A POST YULE BLOG

PHIL SPECOR - A CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR YOU FROM ....

Christmas is over and done now. I hope everyone had a great time. I really enjoyed the holiday this year and even the usual nastiness of the season which is shopping did not seem to bring me down all that much. The reason for that is clearly the Phil Spector Christmas album. This is hands down my favorite Christmas record. I actually like most Christmas music (although I hate most anything done by modern artists and bands, but then that applies to almost everything for me, so I guess that ain't no big deal)but stuff by Mannheim Steamroller, symphony orchestras, church choirs and most any of the classic stuff I can get with and enjoy. The Phil Spector album however, is always heavy rotation during this time of year and I probably play it on a nearly daily basis. This thing is so ingrained into my vision of Christmas that I can't imagine not hearing this at the magic time of year.

You can hear a lot of this stuff on the radio around this time, especially Darlene Love's "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" seems to get a fair amount of radio airplay. This record is chock full of greatness. You get the Ronettes (possibly the greatest girl group ever) as well as the Crystals, Darlene Love, Bob B Soxx and the blue jeans. Of course all of this music gets the Phil Spector "wall of sound " production that you know and love. Also many members of the "Wrecking Crew" show up to lay down their chops (and you would expect nothing less) such as the legendary Hal Blaine and Jack Nitzsche as well, as well as Leon Russell and even Sonny Bono lends a hand on some percussion I believe.

I think the origanal record was relesed on the same day JFK was shot, therefor it didn't do as well at the time. It has been reissued a number of times since and is a true classic, not just of Christmas music, but pop music in general, although you won't hear it outside of the holiday parameters unless you spin your own copy in the month of July.

THE HAUNTED WORLD OF EL SUPERBEASTO

Rob Zombies foray into adult animation is something I've been waiting for with some level of anticipation. Rob Zombie's comic book that had the character El Superbeast in it was really good, and I was disappointed when I couldn't find it anymore. So when I heard he was going to do a movie with one of the characters I thought it might be pretty good. I'm not a fan of Rob's music, although he does seem to like a lot of the same bands I do. He also likes a lot of the movies that I like, so you would think that i might be able to get into the guys work, but not so much really. "House of a Thousand Corpses" was ok, I haven't seen "Devil's Rejects" or his remakes of the Halloween franchise. I mean why remake those first two movies? Oh well, that's freakin' Hollywood for ya.

Anyway, back to the movie at hand. The thing is I can't really give my take on this movie because I didn't watch the whole thing. I turned off a little way through it. It started out cool. Black and white, with a nice old school horror film vibe. As the film took off though I just couldn't get into it. It's not because it's a cartoon, I'm a cartoon fan, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Looney Tunes, The Flintstones, Popeye, and most all of the classics I enjoy to this day. I just found myself watching El Superbeasto and it seemed lik a waste of time that I wasn't willing to engage in. I will possibly give this movie another chance in the future, but then again maybe not. I don't know. Many people will probably get into this and more power to 'em. I will hope the Rob Zombie will bring back his SPOOKSHOW INTERNATIONAL comic instead.

Before I go, I would direct to check out The Hounblog. This is a great blog and I have to say that Gillian's Found Photo#32 says more about real, bonafide rock and roll than anything your gonna find in a years subscription of Rolling Stone.