My Musical Advent Calendar

"Santa Baby" / Maria Muldaur

Wait -- only ten more shopping days until Christmas? Yikes!  (And when I say ten more shopping days, I really mean seven more business days, which is what matters when you do most of your shopping on line, as I do.)

I know I said no more snarky anti-holiday numbers, but honestly, this sexy wish list for the Man in Red hasn't a bit of snark to it. Commercial? Materialistic? You bet. But this naughty/nice babe is perfectly willing to play nice so long as she gets what she wants. 

So whose version of this holiday standard do we pick?  Is it Eartha Kitt's 1953 original, delivered in her best kittenish purr? Madonna's coy Betty Boop version? Kylie Minogue's campy diva turn? Ariana Grande's melismatic overload? Taylor Swift's teenybopper yodel?

Really, as far as I'm concerned, it's no contest -- not when you've got Maria Muldaur in the wings.

Maria, after all, is an old hand at issuing sexy invitations, as her 1973 hit "Midnight at the Oasis" attests. ("Let's slip off to a sand dune / Real soon / And kick up a little dust.") It's all in the innuendo.

Which is the whole point of this tongue-in-cheek song. Our singer -- think of her as a 1950s precursor of the Kardashians -- has a Christmas list all right, and it's strictly high-end: furs, cars, jewelry, and maybe a little pied a terre? But the song is a brilliant melding of melodic form and function -- all those curling little melodic lines, crooking a sexy finger at Santa.

It reminds me of this annoying lingerie commercial that plays heavily during football games (guess why?), with a dewy model in a scarlet satin teddy licking her moist full lips, swiveling to show off her perfect breasts. The message is so clear: "Buy me what I want and I will let you fuck me." (Which is different from, "I will fuck you.") But in Maria's teasing version, that blatant message is given a knowing (wink-wink) spin.

"Think of all the fun I've missed," she cajoles, "Think of all the fellas that I haven't kissed / Next year I could be just as good / If you'd check off my Christmas list..."  And Maria's contralto massages those lines, amping up the subtext, letting us all know that she's ready to deliver.

Camp? You got it. And I love it. 

"Sweetheart" / Maria Muldaur

Big hit?  Maybe not. But whenever this song dials up on my shuffle, I feel as if an old girlfriend has just phoned me for a good dish session.

I came to this record well after it was released (on the 1974 album Waitress in a Donut Shop). In my New England college days I certainly knew Maria Muldaur's voice from the Jim Kweskin Jug Band (theater profs, groovy young arty types, turned me on), and her hit song "Midnight at the Oasis," also from 1974, I heard over and over again on the local radio station. 

But then I went to live in England for a couple of years, where everything got mixed up.  One of my best American pals there was a West Coaster and therefore a Dan Hicks fan; belatedly I appreciated that the Jim Kweskin folks had serendipitously been doing the same stuff. In those pre-Internet days when regional music scenes still had distinct identities, it really meant something to have my own New England chanteuse holding the fort (though Dan Hicks's Mary Ann Price had already jumped ship to sing back-up for the Kinks, a job I've wanted most of my life....)

In those austerity years I had only a cassette player, so somewhere I acquired a cassette of Waitress in a Donut Shop. I didn't have many cassettes; the few I owned got played over and over.  And so this album bored into my brain..

But, oh, how lovely that was.

You know me, I love storytelling songs. And the scenario here is smartly laid out.  She's a waitress in a donut shop (hence the album's title), and he's a regular customer.  She waits every day for him to show up; she's invested a whole lot more in his daily appearance than he probably has in his routine morning stop.

But oh, the yearning she pours into this daily encounter, and the constant consciousness of how futile it is. "Sweet heart / But it doesn't beat for me." Already I'm on board, loving how she deconstructs the word "sweetheart" into its constituent components.

She knows who she is and where she stands. "I'm a waitress in a donut shop. /  I see him on his morning stop. / He talks of love, but he's talking about his sweetheart / She gives him a rough time / He gives me his dime / And then parts." There's an edge of class consciousness there -- the tiniest scintilla -- just enough to trigger all of us 1970s-era hippies into siding with this working girl.

What a sneaky little populist love story this is. And, in the retro jug band tradition, it's all gussied up with road-house piano trills and a horn section. Here we are in the mid-1970s -- punk and the New Wave waiting just around the corner -- and the snazzy mood of this throwback track is deliciously out of sync.

Maria Muldaur's voice was never for the mainstream; her clear bell-like tones, her supple melismas, were completely out of fashion as the yelping 1970s progressed. But then, I've never been one for fashion.  And those devoted nights spent with this cassette on my portable player -- well, as the old song says, they can't take that away from me.

Friday Shuffle

I'm thoroughly bummed that the Amazon widget doesn't seem to work anymore.  In cases like this I tend to assume that Blogger/Google and Amazon are having a hissy fit with each other (did Google steal Amazon's boyfriend?) and Google has decided not to play with Amazon ever again.  Took me ages to find another way to slip those links in here. Hope it works! 

1. Moments Like This / Maria Muldaur
From A Woman Alone With the Blues (2003)
Nice little bit of jazz from Maria Muldaur, in her best kittenish-sultry voice. I've been a fan of Maria's ever since the Jim Kweskin Jug Band days, though my favorite album of hers is definitely Waitress in a Donut Shop.  If all you know of her is "Midnight At The Oasis," please investigate further.

2. The Good Old Days / The Lodger
From Life Is Sweet (2008). 
Catchy indie pop number from this Leeds trio -- "Could it be the start of something? / Could it be the end of a phase? / Could it be the start of the future? / Could it be the good old days?"  Way too upbeat for the break-up subject matter, but I'll never turn down bouncy hooks like this.

3. One to One / Joe Jackson
From Beat Crazy (1980)
Joe Jackson may have started out wearing a New Wave suitcoat, but it never really fit. By the time of Beat Crazy he was already skewing toward jazz  -- we shouldn't have been so surprised by the next year's Jumpin' Jive, though who could have predicted the Latinized glory of Night and Day?  The metronomic drum tick of this track is downright hypnotic.  

4.  I Don't Wanna Talk About Love No More / Amy Rigby
From Little Fugitive (2005)
"I'm tired of emotional discussions / I'm tired of repercussions...."  Amy Rigby's such a hoot; she really tells it like it is, our most reliable guide to spunky chick desire.

5. Redneck Friend / Dave Alvin
From West of the West (2006)
Nice cover of a Jackson Browne tune, on Alvin's album-long salute to various of his fellow native California rockers.  Alvin's gravelly voice adds a sexy intimacy to this tune, perfectly complemented by a slouchy jazz arrangement. More people should cover Jackson Browne, IMHO.  

6. Rush Across the Road / Joe Jackson
From Rain (2008)
Joe again!  And 28 years after Beat Crazy, listen to his muse in full flower on this riveting album, one of the best of the past decade.  On the track before this, he rips our hearts out with "Solo (So Low)" -- only to let joy burst in again with "Rush Across the Road," a soaring paean to how love can take you completely by surprise.

7. Stick To Me / Graham Parker & the Rumour
From Stick To Me (1977)
Early GP, and great stuff -- dig those edgy rhythms and driving energy.  I swear, this song just crackles out of the speakers.    

8.  Hate to Say I Told You So / The Hives
From Veni Vidi Vicious (2000)
Well, talk about edgy rhythms and driving energy -- it's the Hives' turn, dialing up the punk with those grating guitars and pounding beat, sweetened with just a dollop of playfulness.    

9. Say Yes / Elliott Smith
From Either / Or (1997)
I know very little about Elliott Smith, but the handful of folky tracks that somehow landed on my iTunes always make me wistful. Was this song in the movie Garden State?  Sounds like it should have been.

10. You Are A Tourist  / Death Cab for Cutie
From Codes and Keys (2011)
"When there's a burning in your heart / An endless yearning in your heart..."  I love the layered textures of this track, with its incantatory chorus, spooling guitar riff, and plinging echoes.  Even endless radio play this summer couldn't spoil this number for me.

The Wednesday Shuffle

Back to Wednesdays, and it feels so right. (Anything rather than go outdoors in this weather...)

1.  "The Bad Thing" / Arctic Monkeys
From Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007)
Are the Arctic Monkeys over?  I hope not. Here's what I wrote about this scrappy track a couple years ago when the album first came out...

2. "Isn't That the Thing To Do?" / Maria Muldaur
From Love Wants to Dance (2004)
Nice little palate cleanser, with Maria letting out her jazz side on this Gershwin standard.

3. "How Can I Sing Like a Girl?" / They Might Be Giants
From Factory Showroom (1996)
"I want to raise my freak flag / And never be alone" -- yes, it's another off-kilter nerd anthem from the Johns.  That nasal whine of John Linnell is perfect for this song.


4. "There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards" / Ian Dury and the Blockheads
From Reasons to Be Cheerful (1978)
Speaking of raising freak flags....here's my favorite Ian Dury tune ever (here's why). Which reminds me -- I've just got the new biopic Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll from Netflix -- must watch!

5. "Sleepwalker" / The Kinks
From Sleepwalker (1977)
Or, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Insomnia," by Ray Davies. Another freak flag raised!  This bouncy track IMHO isn't one of the Kinks' best -- odd it should be the title track of an album. But there are Kinks fans who love it, so what do I know?

6. "Money Talks" / The Kinks
From Preservation Act 2 (1974)
Now this is more my Kinks -- savage satire with histrionic flair.  Being deep into Keith Richards' Life at the moment, I realize what a pitch-perfect Stones impression this is.  I'm noticing the dirty slide guitar and lovin' it.

7. "New Slang" / The Shins
From Oh, Inverted World (2001)
Charming folk-pop jangle from James Mercer and Co., spiked with stream-of-consciousness absurdity.  Yes, I'll admit it, this song on the Garden State soundtrack was my back-door introduction to these indie darlings.  There is an art to a great soundtrack, though.  Must blog about that sometime... 

8.  "Don't Bug Me When I'm Working" / Little Village
From Little Village (1992)

Talk about dirty guitar -- Ry Cooder gets just plain nasty on this one. Oh, and Johnny Hiatt's snarling lead vocals, with Ry and Nick Lowe each insinuating a verse. ("I can't even work with my baby at night -- Lord have mercy!") Tell me again why Little Village didn't work out?

9. "Full Moon in My Soul" / Robyn Hitchcock
From Spooked (2004)
More folk-pop jangle, with Robyn out-absurding even the Shins -- "I'm out of here, I'm taking off / You can have my cigarettes and, mister, you can have my cough." The loungy rhythm of this number is simply too delicious, and dig that lazy slide guitar in the bridge. 

10. "This Is A Low" / Blur 
From Parklife (1994)
Mmm, what a lovely sonic haze enfolds this modern bit of BritPop psychedelia -- I sink right into it. My sentimental favorite Blur album.  Should have known Damon Albarn would be a Kinks fan...