
than the last concert
O.
pizzicato gunshots
assault more than ears—
the audience shrinks
P.
patriot missiles replace
Tchaikovsky’s cannons
in the 1812 overture
Q.
double-basses
lay the foundation
with laser-guided bows
R.
children’s choir
in the balcony
bawl the descant
S.
tone cluster bombs
fall upon innocents—
conquering civilians
T.
the fuging tune
directs the refugees
to safe ground
U.
devil dog violists
besiege with unprovoked
tremolo
V.
trumpeters aim their horns
poised to play their
triumphant tune
W.
kettle drums crescendo
to the final notes—
rolling, rolling over all
X.
white programs
gad down the aisle—
concert terminated
Y.
empty stage
empty battlefield
empty effort
Z.
oh say can you see
the orchestra has liberated
one more country
Thoughts Inspired by Hawks
Two red-tails
perched on highway lampposts
watch the rising sun and ground under construction.
For centuries these raptors
have spied the earth on the wing and in the trees.
Only in the last one hundred years
did they acquire this steel vantage point.
Are the lampposts a shitty deal
signed in a smoky room between
the hunters’ union and the hawks’ lawyer?
A contract that states, “We accept your right
to the air and vermin; and you
respect our right to fast cars and
concrete roads in need of lampposts. You will
no longer be our targets if you cease
to target our cattle, babies, and puffy dogs.
This contract is legally binding for three hundred years
or until one species buys the farm.”
I drive by two hawks and wonder about this treaty.
I hope after three centuries,
humans sign the mortgage papers—not hawks.
Maxim from Christmas of ‘44
I sang Stille Nacht
in German
and Sister Grabapple
ordained my knuckles
to the yardstick,
and she made me sing
God Bless America
every hour
on the hour
for the remainder of the day.
Not All Models Are Anorexic
The thing that bugs me
The most is
The complete,
The furnished,
The model house.
The one that resides at
The foot of
The subdivision like a famished covergirl chaperoning
The rest of
The homes. Think of all
The electricity that is wasted in lighting
The house; all of
The chemicals on
The super-green lawn; all
The resources that went into
The construction; all this just for
The sample house. Like
The little slices of pizza
The grocery store gives out on Saturdays. Like
The place is a realized dream house for
The newly wed couple following
The American dream:
The one where we destroy
The forests for model homes;
The one where we gluttonize energy for
The urban sprawl business;
The one I drive by on
The daily commute.
In Response to an Email from a Friend who quoted Rilke
I am the swan. The swan am I.
Taken with a grain of salt, the swan
tastes of me. Plucked feathers and
droppings, I leave behind as
my body of work. My work is
but white feathers blown in the river
and brown excrement hidden
in the green rough of a golf course.
The swan is me. We all can swim
on the river or slip
on the feces while searching for
the white ball of complete happiness.
Like maybe happiness comes in un-
com-
plete stages and once you've come to
love your “swanness” you can
complete
the happiness. I am
the happiness.
The swan am I.
Hats Off
Hats off to those unsung heroes of everyday,
those
wearers of hats themselves.
Hats off to that lonely guy, stepping from
foot to foot
holding that Stop/Slow sign.
Hats off to the trifle deaf beekeeper,
the one with
the steam can and mesh face.
Hats off to the cubicle clan
typing away
on subtle, silver, sleek keyboards.
Hats off to hairnet clad
lunchroom workers
who with a smug smile dish plastic plates.
Hats off to the terminally oiled hands
of mechanics,
flat on their backs working with wrenches.
Hats off to the tree trimmers
in cherry pickers
freeing up the ever-growing lines of power.
Hats off to those plumber butts
sticking out from
under a kitchen sink.
Hats off to the Port-a-Bowl suckers,
nostrils burned dead
by bodily functions at festivals.
Hats off to those last few cowboys,
high on their horses,
mending fences and donning chaps.
Hats off to the exterminators
squirting poison
into infested corners, killing critters.
Hats off to the broom and mop
wielding cleaners
of offices, malls and many other dirty places.
And finally, hats off to the makers of hats themselves
hunched over
a sewing machine, fingers cracked from dry fabric.
Reflection
While doing the dishes,
a glass stumbled
to the floor.
I saw it break
before it hit.
(It didn’t break.)
I saw the glass particles
littered on the kitchen
floor.
(There was no debris.)
I saw my bleeding fingers
collect the glass babies.
(The Band-Aids stayed in their tin home.)
In the instant the
glass left the counter,
I saw ten minutes into the future
complete with curse words
and angry music.
