{"id":109,"date":"2009-12-01T17:06:20","date_gmt":"2009-12-01T22:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=109"},"modified":"2016-12-10T16:54:19","modified_gmt":"2016-12-10T21:54:19","slug":"holiday-music-christmas-in-memphis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2009\/12\/01\/holiday-music-christmas-in-memphis\/","title":{"rendered":"Holiday Music: Christmas in Memphis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/husky_team_christmas_in_memphis.jpg\" alt=\"Christmas in Memphis\" width=\"240\" height=\"240\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" \/>Way back in ancient history (well, late 2002) a bunch of friends and musicians dubbed themselves <strong>Husky Team<\/strong> and got together for a quick, one-off project: recording a bunch of holiday classics with a twist. What they did and who they are make this a worthwhile departure from the normal let-it-snow Christmas collections that come out (or get re-released) every year.<\/p>\n<p>What they did is this: they cleverly arranged all of the tunes in the classic Memphis style. They managed to make everything from the hymn &#8220;We Three Kings&#8221; to the <strong>Beach Boys&#8217;<\/strong> &#8220;The Man With All the Toys&#8221; sound like, well, like <strong>Booker T &amp; the MGs<\/strong>. Have fun trying to spot what other well-known songs are referenced in these lovely tracks. You&#8217;ll hear some <strong>Box Tops<\/strong>, to name just one. The songs are deftly played with just the right amount of winking-we&#8217;re-having-fun attitude.<\/p>\n<p>Who they are is also well worth noting. The project instigators call themselves Husky Team, but they&#8217;re really <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=92\"><strong>Dennis Diken<\/strong><\/a> (drummer\/vocalist from the <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=73\"><strong>Smithereens<\/strong><\/a>) and <strong>Dave Amels<\/strong> (keyboardist for <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=88\"><strong>Reigning Sound<\/strong><\/a>). This nearly overdub-free, live-in-the-studio effort includes a powerpop who&#8217;s-who supporting cast: legendary underground popmeister <a href=\"http:\/\/www.musoscribe.com\/blast_from_the_past\/meet_the_r_stevie_moore.shtml\"><strong>R. Stevie Moore<\/strong><\/a> and endlessly cool powerpop tunesmith <a href=\"http:\/\/www.musoscribe.com\/features\/richard_x_heyman.shtml\"><strong>Richard X. Heyman<\/strong><\/a>. And some other cool guys too.<\/p>\n<p>Who says Holiday music has to be the same stuff year after year? <em>Christmas in Memphis<\/em> is a fun album, although if you play it in September (as I did) you&#8217;ll get some odd looks from passers-by.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Way back in ancient history (well, late 2002) a bunch of friends and musicians dubbed themselves Husky Team and got together for a quick, one-off project: recording a bunch of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holiday","category-review","cat-37-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12088,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions\/12088"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}