Friday, December 21, 2012

MORE CLASSIC CHRISTMAS SONGS



This (above) isn't a traditional Christmas song, but maybe it should be. Earlier peppy versions recorded when Dietrich was younger can be found, but this slow and throaty one from 1954 is full of experience and wisdom and conveys the meaning best in my opinion.



O'Connor's is the best modern version that I've heard. See if you agree.



This version (above) of Drummer Boy got so much radio play when it came out, that some people from that era can't bear to hear it any more. I think it still holds up.



 Jonathan Antoine (above)...I never heard of him before I discovered him accidentally this morning. He's so awkward-looking that I thought the video must be a joke before I played it. Now I have played it and, believe me, this guy is no joke. He's rough around the edges, but he'll be a household name in a few years, wait and see.



I post this every year at Christmas, and will probably do the same thing next year. It's great, isn't it?




4 comments:

Unknown said...

Merry Christmas to you, Eddie! Hope you have great holiday.

I don't mean to bother you or anything, but I'm amazed at how my 22 year old sister in college wouldn't listen to a word I had to say, even though I was trying to save her from herself. She has all these ambitions about living in New York to go to law school and all this stuff, and I've been trying to warn her about the dwindling job market for that profession and she scolded me and called me stupid. I have no problem with people majoring in what they WANT to major in college but at the end of the day, one must have enough income to pay the bills, rent and basically survive in the world. I've discovered how corrupted and biased political science courses at least the university my sister is at have become and I was shocked to find out that a lot of the writers who wrote the textbooks in these classes have Marxist leanings.

Basically from what I've heard, the lawyers that are getting paid big are mostly the ones with affluent parents that went to big name Ivy League or T14 schools. In fact, NPR had an article over the summer about this very problem that lawyers are facing right now with dwindling employment prospects. I also saw an article about how some lawyers are becoming truck drivers and other kinds of menial professions that had nothing to do with they studied in the frist place.

In the past, law has been a very viable and useful career but the times have changed and with the economy the way it is right now and the close to million people who have given up looking for work according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the recent layoffs you can find on that website, I don't think the profession is going to recover much in the next few years unless you end up at some cushy government job.

The other week I had listened to The Tom Leykis Show, and Tom himself brought up the fact that lawyers are becoming a dime a dozen and that many of them are appearing on coupon offers or something like that. I'm only paraphrasing here.

What is your opinion on this?

Unknown said...

Unrelated to my first post, I found this video of Irwin Schiff's "How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn't." The illustrations look great and make very good use of composition and a bunch of other fundamentals. I can't believe this was drawn in the 80s. He's the father of Austrian economist Peter Schiff, someone I respect for being such a staunch defender of free market and laissez-faire economics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFxvy9XyUtg

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Roberto: I'm with you. I believe in a good liberal arts education for people who really believe in it. If they become truck drivers that's okay, because they'll be thoughtful and more fully human truckdrivers.

On the other hand, if someone sees college only as a vocational boost then they'd be silly to take courses that aren't practical and useful. As you say, jobs are going to be hard to find in the future.

Also as you say, the Marxist influence on education is appalling. Modern colleges are all about teaching what to think, not how to think. I don't know if it's possible to get a real education at many colleges.

Law can be educational and not just practical. I think all liberal arts curriculums should include a semester of Blackstone's Commentaries.

mike fontanelli said...

Some more favorites:

John Willams

BB King

Judy Garland

Thurl Ravenscroft

Elvis

Ray Charles