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My husband and I have been Jimmy Buffett fans since we were teenagers, so it’s no surprise that his Christmas CD, “Christmas Island,” is one of our holiday favorites. But even if I wasn’t a fan, I’d adore this collection because it’s SO much fun.

Known for his songs about beaches, boat drinks and the Caribbean, Buffett turns some traditional Christmas songs into tropical delights. You be jammin’ to some reggae “Jingle Bells,” complete with Jamaica-appropriate lyrics: “A day or two ago/I thought I’d take a run/to Port Antonio/Be cruisin’ in the sun. The radio was loud/the chicken jerked and fried/and all I had to do that day/was drive on the left side.” “Up on the Housetop” becomes a 60s surf tune, complete with bitchin’ electric guitar and a surfer dude voice over, who asks his companion to “Share the wave, share the wave, it’s Christmas.”

There are some standards, as well, most notably “Mele Kalikimaka” and “I’ll be home for Christmas,” both performed beautifully, along with a lovely a cover of the title track. Also covered is John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas,” a song that, alas, is still far too appropriate for our times. There are some terrific original tunes, as well, my favorite of which is “Ho Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rhum,” in which “Santa’s run off to the Caribbean.” It has some of the most whimsical, fantastic lyrics I’ve ever heard, accompanied by exquisite steel drums. The other original tunes, “A Sailor’s Christmas” and “Merry Christmas, Alabama,” slow down the pace a bit, but without spoiling the mood. And if you keep the CD playing long enough after the last song, you’ll be treated to a hidden track of Buffett reading “The Night Before Christmas.” He doesn’t have Wynton Marsalis’s eloquent N’Awlins accent that I described last week, but he still does a very nice job with it.

So get out the blender and make up some eggnog daiquiris. Then put on “Christmas Island” and take an acoustic trip south. Have a tropical Christmas, everybody!

Okay, now that Thanksgiving is over and we’re looking toward Christmas, it’s time for me to once again feature my favorite holiday CDs for the Sunday Music Blog. Today’s is one we’ve loved for years, Wynton Marsalis’s “Crescent City Christmas Card.” It is SO much fun. Whether you love jazz or not, this is a collection that will make you smile.

It kicks off with a brassy rendition of “Carol of the Bells,” which has been one of my top five favorite carols since I was a little kid. Who knew horns could replace bells so effectively? Then Marsalis’s ensemble is joined by phenomenal soprano Kathleen Battle for a haunting version of “Silent Night.” After that comes one jazzy version of traditional carol after another: “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” “Little Drummer Boy,” “We Three Kings,” “O Tannenbaum”...

The list goes on and on. And in true jazz tradition, there are terrific bursts of impromptu music throughout. Horns proliferate, of course, all kissed with the verve of New Orleans jazz that’s not like any other music out there. But there’s some beautiful piano work, too, especially on “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” My favorite song on the CD, though, is also my favorite version of “Sleigh Bells” ever recorded, with singer Jon Hendricks providing robust and delightful vocalization.

But the absolute best track on this CD is the last one. Along with some truly wonderful jazz accompaniment, Wynton Marsalis himself reads “The Night Before Christmas.” Now, if you’ve never heard Wynton Marsalis talk, you are in for SUCH a treat. The guy has a fabulous, pure New Orleans accent, and I just melt whenever I hear him talk. He’s clearly enjoying himself as he reads the poem, and he injects it with a Southern feel that will warm any winter’s night.

Cheers, everyone! Welcome to the Holiday Season!

Yes, I’m singing the blues this morning. The “I didn’t get my hands on a Nintendo Wii” blues, to be precise. I started feeling them around 8:00 PM last night, when my husband and I drove past Target and saw a line of two dozen people swaddled in sleeping bags in what would become thirty-degrees temps, willing to wait overnight for what the salesclerk told us would be “twenty to twenty-five” systems. There are many humorous anecdotes in our family about the lengths to which we have gone to secure a much-desired Christmas present. But camping in freezing temps ain’t gonna be one of ‘em.

At least I have the Robert Cray Band to keep me warm this morning. Even though what they really are is totally cool.

“Strong Persuader” doesn’t have any songs that are appropriate for those of us who have been wronged by our misplaced materialistic holiday obsession.  But it has EXcellent tunes for those who’ve been wronged by love. In fact, pretty much every song in the collection is about that. In most cases, it’s the singer who’s been wronged by his woman. But in “Right Next Door,” he’s the one who’s caused the problems, by messing with another man’s wife. And in “Still Around,” he’s singing the blues because he wants the woman in his life OUT of it for good, but she just won’t leave.

There are some flashes of hope, however. In “Nothin’ but a Woman,” the blues are averted by the presence of a woman--although it could be any woman--in the singer’s life. And in “Fantasized,” there is the possibility of love blossoming between the singer and a waitress who’s captured his attention.

Still, I should probably be offended by a lot of the lyrics, since most of them make my gender look pretty bad, and the opening number describes the murder of a woman by her ex--who happens to be the singer of the song. But I suppose there are plenty of women singer/songwriters out there who paint men in less than flattering light. Love hurts when it’s the wrong kind of love, and we’ve all experienced that in some form.

But it’s not the lyrics that make this music so exquisitely moving, anyway. It’s the guitar that really twists in your gut. Virtually every song features a cool guitar solo of some kind to showcase Cray’s incredible gift with the instrument. Some are slow, like in “New Blood,” some are jazzier, like in “Guess I Showed Her.” And some, like in “I Wonder,” are the epitome of smoky blues riffs. The horns are great, too, thanks to the appearance on the album of the Memphis Horns, exuberant, audacious and soulful.

Okay, so I didn’t get a Wii to put under the tree for my son. I can listen to Robert Cray and realize there are a lot worse things in life. And a lot better things, too.

“Say It Is So” is kind of a noisy album at times. But it’s a cool noisy. An interesting noisy. And the music overlying the noise is really wonderful.

Tim Finn started his musical life as one of the brothers (along with Neil) who headed up the New Zealand band “Split Enz” back in the eighties. The big hair he had then is deliciously silver now, and his voice has an earthy huskiness that gives one the impression of someone who has gone through some tough times, but who, instead of buckling under them, came out on the other side stronger and wiser for having survived them.

In fact, that’s pretty much the feel of the music, too. I bought “Say It Is So” after hearing the song “Currents” on the radio during an especially rough patch in my professional life. The lyrics spoke to me then, because they were about letting go and letting things happen naturally. I especially love this part of the refrain: “You don’t have to hurry, there’s no need to worry/The currents will carry you away/Not so much swimming as being swept along.” It appeals to the Taoist in me I really wish I could sustain for longer periods of time.

But the rest of the collection is just as nice to listen to, and the lyrics are consistently lovely and upbeat. “Underwater Mountain,” which opens the CD, is a smooth reassurance that we all feel lousy sometimes and need to find a place to go inside ourselves where we feel better. (In this case, it’s a “beautiful mountain under the sea.”) “Good Together” always makes me smile thanks to the warm acoustic guitar and the lyrics that make me think SO much about the relationship I have with my husband--the singer just doesn’t feel “right” unless he’s with the one he loves, preferably at home.

And I love how every song on the CD seems to start with some kind of, well, interesting noise, then moves into a song about something lost that’s been found, sadness that’s turned to happiness, desperation that’s turned to hope. The whole album is just a nice, feel-good hug without being sappy and sentimental. And the music is so very interesting. It is by times rocky, folky, funky, poppy, electronic…

Well, like I said, it’s just INTERESTING. And on days that are a little too gray, a little too sad, and a little too disheartening, it makes me feel better about the way things are, and they way they can be in the future. As Finn sings in “Rest,” the last song on the album, “...it’s time to gather your strength for what lies ahead.” This CD helps me do just that.

That’s a deliberate pun in my title: simple folk, meaning simple lives and simple folk music.  I grew up in small town Minnesota, which at that point was served by one radio station playing country and another playing rock.  And that was it.  My father listened to a lot of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, so I knew that folk existed.  But I didn’t discover it for myself until I went away to college.  These were the days of used record stores, when you could spend a rainy Saturday afternoon going through stacks and stacks of vinyl.  There wasn’t an instant-play option, so instead I would read the lyrics and stare at the grainy black-and-white photos in the back of the song booklet, and try to imagine them playing music. 

I found out that the kind of folk I loved had a very simple line—not too many banjos—and an articulate song.  A beautiful voice helped too.  Somewhere in there I picked up an old record by Kate Wolf called CLOSE TO YOU.  Since then I’ve bought more of her work, and loved it even more, but this was my first by her and so it’s special.  I must have played this a million times in my life (now I own a CD).

I think it’s a very naive album.  She wrote all the songs and the music.  Her voice is gorgeous, like a calmer version of Joan Baez’s—with less range but more sweetness, and none of the political urgency.  She writes sentimental music—mood music.  It’s not going to change the world or revolutionize America, the way Peter, Paul & Mary did.  But it frequently offers a beautiful way of thinking about life, especially life between men and women.

One of my favorite songs called “Across the Great Divide”:

“I’ve been walking in my sleep,
counting troubles, ‘stead of counting sheep. 
Where the years went, I can’t say:
I just turned around and they’ve gone away.

Looking at the lyrics for the first time in years (rather than just listening), I realize that most of them are about love lost, or time lost.  “The years go by / in spite of what you do,” she sings.  “Love grows weak and then / it starts to fade.” Soothed by her beautiful voice I never really realized how melancholy this album is.

