Ian Fitzgerald

Departing from the TV/movie theme, here are a few more customarily neglected items to enhance any holiday celebration.

“Christmas All Over Again” - Some have told me that they rarely hear this should-be holiday staple.  Others claim to hear it frequently if not constantly throughout the season.  Since I’ve yet to hear it in a shopping mall, grocery store, or on an all-Christmas radio station, I’ll side with the former and say this is a neglected classic that needs to be rescued from the moth balls to which it has been tragically consigned.  And unlike Springsteen, who insists on micromanaging the Christmas lists for his bandmates (Did Clarence really want a new saxophone?  Don’t you think he could use a new tambourine one of these years?), Petty goes for the guts and asks Santa for a Rickenbacker all his own.  Heck, I even played this song once (even though it was not entirely of my own accord).

cherry candy canes - While the traditional peppermint version has swirled through the spotlight for years, its less appreciated cherry cousin has become the secret weapon of the cane-shaped candy world.  Candy canes are now available in any number of flavors and colors, from Spree and Jolly Rancher fruit flavors to the dodgy Chocolate Mint canes foisted upon us by Hershey’s lo all these years.  Cherry are still the best (though they can be overwhelming and do not tend to have the durability of good old peppermint).

“Christmas Time (Is Here Again)” -  From 1963 through 1969, The Beatles issued Christmas messages on flexidisc to Beatles fan club members.  This lost Beatles classic is a heavily edited version of the 1967 edition and was included on the “Free As A Bird” CD single issued in 1995.  Of the rest of The Beatles’ canon, this “song” most closely resembles “You Know My Name (Look Up The Number),” except far less annoying.  Yes, Ringo: o-u-t does spell “out”.

As promised, I have a few more film and TV recommendations for those of you hoping to spend your precious holiday moments warming your hands by the glow of the cathode ray.  (Note to self: find out if TVs still use cathode rays.)

It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown (1992) -  Yes, everyone knows and loves the 1965 original, but this 1992 sequel is no slouch either.  Charlie struggles to pay for the perfect present for a girl who probably won’t appreciate it anyway (you know how it is), while the rest attempt to stage an even sharper Christmas pageant.  This one has, unfortunately, fallen out of favor; in much the same way that I believe Wendy’s would not be parading around men in red pigtail wigs to hawk its cheeseburgers and its not-as-impressive-as-they-think array of sides if Dave Thomas was still around, I believe that this special would accompany A Charlie Brown Christmas each year instead of I Want A Dog For Christmas, Charlie Brown if Charles Schulz was still here to throw his weight around.  Hockey-sticks.   (While sources claim that this has appeared on TV in the past, my knowledge of it comes from a VHS offered for $4.95 with fill-up at Shell gasoline stations).

Miracle On 34th Street (1947) - Accept no substitutes (I’m looking at you 1994 remake with Dylan McDermott and a mangled ending): this is the original and still the best.  Natalie Wood is featured as the precocious Susan Walker, but some of the best scenes take place without her, especially the third-act courtroom scenes.  In 2004, one channel took the Christmas Story approach and played the original all day long on Christmas Eve.  The catch?  They alternated between the black and white and the colorized versions.  I think I watched parts of 12 different broadcasts.

I’ll see if I can come up with a few more, though there no need to clog the holiday pipes.

In other news, we may be adding comments to the blog (or, more specifically, a feature that would allow readers to leave comments; I won’t be adding comments to my own blog unless things get extremely slow).  As I understand it, these things are said to be in “beta testing” in the period prior to their full online launch.  I don’t know if that’s entirely accurate, but if you’re reading this blog, the likelihood is that you don’t know either.  So until further notice, the comment function is in beta testing.

This is where I would usually post details from Sunday’s show: I’d write about who was there; who wasn’t; what was played and what wasn’t; curiosities of the venue; the guy who swears he’s seen me somewhere and it must have been Portland because they had such a great music scene when he was out there and I would have fit right in with everybody else’s earnest, sincere, northwestern forest sensibilities. Unfortunately, Sunday’s show was canceled due to inclement weather. For those of you not in the northeastern United States, that meant five or six inches of snow followed by freezing rain all on top of the Thursday snow that hadn’t been cleared. I don’t blame them, but it was disappointing.

So instead, with one week to go until Christmas, I’ve decided to put up a holiday movie guide. I know, I know: why hasn’t anyone else thought of this? Well, I just don’t know. Until someone else comes up with their own recommendations, here are a few movies and television specials to get you going.

Scrooge (1970) - Even though he was only 34 at the time, Albert Finney takes the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in a musical adaptation of Dickens’ holiday story. Features a whole roster of songs by Leslie Bricusse, including “Thank You Very Much,” “Father Christmas,” “I Hate People,” and “I Like Life.” An unexpected highlight is Alec Guinness as Jacob Marley’s Ghost, both in the scene presaging the three ghosts of Christmas as well as a scene in hell following Scrooge’s encounter with the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come that it is not as much inherently scary as it is existentially terrifying.

A Muppet Family Christmas (1987) - The Muppet Christmas Carol is fine, but it’s no knockout. Meanwhile, even David Arquette has had It’s A Very Muppet Christmas Movie removed from his résumé. Right in the sweet spot is A Muppet Family Christmas, a TV special that features every Muppet known to man, including the Sesame Street gang, the Fraggles, and even a look back at the Muppet Babies. A snowman does standup, Bert and Ernie redefine small talk, and no one watches out for the icy patch.

Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol (1962) -If Finney gives us the definitive Scrooge, then Magoo gives us the meta version. A play within a TV show, Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol again brings song to Dickens’ tale, with “Ringle, Ringle,” “We’re Despicable,” and “Alone In The World” the highlights. And it taught us all just how nice some razzleberry dressing would be. (Incidentally, both versions falter when dealing with the Isabel/Belle scenes in Scrooge’s past. I think Dickens’ editor failed him there).

More holiday cheer tomorrow.

Yesterday evening was my appearance on Over Yonder, a radio show on Boston University’s WTBU.  The station is much more impressive than WDOM, where I DJed during my school days: it features a number of offices and storage rooms in addition to a main studio (where hosts Carly and Hilary DJed and conducted the interview) and a B studio (where I set up and played).  When Ted Leo played at WDOM, I believe they set him up in the staff lounge/office (which tripled as a home for milk crates full of unlistened-to CDs).

For as much as I think I have to say, I’m not much of an interview subject.  I find it near impossible to answer questions about my influences (too many answers) and what era of folk music I listen to.  That question is odd for any number of reasons: it suggests that I don’t listen to other eras of folk music and that eras (’30s Dust Bowl and ’60s New York were two they suggested) are somehow exclusive of each other.  Didn’t Dylan sing “Pretty Boy Floyd” at Gerde’s?  Didn’t Woody Guthrie sing the Carters’ “Worried Man Blues?”  That’s not to say that I listen to all folk music: I don’t.  But I wouldn’t draw the lines by era.

All that being said, I enjoyed being on the show a great deal.  It’s clear that Carly and Hilary (and Katie, who seemed to be doing the record-keeping dirty work) listen to some excellent and under-appreciated music, and all three were welcoming, gracious hosts.  In between their questions and my unbelievably witty answers, I played three songs: “Labour Day Parade,” “Concrete Mirror,” and “While The Sun Drains.”  Given that I lugged a box of harmonicas and rack on the subway along with my guitar, I probably should have played a song that featured one.  I didn’t.

Other quick-hit thoughts:

-I also didn’t use the tuner I had with me, which was probably noticeable.

-In the first song, I believe said “glass” has grown and died through the railroad track instead of “grass.”  While this is a wonderfully evocative image, it’s wrong.  This happens sometimes during the first song of a set or when playing a song I haven’t tried in a while: the benefits of muscle memory elude me, and a word or two may come out, but not quite right.  This is better than nothing coming out at all.  Trust me.

-Hopefully, we will have audio evidence of this whole thing up on the site soon. 

While scrolling through the New York Times yesterday (who flips through the paper anymore?), I came across an article about the new John Ford boxset, Ford At Fox.  The set collects 24 of Ford’s films which, though impressive, is less than half of the films Ford directed for Fox and barely puts a dent in the more than 140 films he directed overall.

The article opens with the odd premise that old films have not been preserved and presented to subsequent generations as competently as old books; that great works of literature have a stronger legacy than great films.  Maybe it’s just me, but I know far more people who have seen The Searchers than have read William Faulkner’s Light in August (Dave Kehr’s own choice as proof of this theory).  This is not to say that more could not be done to bring contemporary audiences to film classics: however, I would suggest that in both mediums, the classics survive in the public’s conscious at large; some older works find a niche audience as they age; and some works fade away, regardless of the creator.  (The obvious edge that literature has over film is its mandatory presence in school curriculum; film’s general absence is unfortunate, but most schools seem not to value arts of any kind anyway.)

Two other points that caught my eye:

-the unfortunate title, “Respect In a Box,” which seems to be a take on a certain sassy Saturday Night Live sketch.

-and the following passage: “Ford incorporated elements of Murnau’s technique into his Hangman’s House (1928) and, supremely, Four Sons, a devastating 1928 antiwar film that made creative use of Movietone, Fox’s new sound-on-film technology. Unfortunately, because of music rights clearance problems, the original Movietone soundtrack has not been used here, though, like The Iron Horse, it is accompanied by a fine, newly commissioned orchestral score by Christopher Caliendo.”  At first blush, this seemed inexcusable.  If this set is designed to present Ford’s body of work to a wider audience, why would Fox monkey with the music?  Charlie Chaplin famously anguished over the music in his film, a great deal of which he composed himself.  While I have not heard of Ford placing that much emphasis on this aspect of his films, there is no reason to believe that he would have accepted new scores being laid atop his movies.  

The argument could be made that it is better to have the films shown with a new score than to be left unseen, as they would have been if the apparent “clearance problems” had remained unresolved.  While details of these “clearance problems” are not available, you have to wonder how much it would have cost Fox to clear any rights issues with the music and how much those expenses would have affected a set of films that already retails for just under $300.

I also wonder if people will be as cavalier about it when Warner decides it doesn’t want to renew the rights to all the Rolling Stones songs in Mean Streets and replaces them with some indie band’s idea of what Scorsese was really after in those scenes.