Speaking of quirky...

...which we weren’t, but I decided to change subjects...

One of my pleasures back during the 1990s was watching the series Northern Exposure on the telly.

Call me crazy, but I really liked it.

It was low-key.

It was funny.

It was a dramedy (a portmanteau word meaning “drama and comedy”) but it had no laugh track (I hate laugh tracks).

Best of all, it was quirky.

Here, in two parts, is the pilot episode that launched the series:

Northern Exposure Pilot - Part 1 (18:01)

Northern Exposure Pilot = Part 2 (22:46)

Did I mention it was quirky?

Perhaps Northern Exposure is not your cup of tea. So sue me.

I like things that are offbeat, not run-of-the-mill. Movies such as Big Fish and The Purple Rose of Cairo and Raising Arizona and Harold and Maude and television series such as My So-Called Life and Thirtysomething and Twin Peaks and one whose name I can’t remember about a family that owned a funeral parlor (British, parlour)*, that’s what I like.

It’s the same thing when it comes to music.

[Editor's note. While happening to re-read this post at random on September 3, 2017, it suddenly occurred to me that the one whose name I couldn't remember was Six Feet Under. The human brain is a marvelous thing. --RWP]

I don’t want to hear Doris Day sing “Que Sera Sera” (2:26), I want to hear Pink Martini sing “Que Sera Sera” (3:55).

Sometimes I want to hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” (6:03), and sometimes I want to hear Michael W. Smith sing “Breathe” (6:32).

Sometimes I want to hear “Revelation Song” (4:58) more than anything else in the world.

Yes, I do.

But I never, ever, want to hear anything by the Rolling Stones or Lionel Richie or Meat Loaf or Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga or....

The list goes on and on.

Quirky, huh?

A historic day!

I don’t care what Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong say (3:35).

Or Billie Holiday (3:50).

Or Jimmy Buffett, who included the seldom-sung verse (4:13).

Or even the sugary-sweet, white-bread warblings of Doris Day (3:41).

Stars didn’t fall on Alabama last night.

Snow did.

At my daughter’s house.

We’ve been having pneumonia weather in the South this month. This morning the temperature at my house was 28 degrees Fahrenheit and it’s supposed to reach 72 this afternoon.

From the archives: After experiencing both Darlene Edwards and Anna Russell...

...one is well-advised to return to sanity and the normal world gradually to prevent damage to one’s cerebral cortex. Therefore, since today is New Year’s Eve and 2008 will soon be replaced by 2009, we have just the thing. We shall accomplish our return, our decompression, as it were, by way of our very own A Festival Of Auld Lang Syne Performances.

The first performance will be on the musical saw with accordion accompaniment (I said we must do this gradually), plus there is a bit of the human voice. Experiencing this particular performance is eerily reminiscent of listening to Darlene Edwards herself, but it will begin to accomplish our ends. When the voice enters (which I believe is female, but I may be wrong), we are actually able to forget Darlene for a time by concentrating instead on what seems to be a very poor imitation of the young Bob Dylan from a time when Bob’s lyrics were still comprehensible. Here, then, from 2006, is the androgynous Nicki Jaine on both the saw and the vocal, accompanied by Roy Ashley on accordion, with Auld Lang Syne #1.

Next, class, we travel through both time and space to Detroit in the year 1987 to hear the young Aretha Franklin and Billy Preston sing a Motown version of our festival theme, Auld Lang Syne #2. Inexplicably, there is a brief appearance by comedian David Brenner at the end of the performance.

As we continue to mellow and chill and let the old year slip away, who better than saxophonist Kenny G to put us in the proper mood? Here is the third rung on our decompression ladder, Auld Lang Syne #3. You may skip this step only if you majored in jazz saxophone in college and consider Kenny G as having sold out for commercial success.

Last year, I searched for a fitting Auld Lang Syne #4 with which to close the Festival. After listening to dozens of possibilities, I decided against subjecting you to Barbra Streisand’s turn-of-the-millenium Las Vegas concert rendition and settled instead upon the Alexandria Harmonizers, the 2003 medal winners of the International Chorus Singing Contest at the SPEBSQSA Convention in Montreal, Canada (SPEBSQSA is the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America), singing one of the best renditions of Auld Lang Syne I have ever encountered. This year, unfortunately, that video is no longer posted in cyberspace because of some squabbling over copyright issues, so I am forced to take a different tack. This year, instead of listening to a fourth version of Auld Lang Syne, let us take a little stroll down memory lane and enter the land of Auld Lang Syne itself.

Help yourself to one or more of the following musical stars of yesteryear:

Doris Day,

Vic Damone,

Lena Horne,

Perry Como and Eddie Fisher,

or the great Nat King Cole!

In Gloria Swanson’s role as silent-film star Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, she had one of the great lines of all time: “They didn’t need dialogue. They had faces then!” When I listen to these singers, I feel like saying, “They had voices then!” I shudder to think what fans of today’s music will be thinking are “golden oldies” thirty or forty years
from now.

Our Festival has now come to an end. It has done its work and our decompression is complete. You may now return to your normal lives, where you are free to choose any kind of music that helps you get through your day.

[A slightly different version of this post was first published on December 30, 2007. --RWP]