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If I’m going to have sugar, make it sugar like Air’s Ce Matin-La off of the Moon Safari album. French horn, tremulous strings and a wah-wah pedal late in the game. iTunes has just played it followed by some Yma Sumac.

It’s beautiful outside, but I haven’t been outside in it. After last week’s excursions, I’ve taken the opportunity for anti-sociality. Solitude that is. What do I do with my days?

Through the window I see the leaves coming onto the trees. Just barely in the case of those trees on my block, but through their branches I see one that is fully flowered, and I realize that it’s a tree on the next block over that I pass every day when I walk Lehigh.

New York is responding to the increasing warmth by dumping more people out on to the streets. SO while feel like going for a walk, I feel a little iffy about encountering the crowds. Still it’s important to get out and see some things. And Lehigh could probably do with some more outdoor time.

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…to learn of the death of Lux Interior, lead singer of the Cramps.

Surfing Bird b/w The Way I Walk was the second punk single I ever bought. I still play “Goo Goo Muck” almost every time I DJ.

Goodnight, sweet Gorehound.

Yes, we’re hating all xmas music right now but this season I’ve fixated on one hideous song in particular to rant about: Sir Paul McCartney’s “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time”. Since contemporary stations can’t wait around for James Ingram to cover the entire Andy Williams songbook, they play crap like this. Why do I hate it? Flabby trotting melody, lyrics that recreate someone looking around the room and finding nothing remarkable in the act, gratuitous-counterpoint-singing children’s chorus. Beneath it all is my sneaking suspicion that Sir Paul only wrote it because he couldn’t stand that John Lennon’s Xmas song grows more popular every year, even with an overwrought cover by Melissa Etheridge.

I wanted to list my favorite xmas songs here but my mind is so befuddled that I can’t even remember them. Hmmm – “Mambo Santa Mambo” “Holly Jolly Xmas” (which I used to freak out my ex with by chasing him around the apartment and singing holly jolly holly jolly over and over again) National Lampoon’s “Kung Fu Christmas” “Good King Wenceslaus” and there are another couple in there some where.

Ah! on reflection I’ve figured it out – my fave is “Have yourself a merry little Christmas” for it’s melancholic undercurrents and time skipping lyric.

Another Seasonal Musing – Ask people what is the most popular Xmas carol and most folks will say “Jingle Bells”. But the lyrics never…mention….Xmas…at…all! OOOOOOooooooo weird eh?

(Ok I’ll admit it, I’m bored and resentful here at work)

Suppose you want to start a band right now. My suggestion is that you go and THROW OUT EVERY LP AND CD AND MP3 YOU OWN. Do you like a particular song? Recreate it from memory. I’m saying this because of the god-awful music videos used as bumpers on theN, and all nickelodeon related channels. All of it is a hideous goulash of sounds swirled together for “mouth feel” like mcnuggets. All of coming from the fact that folks are in the habit of recreating records and indexing their sounds via their music collections. Better everyone should have to go back to transmitting orally.
What else is there to crab about? I bought a hideously overstyled corkscrew today at Bed Bath and Beyond. Buffaloed by faux functionality. And I lost out on an Nancy daily I was bidding on. Out sniped.