Today is the day after Thanksgiving here in the United States of America. You’re officially allowed to start listening to holiday music now. To get you started, I compiled a playlist of what I consider to be 100 of the best Christmas songs. Okay, 98 songs, a stand-up routine and a skit. It’s a mix of standards, versions of standards with which you may not be familiar, and obscure but delightful tunes.
Enjoy!
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Per the email I received from Spotify in mid-December, my most-streamed track of 2016 was Blue Oyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.” While that is a great song, I don’t recall playing it more than once or twice this year. However, I did spend hours listening to music by those taken from us by the Grim Reaper. I’m not the only person to feel incredible sadness at the seemingly non-stop loss of great talents, which started on New Year’s Day when we heard the report that Natalie Cole died the day before.
With this playlist I want to celebrate the contributions these folks made to our lives and our culture. If I missed someone, forgive me. There were a lot of folks to remember.
Before we get to the Spotify playlist, videos from two whose music is not on Spotify.
Thank you for enriching my life:
David Bowie
George Michael
Glenn Frey (of Eagles)
Gene Wilder
Leonard Cohen
Muhammad Ali (nee Cassius Clay)
Maurice White (of Earth, Wind and Fire)
Florence Henderson
Merle Haggard
Carrie Fisher (actress best known for Star Wars)
Debbie Reynolds
Paul Kantner (of Jefferson Airplane)
Signe Toly Anderson (of Jefferson Airplane)
Sir George Martin (record producer best known for his work with The Beatles)
Attrell “Prince Be” Cordes (of P.M. Dawn)
Garry Marshall (television/film director/producer/writer, creator of Happy Days)
Pete Burns (of Dead or Alive)
Billy Paul
Natalie Cole
Garry Shandling
Sharon Jones
Alan Vega (of Suicide)
Don Ciccone (of The Four Seasons)
Alan Rickman
Keith Emerson (of Emerson, Lake and Palmer)
Greg Lake (of Emerson, Lake and Palmer)
Steven Young (of M/A/R/R/S)
Joan Marie Johnson (of The Dixie Cups)
Malik “Phife Dawg” Taylor (of A Tribe Called Quest)
Prince Buster
Bernie Worrell (of Parliament)
Bobby Vee
Gary Paxton (of The Hollywood Argyles)
Rick Parfitt (of Status Quo)
Mack Rice (songwriter whose credits include “Respect Yourself”)
Milt Okun (record producer best known for his work with John Denver)
Marni Nixon (singer/actress best known for dubbing the singing voices of Natalie Wood in West Side Story and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady)
Rod Temperton (of Heatwave)
Leon Russell
John Chelew (record producer best known for his work with John Hiatt)
Lonnie Mack
Gogi Grant
Jim Lowe
Sonny James
Nicholas Caldwell (of The Whispers)
Kitty Kallen
Mose Allison
Black
Otis Clay
Bobby Hutcherson
Joe Dowell
Trisco Pearson (of Force MDs)
Gayle McCormick (of Smith)
Gary Loizzo (of American Breed)
Leon Haywood
Paul Upton (of The Spiral Starecase)
Carlo Mastrangelo (of The Belmonts)
Fred Tomlinson (co-writer of “Lumberjack Song”)
Steve Young
Alexis Arquette
Dan Hicks
John D. Loudermilk
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Christina Grimmie
Alan Thicke
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In this installment we get the first songs from two of the most important queer music acts, Pet Shop Boys and Erasure. We also debut Jimmy Somerville’s post-Bronski Beat band, The Communards.
This playlist consists of twenty songs, most performed by artists who fall somewhere under the LGBTQ umbrella.
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Early in the career of the group Dead or Alive, UK music magazine Melody Maker described their lead singer Pete Burns as “a cross between Bette Midler and Jim Morrison.” Sure.
At the time Burns was sharing a home and a bed with his wife Lynne and his lover Steve. His marriage with Lynne dissolved in 2006, the year he announced his engagement to a man named Michael.
Today Burns celebrates his 57th birthday. Tunes du Jour kicks off its weekly dance party with Dead or Alive’s “Brand New Lover,” with lead vocals by the man Melody Maker called a “transvestite sex symbol.” Sure.
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July is National Cell Phone Courtesy Month. Seriously. I didn’t make that up.
The fact that we need a National Cell Phone Courtesy Month says a lot about our country. Cell phones are ubiquitous. People are self-centered sphincters. You need to be courteous for only one month per year.
We use cell phones to text people we don’t feel like talking to. We use them to show the world what food looks like. We use them to film police officers murdering unarmed black citizens. Sometimes we use them as phones. Naomi Campbell has been known to use hers as a weapon.
Here are some cell phone courtesy tips:
Don’t use your cell phone during business meetings! Those meetings are set by executives who need their egos stroked by having people gather in a room to hear them bloviate and accomplish nothing. How can they adequately waste your time if you’re getting things done on your cell phone? That’s cheating. Put the phone away, unless you’re one of the senior execs who need the ego stroking. Then by all means check your phone while people sit in the conference room waiting for the meeting to be over. They already think you’re rude, so why not take that as far as you can? Sphincter!
Reply to your text messages promptly! Don’t keep someone in suspense who needs to know what you think of their alleged witticism. Send an emoji. They’ll probably then respond with a different emoji, meaning you’ll have to answer that as well. Next thing you know, the whole day is shot, you got nothing done, but the insecure person who initiated the text conversation feels a little bit better about themselves, so it’s all worth it. If you’re at a meeting when a text message comes in, don’t respond right away! Wait until the egomaniacal sphincter who called the meeting isn’t looking at you, which will be most of the meeting as his only concern is the sound of his own voice. Hold your phone under the table and reply. That works every time.
Don’t use your phone while on a date! That is so rude! Someone is taking the time to get to know you and try to enjoy a meal with you. Not paying attention to them demonstrates your complete lack of manners. There are exceptions to this rule. If the person bores you to tears, text your best friend and tell him to call you with a made-up emergency. If your best friend doesn’t reply promptly (rude!) and your date is droning on and on about how “all lives matter” or how great the band Chicago is, break the monotony of his or her blather by photographing your food and showing the pic to your date. He or she will be astonished at how much the food in the photo looks like the food on the table in front of him or her, and for a moment, will cease his or her otherwise endless babble. If that doesn’t work, just run out of the restaurant. What do you care? You have no intention of seeing him/her again anyway. Don’t forget to block them on your phone so they can’t text or call you again.
Set your phone to silent or vibrate while in a movie theater, a Broadway show, or a house of worship on your wedding day. Do the same thing if you die. It’s so awkward to be at a funeral and hear “Thong Song” emanate from the deceased. Mourners won’t know if it’s okay to laugh, and that song will be stuck in everyone’s head for the rest of the day, just like it will be stuck in yours for the next few hours. That thong-th-thong-thong-thong.
Don’t be staring at your cellular device while walking on a crowded sidewalk or while in a shopping mall with a large fountain. I take that back. Stare at it in the mall. I can never get enough of that video of that woman who fell into the mall fountain while staring at her device. Remember her? Then she sued the mall! LOL! If you see someone at the mall who is so busy staring at their device that they’re about to fall into the fountain, PLEASE, take out your phone and film it! Post it on the Internet. Humiliate them so they learn proper cell phone etiquette, but only do so if it is July.
I hope these tips help you avoid being a complete sphincter while out in public.
Friday is dance day at Tunes du Jour. Our weekly dance party kicks off with the Lady Gaga/Beyoncé collaboration, “Telephone.”
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Tears for Fears, the duo consisting of Roland Orzabel and Curt Smith, released their debut album, The Hurting, in 1983. In their native England the album spawned three top five singles, “Mad World,” “Change” and “Pale Shelter.” In the US, their most successful single, “Change,” peaked at #73 on the Billboard Hot 100.
When it came time to do their second album, they wanted to break the US market. Needing one more song to round out the record, the duo’s producer, Chris Hughes, suggested Orzabel flesh out a song sketch he brought into the studio. Orzabel did so, and while he didn’t think much of the finished piece, Smith and Hughes thought this is the song that would change their fortunes stateside.
This song, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” was the first single released in the US from Songs from the Big Chair. It went to #1. The song that was the album’s first single in much of the world, “Shout,” was the second US single from the album, and the duo’s second #1.
Today, Curt Smith of Tears for Fears turns 55 years old. Tunes du Jour’s weekly dance party kicks off with a song on which Smith sings lead, Tears for Fears’ #1 breakthrough hit “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”
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They came to dance. They came to celebrate. They came to enjoy life. They came to love.
They went to a place where they would feel comfortable. They went to a place where they would feel safe and supported. They went to a place where they could be themselves. They went to a place where they could be as gay as they truly are and wanted to be. They went to a place where they could escape the shitty world outside, with shitty jobs and shitty people with shitty views of those who are different than they are.
It was a Saturday night, and they needed to dance.
Children didn’t stop going to school, African Americans didn’t stop going to church, and we won’t stop going to clubs.
We will mourn. We will cry. We will persevere. We will win.
It’s Friday, and we need to dance. Don’t think you can stop us. Our Pulse is strong.
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During the 1980s, Siouxsie and the Banshees, led by Susan “Siouxsie” Ballion, had 15 top 40 singles in the UK, where they formed. In the US, they had 15 fewer hits.
That changed in 1991, thanks to a song about a popular Hollywood actress of the 1950s who died in a car accident in 1967.
Vera Palmer, under her screen name Jayne Mansfield, won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year in 1957, beating out Natalie Wood. That was the year she appeared in the film Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, based on the Broadway show in which she also starred. She also starred in the hit film The Girl Can’t Help It, which featured appearances from Little Richard, Fats Domino, The Platters, Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent.
Her career took a turn after these hits, perhaps due to a public backlash against her over-exposure, perhaps due to a decline in popularity of the “blonde bombshell” look, and/or perhaps due to her frequent pregnancies keeping her from accepting roles she was offered.
She did continue to work, however – in films, on television, on stage, and on records. Following a nightclub performance in Biloxi, Mississippi on June 28, 1967, Mansfield was en route to New Orleans where she was scheduled to be part of a radio show the following day. Her car collided with a tractor-trailer, and Mansfield, as well as her boyfriend and the car’s driver, were killed instantly.
The car accident is referenced in the fourth verse of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Kiss Them for Me,” named after Mansfield’s 1957 film in which she co-starred with Cary Grant.
“Kiss Them for Me” peaked at #23 on the Billboard Hot 100, nine positions higher than its UK peak. It also went to #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart and hit #8 on the Billboard Dance chart.
Today the woman born Susan Ballion turns 59 years old. Tunes du Jour’s weekly dance party kicks off with her ode to the late Jayne Mansfield.
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