Since this is a week of weird memories and odd connections I can’t imagine a better way to express that than to discuss Christmas. It’s scorching hot outside. So what the hell am I doing discussing Christmas at such a non-Christmas time. Good question. What’s even more fun is that I’m not an overly religious person. Moral, Yes, Religious, No. Go figure. Anyway, I’m going to ramble a bit about Christmas, actually the music of Christmas because I’m very near the point in a huge Christmas project that I’m working on, where I’ll begin singing all the vocals for it starting next week. This is me starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel on it.
To backtrack, I came up with this concept at Christmas two years ago, Christmas of 2004 actually, so not quite two years ago. I was sitting there thinking about Christmas music and wondered since some of the biggest stories about the holiday all discuss the concepts of the past, the present and the future. Then I thought about the multitude of major musicians that have all done Holiday albums. Guess what? Not one of them, that I could find, in the history of released music has done a three CD set called Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future. So I made it a goal of mine to actually do just that. So in case you weren’t previously aware that I was working on this goal, you know now. It’s been a labor of a strange journey. Why would someone who wasn’t brought up in a Church be doing so much music about a Christian holiday? Darn good question. Actually it’s one I would like to ask Neil Diamond. As soon as you get an answer as to why someone who was truly brought up in a completely different religion would do it, then maybe I’ll have an amazing answer for someone who isn’t partial to any one religion. My answer would really be that a large part of my extended family is religious in a Christian sense and my parents were raised that way too. They, my parents, decided not to force my sister and I to go to Church. In their defence my parents did do an awesome job of teaching us to know right from wrong and to think for ourselves.
Thus, I do believe in that holiday spirit of doing good amongst one another. It could be parallel to the idea of ‘Its A Wonderful Life’. I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t believe that was originally a holiday movie, and I believe it was a box office failure. Look at it now though. You can’t go a holiday season without seeing at least one small scene from on it a TV somewhere. It’s a timeless movie with a fantastic message. Lots of the original message in Christmas is much the same. It’s that message I wish to express. So stay tuned later this year as I’ll be unleashing the nearly two years in the making box-set to iTunes and other digital services.
To further the weird connection, why did I choose this song? Frankly its because I wanted to show how conflicted I am at times. Really, you’d probably guess that just from reading this blog from day to day. It might not be obvious but doing a huge Christmas project like that would seem to come from someone who really knew what they wanted from their career. Truth be told, when I did decide over a year and a half ago to do it, it actually was. Though now, I’m running circles around myself second guessing everything I do. Alot of that comes from the process of doing a CD. Though now I’m knee-deep in a three CD set – so that’s my normal hangup multiplied by three. Then compound that with the issues I’ve had with agents, booking and shows this past year and it really adds up to being not my normal self. Jason’s aptly titled song ‘Afraid Himself To Be’ is more about a guy afraid of a girl, but I can directly relate that love to anything one can love to do as well.
Here’s the other weird connection going on. Jason is two degrees of separation from Bleu, whom I’ve blogged about in the past. How? Well, at some point in the future, I’ll let you know. It wouldn’t be much fun if I spilled everything all at once? Until then enjoy Jason’s exploration into the fragile male ego and spend some time posting your oddest moments of Christmas here now with a comment. Who knows? If you think about December long enough, you might cool off from all this record heat. Besides its a really cool song. You should buy it and explored several others from his CD’s. It’s great, off the beaten path stuff.
(** Disclaimer – if the label decides they’re not happy with my holiday rantings tied to Jason’s recorded music, you can bet I’ll remove the audio portion of this post in less time than it takes Santa to visit a home on Christmas eve. The words will remain. **)