GARTH BROOKS -- WHEN SCHLOCK COMES JINGLING IN
by Bryce Martin


Fortunate am I that my era had Bobby Darin. I feel bad for you if this is your era and you have Garth Brooks.

I heard for the first time Brooks’ “Call Me Claus,” with its pumped-up big-band sound. It is every singer who wants a Christmas standard, a recording so Christmas-y it vies for radio airplay each and every season, which, in turn, translates into album sales every year, such as Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree,” Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock,” or Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song.” Even if it is just once a year, it is enough to keep a singer’s name in the forefront.

Brooks came close with his previous “Santa Looks a Lot Like Daddy” (an oldie by Buck Owens that did not even make it as a Christmas staple for him). The anti-Hank and Top Hat of all the hat acts must have felt something along the lines of a classic rendition would do the trick.

“Call Me Claus” from Brooks comes across as too contrived and forced to merit any genuine sentiment. When Bobby Darin was a young whelp and in his heyday, and even with such gems as “Mack the Knife” and “Beyond the Sea,” he gave the impression of being a poor imitation to the real kings of swing and style. To such elders as Frank Sinatra he paled in comparison. For sheer gaucheness, Brooks (Mr. Obvious) stands alone.

WHEN THE RED, RED ROBIN...
by Bryce Martin


A grasshopper sat on a railroad track,
He looked at me and I looked back.
I picked up a brickbat and hit him in the shin,
He said, "Oh, Lord a'mercy, don't do that again."

Grandma quoted snippets of English nursery rhymes and songs while working the treadle on her sewing machine or baking a wild blackberry cobbler in the wood cook stove.

"My father was Johnny Bull," she said. "I get it from him, but I leave out the 'Bloody this' and the 'Bloody that' he was so fond of."

Johnny Bull is a name meant to represent England or an English person. Her father was born in England.

Grandma's most common phrase was "Lord a'mercy."

Her most vocalized non-gospel song was "Sing a Song of Sixpence."

Sing a song of sixpence
A pocket full of rye;
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie

Blackbird pie was common in her household while growing up. She remembered the traps set in the yards for the birds by her mother and the meat pies that followed. That particular song, however, was as much a riddle as anything else. She said she no longer remembered what it all meant.

"I'm not much for remembering anything anymore," she would say. "Time takes its toll on the mind and body, and it has taken its toll on mine."

I have always been a stickler for detail, even at a young age. Grandma loved birds and flowers, and the four seasons. One of the first signs of spring was the robin. When you saw robins with their swelled chests darting across the lawn or flying in one of those haphazard group formations they deploy, you knew spring was here.

The problem I had with detail came about when Grandma would recite one of the many British poems or songs concerning their national bird, the robin redbreast. That is what I had a problem with: Robins have an orange, not a red breast. I did not understand songs that had lines such as: "When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin' along."

Much later, I discovered that American Robins do have orange breasts -- and British robins have a red breast. Most all of the songs and poems about the robin were Old World works; hence, they all mention a red breast. Therefore, the answer to my problem was the fact that people in America, including my grandmother, were essentially making mention of British robins when the specimens at hand were American robins.

One legend has it that a robin tried to pull the thorns from Christ's crown, and drops of blood fell on the Robin's light-colored chest. There is also the Christmas story about the night Christ was born and about the little brown bird that shared the stable with the Holy Family. A fire Joseph built to keep the family warm burned out during the night. The bird quickly flew down from its nest and fanned the embers with its wings. The heat from the fire turned the bird's feathers red. The breast of the robin was red from then on to remind us of its love for the baby Jesus.

Doris Day had a hit with the song about the "red robin bobbin' along" in 1953 when I was 10 years old. That was in America, of course. The songwriter, if American, was not observant or was using artistic license to its fullest. On the other hand, maybe the songwriter was aware that nothing rhymes with orange.

THE BROTHERS GLIB
by Bryce Martin


Scanning channels, I stopped for a while on Nashville Public Television to watch a Bee Gees show, one done in their latter years. Most of the camera work was on the main singer in the group, Robin Gibb. He was slender like a snake, mostly bald, and made me think of the word slimy. He was hardly the person you would conjure up in your mind when reveling in the imagery of the group�s many sexy, if shallow, love songs. It struck me as out of place for Robin (even his name is too cutesy for his looks), the least likely guy in school to have a date on prom night, breathing out those sultry lyrics for all the beautiful people to swoon over and feel a part of. His twin, Maurice Gibb, at least, wore a hat, sunglasses, and a beard. Without all that, he would have looked almost identical to Robin. Barry is � or was � the handsome one. Still, he was taking no chances, wearing a beard and some tinted shades. He still had his long, 60s-ish hair, that or he knew a good wig maker. I did not expect these people to get old and not age. They fared far better in that respect than some of their counterparts with the unnatural black hair-dye jobbies and the obvious plastic surgery and bad hair transplants. Call me socially conditioned (I think not in this case); I will repeat what I said at the beginning: Watching a highly unappealing person sing love song after love song does not work for me. Neither, necessarily, does watching a highly appealing person sing love song after love song work for me. Believable works just fine.

The Bee Gees were not singing some songs they just pulled from a hat. The songs were their songs and will always be associated with the group. At some point, however, consideration should be given to the difference between what you see on stage and what you hear from the stage.

Sure, the headline is a cheap shot, unoriginal, too. And just what are you supposed to do when you have spent the best years of your life singing about young love to young people in love and now you are old and worn? You should have saved your money and called it quits long ago. That's what.

SEE YA IN THE FUNNY PAPERS
by Bryce Martin



I wanted to be a cartoonist at an early age. In pencil, I drew a panel of how my private detective � Ace Armstrong � looked frontal, three-quarter and profile. It was a daunting desire and I put my pencil aside after that burst of creativity to admire the fabulous artwork, the line drawings and the ink colorings of the masters of the form.

I guess I enjoyed looking at the comics better than trying to reproduce them.

Keeping up with the main comic book characters was easy. It was fun to look for the lesser-known, minor comic figures. Ollie Owl, who wore huge eyeglasses, and Barney Bear were not only rare in comic book form but in movie cartoons as well. The movie houses always had a double feature, and in the middle was a cartoon. I would silently root for one of the minor characters to appear, and would be happier than usual when it was someone like Barney Bear. Some of the minor comic book characters never played in movie cartoons, such as Gyro Gearloose.

I enjoyed seeing the Beagle Boys get their comeuppances. They wore black masks, orange sweaters, caps, and blue trousers. They were always trying to steal Uncle Scrooge McDuck�s gold.

One of the oddest television cartoons, besides Crusader Rabbit, was Clutch Cargo. Talk about cheap. I thought Crusader Rabbit was primitive when it came to its minimal artwork. Clutch Cargo made that series look like Rembrandt by comparison. About the only thing that ever moved on the screen were the speaker�s lips. That part worked very well. It rather reminded me of Ricky Nelson. Ricky would sing one of his rocking hits on his mom and dad�s television show, with everyone clapping and keeping time and Ricky, with a minimum of movement, would be working just his lips and his fingers on the strings of his guitar. An ideal advertiser for the show would have been Geritol, a remedy for �tired blood.�

A neighbor boy in those days had smoked since he was in grade school. He was not caught up in whether a Pall Mall was better than a Lucky or if a Camel was the only real cigarette. He had to bum, steal or borrow something to smoke, so any cigarette was a good one if he was smoking it. That is how I feel about the comics and the cartoons. There are no bad ones; some are just a little better than the others are. Therefore, instead of saying odd, I guess I should have said different. Still, one comic stands out as actually being odd.

Creepily odd were the comic books titled Pinhead and Foodini. They were first conceived as puppets on an early television show. What I could not figure out was why when the pair branched out into comic books they were still puppets. They were not drawn as a regular comic book character might be, but as puppets, with blank, frozen faces.

Just as the Soldiers of Fortune was one of my favorite television shows, I liked The Blackhawks, another group of solders of fortune, in the comic books. The actual title was Blackhawk.

The Blackhawks were a group of guys who wore black leather jackets and piloted fighter planes in WW II battles mainly against the Commies and the Nazis. They got together on their own and put trouble on the run. There was Blackhawk, the leader, Olaf, Chop Chop, Hendrickson, Andre, Chuck, and Stanislaus. Much of their language was from their native tongues. I picked up many foreign language words and phrases. The various sentence structures in the different comics taught me about rhythm. It was not until much later I was able to realize how much of a learning tool the comics had been for me.

Blackhawk always yelled �Geronimo!� when he jumped from an airplane. That was a hard word to pronounce at my young age. After several Blackhawk comics had crossed my path, I realized it was a war cry of sorts gleaned from the name of the Apache Indian chief, Geronimo. I knew the name. He was one of the historical trading cards I had. All trading cards are not sports related. I could not conceive or comprehend what the word meant in that context. The Blackhawks used so many foreign words it might have been Italian for all I could tell.

Andre I liked best. He spoke quite a bit of French. I learned that �Oui, oui� was �Yes, yes.� I was able to figure out that the �Wee, wee� I had heard French people say in the movies and on television was spelled �Oui, oui.� That even helped me in grade school, more like got me in trouble. We had a girl substitute teacher one day and she was having each of us take turns reading passages from a textbook. One of my classmates stumbled on a pair of italicized works, �Oui, oui.� When he did, the substitute stepped in and, much to my surprise, she pronounced it �Ohy, ohy.� Without giving it a thought, I corrected her. �It�s �Wee, wee,� I said. She got that look of incredulity on her face, like �How could you possibly know that?� I would have told her if she had asked. The Blackhawks, Andre in particular.

I also learned from Andre about �bon ami,� which is French for �good friend.� One of my grandmother�s favorite soaps was Bon Ami. I told her it was French and what the name of the soap meant in English. She wondered how I could know such a thing at my tender age. After all, all I did was read comic books.