A couple of years ago, I decided to whip up a mix CD of Christmas covers from a variety of sources. I found it today... without liner notes. I've been able to reconstruct the complete playlist and which disc it came from, but there's one song that's being elusive: the version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer that I included. It sounds a lot like The Smithereens' version, but with more of a Brian Setzer twist.
Anyways, this is the list as I've reconstructed it. I've hyperlinked the Rudolph song in case someone can help source it.
1. Blue Christmas - Bruce Springsteen & Friends
2. Run Run Rudolph - Bryan Adams
3. Rock 'n' Roll Christmas - George Thorogood & The Destroyers
4. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus - John Cougar Mellencamp
5. All Alone On Christmas - Darlene Love
6. What Christmas Means To Me - Stevie Wonder
7. Winter Wonderland - Eurythmics
8. Silent Night - The Primitives
9. White Christmas - Doug and The Slugs
10. I Want an Alien for X-Mas - Fountains of Wayne
11. Here Comes Santa Claus - Clockhammers
12. Jingle Bells - Jumpin' Jimmy and The Mistletones
13. Christmas Song - Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds
14. Christmastime Has Come - Smashing Pumpkins
15. Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) - Hoodoo Gurus
16. The First Noel - Crash Test Dummies
17. Please Come Home For Christmas - Pet Benatar
18. Merry Christmas Baby - Sheryl Crow & Eric Clapton
19. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - (?)
20. Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree - Ronnie Spector & Darlene Love
21. Frosty The Snowman - Leon Redbone & Dr. John
22. Carolina Christmas - Squirrel Nut Zippers
23. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) - U2
24. Christmas All Over Again - Tom Petty
25. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Pretenders
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
Rockcliffe Book Fair
The Rockcliffe Book Fair is a local Ottawa event that's been held each year since the early 1960s, to promote reading to kids and to raise money for the Rockcliffe Park Public School's library and various local kids' literacy programs. Growing up in the 1970s, my parents used to take my brother and I there each year to browse the new kids' lit being published - one of the various ways they encouraged us to read. We stopped going after middle school, I think - at that point, we were a bit older than the target demographic for the new books on display - and it was only a few years ago that I started to go again.
Maybe I just never remembered the scene fully from childhood, but it seemed as if, sometime during the intervening years, the focus had shifted significantly in favour of the Book Fair being a used book sale. These days, it's typical that I can visit the fair each year and walk out with a stack of great finds. Tonight was no different - this year's haul includes a bunch of Donald Westlake novels; four 1950s-era Pogo collections by Walt Kelly; a small stack of mid-1970s Archie digests reprinting some amazing 1950s/1960s art by Harry Lucey; novels by Elmore Leonard and Lawrence Block; a book by former SNL writer/performer (and hopefully Minnesota's next Senator, pending the recount) Al Franken; and a 1950s kids' lit prose book illustrated by near-legendary comics/animation ace Alex Toth.
Total cost? Sixteen bucks, and for a good cause.
Maybe I just never remembered the scene fully from childhood, but it seemed as if, sometime during the intervening years, the focus had shifted significantly in favour of the Book Fair being a used book sale. These days, it's typical that I can visit the fair each year and walk out with a stack of great finds. Tonight was no different - this year's haul includes a bunch of Donald Westlake novels; four 1950s-era Pogo collections by Walt Kelly; a small stack of mid-1970s Archie digests reprinting some amazing 1950s/1960s art by Harry Lucey; novels by Elmore Leonard and Lawrence Block; a book by former SNL writer/performer (and hopefully Minnesota's next Senator, pending the recount) Al Franken; and a 1950s kids' lit prose book illustrated by near-legendary comics/animation ace Alex Toth.
Total cost? Sixteen bucks, and for a good cause.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Finding Canadiana where you least expect it
It's election time here in Canada, so let's start things with a repost from my earlier blog experiment, a sequence of Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland pages from 1911 showing Nemo's airship tour of Montreal, Quebec, Ottawa, and Toronto.
If you want to see more, there are two collections worth tracking down: one is the Taschen edition, which reprints all of the initial 1905-1914 run - there was a brief second run some years later - at a reduced size (roughly 10½" by 12"); the other is from Sunday Press Books, reprinting about one-third of the run at their original 17" by 21" size.
If you want to see more, there are two collections worth tracking down: one is the Taschen edition, which reprints all of the initial 1905-1914 run - there was a brief second run some years later - at a reduced size (roughly 10½" by 12"); the other is from Sunday Press Books, reprinting about one-third of the run at their original 17" by 21" size.
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