December 13, 2005

The Christmas Dream

Several years ago I recorded a beautiful album of music for the festive season with up and coming artist "Happy Charles" . . Who has since become Charles Green . . www.happycharles.com
- and still continues to make beautiful music

This is by far the most lovely album of holiday music I have recorded . . I did a song with Elmo of "Grandma's got run over by a reindeer" fame, my own "Music for Winter festivals", an album of tunes for Atmosphere music, various dulcimer seasonal ditties and of course "Merry Xmas . . Have a nice life" with Cyndi Lauper . . . It was her last recording for Sony and as the title reflects she had had enough, reflected in her vocal performance and production. The songs were pretty and like everything I did with Cyndi had such great potential . . but that's another story and another life. We all dabble with things outside of our norm but somehow always seem to end up back in our comfort zone which is musically where she and I are today . .

Anyway I digress . . . back to the Christmas dream. Title song written by Julian Marsh www.julianmarsh.com and me .
Oh Julian erstwhile king of the remix.! How I loved his dance CDs . . but then I digress again

As with most albums there were the high dramas and so one of the songs couldn't make it to the final pressing because of legal threats over the co-writing. The mailout Xmas card which we OK'd with the US post office was a disaster . .Most of the CDs were either returned or arrived at their destination broken. I didn't care for the cover but Charles loved it. The accompanying single "Sitting on Santa's lap" was an almost homicidal disaster with the mastering engineer having a nervous breakdown in my studio followed by me nervously locking all doors and windows at 4 am . . . etc. etc. but it still remains one of the most beautiful albums I have recorded . .

So 4 years later and one of Charles song "Give your heart away" has found its way into a great local musical -www.wafflehousemusical.com I wish writer/director/producer Kain all the best with this! We went on Saturday night and the show has GREAT potential! Salutation to everyone involved!

Darlene Love heard "If I could" and "A night of peace" (hurriedly recorded as a substitute for the song we couldn't use and both written by yours truly and Seth Glassman - www.sethglassman.com) Last year Darlene hosted "A night of peace at the Apollo" . .I have video of her and Cissy Houston and Ben E King et al singing the aforementioned song which closed the show . .

. . and so this Thursday we are doing a rescheduled "Night of Peace" in Nashville at Murphy's Loft. Charles is performing songs from the CD and I will be performing instrumental music for the winter festivals . .

hope to see you there . .

7pm Murphy's loft

Murphy road

www.musicallmusic.com/anightofpeace.html