Tag Archives: paul mccartney

Holiday Horrors: “Wonderful Christmastime”

For other Holiday Horrors posts, click here.

I like Paul McCartney a lot. He’s my favorite Beatle. I think he gets a bad rap merely for outliving John Lennon (who drives me up the wall, as we shall get into in a future post), but I think his solo stuff is much, much better than John’s (if you’re willing to ignore some of Paul’s most glaring clunkers, which I admit is hard to do at times). He’s still out there doing it, and whatever criticisms you can make of his newer material, you can’t say
he’s coasting and putting out lazy retreads.

Notwithstanding George Harrison picking up the sitar and Lennon enabling Yoko’s screeching, Paul has always been the most musically adventurous of the Fab Four. Sometimes musical adventurousness leads to brilliance like side 2 of Abbey Road. But sometimes it leads to early adoption of questionable new technology, as Sir Paul did in his 1979 holiday tune “Wonderful Christmas Time”. Back then, polyphonic synthesizers were in their infancy, and Macca decided he needed to get in on the ground floor of the impending beep-boop revolution.

So he performed most of the song on a (then) brand new keyboard, the Prophet-5. In 1979, it must have seemed very futuristic, since it had a lot of knobs and dials and allowed you to play five whole notes at once. But then again, so did the original Battlestar Galactica and Space Invaders. With the Beatles, McCartney made timeless music, but this song is definitely the product of a very specific timeframe–and should have stayed there.

Unfortunately, this tune has received an undeserved revival in the past few years. I never heard this song as a kid, and then all of a sudden it reemerged from the depths of Moog-ville five or six years ago. I think much of its renewed appreciation is ironic, from a generation that thinks huge cell phones and dial-up modems are hysterical.

Truth be told, this song is not that bad at its core. From a pure musical standpoint, it’s not great, but it’s not terrible either. It’s cute, inoffensive, even fun at times. Unfortunately, to get to this core you have to wave through a chorus of toy laser guns. If Nerf made instruments, this is what they would sound like.

Some people dig vintage synthesizers. These people are insane. Maybe nostalgia gives you a soft spot for Atari, but deep in your heart you know it pales in comparison to the PS3. Preferring the synthesizers of 1979 to today’s models is like preferring an outhouse to indoor plumbing.

I hope someday McCartney decides to re-record this with a real band. Or at least with instruments that don’t sound like miked styrofoam.

REMINDER: Give ‘Til it Hurts So Good!

goodguys.jpgAs I alerted this readership last week, the WFMU Pledge Marathon is afoot. So pledge today!

Or pledge tonight, during The Best Show on WFMU. Ted Leo and Aimee Mann will be in studio, playing songs for pledges. Paul F. Tompkins and John Hodgman will be there to provide hilarity. And a pledge of $75 gets you a brand-new pledge-exclusive Scharpling & Wurster CD. Wow! A bargain at twice the price!

But not only that! That same $75 pledge earns you another pledge exclusive: an all-star tribute to the Paul & Linda McCartney album RAM, with songs covered by such esteemed artists as the two titans mentioned above, plus Death Cab for Cutie, Times New Viking, Portastatic, and many more.

What else do you get? Much much much much more! Actually, just a totebag, near as I can tell. But that can be much much much much more, depending on what you intend to use it for.

Actually, you get the satisfaction of knowing you helped one of the funniest radio programs of all time and one of the few radio stations in the NYC area worth listening to. So if you give no other monies to charity this year–and you know you won’t!–give to this!

Inappropriate Walk Up Music: 03.05.09

santo-shea.jpgFor the original Inappropriate Walk Up Music post, click here.

Every day until Opening Day, Scratchbomb presents three tunes that are completely, unequivocally inappropriate for use as major league walk-up music.

These are not necessarily bad songs–although that
certainly helps. They are merely songs that don’t evoke the fear and dread one traditionally associates with the walk-up song. In fact, they evoke the exact opposite.

Imagine yourself in the on-deck circle. Bottom of the 9th. Down by one. Man on second, two out. You hear the PA system blare, The centerfielder, number 20… The crowd roars at the sound of your name. And as you stroll to the batter’s box, you are greeted with the strains of one of these songs:

* “Closer to Fine,” Indigo Girls
Suggested by Cuzzin Loutie; we also would have accepted “Galileo”

* “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”: Paul McCartney
I like this song, but I’m amused by the thought of someone taking practice cuts during the jaunty Admiral Halsey section. Like, Albert Pujols staring down the pitcher while Sir Paul toots “He had to have a berth, or he couldn’t get to sleep…”

* Charlene, “Never Been to Me”
They used to reference this song all the time on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. In fact, I was unaware it was an actual song for the longest time; I just thought “I’ve been to paradise, but I’ve never been to me” was one of those touchy-feely Me Decade phrases. If you’ve never heard the song, it’s just as ridiculous as that line implies.