Z's Music Corner - Christmas Edition

[Z_TheWriter]

Jul i Angora by Drengene fra Angora

Danish satire series Drengene fra Angora ('The Boys from Angora') made a really weird but oddly catchy Christmas song featuring many of their characters.

The show was a mix of sketches and faux talk-show, with all characters played by the same 3 people. Jokes ranged from mildly inappropriate to 'Omg how did they put that on television??'

 

[YmaOHyd]

The Miles Davis Sextet playing "Oleo" on their live album Jazz at the Plaza. It's an absolute heavyweight lineup: Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderly and Miles Davis. "Oleo" is a contrafact, a reused harmonic structure with a new melody; it's one of many contrafacts based on "I Got Rhythm" by Gershwin. This record, and possibly this song, features in my piece Plugged In.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Since we've covered the Redneck 12 Days of Christmas, this was inevitable.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

Coldplay - Christmas Lights

You all know Coldplay, you probably either love or absolutely despise them. I am an unashamed fan, in moderate amounts.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

The Miles Davis Sextet playing "Oleo" on their live album Jazz at the Plaza. It's an absolute heavyweight lineup: Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderly and Miles Davis. "Oleo" is a contrafact, a reused harmonic structure with a new melody; it's one of many contrafacts based on "I Got Rhythm" by Gershwin. This record, and possibly this song, features in my piece Plugged In.

I kinda love this, but it also showcases a tendency of the time I kinda don't. A lot of very technically skilled players ended up playing solos that almost sounded more like "how many notes can I play?" than an attempt to make great music. It's part of why I love Miles Davis, because he was decidedly not that.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

Since we've covered the Redneck 12 Days of Christmas, this was inevitable.

First time I heard this was actually a surprisingly good Danish translation by a musical comedy group here. Took me many years to discover it was a "real" song and not just something they made up for that one show.

Also Tim Foust is amazing! (Totally no bias, being a bass myself)

 

[cw5523729]

Since we've covered the Redneck 12 Days of Christmas, this was inevitable.

As I waited for the video to show up, I already knew what I was going to see and was not disappointed at all

 

[Z_TheWriter]

When a lovely Christmas video suddenly gives you sapphic fantasies, finally proving that you are, indeed, a perv.

I'm back to the same feeling as last they were posted - kind of intimidated. I'm not sure if it's just that my long illness-caused isolation has given me a bit of social anxiety, and they keep staring into the camera, or if I have a fear of slightly posh-looking American women smiling at me.

 

[YmaOHyd]

I kinda love this, but it also showcases a tendency of the time I kinda don't. A lot of very technically skilled players ended up playing solos that almost sounded more like "how many notes can I play?" than an attempt to make great music. It's part of why I love Miles Davis, because he was decidedly not that.

See, the fastest of those solo's is Adderly's, and I think it's brilliant. The syncopation is very advanced, and he blends in nods to older jazz styles, like trills, which had fallen out of favor. He's playing all the notes for sure, but they're all interesting notes.
--

Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends are a semi-amateur shanty band from Port Isaac on the Cornwall peninsula in England (recently they branched out and diversified the group by adding a member from Padstow). They performed for more than fifteen years before signing their first record deal in 2010. They were discovered by a BBC producer who heard one of their self-produced CDs in 2009 and got them signed to a million-dollar record deal; the whole thing became the subject of the movie Fisherman's Friends, released in 2019. It and the sequel are available on streaming, I think; James Purefoy, who played Marc Antony in ROME, stars, along with Daniel Mays, who gets shot by Diego Luna early in Rogue One.

The group's lineup has changed a lot since the mid-90s, including after a freak accident at a gig in 2013, when a steel door collapsed, killing singer Trevor Grills and group manager Paul McMullen. They perform regularly at various festivals, including in the video above at the Platt in Port Isaac.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

See, the fastest of those solo's is Adderly's, and I think it's brilliant. The syncopation is very advanced, and he blends in nods to older jazz styles, like trills, which had fallen out of favor. He's playing all the notes for sure, but they're all interesting notes.

See I totally agree. It's very advanced, he does a lot of interesting things, it is brilliant. It's just that while I find it very technically impressive and theoretically interesting, I also find it a bit musically inert.

This is a gross generalization though, as I said, I do kinda like this particular performance, and that style of playing is certainly better executed here than in many cases. Unlike some, it's clear that they're not only showing off technical proficiency, but actually have something to say.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

The Danish Christmas TV shows are back!

It's Hard to be a Nissemand from The Julekalender by De Nattergale

The Julekalender was made by Danish comedy band De Nattergale (A portmanteau of the Danish words for 'Nightingale' and 'insane'), is mostly aimed at adults, and was a huge success.

The shtick of the show is that the elves in it all speak a weird comedic mixture of Danish and English. Thus, 'It's Hard to be a Nissemand' (male elf), and also the title of the show (Julekalender is what we call this type of show).

The show is about 3 elves having crash landed their plane in a Danish farmer's field. They need to find a way to repair it, perhaps with the help from their magical book. If only they can keep it and themselves hidden from the evil Nåsåer (literally 'Oh-then-er') who is suddenly lodging in disguise with the farmer and his wife.

There exists both a Norwegian and Finnish version of the show, made later with musicians from those countries.

 

[cw5523729]

 

[cw5523729]

 

[YmaOHyd]

A beautiful nested-loop construction by Stefano Barone:

 

[Z_TheWriter]

Twisted Sister - Heavy Metal Christmas

So yeah, it's the 12th and this is a thing

It may only be me, but it took me a long time to hear that the thing they want every time is "A tattoo of Ozzy" (Osborne)

 

[YmaOHyd]

 

[KTrout23]

I came across this version of “Frosty the Snowman” by Cocteau Twins a few years ago. It was originally released in 1993.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

I came across this version of “Frosty the Snowman” by Cocteau Twins a few years ago. It was originally released in 1993.

This video shows as entirely unavailable (not just can't be embedded) for me.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

The Night Santa Went Crazy by Weird Al

Weird Al, you know him. He was here on December 1st by way of @Bamagan.
Well he made more than one Christmas song.

 

[Dodola]

Not a song post, an observation/question.
Why are most Christmas carols, from 60-70 years ago or longer?
Was there a global cutoff date for writing new ones?
I'm not talking about Mariah Carey recording a single, or that type of song, I mean the songs that carolers sing.
Did Frank Sinatra call everyone and say "no more Christmas carols!"

The same goes for nursery rhymes. It's either a well kept secret conspiracy, or they were just all quitters.

 

[old_prof]

Carolers want to sing songs that everyone knows. That people expect carolers to sing. Songs your grandmother liked. They might have been new when your grandmother was a kid, but from your perspective they are now classics. In fifty years, I suspect it will still be 70 years ago. Although I can't think of anything from the 90's or 00's that's likely to catch on like that.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

In addition to what iwatchus said, it's also just not a style of music that's very popular currently. You can make songs that lend themselves well to people singing them together while going caroling or around the tree, you can make songs which work well singing to your children. You won't make a lot of money on it, however, and not a ton of people will listen to it. So not a lot are made, and the ones which are don't get the reach to become widely adopted.

 

[alohadave]

Carolers want to sing songs that everyone knows. That people expect carolers to sing. Songs your grandmother liked. They might have been new when your grandmother was a kid, but from your perspective they are now classics. In fifty years, I suspect it will still be 70 years ago. Although I can't think of anything from the 90's or 00's that's likely to catch on like that.

And those songs are vocal/choral and can be sung without instruments.

 

[Bamagan]

The way people 'consume' music has undergone a massive shift since the days when carolers were commonplace. The 'classics' were made at a time when there were only a handful of avenues to reach an audience, so the audience reached was relatively monolithic. In the last decade or two, the number of avenues has expanded, which has caused an explosion of artists now that many barriers to recording and distributing music have eroded.

That's good in some ways, but it has the effect of generally reducing the cultural impact of any particular artist or song. Even the biggest stars in music these days, with legions of devoted fans, never reach the ears of a substantial portion of the population. It's easy for us to find and concentrate only on the stuff we like the most, instead of listening to the radio for hours for the two or three tunes we love. Incidentally, that's something Weird Al mentioned in an interview, asking why he doesn't do many parodies anymore. His answer was more or less what I just said: there are far fewer songs these days that transcend the barriers we put up against styles or messages we don't like.

 

[KTrout23]

This video shows as entirely unavailable (not just can't be embedded) for me.

How about this one?