Last year I did a Year In Review post and it went pretty well, so this year I’m taking a look back at the decade just passed. So many things happen over the course of ten years but these are the things that grabbed my attention for one reason or another.

Man Or Astro-man? “Interplanet Janet” (from Schoolhouse Rock)
In August 2006 Pluto was demoted to “dwarf planet” status. How does a planet get demoted? Pluto seriously needs to get a new agent. As I reach middle age it seems that science is conspiring to piss all over my childhood. First they start renaming the dinosaurs and now Pluto’s not a planet. It’s enough to give a guy a complex.

Pat Boone “Paradise City” (Guns N’ Roses)
Chinese Democracy was finally released in November 2008. It was at first widely anticipated, then became a joke as the years and promised release dates slid by. When it finally came out nobody really gave a damn any more, which was a good thing because the album was a piece of crap.

The original lyrics of “Paradise City” were “Take me down to Paradise City where the girls are fat and they got big titties.” I would so love to hear Pat Boone sing that.

John Connors “The Patty Duke Show Theme” (from The Patty Duke Show)
Digital broadcast TV came to the U.S. in 2009 after a few false starts. Thanks to the wonders of digital signal compression TV stations now can broadcast four channels using the bandwidth that they had been using to broadcast one analog channel. For the most part they haven’t figured out what to do with the extra channels, I’m seeing a lot of 24-hour weather broadcasts. But Chicago’s WCIU-TV has it figured out. They’ve devoted one channel to reruns of classic TV shows ranging from Have Gun, Will Travel to The Twilight Zone to Starsky And Hutch. They haven’t broken out Patty Duke yet, but I figure it’s inevitable. Another channel shows obscure movies, including some horrible monster movies from the 60s and 70s. They’re so old school that when Octaman ran short they filled the time with an old Pink Panther cartoon. Now that’s a good use of the public airwaves.

Diesel “Paranoid” (Black Sabbath)
I saw Ozzy play live when it mattered. He had just released his first solo album and had something to prove. Randy Rhodes was playing guitar and Motorhead was the opening act, touring to support the Ace of Spades album. The Aragon Ballroom was packed and some sweaty drunk passed out and fell on me. All in all it was one of those life-defining occasions. And then in 2002 Ozzy staggered onto my TV screen looking drug-addled and pathetic. It was hard for me to reconcile the doddering stooge on my TV with the fierce performer I saw that night so long ago.

Brian Grosz “Gimme Some Money” (Spinal Tap)
The Euro entered circulation in the European Union on January 1, 2002. It had been used in accounting since 1995 but now people could spend Euro coins and currency. It’s interesting how the EU dealt with nationalism on the part of its member states when it came to currency design. The coins all have the same design on the “heads” side and each country is allowed to design its own “tails” side. The paper money has nice generic bridges on all the bills.

This song comes to us from the very excellent Spinal Tap tribute CD put out by the very excellent Brian Ibbott over at Coverville.

Erasure “Too Darn Hot” (comp. Cole Porter)
Global warming has become pretty undeniable over the last decade. The people who used to argue that it wasn’t happening have now by and large moved on to arguing that it’s not being caused by people and even if it is it would be too expensive to fix the problem. In the meantime the ice caps are melting and polar bears have turned to cannibalism because they can’t get out on the ice to hunt for seals any more. It is indeed too darn hot.

If you scroll down and take a look at my Thanksgiving post you’ll notice that I mentioned that the Chris and Heather Country Calendar Show was coming up. The show happened a week ago yesterday and I had a wonderful time. I was even more excited to find that they had put together a second CD of the music from Country Calendar shows past. With that much more material to choose from, I couldn’t resist putting together a post of music from those shows.

If you don’t want to scroll down to the bottom of the page, here’s the deal. Every year Chicago cartoonist and filmmaker Heather McAdams draws a calendar that pays tribute to country musicians famous and obscure. It’s a great source of knowledge or trivia, depending on your point of view. Every December Heather and her husband Chris Ligon get their musician friends together to play music from the artists featured in that year’s calendar. The evening also includes film (or this year for the first time, video) of the original artists in action. It’s kind of a yearly Christmas party for the musicians involved and they put on the show in a bar three blocks from my house, making it a can’t-miss event for me.

Devil In A Woodpile “The Most Beautiful Girl” (Charlie Rich)
I always thought that this song was impossibly cheesy. But when I heard Devil In A Woodpile reinvent it as a country blues stomp I was blown away. One more example of a well-written song that shines when it’s liberated from its original arrangement.

