Elf

#1163: Not A Review of the Movie ‘Elf’ (2003)

RECORD STORE TALES #1163: Not A Review of the Movie ‘Elf’

December 2004 was a low point. My mental and probably physical health too were…not good. I was managing two record stores against my wishes. I was in charge of the Beat Goes On on Highland Road, and Oakville. Oakville was supposed to be somebody else’s store, a franchise. Well, things went from bad to worse and I found myself driving to Oakville every day for many weeks in November and December, in a car that was not long for the grave.  I was going to work, coming home, drinking red wine and going to bed.  It was a cycle of endless days and weekends too.

My boss took me aside; had a meeting with me behind closed doors.

“Mike, I noticed you’re not doing well with the whole Oakville thing.”

There was no such thing as mental health time off in my world.  I wouldn’t have known you could do that.  Could you, in 2003?

My boss suggested that I use the commute time to listen to “old cassettes that you haven’t played in a while.  That could be fun for you.”

That’s when I learned that listening to Winger when you’re stuck in 401 traffic isn’t actually all that fun.

I took a break one afternoon in Oakville and walked over to some crappy store that sold everything from soda pop to small appliances.  I saw Elf on the racks, the Christmas movie starring Will Ferrell as…an elf.  I was skeptical.  I heard mixed things.  But I was in a shitty headspace and I needed a pick-me-up.  Retail therapy.  Elf and a soda pop went into my shopping bag. I may have even bought a bag of chips.

I had Sunday off, and I watched Elf in my pajamas that morning.  And I laughed.  I was immediately enthused because the beginning reminded me very much of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, what with the animation and the snowman.  I was also following Jon Favreau’s directorial career with great interest.  Peter Billingsley was in the movie.  I truthfully loved it from day one.  I still love it.

My dad on the other hand calls Will Ferrell “that annoying guy” because of this movie.

I remember wrapping Christmas presents with my mother in law Debbie while watching Elf.  I don’t really know if she liked it or not, but she liked watching it with me.  I think she liked a lot of it.  James Caan.  Mary Steenbergen.  Bob Newhart.  These are fantastic actors, and James Caan provided that “realistic” perspective that an absurd movie like this needs.  To sum:  Buddy the Elf (Ferrell) realizes he’s too tall to be an elf, and then Papa Elf (Newhart) finally tells him the truth:  his parents were human, and James Caan is his dad, and he lives in New York City.  And so off Buddy the Elf walks from the North Pole all the way to New York in order to meet his real dad.  Chaos ensues of the culture shock variety.  James Caan, as the biological father thrust into this situation, is the point of view the audience needs to make it work.  The scenes with he and Buddy are often some of the best.  Having said that, there is a badass snowball fight in Central Park, and some great singing from Zoey Deschanel, who doesn’t seem to question the weirdness of this elf guy who’s falling for her.  (Look for a cameo by Tenacious D’s Kyle Gass.)

Wonderful movie in my opinion, with clever use of perspective to make Buddy tower over his elf kin.  Hilarious performances by Peter Dinklage, Faizon Love, and Leon Redbone as the snowman.  Family friendly fun.

So, I thought, “I’ll buy this for Grandma for Christmas.  She enjoys light movies that make her smile.”  I was basing this on a years-before viewing of Ernest Saves Christmas that she enjoyed with us.  And I don’t know if she ever watched Elf.  I asked her a few days later.

“I don’t think I got it Michael,” she said.  “I fell asleep, and when I woke up, it was still the same scene playing.”

She was watching the animated DVD menu.

I didn’t buy Grandma movies for Christmas after that!

REVIEW: Elf – Carolina County Ball (1974)

ELF – Carolina County Ball (1974 Line Records)

Before the Rainbow there was Elf.  It was basically the same band – Ronnie James Dio on lead vocals, Mickey Lee Soule on keys, Gary Driscoll on drums, and Craig Gruber on bass.  The one and only difference was Steve Edwards on guitar, who would have no place when Richie Blackmore came knocking a year later.  Their second album, Carolina County Ball, was produced by Deep Purple’s Roger Glover.  It’s fair to say that Dio hadn’t found his niche yet.  With Mickey Lee Soule, Ronnie co-wrote every song, but was seeking a bouncier Guess Who direction at this point in time.

