May the merry bells keep ringing, happy holidays to you.

Yes, I realize that it is August and my blog title is lyrics from a holiday song.

What can I say? I am in the mood.

September is only a few days away, which means that October and "holiday season" are only 5 weeks away.

October-December is my favorite time of year. I love Halloween. Thanksgiving is usually pretty good and of course there is the yuletide season.

When I was in grad school (the first time) I wrote a thesis on secular Christmas music. A few years ago I put together a podcast of Christmas tunes and put on a Christmas show. I am not sure what I want to do this year, but I have to think of something.

I was inspired today, because I came across "Halloween Nuggets." It is a box set of Halloween ditties from the 1950s and 1960s. The art on the cover is very pulp fiction and the tunes are "garage" in their composition structure and sound. Though I don't really have the desire to compose Halloween tunes, I am interested in their history. Much like the Christmas tunes I wrote about in my thesis, many came out of the area of novelty songs (1910s-1930s), but failed in that they are not revered every year, nor did it spawn a gold rush of Christmas hits in the 1940s through the early years of rock and roll.  Christmas' desire for the sublime of yesteryear was manufactured by the Knickerbockers in 1800s New York area to curb wassailing and make the holiday family friendly. 

With this cleansing of the holiday, nostalgia was built into the mystic of Santa and all things NOT Jesus related and our modern day secular Christmas started to take shape. By World War I, Christmas was becoming an industry and by the end of World War II, Christmas was the United States' holiday.

Today Christmas is a powerhouse. 

I mean Hallmark has like 200 movies in the can about the holiday.

They are all great too. Women in relationship with a dud, either happens upon a mysterious stranger (with a heart of gold), or rekindles with an old flame. This takes place where it snows at Christmas time and her parents always have some kind of connection to the stranger or old flame. In one movie I saw the loner "cowboy" guy is really into whittling or putting those ships in the bottles just like the woman's dad and they bond. Ccccraaappp. 

I watch these movies every year.

And don't even get me started on Christmas traditions.

Anyway, what I was actually going to write about is that Halloween might be coming into its own as a holiday with the nostalgia train. Except unlike Christmas, it paid its dues as a holiday and now is a valid mainstay, which people/families have their own traditions associated with the ghoulish season.

Halloween is a mish-mash of Celtic, All Soul’s Day, All Hallows Eve, and a few other days that center on the celebration of the dead. In the late 1800s, there was an effort to curb Halloween’s “trick or treating,” which was similar to wassailing at the time and make it more community friendly. The holiday went through an ebb and flow until the 1950s and the baby boom, where the holiday became a child focused holiday.

As a Gen X’er, I have a certain nostalgic ping in my heart for Halloween. Growing up with more autonomy then kids today, we trick or treated huge geographic parameters and used pillow cases to hold our loot. There was an excitement of being out at night, dressed up as someone (or thing) else, and going to strangers doors to receive a treat that can I cannot explain.

Later, as a punk rocker I enjoyed (still do) the ghoulish tunes of the Cramps, Alien Sex Fiend, Specimen, and other goth rockers who seemed to live in a loop of Halloween and had a macabre group think that was celebrated with not only images of the grotesque and German expressionist poetry and art, but also an appreciation of seeing beauty through a different lens.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the cutesy Halloween stuff too.

With my daughter now at an age where she will enjoy the candy part of Halloween, it pleases me that she is into picking out what she wants to be for the holiday.

Does it warm my heart that she wants to be Sally from “Nightmare Before Christmas?” Yes.

I hope that the music of Halloween will one day be recognized to its full potential.

Witch Girl by the Mystrys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPxGD1rfbxM&list=PLUSRfoOcUe4ZHBtPBMDyvhB1oa2xPy2nj

Graveyard by the Phantom Five

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifZjdqwIGTg&list=PLUSRfoOcUe4ZHBtPBMDyvhB1oa2xPy2nj&index=5

Burn the Flames by Roky Erickson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkrorBRhmgE

Many miles away something crawls to the surface. Of a dark Scottish loch.

I am all over the place today. 

Last night I saw one of my favorite musicians tear it up at the local metal watering hole in downtown Oakland. 

First off, I had no idea that metal was still a thing.  Y'know, like new bands doing it. 

Their songs reminded me of when Motley Crue shouted at the devil, and Bruce Dickenson ran toward the hills. Second, it was nice to hug my sweaty drummer friend.

I listened to our old band this morning and it was nice to hear the ebb and flow we created sooooo many years ago. 

I admit it, drummers are my favorite people. A little crazy, they feel the need to hit objects, and keep time. Plus, they get me. As a bass player, jamming with a good drummer is like a fine wine, good sex, and 600 thread count Egyptian sheets.

With that being said drummers also don’t listen, act like fussy toddlers, and speed up and slow down depending on how much coffee and/or alcohol they have consumed.

It is complicated.

Presumably one of the best rock drummers of all time Keith Moon was consistently the latter description and freaking amazing. But if you ask me (a bass player) it is because John Entwistle knew how to communicate with Moon through tones and sonic movement.

This leads me to communicating through music.

Don Joyce, of the band Negativland and “Over the Edge” radio died last week. This was an individual whose deliberate audio strokes created unique soundscapes filled with humor, social commentary, and general weirdness. One of my two favorite memories of listening to OTE was driving down the I-5 on the way to Vegas. The show was audio anarchy about a guy and his chicken ranch. If I recall there were a lot of samples of televangelists too. We were lucky enough to catch the show on three different public radio stations on the way down and it went on for hours.  

I realize that to enjoy Negativland and a program like “Over the Edge,” one must have a certain kind of “musical palate,” but the art of his noise should be celebrated, because he was a pioneer and sonic artist.

Take it back to the bridge.

I have played with many, many guitar players and I am currently involved with one who shares much of the same musical tastes as me. I know that doesn't sound so strange, but he is younger than me and his connection to the music of my youth is from a different perspective that I find refreshing (and a bit validating). 

It has been years and years since I have listened to so much of the same music as my guitar player. I mean previous guitar players and I have shared mutual influences, styles, and visions. This is more about what I listen to when I am plugging away at work with a Pandora station playing in the background, or music I choose when cleaning the house. It is refreshing. I once played with a guitar player who thought a Led Zeppelin song was the Who. Or vise-versa, I have blocked it out.

It has also been years since I have written music with any regard to what the guitar player might come up with. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate guitar players (I am married to one), they just play too loud in the practice space and don’t listen to the rhythm section is all.

I kid. I kid. Guitar players are necessary, most of the time.

 Below is a link to a nice article about Don Joyce.

http://blog.sfgate.com/loaded/2015/07/23/don-joyce-radio-maverick-and-member-of-negativland-dies-at-71/