Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree? Not so much.

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The first time he caught me doing it he was shocked and dismayed but over the years Hippie has come to accept that it is for my own happiness that I listen to my Barry Manilow “A Christmas Gift Of Love” CD, and he's okay with it just as long as I do it when he's not around and he doesn't have to know about it.

Everyone knows that I love Rock and Roll enough to put a million dimes in the jukebox, baby. However, when it comes to Holiday music, I mostly prefer the classics and the crooners over anything rocking and rolling. The first Holiday CD I listen to each year is my “Andy Williams Personal Christmas Collection” followed closely by Sinatra's "A Jolly Christmas", various other oldies but goodies and, of course, Barry.

I do sometimes like albums by rock artists who cover classic songs or perform originals that stick to traditional themes. I love, love, love "Heart Presents A Lovemongers Christmas" (Ann Wilson singing Ave Maria is almost too beautiful to stand) and I have to say that Kenny Loggins does some credible crooning on his album, “December”. Yet, you are not going to catch me listening to the Lynyrd Skynyrd Holiday CD that Hippie misguidedly put in my stocking one year, nor is any sort of death metal Christmas mosh pit anywhere in my future.

Of course there is some Holiday music that Hippie and I can agree or at least compromise on. For example, Elvis Presley's "If Every Day Was Like Christmas" has the rock cred Hippie requires while still being crooning enough for me. We are also both fond of a compilation called “Winter, Fire and Snow” which has a song called, “Christmas Must Be Tonight” by Robbie Robertson that is a personal favorite of ours. And there is a more alternative collection called, “Maybe This Christmas Tree” that I don't hate and has one or two gems that I really enjoy listening to.

Still, while the Hippie Husband is away, this wife will play her Barry Manilow, loudly, and sing along without shame because that's just how I roll (and not so much rock) during the Holidays.

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Remembering The Words

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The other day Hippie and I were listening to the 70s music station on our satellite TV and before I knew it I was singing along to a song by The Stylistics I probably haven't heard for ten years or more.  It made me wonder just how many song lyrics are stored in my memory.

When it comes to music, I have very eclectic tastes.  I grew up listening to my parents' records, then my older siblings' records and then the records (eventually cassettes and cds) that my friends and I collected as teenagers.  That's about fifty years of music that I was exposed to before the age of twenty.  As a result, though sometimes I can't remember what day it is, I know, not just every word, but also "every Sha-la-la-la, every Wo-o-wo-o" to countless songs.

When I can't remember something I often joke that the lyrics to "American Pie" are taking up the space where more important information is supposed to be stored.  I even know the words to songs I don't like.  I could probably rattle off a few lines of "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" faster than I could tell you what my cell phone number is.

There is a sort of jukebox in my mind that is activated by certain words, phrases or situations.  Sometimes just someone saying "hey" to me can have me humming Led Zeppelin (Hey Hey What Can I do) or BJ Thomas ([Hey Won't You Play] Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song) for the rest of the day. The phrase "Wish You Were Here" always triggers a Pink Floyd concert flashback.  And when I am having a hard time articulating my feelings "De Do Do Do De Da Da Da" is all I want to say to you.

Hippie can speak a little German and I know a little Spanish but we are both fluent in a language we call Beatles-ese.  Neither of us can ever say that something is Getting Better without the other one chiming in, "It can't get no worse".  He'll say yes and I'll say no, he'll say stop and I'l say go, go go.  Oh no.

Music may be the universal language but song lyrics are more esoteric than that.  Everybody likes something with a good beat that you can dance to, but the lyrics are what make a song personal.  So I guess it's really no wonder that the lyrics to songs that have provided the soundtrack to my life are among my most enduring misty water colored memories.  It's only a wonder that I don't burst into song during every conversation.

And if there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now...

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Songs About Art

Although all musical compositions are works of art, here are a few of my favorite songs that reference art or artists in one way or another:

“Michelangelo” by EmmyLou Harris
From the album “Red Dirt Girl”

Last night I dreamed about you / I dreamed that you were older / You were looking like Picasso / With a scar across your shoulder / You were kneeling by the river / You were digging up the bodies /Buried long ago / Michelangelo

A beautiful song that came to EmmyLou Harris in a dream. From the lyrics, I suspect it wasn't really Michelangelo she was dreaming about but her words certainly evoke a lot of imagery. I can easily imagine the scenes they describe as paintings hung on a gallery wall.

“The Painter” by Neil Young
From the album “Prairie Wind”

The painter stood / Before her work / She looked around everywhere / She saw the pictures and she painted them / She picked the colors from the air

While the opening lyrics above seem rather basic, it gets a lot deeper from there. To me this is a song about the triumphs and pitfalls of the creative process, of which I'm sure Neil Young knows much about. “If you follow every dream / You might get lost”...I think that's something every artist needs to hear at some time or another.

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“There Goes My Inspiration” by Utopia
From the album “Utopia”

Me and Gaugin used to party down / I was hung in The Louvre, I was Renoir's pal / Vincent Van Gogh used to joke with me / Now they don't come 'round

This name dropping little ditty by Todd Rundgren's Utopia is about an artist who has lost his muse. Who hasn't been there before?!

“Masterpiece of Loneliness” by John Waite
From the album "Figure in a Landscape"

But I bought a paint box and some brushes/ to pass the time since you've been gone/ It's a portrait of a broken man / And the colors always run

To me, John Waite's voice is a work of art in itself. Here he sings hauntingly and beautifully of an artist attempting to pass the time with “a paintbox and some brushes” only to find himself confronted by his own inner state. 

“A Case of You” by Joni Mitchell
From the album “Blue”

On the back of a carton coaster / In the blue TV screen light / I drew a map of Canada / Oh Canada /With your face sketched on it twice

I have read in various sources that this song is partly about Leonard Cohen and partly about James Taylor. I guess it is more of a love song than a song about art but there are those lines, “I am a lonely painter/ I live in a box of paints” and she is indeed a painter. She also wrote a song about Van Gogh: “Turbulent Indigo”.

These are just the first few songs about art that sprang to my mind, I'm sure there are plenty more great ones that just haven't occurred to me. Do you have a favorite “art song”? I'd love to hear from you.

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