It sounds like Mardi Gras on the opening title track, with clarinets, trombones and trumpets accompanying the band on this “boogie-woogie Friday night”.  Soule shines, ticking the keys with delicate intent.  Heavy metal, this is not not!  Not even close.  There’s a guitar solo but it’s a secondary feature.  Only at the end does the song pick up the pace.  It’s actually a great tune, but anyone expecting dungeons and dragons had better head back to their gamesmaster for a new dice roll.  Expect boogie.

“L.A. 59” opens like an old bar room, with a piano taking up all the space.  The opening figure sounds like it’s emulating a train, which is probably a good guess.  “Get me back to L.A., 59!” sings Ronnie, sounding a bit more like the mighty mite he would become.  “Hello, hello sunshine!”  Upbeat, with the guitar taking up more of the song this time.  A great upbeat tune to start your day.

A little bit of a funky swing emerges on “Ain’t It All Amusing”, demonstrating the talents of the rhythm section in particular.  Driscoll was no slouch and Gruber had no issue filling the bottom end with interesting vibes.  This fun song really is about rhythm with a pinch of funk.  It sounds a lot like Deep Purple Mk I, especially with the long percussion break that ends it.

“Happy”, which is ironically anything but, is a bit filler-ish.  It’s Elf playing in a smokey nightclub and it’s all a bit repetitive.  “Annie New Orleans” picks it up, with another Elf piano boogie-woogie.  Whitesnake have also done songs of this nature in their early days.  Then the awkwardly titled “Rocking Chair Rock ‘N’ Roll Blues”, which is a ballad more or less.  It boasts a nice guitar solo and a laid back sound, but it’s going to have some reaching for the skip button.  They shouldn’t, because three minutes in, a new riff arrives and transforms the song into another rockin’ boogie-woogie.  Listen for some of Driscoll’s fun cowbell work on the back end too.

The one title that grabs everyone’s eye is “Rainbow”.  Don’t get too excited.  It doesn’t sound anything like Blackmore’s Rainbow; more like a a third rate tribute to The Band.  The boogie-woogie is starting to wear a little thin, and same-samey now.  “Do the Same Thing” is more like it.  It sounds like a prototype to Rainbow’s “If You Don’t Like Rock ‘N’ Roll”.  This allows the players to shine a bit more.

The album goes out on a cringey ballad called “Blanche”, with Dio singing about “Rainy days, rainy days” in a voice quite unlike the power he would later master.  This is little more than a silly album outro; nothing to be taken seriously.

Every album and every band will have its defenders, but Elf was the least of Dio’s four main bands over the decades (counting Black Sabbath and Heaven and Hell as one band).  Carolina County Ball lacks focus, and Glover doesn’t provide any punch in the stale production.  The album rests on the songs and performances alone.  Fortunately the band could play, though they seemed uncertain about who they wanted to be.

3/5 stars

 

#1076: Weekend Listening At Home

RECORD STORE TALES #1076: Weekend Listening At Home

When I have time and the inclination at home, I like to go through dusty corners of the CD collection and finally get them ripped to PC.  I take my hard drives with me everywhere, so my music collection is always portable.  This weekend I took some deep dives, and sampled the sweet exotic fruits of the E section, a sampling of K’s and L’s, and some new arrivals too.

First of all, the newer stuff.

I’m going to have to re-review Morning Report by the Arkells again!  Turns out, I made a mistake in my original review.  I said that the deluxe edition had three bonus tracks, but I was wrong.  I didn’t realize that there was another bonus track inserted as track #2, between “Drake’s Dad” and “Private School”.  This makes all the difference in the world to the sequencing.  Now we get “Knocking At The Door”, a new single, as the new track #2.  Since “Drake’s Dad” and “Private School” were my two least favourite songs, having something of much higher quality between them really helps the flow.

I always buy something after doing a show on Grant’s Rock Warehouse.  This time, it was the Stone Gods.  I’ve acquired the single for “Burn the Witch”, which comes with two awesome non-album songs:  “Breakdown”, and “Heartburn”!  “Breakdown” is exactly like Thin Lizzy, to a tee, except with Richie Edwards on lead vocals.  “Breakdown” is of equally high quality, a light and humorous tune about Pepto-Bismol and Gaviscon.  Expect a review at some point in the future.

