If It Isn't Scottish, It's Crap: Special Beach Boys New Year's Eve Edition

From November 1964, and their epochal Christmas LP, please enjoy the incomparable Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, Al Jardine, and the humongous dickitude that is Mike Love and their incomparable a cappella rendition of that Scottish New Year's eve song whose title escapes me.

With an extra special holiday message from Denny at the end.



And if you're out tonight, please drink responsibly. Or not. After all, you guys can do anything you want -- you're college students!

Coming tomorrow: We revisit a PowerPop New Years Day classic. Coming Friday: An absolutely brilliant new Weekend Listomania's Greatest Hits.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town (Special Existentially Bummed Out German Edition)

UN ambassador Hans Beinholtz is kind of depressed this season..

The Colbert Report
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That's my old Greenwich Village pal Erik Frandsen as Hans, of course.

Seriously -- I always thought of him as a sort of old school folkie; I had no idea he was one of the funniest mofos alive.

No Rim Shots in Hell

German ambassador to the UN and world's most existentially depressed man Hans Beinholtz...

...doing his stand-up tragedy act.



Hans, of course, is the alter-ego of my old chum from my Greenwich Village days Erik Frandsen, although I didn't discover this until a couple of days ago. In any case, it blows my mind that a guy I thought was merely an entertaining old school folkie is also something of a comic genius.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

So last Friday I had lunch with Peter Spencer...

...a friend of mine from my early 80s sojourn in Greenwich Village as a member of legendary obscure pop combo The Floor Models.

Pete's a brilliant singer/songwriter/guitarist and a heck of a nice guy (who I hadn't seen in at least a quarter of a century), and as you might expect, we got to reminiscing about the old days. And at one point I asked about another mutual musician pal I'd lost track of, the very very funny old school folkie Erik Frandsen.

(That's Erik in the photo on the left, and yes that's the late great Dave Van Ronk on the right.)

The song below, which I post here to give you an idea of Erik's work, is his hilarious ode to the holiday just past, "Christmas in Brooklyn." (Which, by the way, is even better than my other favorite New York themed yule classic, "Christmas In Hollis" by Run-DMC. So there.)



In any case, Pete replied that Erik has had a whole new career as an actor, and that for the last year or so he'd been playing a recurring character on The Colbert Report. Why I hadn't gotten the memo on this is beyond me, but in any case here's Erik as Hans Beinholtz (the existentialist and aggressively depressing fictional UN ambassador from Germany.)



I should add that Erik also showed up on last week's Colbert finale, but as the unicorn Abraham Lincoln...

...which was almost too disturbing for words.

I should also add that I recently mangled one of Pete's best songs in the recording studio, and that after hearing the results, Pete graciously declined to throw his drink in my face.

More on that musical crime against nature later in the week.

It's So Nice to Be Home For the Holidays

From 1995, please enjoy The Pretenders -- featuring world's coolest sentient person Chrissie Hynde -- and the Duke String Quartet and an absolutely gorgeous performance of "2000 Miles." Or as we here at Casa Simels like to call it -- the greatest Christmas song written in English in the second half of the 20th century.



That's from the Pretenders wonderful DVD "The Isle of View" which, in case you missed it, is a sort of semi-unplugged concert set of the band's greatest hits and stuff; it's still in print and as you can plainly see behooves behaving.

Seriously -- what are you waiting for? Get the hell over to Amazon and buy the damn thing as a Christmas present for yourself over HERE now.

It's Christmas Time

[Okay, I'm going to get a little self-indulgent here for a minute, so cut me some slack if you can. And yes -- I've posted a slightly different version of this on several previous Christmases; consider it one of those internet traditions you've heard so much about. -- S.S.]

Ahem. So. Way back in December of 2007 -- when the world, myself and this here blog were young -- I found myself, quite improbably, falling in love. And the Christmas song I kept hearing in at least two TV commercials at the time was the ineffably touching "All That I Want" by The Weepies.

Which, as it turned out, was, improbably, about the improbability of somehow finding the right person to fall in love with.

Above the rooftops
The full moon dips its golden spoon
I wait on clip clops
Deer might fly. Why not? I met you

Seven years later, I still can't hear the thing without getting a little misty, sentimental old fluff that I am. So I thought I'd share it again as sort of a Christmas card to you all. And to a certain Shady Dame let me just say, and for the record -- I love you.

Anyway, Happy Holidays -- and here's hoping that what the new year brings you makes you as happy I've been since I first heard that song. However improbably.

Blecccchhhhh. Seriously.

Let's just say I've been better.

Normal, upbeat and germ-free, posting resumes tomorrow, including a traditional PowerPop Christmas message.

Joe Cocker 1944--2014

The inimitable blues-rock stylist has passed.



Wait a sec -- did I say inimitable? Clearly not, since that's actually John Belushi.

In any case, rest easy Joe. You made music history in your own weird way.

And may I just say again, and for the record, that this death shit is REALLY starting to piss me off.

Lord of the Fly

This clip -- whose existence I was unaware of until last Friday -- has absolutely nothing to do with the mission statement of this here blog.

That said, you will not see a funnier six plus minutes any time in the foreseeable future, so I thought it appropriate to share in the spirit of the Holidays. I should add that bringing out Pavarotti at the end -- you may not believe it even as you watch -- is a particularly inspired touch.

You're welcome.

Okay, I Couldn't Resist

Tom Lehrer rhymes "Shavuous" with "East St. Louis" in honor of the Jewish holidays.



This actually may be the last new recording Lehrer made; it first saw the light of day on Rhino's essential 2000 box set The Remains of Tom Lehrer.

And I hate to admit it, but until I heard this, it had never even occurred to me that Lehrer was a fellow Red Sea Pedestrian. Which is really kind of funny, because in retrospect his whole esthetic has a fairly obvious scent of the Borscht Belt, and always has, the Gilbertian word play not withstanding.

In any case, Happy Hannukah, Tom and in the immortal words of Gov. Scott Walker -- molotov!!!!