Flipping on the car radio this time of year brings torrents of holiday music. Many of the local stations change to an all Christmas format from Thanksgiving to the end of the year and you are bombarded with holiday tunes from every era and every level of quality– good , bad and ugly. Most are happy, solemn, goofy or stickily sentimental. Or nostalgically melancholic.
Melancholy plays a big part in many Christmas songs, especially in those songs about being separated from loved ones at Christmas– I’ll Be Home For Christmas and White Christmas for examples.
But there are very few that fall into the category of a Fairy Tale of New York from the Irish band The Pogues. Released in 1987, it is about two Irish immigrants in NYC who look back on their stormy relationship and their dreams that have fallen due to drugs and drink. I would be optimistic in calling it melancholic or bittersweet.
But it is a beautiful song and something in it connects on a very human level even through the harshest imagery of the song. And it has connected in a big way through the years. It has been the most played Christmas song in the UK since the turn of this century and is consistently named the most popular holiday song in many polls throughout Britain and Ireland.
Below is the video from the 80’s for the song. A small bit of trivia: there is no NYPD Choir so the band recruited the NYPD Pipe and Dreams to appear in the video. They were asked to sing “Galway Bay” but since they didn’t know the song they sang the one song they all knew, especially in their reputedly drunken state at the filming– the theme from the Mickey Mouse Club. The film is slowed to better sync their lips to the intended song.
So, enjoy? Maybe this song does so well because it makes our own Christmas melancholy seem not all that bad…
Aww, change the channel. It’s a rerun…
I am going to change the channel now. It’s time for Sunday music and I’ve been singing this song all week. It’s the Tom Jones version of Elvis Presley Blues which was written and performed originally by Gillian Welch. I am a big fan of Gillian Welch and love her version but I really admire Tom Jones’ take on it as well. It’s pared down accompaniment really highlights the power of his voice which is still formidable even at age 75.
Another Thanksgiving and it might seem that it would be hard to find much to be thankful for in this turbulent world with its endless cornucopia of anger, hatred, intolerance, injustice and inequality set out for our consumption each day. With a diet of so many negatives it would be easy to forget that one simple thing that truly feeds and sustains us– gratitude.
I just love the paintings of Henri Rousseau. It’s not something that I can quantify in any way. It’s not just the harmony of color and form or the subject matter or even the way it is painted. There’s just such a great sense of rightness in the work, a great sense that this is the artists’s reality. It just reaches out and allows you to step easily into it while still maintaining a feeling of depth and emotion, a quality that many artists seek but few find.
You can’t think a story — you can’t think, “I shall do a story to improve mankind.” It’s nonsense! All the great stories, all the really worthwhile plays, are emotional experiences. If you have to ask yourself whether you love a girl, or whether you love a boy, forget it — you don’t! A story is the same way — you either feel a story and need to write it, or you’d better not write it.
Redtree Times 