Finally, I sampled some April Wine, from Over 60 Minutes With…All the Rockers.  People ask me “Why do you not own any April Wine?”  I said “I never grew up with April Wine, my friends didn’t like them, so I never bothered.”  Well Tim Durling said I need April Wine.  I will evaluate this at a later date, but I have some April Wine now.

The next batch of discs was from the last part of the E section, five discs that had escaped ripping to the PC all these years.  It could be 20 years or more since I have last played some of these.   Earth, Wind & Fire, nothing need be said here, that’s essential.  I was surprised at the quality of Elf, as boogie-woogie isn’t usually my thing.  The Rik Emmett CD is cool because it has 2001 live versions of some of his old Triumph classics.  Episode Six runs the gamut from quaint to psychedelic.  “UFO” is one cool such song, a spoken word bit over drums, that reads from UFO sighting reports.  But that’s Ian Gillan and Roger Glover on the front cover, yes indeed!  Finally, the Eric Singer Project (ESP) was the weak link in this batch.  Just a bland covers album to me.

Next, over to the K section.  I noticed that none of my Kula Shaker music was on PC, and I have a lot of Kula Shaker.  That’s the entire collection below, in fact.

Look!  The 2 CD edition of debut album K with a cool remix of “Tattva”.  Two CDs of “Govinda” singles with B-sides and remixes.  “Grateful When You’re Dead/Jerry Was There” CD single with two non-album tracks. The highlight of me of these was “The Leek”, a quiz show style radio appearance by bassist Alonza Bevan.  (A distant cousin of Roger Glover, in fact.)  Really funny stuff.  To me, anyway!  Two CDs of “Hush”, the Joe South cover (also covered by Deep Purple Mk I) with lots more non-album tracks.  Then we have the Summer Sun EP, which has four of the previous B-sides and two songs I didn’t have elsewhere.  The second album, Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts spawned a CD single called “Sound of Drums”, both of which are here.  More non-album tracks on that as well.

Well, it turns out, I still love Kula Shaker!  Like, a lot.  That Britpop sound, mixed with 60s psychedelia and far Eastern influences just tickles my fancy.  There were a couple tracks I really loved, but none more than “108 Battles of the Mind” from the second album.  What a cool, manic track that definitely benefited from the Austin Powers era.

One thing about Kula Shaker that needs to be addressed:  the stellar musicianship.  These guys can jam!  Special notice to drummer Paul Winterhart who is absolute monster.  Incredible band.  Once I start re-absorbing these songs back into my memory, I may have to catch up with what they’ve been up to since 1999, where my collection ends.

Continuing through K, and into L, the listening continued on Sunday morning.

Kyuss is a band that I don’t think was summed up well by compilation.  I will have to dig further.  I have their split EP with Queens of the Stone Age, which has “Fatso Forgotso” on it, but I think Kyuss were an album band.  The two Kulick albums are excellent.  Corabi is on Transformer, which is signed!  I didn’t know I had a signed copy!  The James LaBrie solo disc also sounds great from what I sampled!  Very Dream Theater, in a good way.  Some heavy, some soft.  Then we have Life Sex & Death, also called LSD.  Their gimmick was their lead singer “Stanley” who was supposedly homeless (but wasn’t).  This 1992 album is one that needs more exploration.  What I heard was heavy, gritty and riffy while retaining some melody.  To be further examined in the future.

As far as I got on the weekend, this just scratches the surface.  Look at all this stuff that is still sealed in my collection.  Time or inclination just haven’t lined up with the proper mood yet.  Some are newer arrivals, like Metheny, Hollywood Vampires and Eric Carr.  Others have been sitting around for years.  The Kiss compilation may as well stay sealed for collector’s purposes, but The Boxed Life by Rollins…that could have been waiting a decade on these shelves.  The Garth Hudsons have been here since 2020.  The Etta James and Beatles since 2018.  They were in Jen’s mom’s collection.

Wish me luck as I continue to delve into these unheard corners of my collection.  What would you be playing first if you stumbled onto these discs?