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You are here: Home / Music / Late Night Horror Show Open Thread

Late Night Horror Show Open Thread

by Anne Laurie|  December 27, 20131:54 am| 24 Comments

This post is in: Music, Open Threads

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Wren Day (Commentor Raven sent me down a YouTube wormhole on an earlier thread). Whenever the Aould Folks or my mother the incorrigible ‘history buff’ would wax nostalgic about some quaint folk custom like the above, my Manhattan-born dad would say “Aren’t you kids glad for television, so we don’t have to ‘make our own fun’ anymore?”

Today, he’d substitute ‘the internet’ for ‘television’, but you see the idea. In my heart I suspect a lot of these Ancient Midwinter Rituals from the Unknowable Past, for all it was important to ritually remind the Sun ‘to stop lurking along the horizon and do a proper day’s work again’, were also about giving the young folk something to do after the last of the harvest until the days started lengthening. Making one’s festival costume, recruiting a gang, planning a dance routine that wouldn’t shame you in front of those bogtrotters from the other side of the hill — and then, you’d have memories of the event to talk about for the ensuing three months of short rations and close quarters.

(And, yes, Steeleye Span’s “The King” is a wrenboy song.)

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Previous Post: « You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch
Next Post: Early Morning Open Thread: C.R.E.A.M. »

Reader Interactions

24Comments

  1. 1.

    Groucho48

    December 27, 2013 at 1:56 am

    Love Steeleye Span!

  2. 2.

    wasabi gasp

    December 27, 2013 at 2:21 am

    What in heck was that? Build the dang fence, a’ready!

    Rustam Fateh Ali Khan – Tori Chab and Kalenin Burcu Muyam

  3. 3.

    ? Martin

    December 27, 2013 at 2:49 am

    Whenever the Aould Folks or my mother the incorrigible ‘history buff’ would wax nostalgic about some quaint folk custom like the above, my Manhattan-born dad would say “Aren’t you kids glad for television, so we don’t have to ‘make our own fun’ anymore?”

    Uh huh. As if Manhattan wasn’t the birthplace of the modern New Years and Christmas celebrations and Festivus. NYC has had no shortage of their own fun-making.

  4. 4.

    wasabi gasp

    December 27, 2013 at 3:02 am

    Orelha Negra – A Memória

  5. 5.

    wasabi gasp

    December 27, 2013 at 3:17 am

    The Mongrelettes – Mon Mec A Moi

  6. 6.

    Schlemizel

    December 27, 2013 at 3:25 am

    Irish kids had another holiday, it may have been Wren Day but I forget when it took place exactly. You would go kill a wren then take it door-to-door asking for money so you could have a funeral for the bird which you displayed on your travels.It was accompanied with singing & drinking (but then again what wasn’t in the Auld Kuntry?)

    Tommy Makem used to sing a song about the festival.

  7. 7.

    wasabi gasp

    December 27, 2013 at 3:54 am

    Luise Pop – Fat Yellow Moon

  8. 8.

    NotMax

    December 27, 2013 at 4:03 am

    @wasabi grasp

    French titles? Ma Belle Amie (a one hit wonder by a Dutch group back in the vinyl age).

  9. 9.

    wasabi gasp

    December 27, 2013 at 4:10 am

    Oscar Brown, Jr. – Hymn to Friday

  10. 10.

    wasabi gasp

    December 27, 2013 at 4:31 am

    @NotMax:

    Like your Dutch fellow, The Mongrelettes are not actually French…they’re Greek.

    Here’s another Greekster I like to spin every now and again:

    Marietta Fafouti – The Girl Who Loved the Rain

  11. 11.

    wasabi gasp

    December 27, 2013 at 4:39 am

    Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers – Dat Dere

  12. 12.

    wasabi gasp

    December 27, 2013 at 5:05 am

    @NotMax:

    Getting back to things French, this would probably be my pick for album of the year:

    La Femme – Psycho Tropical Berlin

  13. 13.

    raven

    December 27, 2013 at 5:50 am

    It’s fun to wake up and see you got some action!

  14. 14.

    raven

    December 27, 2013 at 5:52 am

    This book talks about Dickens and modern Christmas:

    The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits

    ust before Christmas in 1843, a debt-ridden and dispirited Charles Dickens wrote a small book he hoped would keep his creditors at bay. His publisher turned it down, so Dickens used what little money he had to put out A Christmas Carol himself. He worried it might be the end of his career as a novelist.

    The book immediately caused a sensation. And it breathed new life into a holiday that had fallen into disfavor, undermined by lingering Puritanism and the cold modernity of the Industrial Revolution. It was a harsh and dreary age, in desperate need of spiritual renewal, ready to embrace a book that ended with blessings for one and all.

  15. 15.

    raven

    December 27, 2013 at 6:07 am

    @wasabi gasp: These guys love it. . .

  16. 16.

    Gretchen

    December 27, 2013 at 6:59 am

    There’s a wren song on The Chieftans’ Bells of Dublin, but I didn’t know the history of it.

  17. 17.

    maurinsky

    December 27, 2013 at 8:17 am

    @Schlemizel:

    My father grew up in Galway, this sounds very much like what he described. Also, when I was a Duran Duran fan in the early 80s, every time he heard their name he’d sing “oh, de wren, oh de wren, he’s the king of the birds”

  18. 18.

    Origuy

    December 27, 2013 at 9:11 am

    Anne Laurie, you’re in the Boston area, right? Have you ever been to the Christmas Revels in Cambridge? I go to the one in Oakland every year. They put on a different show every year, featuring Christmas/Solstice/Yule traditions of a different place or time. This year’s California Revels was set at Haddon Hall in Darbyshire.

    Love Steeleye Span.

  19. 19.

    gogol's wife

    December 27, 2013 at 9:17 am

    @Groucho48:

    I saw them open for Jethro Tull in Kansas City some time in the 1970s. It was excruciating. I have no idea why I went to that.

  20. 20.

    HelloRochester

    December 27, 2013 at 11:52 am

    Mumming freaks me the fuck out. When I first moved to Philly, I was having a smoke in my now-wife’s apartment early on Jan 1 and I said “Why does Philadelphia have Gay Pride on New Year’s Day?” She couldn’t believe I’d never seen straight (drunk) union pipefitters dressed in sparkles, makeup, and feathered headdresses walking in a parade. It’s still exceptionally odd to me.

  21. 21.

    MD Rackham

    December 27, 2013 at 11:57 am

    @gogol’s wife: I saw them together at the Forum in LA on that tour. 1973?

    I really enjoyed that concert. But Steeleye Span was best in small clubs, like the Troubadour.

  22. 22.

    gogol's wife

    December 27, 2013 at 12:28 pm

    @MD Rackham:

    Yes, hockey arena wasn’t probably the best choice. Before the concert, a guy came out and said, “Someone has stolen one of Steeleye Span’s costumes!” It was surreal. That’s what I remember most vividly.

  23. 23.

    wasabi gasp

    December 27, 2013 at 3:09 pm

    @raven:

    Getting my pick knocked down to honorable mention sounds like a great late Christmas present. Hit me with some links.

    Maybe leave the lame stream mediums out of it, though.

  24. 24.

    Groucho48

    December 27, 2013 at 5:18 pm

    The Boys of Barna Straide…hunting for the wren.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=el_yjhkRrnU

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