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About This Author
Well, hello. I’m still testing this.
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Music Notes
A blog, generally about music, usually for projects hosted by Jeff  . I may also write about the 48-Hour Media Prompt Challenge if I don't feel like writing a story or poem inspired by the given song. Other bits of poetry or different topics of discussion might end up here as well.
December 25, 2024 at 3:19pm December 25, 2024 at 3:19pm
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My sixth track for "Invalid Item"  is an instrumental rendition of the Christmas piece Little Drummer Boy by Simply Three.
Ouch. That opening bass beat is almost too much. As I said in the last post, I haven't had a chance to hear my Xmas collection in high quality audio until now. This is another track from S3's Lux album, which means the edginess is played up… which basically means they cranked up the bass notes.
Despite the whopper drums, which after all is a basic element of a song called "Little Drummer Boy," I still like it. In large part I like it because it has no vocals. Last year I tried listening to For King and Country singing Little Drummer Boy, and I found it so annoying I couldn't bear to finish it. Which is a shame, because apparently they're quite proud of their rendition of it and use it as their Christmas album title.
Lyrically speaking, when I first discovered the song years ago, I was puzzled by the anachronistic nature of the story and the fact that it's spiritual yet retro, from the same era as such tacky songs as "Let It Snow" or "Baby It's Cold Outside." I wondered why it's admired by Christians on the same level as the "genuine" Christmas carols of centuries past.
Finding the S3 instrumental version taught me to appreciate it for the melody, and this year as I've encountered it in public I can't help appreciating the spirit of the story it tells. (Though I wonder if a newborn baby would really smile at the sound of an army drum…) In fact, I thought the version performed by The Jackson Five was actually pretty good, "rum-pa-pum-pum's" and all. Perhaps I'll add that to my playlist before the year is out so I can finally sit down and listen to the lyrics.
Words: 316.
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December 25, 2024 at 7:40am December 25, 2024 at 7:40am
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My fifth track for "Invalid Item" is an amusing one. I first discovered Snoopy's Christmas by The Royal Guardsmen way back in 2017 during my first year of taking music especially seriously. We were staying in South Carolina over the holidays, and one particular radio station played it frequently, and it captured my fancy immediately.
I thought it was the cutest thing all around: the "moment of mercy" storyline, the idea of singing about Snoopy—one of my favorite characters!—and the hook of the bells ringing through the land. When I mentioned it to Mom, she'd never heard of it. She played me The Royal Guardsmen's "original" Snoopy song, which dismayed me because of the exaggerated bloodshed and the merely superficial similarity to the comic strip. I couldn't imagine what Mom thought was so interesting about it. Obviously, I'd much rather hear the Christmas edition.
I'm sitting down on Christmas Eve, playing these songs as I write about them. This is the first time I've listened to Snoopy's Christmas with my "high quality" Bluetooth earbuds I bought for $5 at Dollar Tree this summer. I'm delighted by the binaural sound effects and the clarity of everything, bombs and all  Audio device quality definitely makes a difference. It doesn't cost much to get it surprisingly good these days.
The concept here is a classic trope, and one I may use someday in my writing. And with that, I present you a wartime treat.
Words: 248.
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December 25, 2024 at 5:52am December 25, 2024 at 5:52am
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My fourth track is a Christmas favorite from a rare gem of an album, Midnight Clear by Andrew Dale and David Chafe. I'm choosing the title track to introduce them to you, as it was the first one I found from them.
I believe it was on BBN, Bible Broadcasting Network, where Mom and I heard this version one evening a couple years ago. We don't usually listen to that radio station, because they play a lot of cringy baritones and exaggerated pipe organs from a century ago. This time, though, Mom liked the singer's voice and the simple, muted production, even though she doesn't usually care for pianos. I Shazamed it, tracked down the album, and added the whole thing to my YouTube account to save it because I keep forgetting their names (in my offline playlist, I have them down simply as "Andrew and David"...)
The duo is Canadian; they came together in 2007 solely for this special holiday album and are not affiliated with a band, being more of the classical type of artists. Andrew does the vocals and David plays the piano throughout, and that is all Midnight Clear has in the way of production.
This simplicity allows the depth and sincerity of Andrew's voice to shine through. I'm happy to have this on my playlist at last, because it's a song you don't hear often in public. As a kid the lyrics appealed so much to me, I memorized them straight off of that booklet of sheet music I mentioned in the previous post. Which means it's special for me to hear it now as it's supposed to sound rather than how I always had the words laid out in my head. The third verse is somber, different from what I knew as a kid; you can see all the verses on Wikipedia here.
And now, enjoy a true Christmas classic 
Words: 317.
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December 24, 2024 at 6:27pm December 24, 2024 at 6:27pm
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Track Three for "Invalid Item"
I've always liked Josh Turner's distinctive deep voice, and in fact I featured his Will You Go With Me in my February 2024 "Invalid Item" blog posts.
