Happy Merry Hanukkah Christmas Oi!

It seems as if everyone loves the music this time of year – Christmas music playing all the time in the stores as we shop. But – let’s look at some non-traditional holiday songs; the ones that do not typically get played in aisle five of  Duane Reade.

Christmas In Hollis – Come on, this is beautiful folks – this song is so wrong it’s right. Run DMC stereotypes galore, this song puts the hood into Christmas 

Christmas All Over Again – by Tom Petty. Again, an original Christmas tune – played in Petty-esque simplicity – 

Christmas Time – Smashing Pumpkins. Billy Corgan is Tim Burton’s dream soundtrack singer – he makes Christmas seem so Smashing Pumpkins in this song which is hauntingly beautiful. 

 
Oi to the World – No Doubt … a punk Christmas tune that only Gwen Stefani could get away with covering. A song of forgiveness and bourbon – highly recommend.

Ave Maria – Chris Cornell and Eleven – Traditional yes, but not with this voice. Beautiful – powerful.

  I would never have imagined the next one. So I wanted a Hanukkah song but never thought I would come across a Hanukkah song like this. Please get ready to dance: Chanukah Jewish Rock of Ages - Official Hanukkah Song.

I’m not even a Tom Waits fan – but this is awesome! Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis. Sad  song – but beautifully done.

 Fairytale of New York – This song is so New York, you can smell the bar at 4am. Beautiful (as much as Shane McGowan can be beautiful) duet with Kristy MacColl.

Christmas Must Be Tonight – My Morning Jacket. Jim James does not stray from the Band original. Classic and should be heard by
all.

A New York City Christmas Tradition of sorts for us in the emergency response community. Shilelagh Law wrote Christmas in New York Again after the 11th and it captures holidays and remembers those no longer with us.

                      


Making Christmas – Nightmare Before Christmas – Eerie holiday song from one of the best movies ever made. If you want to play Christmas music starting after Halloween, you should start with this one!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanza, Happy Festivus and have Very Blessed and Happy New Year!!!

Just Like The Ocean Always In Love With The Moon Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk at 20

Kurt was fairly quiet and introverted most of the time. Jeff was the opposite. He was very much full of life and had a lot to say. He was somebody in love with experiencing everything. Within a very short time, he had all these famous old rock stars coming to his shows. Which put a a lot of pressure on him. People talked about his concerts the way they used to talk about Hendrix: they'd sit there, wide-eyed, telling you stories about him. He definitely had an aura. It's impossible to say what it is exactly a guy like that has, that is so attractive to other people. But he had more of it than anyone I had ever met. 

~Chris Cornell, Jeff's friend and music director of Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk.

Sketches is anything except what you'd expect for the follow up to Jeff's debut album, Grace. Jeff would be proud of that. He began writing songs for the album he wanted to call My Sweetheart the Drunk and was recording many of these songs when he swam infamously into the Wolf River on May 29, 1997. He left behind many unfinished songs and recordings that had to be interpreted and assumed finished in the way Jeff would have wanted. Helping in that, at the request of his mother, was friend Chris Cornell.

Sketches is two discs of ups and downs. There is a lot of scorn, the powerful, heartbreak, isolation, and acceptance. His lyrics show growth, chance, and not Grace part II, a leap Sony would not have been happy with for sure. 

Who knows what would have become of Jeff. The truth that music was his home - and that the music he wanted to create and enjoy. When you start to perform under fake names just to enjoy playing a small show for the sake of music...who knows how long Jeff would have survived the industry. Easier said then done now as opposed to the big label 1990's.


Twenty years since we heard what was going on in Jeff's mind and heart. There was change going on within Jeff. The sounds he used to record Grace at Bearsville Studio differs greatly from the raw sound of the songs he recorded in Memphis and in New York City for Sketches. There is one eerie similarity between the two albums: Jeff's references to river, water, and drowning. 

Below, some lyrics from each track. 

Disc 1

The Sky Is A Landfill
The storm has ripped the shelter
Of illusion from our brow
This power is no mystery to us now.
Leave your spirit genocide
The cancer you won't remove
We cast our funeral rose inside
And bury the need to prove
Our mutilation is to gain from the system  

Everybody Here Wants You
I know the tears we cried
Have dried on yesterday
The sea of fools has parted for us
There's nothing in our way
My love 
 
Opened Once
Just like the ocean
Always in love with the moon
It's overflowing now

Nightmares By The Sea
I've loved so many times and I've drowned them all
From their coral graves, they rise up when darkness falls
With their bones they'll scratch the window, I hear them call
"Don't know what you asked for." 

Yard Of Blonde Girls
Through the yard
Through the yard of blonde girls
Through the river and the sea
Gold sharks glittering
A tree of white
Breaks the earth
The streets where Lola played
   
Witches' Rave
You'd like to see him suffer
For you fantasy and thrill
He fell sick while we made love
He's out there, somewhere, still


New Year's Prayer
Leave your office
Run past your funeral
Leave your home, car
Leave your pulpit
Join us in the streets where we
Join us in the streets where we
Don't belong, don't belong
You and the stars
Throwing light
  Morning Theft
True self is what
Brought you here, to me
A place where we can
Accept this love
Friendship battered down by
Useless history 
Unexamined failure 

Vancouver
We're where we belong
It should end here
Until the end of time
Beyond the moment
That ends our bondage
I am your failed husband contender
I'm your loan shark of bliss.

You & I
You and I
Ah, the calm below that poisoned the river wild
You and I
Tears that dry on a rude awakened child
Where you look down
I've walked before
Burning holes
With eyes of liquid brown
If we had only known
In a way
We wouldn't reach this ground
You were my only home  

Disc 2
Nightmares By The Sea
Stay with me under these waves, tonight
Be free for once in your life tonight


New Year's Prayer
Stand absolved behind your electric chair, dancing
Past the sound within the sound
Past the voice within the voice
Haven't You Heard
Paranoia will write the world prayer
Make sure that you fit in the right holes
But when you take his offer, you're done for 

I Know We Could Be So Happy Baby (If We Wanted To Be)
We had a birthplace in common
We had separate beds and lives
I'll just sit here and glow
Break out the oldest pictures
Hand your ruined letters out to dry
We had a birthplace in common
And separate beds and lives
And lives, and lives 


Murder Suicide Meteor Slave
Welcome down to paradise rock
There is no single entrance
With the stars to revolve around
There is no real underground

Back In N.Y.C.
You're sitting in your comfort you don't believe I'm real,
You cannot buy protection from the way that I feel.
Your progressive hypocrites hand out their trash,
But it was mine in the first place, so I'll burn it to ash.
And I've tasted all the strongest meats,
And laid them down in colored sheets.
Laid them down in colored sheets.
Who needs illusion of love and affection
When you're out walking in the streets with your mainline connection? 


Demon John
Today or tonight
Better get yourself together
And transcend it, a burst of light
Blaze stars into me
While the love breaks through here and now 

Your Flesh Is So Nice
  Jewel Box
Diamonds from the pavement
Where a broken glass had been
Just like these troubles that I'm leaving to the wind
Like sapphires in boxcars speeding towards the end
Like thieves, my bad luck grows  

Satisfied Mind (Cover)
My Friends and My Lovers, I Will Leave, There's No Doubt
But One Things For Certain, When It Comes My Time
I'll Leave This Old World With A Satisfied Mind

Gunshot Glitter [Bonus Track]
Down to the sea out of the skies
Of gold cards and casual tears
I have only come to see you shine
Feminine smiles the right side is wise, more than I.
I wanna be your lover,
Lipstick my name across your mirror.
Blood red with flaked gunshot glitter
And be one with all you disowned in your young life. You paranoia politician diva.
You paranoia politician diva. 
 
Thousand Fold [Bonus Track]
There ain't a star born that brightens
More than you, you always should have known,
I'll illuminate your question,
Long time ago I'd died and gone.
What has brought the question?
Time has brought the question.
Come and call the question,
Oh, oh, oh.
Here are the stars, same thing again

I am a railroad track abandoned
With the sunset
Forgetting
I ever happened
That I ever happened

May 18th ...

I give this blog post over to dear friend Jeff Buckner. His similar pain I felt with loss of David Bowie. Chris Cornell's sudden and tragic loss still stings. Why - so many ask. Jeff hits home with music. Music, to some of us, is family. They are an older brother, sister, lover, friend ... music can give you peace, make you think ... music can give you a friend in time of need. Thank you Jeff for sharing - may we all find peace soon with our losses, something I fear, Chris never found with the loss of Andrew Wood, Layne Staley, or Jeff Buckley.

May 18th

By Jeff Buckner 
Let's go back to May 18th, 2017. I had just awoken to the news of Chris Cornell passing. it hit like a thunderbolt, so unexpected, so quick, so much pain entered my heart. a sledgehammer to the soul. As much as I love music, really only two bands stand above the rest. Led Zeppelin and Soundgarden. Chris Cornell's music had got me through so many dark times. His lyrics we're jumping off the records into my brain into my soul..... his voice went through me like a supernatural being. I look up to many a musician, John Bonham, Dave Grohl, John Paul Jones, Bon Scott. But then there was Chris Cornell, there was just always something about his music and his lyrics and just the person that he was that appealed to me from a very early age. The character that he was, the swagger, the voice, the poet. Not since Jim Morrison had I heard another human being speak so beautifully in songs. And then to find out his death was from suicide. I mean this is Chris fucking Cornell that's why it's so deep! Every musical artist is tortured in some way. That's what makes their art so beautiful. But if Chris Cornell, a father of three a husband, a son, a brother, a Rockstar can be taken down by depression.... a disease that affects 6.7 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year. That's beyond heavy, it hits home. This is a guy who had everything to live for and yet couldn't beat the demons Inside of his head. That's some heavy shit. Here we are almost 7 weeks later. I can't shake it, I can't get over it, it's a bereavement so fucking heavy. I lost a brother.... an older brother. Growing up all of my brothers were shit. Friends sucked. But there was always my music, there was always Soundgarden, Audioslave, Temple of the Dog, always Chris Cornell. 

I write this now in memoriam to a man I never personally met, but to a man who saved my life more than once. Continuing to do so each day I get up to listen to his songs, albums. So I guess, in short, thank you Chris Cornell for being a brother and a friend. 

Whenever Chris lost a friend, and he lost a lot of friends, he would make art for them in words and song. So I wrote this for him. Thank you for your beautiful gift of creating listenable art. Rest in Paradise, Chris Cornell.

I Have No Disguise You Can See Through: The Loss of Chris Cornell

I never wanted
To write these words down for you
With the pages of phrases
Of things we´ll never do
So I blow out the candle, and
I put you to bed
Since you can´t say to me
Now how the dogs broke your bone
There´s just one thing left to be said
Say hello to heaven

It was his multi-octave voice that hit you first. Whether it was with Soundgarden, Audioslave, or Temple of the Dog, Chris' unmistakable voice enticed you. He could dance softly with it or he could pound the chords over your head and you would enjoy every minute. He was a mystery, those eyes, mesmerizing, looking at you, beyond you, to things unseen.

But the early days of grunge in Seattle and the 90's left Chris scarred. It wasn't just the drugs, alcohol, but slowly and maybe, it was depression. In 1990, Chris lost his roommate and dear friend, Mother Love Bone front man, Andrew Wood. Andrew's loss prompted Chris to start Temple of the Dog, inspired by a line in one of Andrew's songs. But Andrew's loss didn't seem to ever leave Chris. Similarly with the loss of Jeff Buckley, Chris seemed to live in the past with the loss.  

And people ask what was so special about Chris? Chris helped to usher in grunge - and was actually from Seattle. It wasn't like he jumped on the Seattle grunge band wagon, he formed Soundgarden in 1984, while hair metal and pop succeeded disco and punk. Six years and several band changes later, Badmotorfinger propelled Soundgarden to the charts and onto MTV. The 90's gave us the Singles song Seasons, Temple of the Dog, and his contribution to Alice's in Chain's Sap, Right Turn.

Chris was versatile, himself saying he could play Sydney Opera House one night and Voodoo Fest the next. While he gave us some heavy songs, we also got songs like Ave Maria or his cover of Prince's Nothing Compares 2 U.

Chris and his wife started The Chris and Vicky Cornell Foundation  that"develops projects and programs with leading charitable organizations and partners to raise awareness and mobilize support for children facing tough challenges including homelessness, poverty, abuse and/or neglect." He looked out for others and spoke for those who didn't have a voice, including helping refugees.

It's hard not to play into the guessing game. Was he sick? Depressed? Back on drugs? How long had he planned That maybe the tease of In My Time of Dying was Chris saying goodbye. Many of us worship our musical gods and goddesses. These last few years have taught us that we need to get busy living - go and see your favorite artist. Dance with your partner. Take five minutes and be late for work to finish your favorite song. Just enjoy life. And also be a listening ear for anyone who may need help. 

 In my time of dying, I want nobody to mourn

All I want for you to do is take my body home.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

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Available 24 hours everyday and chat is available