Andrew Bird with Scott Ligon “Bubbles In My Beer” (Bob Wills)
I like Bob Wills’ music much more when it’s covered by other people. I find the original recordings difficult to listen to because Mr. Wills never shut the hell up. He constantly jabbered over the musicians in his band while they were playing. Makes me want to reach into my stereo and bitch-slap the guy.

Jon Langford and Sally Timms “Streets of Bakersfield” (Buck Owens)
Ms. Timms is a mercurial performer with an amazing voice. She’s all business on this recording, which is mildly disappointing. I did notice that this year they scheduled her early in the evening. I don’t know if that was a coincidence or if Chris and Heather were trying to get her onstage before she drank too much.

Neko Case “The Moon Is High (And So Am I)” (George Jones)
For his own sake I’m glad that Mr. Jones has dried out. But the world’s a little less exciting now that he’s not riding his lawn mower to the liquor store.

The Wichita Shut-Ins “A Wound Time Can’t Erase” (The Stonemans)
I was there the night this one was recorded and I remember the film of the Stonemans. The mandolin player was really cute and seriously hyperactive. She constantly danced this frantic sort of jig while savagely thrashing her instrument. It was inspirational to see.

By now everybody knows that a couple of fame-whore douchebags crashed President Obama’s first state dinner at the White House. It was certainly a failure on the part of the Secret Service and those agents responsible need to have their heads put on sticks as a warning to others. But the amount of time this story has been in the news and the vitriol with which it has been reported makes me think that there’s more to it than meets the eye. After all, this is hardly the first time this has happened. White House security has been breached 91 times in the past 30 years, including one clown who did it three times.

Bryan Ferry “It’s My Party” (Lesley Gore)
Washington is a notoriously insular place. Politicians, lobbyists, reporters and socialites all exist in a big clubby experiment in social darwinism. Everybody is expected to know their place and to stay there. And that’s the great crime of the party crashers. It was the elite’s party and they invaded the turf of the elite and for that they must pay.

Eldissa “Fame” (Irene Cara)
It’s obviously all about fame for these two nimrods. They thought this stunt would get them on a reality TV show. As though that’s a worthwhile goal. And now some congresscritters want to force them to testify before Congress, which would be like throwing Br’er Rabbit into the briar patch. Andy Warhol’s epigram seems so trite and innocent now. These days the problem’s not that everybody is famous for fifteen minutes but that a media environment has emerged that encourages fame-whoring so all those digital cable channels and blogs have content to deliver to the rest of us who are still trying to become famous for fifteen minutes.

Camper Van Beethoven “Photograph” (Ringo Starr)
The whole thing might have been swept under the rug if not for the photographs. If the party crashers had just eaten dinner and done the receiving line it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. They could have even taken photos with famous people if they had just hung the photos in their home. But they had to go and post them on Facebook and at that point they couldn’t be ignored any longer.

Thin White Rope “Town Without Pity” (Gene Pitney)
I don’t know if there was a physical velvet rope that those doofuses talked their way past. Maybe it was a thin white rope. We’ll probably never know.

Stretch Arm Strong “Get The Party Started” (Pink)
I think that the party would have gotten started just fine without them.

In classical music circles an orchestra is defined to be a large musical ensemble that consists of four equal sections: brass, woodwinds, strings, and percussion. Other musical styles have laid claim to the term as a description of a large band, regardless of its composition. What kind of stuff do these non-classical orchestras play? Glad you asked.

Das Palast Orchester “Sex Bomb” (Tom Jones)
This sounds like something Frank Zappa would play with one of his big touring bands. Frank loved a good romp through all the cliches of a musical style, played with crack precision. I might just like this version better than the original, which is saying something given my unnatural love of Tom Jones.

Nicholas Tremulis Orchestra “Velvet Guitar” (Alejandro Escovedo)
Nicholas Tremulis is something of a local institution in Chicago. His orchestra plays an incredibly broad variety of music, and here they put a calypso spin on this Alejandro Escovedo song.

The Woody Jackson Orchestra With Money Mark “Love’s Theme” (Love Unlimited Orchestra)
No strings or porno waka-chika guitar here. It’s a all about the roller rink, baby. Dang, now I have a mental image of Barry White on roller skates. I need to think of something else fast.

Man Chau Po Orchestra “Sealed With A Kiss” (The Four Voices)
It sounds like it’s from the soundtrack of a teenage surf movie from the 50s. This song would be playing during the makeout scene on the beach, just before Conflict occurred. Then all the good-hearted but misunderstood kids would have to run off to save the girl/defeat the monster/stick it to The Man with barely enough time to brush off the sand. This comes from an album with a truly great title: The A-Go-Go From River Kwai.

The Ukulele Orchestra Of Great Britain “Dy-Na-Mi-Tee” (Ms. Dynamite)
These guys are hilariously funny but they also have great chops.