It was last year, while thinking about Xmas songs and how to build my offline playlist, when I suddenly imagined Josh's voice in my head, singing The First Noel. And I was like "ooh, that sounds perfect!" And went to check if he really did sing it. He did, and it's just the way I expected it would sound. He treats it with the respect it's due (unlike his treatment of Joy to the World… see a screenshot of my personal music journal below.)
I'm kind of fussy about songs, and oftentimes his discography is either too cheesy and secular for me, or else it's old-fashioned gospel music which I don't really have a connection to. (Long Black Train is a favorite, but that's another story…)
I've always been familiar with The First Noel; I remember as a kid I had a little booklet of Christmas carol sheet music from the local newspaper, and I would examine all the songs and see which of them I thought were up to my poetic standards. Since we didn't actually listen to much Christmas music, I quite literally had no clue as to melody and went solely based on the lyrics, which resulted in some peculiarities as I memorized lyrics which turned out to sound entirely different from how I thought. Long story…
These days, The First Noel is a song I look forward to by any artist on public airwaves. This particular version is the one I have in my playlist, alongside the Simply Three instrumental.
Words: 294.
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December 24, 2024 at 7:58am December 24, 2024 at 7:58am
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We Three Kings is one Christmas song I've been familiar with from a child. My mom always liked it and had a couple of renditions she played which I can no longer remember the artists.
I discovered Simply Three in 2018 when I listened to their famous cover of Avicii's Wake Me Up. They're a group of three string musicians: a violinist, a cellist and a bassist. (Not a bass guitar, rather a gigantic cello.) They do classical instrumental covers of pop songs and also compose their own works. Currently one member quit, so now they're Simply Two…
S3 released a Christmas album in 2021 entitled Lux, an adventurous and even edgy exploration and reinterpretation of classic carols. Their rendition of We Three Kings is sweeping and dramatic. When I listen to it I picture the three kings plodding across the desert sands, braving fierce winds and unknown dangers, until they stand at the top of a rise and see Jerusalem spread… no, that doesn't make sense because Jerusalem is on a mountain  At any rate, it sounds like an epic fantasy 
I like how their version goes off on its own, so to speak, striking a unique melodic path rather than treading the same time-honored route which would be assumed from standard sheet music, if that makes any sense. It's not a simple karaoke, but a complete reimagining.
Words: 233.
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December 24, 2024 at 7:38am December 24, 2024 at 7:38am
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My first track chosen for Jeff's "Invalid Item" is Good King Wenceslas , by Loreena McKennit.
This is beyond a doubt my favorite Christmas carol of all time. The uplifting story of a charitable king and his humble page who was granted a miracle so he could help carry out a good deed, combined with the wonderful melody, is really something special. This particular version captures the essence of what makes it so magical, with the lady's harmonious voice and a blending of strings, drums and bells which lend a medieval vibe.
Even the cover art for her album is beautiful, showing a winter forest with animals gathered around.
I have at least two stories behind this song. The first is how I discovered it at all. I noticed it years ago playing in a clothing store I shop at regularly. But whenever I heard it I didn't have my phone at the ready to capture a Shazam (in those days, I used Google Sound Search…) to be honest, I had a phone, but it wasn't online, and that particular clothing store never had WiFi. Long story… not only could I never get a Sound Search on it, but I could never understand any of the words to be able to look it up. Having no chorus, it didn't have a lyrical "hook" to grab onto. But I knew that was an extremely appealing classic melody I wanted to listen to better.
So one day it played and I did something different: I recorded it. My recording was brief and muffled and indistinct, but I was determined to find that song. I went online and looked for a place where I could upload an audio file for identification. No automated software could recognize my sample (one site suggested weird Russian things…)
Finally I found a French site called WatZatSong, where they crowdsource from a global community of music lovers to find and label song samples. From there it didn't take more than a couple days before someone told me it was Loreena McKennit's Good King Wenceslas.
The next story is from 2020, when I suggested this specific track to my boss during the holiday season. I thought I'd like to hear it on his super duper sound system which he enjoyed using while we worked. Imagine my embarrassment when instead of the elegant, classy Loreena McKennit version, he blasted out some beery-voiced Irish bar doggerel recording of Good King Wenceslas! Turns out her version wasn't available on Spotify, and he didn't have the sense to pull it up on YouTube instead. It's the kind of thing that looking back on it is funny, but at the time I was getting close to a nervous breakdown from overwork and, in my tunnel vision, thought it was the worst thing that could've possibly happened. Ugh.
Anyway, enjoy. This is my favorite rendition of it for good reason, trust me. I should perhaps take some time to explore her music… which reminds me, I did listen to one other track she made, but that's quite another story.
Words: 521.
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© Copyright 2024 Amethyst Snow Angel (UN: greenwillow at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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