CLOSE TO YOU is for a rainy day, a day when you need someone to sing—and cry—along with you.

2 Tone Records exploded on the British music scene in the late ‘70s, when the genres of punk and ska collided. Although the music of 2 Tone is certainly more ska than it is punk, it sort of sounds like ska that was injected with too much adrenaline--or maybe ska on a sugar rush. There are times when the songs are so fast, you honestly can’t even dance to them. So you just sort of pogo around the room. (Hmm. Now I’m wondering if that’s how slam dancing started.)

I never heard a band who recorded with the 2 Tone label that wasn’t excellent. But my favorite, I think, were/are the Specials. And this, their debut album of the same name, is, in my opinion, their best. Not just because they covered a lot of great ska classics, but because their original songs are excellent, and emblematic of the times. There was a lot going on in Britain in the late 70s--high unemployment, significant racial tension, struggles in the working class--and the Specials captured all of it in their music.

There’s “Stupid Marriage,” about kids getting married too young, and for all the wrong reasons. Similarly, “Too Much, Too Young” focuses on how early pregnancy both robs kids of their youth and puts a burden on the taxpayer. “Nite Klub” criticizes the aimless youth who spend too much time, money and energy hanging out in bars. “Concrete Jungle” is about urban violence. There are songs about racism, too, something these most-often multi-racial bands knew a thing or two about.

But it’s the music that makes this album stand out. Not just Terry Hall’s unpolished, yet very fluid voice that totally captures working class Britain, but the raucous horns, the cool Farfisa organ, the almost lazy drumming on the slower tunes (and I mean that as a compliment, because only ska drummers can sound so deliciously leisure). Mostly, however, it’s that wonderfully uneven ska beat. Stewart Copeland, the drummer for the Police, once described it this way: Regular music beats go ONE-two-three-four, ONE-two-three-four. But the ska beat is more like one-two-THREE-four, one-two-THREE-four. It’s just a little...off.

And it’s really, really cool. Not to mention imminently danceable, very smart, truly unique and surprisingly sophisticated in a lot of ways. And for those of us who came of age in the late 70s and loved all things British, it makes you feel like a kid again. Me, I’m off to look for my porkpie hat.

This morning, I awoke to a quintessential autumn day. Thick gray skies, an expected high temperature in the 50s, wind whipping through the trees and scattering the leaves around the yard. To me, the perfect sort of day. I’m gonna go out on a limb and declare that fall has FINALLY arrived in Kentucky. (‘Bout damned time, too.) This is my signal to change out not just summer clothes to fall, but summer music to fall. So I say a fond farewell to salsa and reggae (See ya next, year, guys!), and open my arms for a welcome embrace of classical and chamber music. (I listen to other stuff, too, year-round, but these things are fairly seasonal for me.)

My husband should actually be writing the music blog today, because it’s he, not me, who is the rabid Patrick O’Brian fan in the family. (I like my historicals served up with a very healthy dose of romance.) And it was he, not me, who discovered “Musical Evenings with the Captain.” He did tell me for the blog that music is integral to the books. It’s what initially brings together the two main characters of O’Brian’s novels, Jack Aubrey and Steven Maturin, when they meet in the music room of the Governor’s house in Port Mahon. And the two often play together--Jack on violin and Steven on cello. So the music included on “Musical Evenings” is the same sort of music they would have created during that time. And much of it is the music mentioned in the books.

For example, my husband points to a scene in THE WINE DARK SEA, wherein Boccherini’s Sonata for Violin and Cello in D Major, which is one of the selections on the CD, is very much a part of the scene. Jack’s and Steven’s enjoyment of the ‘89 Port (that would be 1789), inspires them to play. From the book:  “They swept into the next movement, the ‘cello booming nobly, and carried straight on without a pause, separating, joining, answering one another, with never a hesitation nor a false note until the full satisfaction at the end.” (It goes without saying that my husband is also a fan of Port. Thanks, David!)

This is also a great description of the CD, come to think of it. It’s just a really wonderful collection of chamber music, and it introduced me (absolutely NO aficionado of classical music) to composers Pietro Antonio Locatelli and Luigi Boccherini, who I’d never (at least not knowingly) heard before. Their works are joined by those of Haydn, Handel and Leclair and performed by the Philharmonia Virtuosi: Mela Tenenbaum and Alexander Tenenbaum on violins, Dorothy Lawson on cello, and Richard Kapp on fortepiano.

We’ve been listening to it this week in the mornings as we prepare for work and school. It’s a lovely way to start the day. (Even my 12-year-old enjoys it.) And for driving or walking through color-spattered woods with the cool kiss of autumn ruffling your hair, there is no finer music anywhere.