Dec. 24 Christmas songs

This is Jackson Browne's Christmas song, "The Rebel Jesus", performed by him with the Chieftains. The video part could fairly be described as, uh, static. But the song is great. The song actually ends at 3:48, but they've included the next instrumental track on the YouTube video.



This is Jewel singing, "Silent Night, Holy Night". I should add that the original is "Stille Nacht, Heilege Nacht", and it was written in the Austrian state (province) named Upper Austria. I really like Jewel's Christmas album. And listening to it reminds me I need to get to know some of her other music better. (A second or two at the start is missing.)



There's another version from Jewel in 2000 at this link but I like the first one better.

Okay, I know this is three "Silent Night" versions in this one post, but hey. This one is by Aaron Neville and Linda Ronstadt. Both have fantastic voices.



This is John Lennon's 1971 "Happy Christmas (War Is Over)". Surprisingly - to me anyway - Julián Ruiz at El Mundo writes that this is the song that is most heard at Christmas all around the world. There's something incredibly fitting in that. He also says that the song is a "re-creation" of a popular song from the 18th century called "Skewball".



Tags: aaron neville, christmas songs, jackson browne, jewel, john lennon, linda ronstadt

The War takes pride in America

Episode 4 of Ken Burns' The War presented us with the Anglo-British-American invasion of France in June 1944, apparently the grandest and most decisive military event in all of human history. All that had come before, our war interpreter tells us, were "mere preliminaries". Stalingrad, Kursk, Midway: small stuff, practically inconsequential. It had to be the Americans who achieved the Turning Point of All History. And in a battle, of course. Not in writing a Constitution or curing polio or some wimp sissy stuff like that. The invasion of France in 1944 was "the greatest invasion in history," we learn. Well, I guess if you don't count the massive attack that Germany and its allies threw at the Soviet Union almost exactly three years earlier. But who cares what happens in a backwater of history like Russia and eastern Europe?

A way occurred to me to describe the dissonance I have watching The War. Jackson Browne did a haunting song about the bloody civil conflicts in Africa over blood diamonds, called "Sergio Leone". It's about a filmmaker who records the brutal events. The concluding lines are:

From the Via Tusacalana to the view from Miller Drive
He shot the eyes of bad men and kept their deaths alive
With the darkness and the anguish of a Goya or Van Cleef
He rescued truth from beauty and meaning from belief

Just once in my life, I wish I could write a line as evocative as, "He rescued truth from beauty and meaning from belief."

But since I probably never will, I'll borrow Jackson Browne's lines to describe the impression Burns' documentary is making on me:

From the bombing of Pearl Harbor to the view from Utah Beach
He took long reams of war film and sandwiched it in kitsch
With the brightness and nostalgia of Norman Rockwell painting cheese
He buried truth in violins and horror in light relief

Tags: jackson browne, ken burns, second world war, the war documentary, world war two

Bush's Iraq Speech Coming Sunday

Bush is planning to address the nation on Iraq Sunday afternoon. I'm willing to venture a few predictions about the speech.

He will not be announcing the discovery of any large portions of the 25,000 liters of anthrax, or the 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, or the "500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent" he talked about in his February State of the Union speech.

He will not be admitting that he lied to the American people and the world about the "weapons of mass destruction." Or saying he's sorry for deliberately promoting the fiction that Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 attacks.

He won't be announcing that he's firing Rummy or Colin Powell or Condi Rice for their false claims on those subjects. Or that Dick Cheney is resigning as Vice President for the same reason. Or for their general incompetence.

He won't be saying he was wrong to push for cuts in the combat pay and death benefits of our soldiers he's put into a horrible mess in Iraq.

I do expect to hear vague tributes to those soldiers. And lots of happy talk about how glad the Iraqis are that we liberated them, and about how much progress we've made in the occupation. There may be a mention of WMD "programs," or fatuous comparisons to postwar Germany and Japan. There may be some cosmetic new announcement of motion toward Iraqi self-government. He'll talk about how sincere he is in his effort to get assistance from the United Nations and our allies that he and Rummy worked so hard to insult and alienate. And there'll probably be some negative reference to his critics, which the rightwing echo chamber will immediately pick up and magnify.

But, whatever the specifics, it's a safe bet that the real meaning of the speech will be what Jackson Browne describes in his song "Casino Nation":

DC to daylight, the cowboy mogul rides
Never worry where the gold for all this glory's gonna come from
Get along doggies, it's coming out of your hides.

-Bruce Miller

Hearing: Kris Kristofferson, "Broken Freedom Song"

Tags: bush, jackson browne, iraq war