Mark Likes Music

I've been looking for a version of "Silent Night" that captures its sacred nature, its ethereality. If I can stop thinking about lumber while watching, this clip might be it: Everyone's favorite "great Inuit violinist," John Clare , sent me a link to this earlier today. So you can thank him.

If you're in Chicago for Christmas--and you're a big geek--you'll want to check out Commedia Beauregard's A Klingon Christmas Carol : Christopher Kidder, the director and co-writer, tells the Wall Street Journal , "It's like an opera." I'm sure it is. But at least it's not this: (Thanks to Symphony Nova Scotia and Erika Beatty for the tip.)

Here's a video ( sent by--you guessed it--my sister-in-law ) of Los Straitjackets doing "Sleigh Ride" in Portland last December: A few days after their show, coincidentally, Andy Williams, also a noted "Sleigh Ride" interpreter, was on NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me .   Be warned if you listen to the interview: the guy's kind of a jerk. I'm not going to post his "Sleigh Ride" here. I will post this, though:

My sister-in-law is at it again : Before LeBron, Akron was probably best known as the place where The Waitresses came from. (I don't know if that's really true; I just found that out on Wikipedia.) You might not know "Christmas Wrapping," but you probably remember this:

My friend Peter MacDonald, the Music Director at Local 107.3 FM in St. John  and someone  who really needs to update his blog , posted this little gem to his Facebook page this morning: The longer you listen, the more you realize just how great this is. No joke. I love it. And the band's pretty tight, too.

So, my sister-in-law sent me this, with the note: "I thought of you when I saw this one." When did the gesamtkunst-lightshow at Christmas become so popular? There's even a website . Thanks for the tip, Sabrina .

Has anyone in Utah seen The Rose ? Thanks, Robyn. I couldn't resist.

There are a many ways to enjoy the magical sounds of Christmas. With a bagpipe in your living room is not one of them. They may take our eardrums, but they'll never take our egg nog!

Somewhere there are photos of me, decked out in wire-rimmed hippie glasses, sitting at a piano and playing "Imagine" with my junior-high rock band at a school talent contest. As a kid, I was a bit of a John Lennon fan--needless to say--and it was great to see Open Culture  post, among other things, Lennon and Yoko Ono's  Dick Cavett Show interview   as a tribute on this anniversary of the Beatle's death . I've already shown you some Christmas music that's just so wrong , but today it's worth mentioning John Lennon's "Happy Christmas (War is Over)" as music that's pretty well the best there is, at least of the last 40 years of so. There are tons of homemade videos of the song on YouTube; here's one:

Never were truer words ever spoken. If you like curse words, take a look at this video from Drew . He's an Ohioan . Otherwise, enjoy the Slayer light show . 

Did you ever wonder what happened to that guy in high school who thought he was deep because he listened to metal. "It's not Satanic," he'd say. "I'm a Christian, and I can tell you that the lyrics actually remind us about evil. They're a warning." Well, he lives in a three-bedroom colonial in California now. And he's setting his holiday light show to Slayer's "Raining Blood."