A Very Moonachie Christmas And A HOLIDAY WEEKEND MIX

 

December, 1976, I just spent a month at my dad's place in Sheepshead Bay, which began right before Thanksgiving, and I was now headed back to Broome Street for Christmas week. When I got home on the 23rd, I was shocked into a new kind of holiday bliss. While I was gone, my mother transformed my tiny freight elevator sized room into what I can only describe as a 60's psychedelic paradise. 

The walls were newly painted orange. There were new black drapes, a lava lamp, a bedside lamp with a red lightbulb, a new clock radio, which four years later delivered the news of John Lennon's murder as I was falling asleep to Alison Steele on WNEW-FM, though it might have been Vin Scelsa. I can't recall at the moment. I just know, that's how I found out. But I digress. There was also a new portable black and white television, a brand new turntable, and a quirky, decorative bedside wire sculpture which made an unpleasant noise that hurt my teeth when you shook it. It was the type of thing you would regularly find in the wacky Azuma shop near West 8th Street in Greenwich Village. Or maybe on the set of "Sleeper."

 

This was a truly amazing gift from my mom, though I imagine she had some help from my grandmother and uncle. I wanted to live in this eden forever. Crack a window for some air. Sneak into the kitchen for sustenance. Records, TV, a lava lamp and a stupid wire thing that I knocked over every time I reached for the clock radio. What else did I need? 

Cut to Christmas morning and I awaken to a few more gifts under the tree, including some new records, one of which was Queen's new one "A Day At The Races" that had just come out a few weeks earlier. This was going to be the best Christmas yet. Right? 

WRONG! 

I was told to shower and get dressed because we were leaving at noon to spend Christmas Day with my Aunt Mary and Uncle Bobby, and count'em, their 12 kids, in Moonachie, New Jersey.

Now, I always say, it's no picnic being an adult. You have bills to pay. You have to dress yourself. You have to get dressed. But, you do have one amazing perk when you are an adult. It is the freedom to say to anyone at anytime, "No," as in "No, I am not going to Moonachie." I did not have that freedom on 12/25/76. But I did say this to my mother.

"You spent all this time and money creating this amazing room full of everything I love and now you are taking me away from it all. That's not very Christmasey."

Okay, that was a bit melodramatic. Maybe Lana Turner could have pulled it off. But I couldn't.

My mother wasn't amused. 

And so, we went dashing through the sludge in a 1971 maroon Ford Maverick and crossed the river to the Jersey side. We rode along the idyllic Tonnelle Avenue to Moonachie where there would be a dozen cousins, ages ranging from 5 to 25, screaming, fighting and wrestling, kicking toys around, and pretty much just throwing shit across the house, sometimes, at each other. Not a single one of them cared about music on any level that would satisfy me on this lost Christmas day, let alone knowing who the hell Queen were. 

My Aunt Mary & Uncle Bobby were wonderful people with great senses of humor. 12 kids, remember? Not to mention, a few of their older kids had kids of their own. This was insanity. My Aunt Mary was a great cook, but imagine having to cook a Christmas meal for 30 people without outside help. There were two turkeys, three lasagnas. The pot of meatballs had to be stirred with a snow pusher. And those kids, my cousins, were great kids. But they were not like my cousins on my father's side. 

My Brooklyn cousins bought records, played instruments, and listened to WABC and WMCA all day and night. No one was rambunctious. No one wanted to wrestle, for Pete's sake. Christmas Day would have flown by if I was in Sheepshead Bay. We'd be eating and laughing, or playing one of the dozen guitars my uncle had in the house on East 19th Street. We'd be taking turns picking out 45's to play on my cousin Albert's stereo, fighting only about whether "No Milk Today" or "I'm Into Something Good" was the better Herman's Hermits song. But here I was, daydreaming about my new multicolored den of iniquity back on Broome Street, while being roughhoused against my will in Bergen County. I finally snapped out of my reverie, but only after getting hit in the head with a flying can of Play-Doh. What a fa-la-la-la-loser. 

This is just one more example of why I have a seasonal winter twitch.

But now, some music.

I love Christmas music, though much of it affects me in ways I'd rather not experience. It's a little too evocative of good times and bad. This is why I can't create a holiday playlist that is strictly Christmas music. I need at least a few secular speed bumps, though this playlist has mostly secular speed bumps. And besides, who says good Christmas music couldn't be a lovely jazz or power pop tune.

 

Hope ya dig it!

 

TRACKLIST
Dr. Feelgood- The Mavericks
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!- The Fab Four
Such A Night- Bunny Paul
Hot Line To Jesus- Mack Rice
What Time Is It- The Jive Five
Hooves On The Roof- Nick Lowe
Valley Winter Song- Fountains Of Wayne
Coming Up Close- 'Til Tuesday
Love Has Found Me- The Galaxies
Heavenly Night- The Lemon Twigs & Friends
Nessun Dorma- Jeff Beck
Blue, Red And Grey- The Who
Four Seasons In One Day- Crowded House
Don't Talk- Linda Ronstadt
In A Sentimental Mood- Duke Ellington & John Coltrane
By The Time It Gets Dark- The New Mendicants
It's A Big Country- Davitt Sigerson
Hand In Hand- Phil Collins
Just One Victory- Todd Rundgren

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