I know most people are content to just like what they like and dislike what they don't—good for them—but I am incapable of operating on just that level. To be fair, I'm willing to admit that I underwent a certain level of academic indoctrination in my college years (it was the so-called "PC" early 90's after all),…

A full body high top fade.

Honestly, as I said above, I think 'Pleasure Principle' is the better album but if what you like about 'The Man Machine' is the thematic "machine-obsessed" aspect, you'd probably prefer 'Replicas'. I think 'Pleasure Principle' is more emotionally mature, as if it were the voice of a replicant coming to terms with the…

"It was bad enough…now it's getting
deconstructed in the comments." "weak shit" & "Has anyone here ever had sex?"

That's some serious Scrooge type shit, Aurora.

Yes, but "war is over / if YOU want it" really knows where to lay the blame. I'm not claiming John's lyrics are great, I don't think he was half as clever as everyone (including he, himself) thought he was—but it is the better song, and (to develop a second, perhaps more pointed metaphor than the Charlie Brown one) is…

That's fair enough, but taken as a whole I find the thing moving. They're both naive, but to me (to use a Charlie Brown analogy), whereas Paul's is naive in a mercenary pink aluminum Xmas tree way, John's is naive in an honest, runty little Xmas tree way.

Of course you're right—but 20/20 hindsight, education, political ideology and the virus of deconstruction can lead to real cognitive dissonance where art and identity issues are concerned—and you can't simply unlearn your way back to rationalization. There is an undeniable sexism inherent in the song which can make it…

"theologically unsound"

Is that true? I don't know enough about numbers to argue that but can we sure they are using the same alphabet as we are?

That always brings to mind HD's 'Trilogy' (which see).

For me, that kind of drama in a Xmas Carol always brings to mind the part of 'Do You Hear What I Hear?' (and from that inevitably to 'Gremlins') where the King gets all divine right on "the people everywhere" with "Listen to what I say!!"

I get dismayed, sometimes by nothing.

'Feliz Navidad'!

Canned Heat are pretty awesome though. I remember after 'Freedom Rock' came out and for a matter of years the only Canned Heat song I knew was that insipid flute Blues song 'Goin' Up the Country' (which in the Massachusetts area was also used in a commercial for, of all things, a brand of white bread—a situation that…

I have the whole 'Star Wars Christmas Album'. It advertises itself as having "characters from the movies" but in reality Chewbacca and R2D2 are collections of sound cues, so that means it was really just poor Anthony Daniels in the studio. So very sad.

Actually, most Xmas songs are fairly downbeat—sentimental and often even maudlin ('Silent Night', 'What Child is This', 'Holly and the Ivy' all those Medieval melodies and cheerless Victorian cheer). And those that aren't are unbearably, self-consciously joyous ("It's the MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR (DAMMIT)". The…

More likely he got sick of hearing Lennon's vastly superior and honestly moving 'Happy Christmas/War is Over' every year and, forced to contemplate the royalty goldmine he'd missed out on, finally said, "Aw, fuck it—pass me the Casio, Linda."

I get the sense that for people younger than a certain age—i.e. people who were still children in the total thrall of Xmas—when the song came out, it is beloved in the way, for example, those my age still revere 'Last Christmas' by Wham! All of which is a self-deprecating way of suggesting that what makes a "classic",…

In other news, there were two albums released that year called 'The Pleasure Principle' and they are both excellent: