I no longer use the "sportmurphy.com" email listed elsewhere online. try myspace/facebook if you have something to say or ask.
![[Powered by Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
Friday, December 21, 2007
Yeah, yeah, I missed last night. I was up until almost 5 am making a dvd compilation of unusual - you guessed it - CHRISTMAS clips. Tonignt? House cleaning. All shagged. Anyway, the real 12 days of Christmas are supposed to start on Dec 25.
Oh, and Happy Birthday, Dad. I'll lift my Xmas Eve whiskey to the memory of lifting 'em with you.
Oh, and Happy Birthday, Dad. I'll lift my Xmas Eve whiskey to the memory of lifting 'em with you.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Actually had to spend time in a mall today... always odious. Kid's toys. Ate this Arthur Treacher fish that was both artless and treacherous; it turned immediately into bowel-churning greased feces and if that description sounds disgusting, try visiting a Long Island mall on Xmas week.
The large pop-art cock was one of numerous artworks lending rare grace to the concern. Now the place is bereft of these li'l islands of greenery and sculpture; the promenades are instead dotted with krap kiosks and snack counters. Soft pretzels covered with brown sugar and toffee goop to eat while purchasing battery-operated trick dog toys that disintegrate on the way home.
When I worked in Sam Goody records, the disco era was in full flower. I was forever trying to play Tom Waits in-store before the boss took it off and put something awful on the stereo. During the holiday shopping season, one of the albums in heavy rotation was the unimaginably rotten, utterly unendurable Salsoul Orchestra "Christmas Jollies." The cover is shown below, along with the original, peek-a-boo ass pic of the Salsoul girl, which the crack design team at Salsoul records bowdlerized for the Christmas album. That same craft and taste informs the music as well, an incessant boomboom disco beat throbbing without variation under the comfort-and-joyless mynah bird chorus disemboweling seasonal favorites sacred and secular.
Years ago I worked in a mall. There's a view of its interior way back in those days:
The large pop-art cock was one of numerous artworks lending rare grace to the concern. Now the place is bereft of these li'l islands of greenery and sculpture; the promenades are instead dotted with krap kiosks and snack counters. Soft pretzels covered with brown sugar and toffee goop to eat while purchasing battery-operated trick dog toys that disintegrate on the way home.
When I worked in Sam Goody records, the disco era was in full flower. I was forever trying to play Tom Waits in-store before the boss took it off and put something awful on the stereo. During the holiday shopping season, one of the albums in heavy rotation was the unimaginably rotten, utterly unendurable Salsoul Orchestra "Christmas Jollies." The cover is shown below, along with the original, peek-a-boo ass pic of the Salsoul girl, which the crack design team at Salsoul records bowdlerized for the Christmas album. That same craft and taste informs the music as well, an incessant boomboom disco beat throbbing without variation under the comfort-and-joyless mynah bird chorus disemboweling seasonal favorites sacred and secular.
"Fuck me Elvis" (as we said in those days), it sucked. And it made those already wretched hours eeeeendless.
At every available opportunity I'd slip away to Beefsteak Charlie's to drink away the agony. As did most of the store's management on Christmas Eve itself, which presented a grand opportunity to purloin stacks of records, tapes, styluses, cartridges, microphones, tape decks, headphones, cables, instruments, songbooks, office supplies, et al, right under their inebriated noses. I wonder if the great R. Stevie Moore, then working at one of Sam Goody's New Jersey stores, did the same. I got fired three times from that place. Sometimes I still dream that I'm showing up for work there, looking for my time card. Then I wake up, drunk.
Ah, holiday memories!
Ah, holiday memories!
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Here's my first extant Santa picture. Mom has dressed me in festive raiment, with suspenders (or "braces" to those of you in the UK, or "galluses" to those of you in the early 19th century) and a seasonal red-n-gold shirt. This picture differs from the subsequent ones in a few details: the throne of Ol' Saint Nick is here a white, betasseled number with stripes and spires. The background wall is neutral. The giveaway booklet - these usually featured coloring pages and cartoon tales of happy children in Santaland - clearly identifies the site as Abraham and Straus department store. Downtown Brooklyn. How dearly I recall the splendor of these stores in Christmastime... huge trees gleaming with lights, glass ornaments and tinsel. The banks of elevators manned by old men who always made gentle remarks to a young boy overwhelmed by the spectacle about and the prospect of meeting HIM.
You'd walk though the herding corridors, deftly done up in paint and glitter to illustrate that year's theme (reflected, of course, in the booklet)... Children of many lands celebrate the holidays... Jimmy and Sally visit the North Pole... Rudolph and friends welcome you... eventually arriving at the "big chair" ...not the one Tears For Fears later referred to. Now, this time I seem a bit tentative. Who could blame me, sitting on the lap of this bug-eyed menace? I dig the beard; it's a quality item with a golden tinge to provide veritas and contrast with the white trim on his outfit. Wonder what I asked him for? More to come on this absorbing topic.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Well, I decided to do this every-night blog thing, for Christmas. The attempt to keep up with this and the attempt to make Christmas festive here are both acts of will; I'm not especially inspired to do this, and Christmas nowadays is heavily laden with sorrows, obviously. Still: I am alive and I have a family to nurture and be nurtured by, so acts of will... acts of defiance toward the grim realities of living... are important.
I just got a little ways into a screed and deleted it all.
Right now my Mom is in very bad health... dying, to be blunt. I'm really weary. REALLY weary and sad. So fuck screeds and onward with the little acts of defiant will. For '08 I have a trip to France to look forward to. I hope my little circle of French compatriots... friends, fans and fellow artists... help me enjoy a little vindication for all this futile work I've done with music. Between that and this snail's-pace album we've been making, maybe it'll get a shot in the arm and feel like it means something again. Or maybe these'll be sweet notes on which to conclude the whole tortuous venture. Either one's cool with me.
And I have this little gig at the NY Post, thanks be to Guzman. You know, telling people I write articles about musicians is infinitely preferable to telling them I'm a musician. The latter means "published" which means "money"which means respect. The former means "loser" and people love reminding you of that. So yeah, bring on a year of Sunday articles. And if a few folks in Paris applaud a set of my greatest misses, that will sustain me.
And of course, there's my wife and kids. I hope for a good year for us, and for a nice holiday season to lead us onward. And for you, my friends, I hope for wonders untold, successes grand, and radiant health. Merry Christmas, anyway, is my point. More nostalgic/stoopid Christmas posts to come.
I just got a little ways into a screed and deleted it all.
Right now my Mom is in very bad health... dying, to be blunt. I'm really weary. REALLY weary and sad. So fuck screeds and onward with the little acts of defiant will. For '08 I have a trip to France to look forward to. I hope my little circle of French compatriots... friends, fans and fellow artists... help me enjoy a little vindication for all this futile work I've done with music. Between that and this snail's-pace album we've been making, maybe it'll get a shot in the arm and feel like it means something again. Or maybe these'll be sweet notes on which to conclude the whole tortuous venture. Either one's cool with me.
And I have this little gig at the NY Post, thanks be to Guzman. You know, telling people I write articles about musicians is infinitely preferable to telling them I'm a musician. The latter means "published" which means "money"which means respect. The former means "loser" and people love reminding you of that. So yeah, bring on a year of Sunday articles. And if a few folks in Paris applaud a set of my greatest misses, that will sustain me.
And of course, there's my wife and kids. I hope for a good year for us, and for a nice holiday season to lead us onward. And for you, my friends, I hope for wonders untold, successes grand, and radiant health. Merry Christmas, anyway, is my point. More nostalgic/stoopid Christmas posts to come.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