(The orchestra kept their instruments silent.)
I saw the glass topple over, spin
like a baseball. The tile was the bat.
(The pitch was a strike.)
In that nanosecond,
in that glass,
I saw Blake’s grain of sand.
My Country Bumpkin
I was playing the axe and catching shooting stars
on my tongue
when
Johnson bought his hen a lottery ticket.
Agatha fulfilled his feathery fetish,
turning family affection into a game of hide and seek.
Johnson was the kind of screwdriver who made his kids
work on
Saturdays.
His wife, Tamberlynn, simply carried
small silver bells in a quart berry basket.
Occasionally, she’d gallop past me, tinging and binging
with those
bells.
My melodious machine and her chiming orbs
were Vivaldi playing “Spring”, the season of our affair.
A Dollar for Your Thoughts
Taken at face value, the dollar is just a dollar.
But if you look a little deeper, into the green ink,
the fabric paper
you might see the blood, the red blood
of the workers,
the bloody sweat of those
who broke their spirits so
Morgans and Rockefellers and other Ritchie Riches
could own one more pair of
imported leather shoes.
You might see that Italian cow,
daydreaming about a field so green,
so vast,
so full of nourishment, that never will his four stomachs growl.
You might see that daydreaming bovine
get corralled into an old blue transport truck
made in Sweden in the 1970s
that has an equal amount of old, new, rebuilt and broken parts.
You might see this now daymaring side of beef
ride in the back of the rugged blue truck
thru the lush Hemingway-esque landscape; the kind of road
where landmines once took children’s lives
because war is hell
and innocents die.
You might see that spooked shoe-to-be
get dropped off at
the slaughterhouse
where the foreman speaks in broken English
to the driver of the dilapidated blue truck
for the driver was once an American
tired of living the blood red American dream
and decided to change his scenery.
You might see that American-Italian receive cash
from the foreman for the cow; that hard earned cash
that only the laborer can appreciate.
You might see this exchange, this fair trade;
but
you might try to not see the cow in
the slaughterhouse
its blood dripping onto the drain-filled floor
where workers where steel-toed boots
and walk slowly over the sticky but slippery
red liquid.
And
you might try to not see
that pair of shoes now;
but
you do see them, don’t you?
And
you might wish you never
looked that closely at the dollar bill.
And
you might slide it into
the blind homeless guy’s cup, knowing he’ll never see
that vast field in Italy,
that peaceful Italian cow,
that mucky slaughterhouse,
that grinning foreman,
that decrepit blue truck head back to the farm.
He’ll never see all this
and feel remorse for the acquisition of wealth.
A Murmuration of Starlings
To paraphrase Carl Sagan,
we are all star-lings, little stars,
murmuring to each other in the night, not quite fireworks.
We are all invasive birds, moving from continent
to continent
across the universe.
Once we called a cage home.
But someone felt
we were beautiful and hauled that cage
across oceans.
They freed us and we spread
across the black sky, dropping
plumage along the way.
What We Got
_men. Ahmen. Ah men, oh man.
The day has
dropped
to the mat.
Time dissolves into, melts into nothin’--
We accomplish nothin’
w/ nothin’.
The day put up a good fight
a good boxing
match
book
covers
I collect them: these trinkets
of dateless vacations and too much
money spent on brain cell killers.
We got nothin’
w/out life.
These bars where I watch the
fights in, the stools are
round and revolve like the earth.
We got nothin’
w/out motion.
And feelings. And E-motion. And Pain.
There’s all this talk about
difficult times
and suffering.
Life IS suffering, says the Buddhist monk
Ah, man, you’ve got to excuse me if
that doctrine don’t float my boat.
A part of me wants to give in and medicate on the
sound of
one
hand
clapping.
We got nothin’
w/out thought.
Ah, man, why did you invent
destruction? or were we just following
divine order?
nature’s example?
We got something
when we got nothin’.
I get lost on the revolving earth-bar-stool.
Lost in a forest of buildings
a jungle of people
a desert of technology
a sea of fast food.
We spin and spin at all times. We are
all
at the bar,
thirsty, and denying our addiction.
We got nothin’
w/out addiction.
The most interesting people
writers
politicians
sports-stars
rock-stars
all
are addicts to something or another.
We are all
attics filled with dusty photo albums,
vinyl albums,
vinyl luggage,
relics hidden for a reason.
We are
all
prisoners.
We got nothin’
w/out bars on the windows--
bars w/ windows.
Gravity is the warden. The earth-bar-stool is
the jailhouse.
You can count the days w/ notches on the walls
or you can be Elvis in Jailhouse Rock.
Make the most of your
sentence.
We got nothin’
if we let the guards push us around.
And on the streets, the beat arrests dealers.
And in the suburbs, the kids have clam-bakes
in their father’s Japanese, or maybe German,
(once our enemies, mind you)
luxury cars, parked on streets lined w/
herbicide-green grass and cookie-cutter mansions.
And overseas, we fight the flavor of the month,
as our homeland looses forests, farmland, and the future.
We got nothin’
w/out a battle to stand behind.
I wish I could have fled to Canada when
the warrior lottery was in effect. Where I could’ve
laid low and acquired an accent, _. _men.
Ahmen.
We got nothin’
w/out prayer.
Where domestic beer is real beer and not
just watered down bikini commercials.
Where health insurance is a birthright. Not
something you’re lucky enough to get taken
out of your paycheck and have to drive
an hour to find a doctor that accepts
your card like it was a poem and
the future of publication--or maybe its life--
rests in his (or maybe her) hands.
We got nothin’
w/out medication.
It comes back to the revolving earth-bar-stools
and addiction to busty girls on TV
paying actors and actresses their salary
for sitcoms, realitycoms, dramacoms, hell, even
dotcoms. Ahmen.
We got nothin’
w/out mindless entertainment.
But I get vacuumed into that trance. That
drool running out my mouth and onto my thrift
store, cigarette-burn-hole sweater. I can recall
that episode of Different Strokes where Arnold
steals of few pulls on a pack of Camels and
accidentally scorches his green cardigan. And
Daddy McWhitebucks explains to him the potential
danger of smoking.
And now a word from our sponsor,
Phillip Morris,
proud makers of Marlboro, Kraft Mac and Cheese, and
coffin-stuffin’. You’ll love the man made coffin-stuffin’.
We got nothin’
w/out funerals and remembrances.
Holidays hit the calendar every month (like a
jockey whips his horse trying, amen, to get from
last to first) to celebrate everything from Virgin Birth
to thanks for teaching us how to live
here in the New World (the one that an Italian
discovered even though you’ve called this home
for thousands of years) so here’s genocide in
return. A fair trade on any white man’s scale. Ah, men.
We got nothin’
w/out oppression, exclusion.
We are a country of clubs. Of country clubs
where some people (no matter what their net worth
or world ranking in billions earned per quarter) are
still unwelcome, unable to pay their dues. Even
if over the years they have signed checks w/
whip-mark-scares
gas-chamber-showers
reservation-alcoholism
railroad-hammer-heatstroke
ghettoed-woman-and-children (sorry, no room in the lifeboat, ah, ma’am)
This was their down payment and now we change the currency.
We got nothin’
w/out debt.
Pass the collection plate and pay some
preachers to keep the myth alive. _men.
Saints be praised.
You can have your Saints.
Your Gods.
Your Virgins.
Your Headhunting Bellydancers.
Your Sunday Conversion Parties.
Your Brainwashing Cult Films.
Of course, I’ll go see the midnight showing
of a Rocky Horror Picture Show w/ you.
‘Cause there’s something about a sweet transvestite from
transsexual Transylvania and a
young Susan Sarandon who can’t
carry a tune even if it’s to save her virginity.
We got nothin’
w/out virginity.
So pass the plate from pew to pee-yew.
Ahmen.
I’ll take my seat on the revolving
earth-bar-stool, order a
Virgin Mary,
and leave this poem as a tip.
Acknowledgement Page
“Symphonic War-kus” – The Fifth Column
“Thoughts Inspired by Hawks” – Main Channel Voices
“Not All Models Are Anorexic” – The Adirondack Review
“Maxim from Christmas of ’44” – Perigee
“In Response to an Email from a Friend who quoted Rilke” – Drexel Online Journal
“Reflection” – Poetry Motel
“My Country Bumpkin” – 32 Poems
I LOVE you for this.
Good Stuff! Thank you.
Any chance this year's compilation would have the studio version of Jason Mraz and Tristan Prettyman doing "All I Want For Christmas Is Us"?
Just in time for tree-trimming. Who knew there were so many christmas songs out there. Well you did...hurray for that!
thanks for posting this! i have a couple of holiday parties to DJ & these will work for the older folks & the younger folks too :) happy happy to you! xo colleen
very sweet.
Hello there! I'm desperately searching for Ed Harcourt's version of In The Bleak Midwinter and your blog seems to be the only place on the entire web that even knows of its existence! I'm afraid I don't know much about blog etiquette so would it be awfully poor show for me to ask for it to be uploaded again?
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