Remembering My Dad

Ten years ago today my father, John Emslie, celebrated his final birthday at the age of 78. Two months later he died, after a couple years of health problems and having undergone recent surgery. It's hard to believe it's been ten years since he passed away, and I've been thinking about him a lot lately. The above image was from the card I did for Christmas of that year, 2001, in memory of my dear Dad.

While we certainly had the same father/son tensions and arguments that most guys have, all in all we were pretty close. My Dad was always there for me, supporting my desire to follow a career path in the arts, and always ready and willing to lend a hand with house repair work and such. He put up some insulation and wood paneling in my first townhouse, and I think that was something he liked doing a lot, as our family homes through the years always ended up with many rooms getting wood paneling!

One thing I'll be eternally grateful to my Dad for was his influence on my taste in music. When I was just a young kid, we had this wonderful old hi-fi - pretty much just a wooden box on four legs, containing a radio and felt covered turntable. Dad loved to play music around the house, and mostly he played jazz records. While he never tried to force his music tastes on me or my sister, I was just naturally drawn to such artists as Louis Armstrong and New Orleans clarinetist, Pete Fountain. Also, my Dad was a huge fan of Bing Crosby, so every Christmas, Bing's holiday album containing his classic "White Christmas" got plenty of airplay. To this day, I can't listen to Bing Crosby without thinking about my Dad. Funnily enough, I don't recall Dad ever playing any Frank Sinatra, but I know my interest in Frank was a direct result of all the great music I grew up listening to at home back in the 60s and 70s.

So, as this holiday season winds down, I just wanted to celebrate my Dad's birthday with this posting of that Christmas card illustration I did way back in 2001, as I fondly remember the good times we had and the influence that he had on my life.
Happy Birthday, Dad!

"All the Noise, Noise, Noise, NOISE!!"

Yes, sad to say, but I tend to get a little Grinchy this time of year. Mostly it's due to the drudgery of Christmas shopping. It's not that I don't want to buy gifts for family and friends, mind you, it's just that I end up having a tough time trying to find stuff that I think they will like. In fact, it always seems that I see all sorts of books, CD's and DVD's that I'D like instead! So it does feel like I'm trekking through many a store over and over before I settle on the right gifts to buy for others.

But my main complaint about Christmas shopping is making my way through the overcrowded malls and having my ears assaulted by all of the crappy contemporary Christmas songs! I'm afraid that my tastes in music have always been a lot closer to my parents' generation than that of my own, and in fact as a teen I always preferred the records my Dad played around the house far more than what my peers were listening to at the time. As such, I never did develop a taste for the rock music of the day, although a lot of the pop/rock on the radio back then certainly was a lot more tuneful than what's on nowadays. Which brings me to my complaint.

Why do all of the untalented, similar sounding, young pop/rockers of today feel that they need to release their crap versions of Christmas songs? They all seem to sound the same, as their trilling crap voices meander around the notes without ever really hitting their target, adding in a lot of inane "Yeaaahhh"s to fill in any pauses between the lyrics. And then there are the mindless rappers who have cut melody out of the equation altogether, trying to force in ten times as many words (most of them unintelligible) than the original composers had written in the first place. And all of this tuneless, appalling crap is being blasted at high volume out of every clothing and electronics store that I am forced to pass by.

Now to be fair, there are a few stores and restaurants where I can hear old chestnuts from glorious Christmases past sung by the likes of Bing, Frank, Dino, Sammy, Ella, Peggy, and Nat, but even then there still seems to be a few contemporary crap songs thrown into the mix just to rankle my nerves. Incidentally, why is it only at Christmas that the great singers of the past are allowed to be heard in public at all before being placed in the box of mothballs again for another year? If one didn't know better, one might assume that Bing Crosby had recorded "White Christmas" and nothing else during his entire career!

So there you have it - the reasons for my annual Grinchy demeanor. Please let it be Sinatra singing as I sit down to a plate of roast beast...(sigh)

And speaking of Frank and Dino, here's some fun Christmas music by the all time kings of cool - a surefire remedy for curing Grinchiness: