Re: Know when the holidays have officially arrived?

Ron -

Back in the Pleistocene era when I pretended to go to college I would, can you believe it, smoke some weed and get what they used to call "high." And while I was mostly listening to The Band, Procol Harum and Jimi Hendrix in these situations, I would occasionally find myself sitting on my couch around 4pm with the TV on watching Hee-Haw and the Lawrence Welk show - and with the help of chemical stimulation I found I could enjoy the music there-in. It was like listening to something from another planet, but I figured music was music and I could dig it on those terms.

Dean Martin can be a little hard to take, especially if it's anything either in Italian, about Christmas or recorded after about '65, but it should be remembered that Deano was one of Elvis Presley's favorite singers and an early model for him - which may not count for much, depending on how you view the King.

As for Sinatra - again, as long as you avoid anything recorded after the Beatles came out - he was the greatest interpreter of lyrics I ever heard. You just can't be influenced by the fact that so many a**holes like him, or that he was a major jerk as well. That would be like not watching John Wayne movies because of his politics -

Anyhow, just imagine your never heard big band music before and treat it like you are listening to something just recorded in Malaysia - it's not your thing, but it's not bad.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions