Voice recording #208, Dec. 23.
The Animals, "We Gotta Get Out of This Place", '64 maybe. It's a good Animals song. Right after I heard this, I heard from Freddy Coleman on ESPN radio that Joe Cocker had died. Clearly a sad loss. Coleman mentioned how important Cocker was to British R&B music. 900.
?, "Young Love, and the year didn't show up on the display. I'm not sure who did this, but it sounded like a woman. Lesley Gore covered it in 1966, and Mary Hopkin in '69. The most famous version was Pat Boone's during the '50s, and even that was a cover. There's not much difference between that version and this one. The instrumentation was even thin. 4,400.
Peter and Gordon, "A World Without Love" from 1964. I remember this one because on my birthday there was a party for me with mostly basketball players and their girlfriends. One of my teammates, I think it was Paul Cogsdill, gave me the Peter and Gordon album, which might have been called "A World Without Love". I'm pretty sure it was their first album; they hadn't had many hits at the time. The album is pretty much Peter, Gordon, a guitar and drums. Very simple. It was a subset of the British invasion. 3,400.
Marvin Gaye, "Thinking About My Baby", 1969. Not one of his best. I'm thinking about two of my babies, M-Tex and Samantha, who are now in Paris and will be spending Christmas in Venice while I'm in Pittsburgh. 4,550.
The Doors, "I'm Going to Love You" from '68. One of the times I went to the Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame, there was a display about Jim Morrison. It detailed his upbringing and some of the problems that led to his early demise -- a theme of this day. The thing that stuck in my mind the most was seeing his Cub Scout uniform. His dad, Rear Admiral George Morrison was in charge of the U.S. carrier fleet in the Gulf of Tonkin. The display made it seem as if there was a Great Santini component to the parenting by Jim's dad, that he was hard on his children. So Jim seemed conflicted between his desire to be free and not repressed, and the kind of precision that went into his Cub Scout uniform. That conflict apparently wasn't played out before his death. I remember when I was in Cub Scouts, my mom was a pretty good seamstress; she did homemaker things very well. But on my sleeves -- and I didn't get a whole lot of arrows to add to my badges -- rather than having the badges separated precisely by a quarter of an inch or whatever the measurement was, and Morrison's sleeve was a picture of precision, one of mine would be tilted a little bit this way and another a little bit that way. It was not a neat row. I was in Boy Scouts just about long enough to get enough merit badges to get a sash to display them -- that was about it. You'd see some kids at summer camp with merit badges from their shoulder to their waist, but I got caught up in high school sports and other activities. So my sash had a few rows of badges up near my shoulder and the rest was blank. I do recommend the Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame. 2,900.
The Mindbenders, "A Groovy Kind of Love", I'd say early '60s or maybe as late as '66. They were no longer Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders. He had left the band in 1965. With him, the Mindbenders had better songs than this slow-paced, innocuous rock song. 4,650.
Sam and Dave, "I Thank You" from '68. Again, not their best. Some things in the song were mindful of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", but this song isn't as good as that either. 4,100.
Nancy Sinatra, "These Boots Are Made for Walking", maybe '64. This song changed a lot of people's perceptions. 1. Who knew Frank Sinatra had a hot daughter? 2. It made me look at women in boots in a different way. Some boots are good, and I'm sure Nancy helped other women think they'd look good in boots as well. This next part I direct at M-Tex, to say you don't really need a dozen pairs of boots. This was by far her biggest hit -- even bigger than the songs she did with her dad, who I understand was also a pretty good singer. 2,700.
The Drifters, "White Christmas". Picture The Drifters singing "Under the Boardwalk" or "Up on the Roof". Picture "White Christmas". And then picture something 180 degrees away from each of them, if that's possible. I guess you'd call this closer to "Green May Day". I might have given another song 4,999. But if I did, this song would probably lose the playoff for that position.
This is actually the Lou Christie Christmas Show, so perhaps we'll have "Two Faces Have I on New Year's Eve", and one of those would be shit-faced. I hope the others are better. I like Christmas songs, especially during the few days before and after the holiday (not in November or on Halloween), but really!
Beach Boys, "Little Saint Nick". My faith is restored. This one has staying power. It's very Beach Boys, playful and a counterpoint between the Beach Boy's almost falsetto and the bassish "Christmas comes this time each year." As they repeat that phrase, the pitch gets higher. 3,950.
The De Castro Sisters and Nick Martin, "Snowbound for Christmas", 1955. I think Nick Martin had the orchestra, because he certainly wasn't singing. This one sounds like a production number, so it might have come from some holiday movie. It had a big orchestra with lots of strings. I checked and the song doesn't seem to have been included in a movie. It is, however, the title song on an album of forgotten holiday tunes from the '50s and '60s that you can buy for 10.98 pounds from propermusic.com. 4,750.
Lou Christie, "Coldest Night of the Year". A woman was singing most of it, so possibly it was Louise Christie. 4,800.
Cyndi Lauper, "Feels Like Christmas". It sounds like Cyndi, but out of tune. The drumbeat sounds like the Continental Army marching from Lexington to Concord. It didn't feel much like Christmas to me. As much as I like Cyndi Lauper, 4,850.
Paul Anka, "It's Christmas Everywhere". It's not Christmas yet. It's barely Christmas Eve in Europe, and only what Diana would call Christmas Eve Eve here in the U.S. and Anka's Canada. This song is more like Christmas on tranquilizers. It doesn't follow any of the typical formulas. It's not religious. It isn't warm and fuzzy. It isn't a novelty recording. It's just a song. 4,900.
Lou Christie, "Christmas in NY" on the display, but the words are "Christmas in New York", so I'm guessing that's the actual title. It has some Lou Christie touches with the falsetto and chimes, but it's nothing special for a holiday song. 4,850, possibly a bit more.
Brian Wilson, "What I Really Want for Christmas". This was a bit heavy. Apparently what he really wanted was peace, which is cool. But he would have been better in following the formula of "Little Saint Nick", so listeners could say, "Hey! A Beach Boys song!" I just heard more of the song on the recording, and thought the people who write songs like this probably failed at writing some of the weak new hymns you could hear in "modern" churches. 4,900.
Carnie and Wendy Wilson, "Hey Santa" from 1993. I would bet that more Christmas songs are about Santa than anyone else, even Jesus. But I guess that makes sense. It is Santa's birthday on December 25th, right? I didn't remember Wendy, but I checked and found that she was the other Wilson sister in Wilson Phillips with Carnie and Chynna Phillips. The sisters were Brian Wilson's daughters -- the Beach Boy, not the former Giants and Dodgers pitcher. I had low expectations for this song, so it's not as disappointing as Brian Wilson's. 4,850.
Next, following my Christmas trip to Pittsburgh, is voice recording #217 from Dec. 29.
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