Merry Christmas

Growing up there were two television shows that would be watched in our house that would tell me Christmas was right around the corner. One was televised on Christmas Eve itself. This was the annual broadcast of the 1951 version of "A Christmas Carol" more correctly titled Scrooge); the black and white classic which starred Alastair Sim as the quintessential Ebenezer Scrooge. Each and every Scrooge that has come along since owes, at the very least, a tip of the hat to this 1951 cinematic masterpiece.

Christmas still isn't Christmas without a viewing of that movie. I must have watched it a hundred times or more in my lifetime and I still tear up at Scrooge's redemption. I know for a lot of people Christmas is "It's A Wonderfull Life" and, having finally seen it for the first time a few years back, I can fully understand why. It is a wonderfull movie.

But for my money nothing can hold a candle to "Scrooge". Check it out on YouTube in nine parts. If you have never seen it, then do yourself a favour; you really, REALLY need to watch this movie. As Bill Murray

noted in the excellent parody Scrooged "You're life might well depend upon it.

 

Here then, on the ubiquitous youtube, is that great Christmas classic.

Scrooge - Part 1 
Scrooge - Part 2   
Scrooge - Part 3

Scrooge - Part 4   
Scrooge - Part 5   
Scrooge - Part 6

Scrooge - Part 7   
Scrooge - Part 8   
Scrooge - Part 9

The second television event which always spelt Christmas for me was, and still is A Charlie Brown Christmas. Is there any other special out there that so keenly captures the joy; the absolute beauty of a child discovering that there is more to Christmas than initially meets the eye. If there is I would sorely like to see it.

A Charlie Brown Christmas - Part 1
A Charlie Brown Christmas - Part 2     

In the end though, for me, Christmas has always meant getting together with my Aunt Martha, Uncle Bruce and my three cousins, Bryan, Andrew and Katherine. My folks and I would come into Scarborough for Christmas Day dinner and they would go to my folks place for New Years Day dinner. The following year, the roles would be reversed. This tradition continued for many, many years; eventually incorporating Andrew's wife Sheley, Kath's husband Andy and their kids and my spouse Rhonda. The table got pretty darned crowded. Bryan, his spouse Judy and their kids live in Calgary so their appearances have been somewhat limited, although they are never far from mind and always in our hearts.

Contrary to popular belief I do like Christmas carols; I do. It's just that my tolerance for the genre was supremely challenged when I worked retail and would start listening to festive tunes somewhere around the first week of November. By the time Christmas rolled around I had little time for Christmas tunes. No "Bah Humbug!" when I left work. More like, thank goodness I can listen to whatever it is that I want to now. Sometimes that actually does include Christmas music. I've just never been able to see the logic in forgoing any other kind of music during the Christmas season.

What would my favourite Christmas carol be? "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing"; more of a Christmas Hymn, I know. It’s my favourite; I’m sure, in no small part to the fact, at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas, the Peanuts gang all gather round Charlie Brown's beautiful tree and sang that hymn as the credits rolled. Then again, maybe it’s because it was the recessional hymn at our Carol Service on Christmas Eve while I was growing up. Either way, it is a very powerful song which can still bring a tear to my eye on that oh so Holy Eve. I remember some Christmas Eve's leaving church in the cold hours after midnight with a fresh layer of snow upon the ground when none had been present as we first entered a couple of hours earlier.

Just as Charlie Brown did in his special, I have felt for years that Christmas has lost its way somewhere. People seem far more concerned about buying a gift which will top the gift their friend might buy for them; Christmas lists get longer and longer; people's tempers get shorter and shorter. Isn't this supposed to be the time of year when we all embrace the phrase "Peace on earth, good will toward men" even if for only a little while?

If there has ever been a time of year to be with those you love, without condition, without reservation, then this must surely be it. Truth be told, the week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day must surely be a time of sublime reflection and thankfulness; for all that we have; for all of our blessings, regardless of how copious or limited those blessings may or may not be; but mostly we must be thankful for those whom we love and those who love us; friends, family, acquaintances. Need not matter. To say that kind of appreciation and reflection should actually exist on a year round basis is a gross understatement. Yet, now is the time, if at no other time during the year. Count your blessings; smile at someone who has never smiled at you. Be the type of person that you have always wished you could be.

And so I leave you now saying to you and yours, have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year,

The Aardvark

The Change Rock The Edge 102.1

On Saturday, January 23rd The Change played The Edge 102.1 streetfront studio's Steamwhistle Indie Club ; a small venue to be sure; much better suited to a summertime gig, what with it's ceiling to floor pane glass windows across the vast majority of the studios considerable street front. Yet once [check] struck the first chord of [check] the minus [check] tempertature just vanished. This was only my second time seeing the band in an electric setting, only serving to reinforce my first impression of them electric a mere mater of months before at [check].

Now, when you reach my advanced years [49 if you must know] odds are you have already gone through any number of music appreciation stages. This tends to follow a fairly set progression:

1) Oh My Freaking God, I've Never, Ever Heard Anything Like That Before
2) Oh My Freaking God, Nothing Else Compares To (artist refernced in #1, henceforth referred to as your first musical love)
3) Oh My Freaking God, Who The Hell inspired (your first musical love)
4) Oh My Freaking God, Why Have I Never Heard This Other Band Beofre
5) Oh My Freaking God, Why Did I Waste So Much Time Focusing On (your first musical love)
6) Oh My Freaking God... I Love Music

It's a bloody shame then considering the fact that a staggering number of people never, EVER, get past number 2 just previously referenced somewhere up there previously. Which is more than just a little more tragic than your run of the mill tragedies. Kind of reeks of 70 year olds lurking around wearing tie dye shirts and faded levi's expounding upon why nothing worth while ever happened in  music once Dylan went electric back in 1965 at the Newport Jazz Festival. I would rather die than become one of THOSE. When you have spent a lifetime in love with music and have progressed beyond number 2, beyond number 4, perchance to progress, dare i say it, beyond number 5 and light upon number 6; that, for me, has always been the ultimate.

Falling in love with a song, an album, an artist is all about growing up musically. Fixating upon that song, that album, that artist for a lifetime is a crime and a tragedy rolled up into one.

So you might ask, what the does that have to do with The Change?

Well, if you are a number 2, then probably not much. If you are a number 4, 5 or, dare I say it, 6, then quite a lot I think.

There comes a point in every music affecianado's life when you must sit back and take stock of the music you love; why am I just not drawn to anything recorded past 1976, 1977, 1978 (insert your appropriate year here); is there something wrong with me? The long answer is, no, there isn't anything wrong with you. It just so happens the short answer is the exact same. When someone spends their entire life in love with a certain musical style and they awake one day to realize all the music they really, truely love is at least 10 years old; well, it can be pretty traumatic.

I have always tried to keep an open mind as well as an open ear to new artists, new bands, new songs, new CD's; but it hasn't always been easy. I'll tell you right here and now that Rap has, by and large, never done it for me. I understand the genre; I understand the origins, the wheres and the why fores. It has just never spoken to me on a viseral level. Now I did say "by and large"; there have been a few Rap artists that I have come to appreciate, largely because they wore their musical roots on their sleeve. Beat poetry of the late 50's early 60's, R&B from the same era; that, to me, is the paternaty of Rap music.

The whole American Idol mentality just leaves me cold. While there have surely been talented singers on the show they are being invested with some kind of musical legitamacy just by the fact they have, quite literally, won a game show. A game show more talent based than many of them to be sure but, what the fuck?

There are Indie radio stations bringing the cutting edge of new music, with all of it's teen angst revamped for the current generation; but I've lived through the uber raw reality of that years ago and come out alive on the otherside. Which kind of belies the thoughts and emotions expressed in that music. I lived it; I felt it with all of my being; yet I came out relatively unscathed on the otherside. So, while I can appreciate the words, while the music can take my soul on a magic carpet ride, I just can't loose myself in the message that music brings anymore.

Which is why happening across a band like the Change can have such a profound effect upon you. You, of course, being me.

If you are like me, how many times have your sat back and thought, what would it have been like to have been there when Elton John played that fatefull series of shows starting off the night of August 25, 1970 at the legendary Troubador Club in LA; when The Beatles rocked The Star Club in Hamburg, Germany or The Cavern Club in Liverpool in the early 60's; to have been there during The Rolling Stones eight month residency as house band at The Crawdaddy Club in 1963; at one of the mighty Led Zeppelin's early stints at LA's Filmore West or Boston's famed Tea Pary.

Growing up when I did the answer would be countless times. Then, out of the blue and quite accidently comes a fledgling group. A group which, as I have mentioned before, wears it's influences on their sleeve without being derivative; a group which takes old themes of love, angst and loss and brings them alive in the modern era; a group which, like most truely great groups, resists the temptation of lacing their set with "covers"; eschewing them for all original compositions.

Who out there has seen the movie "Almost Famous"? Anyone? Anyone? Beuller?...

Before each and every gig they play The Change go into a huddle onstage; what is said or discussed amongst them I can only speculate. In my minds eye I hear the fictional band Stillwater from Almost Famous going into their huddle and chanting

This band knows where they came from; this band seems to know where it is that they could potentially go.

You're right, how can anyone ever know that. Truth is, they just fucking rocked. They still do.