Many top-rank rock and pop acts skip performing on New Year's Eve. Probably because their families insist they spend the evening at home after months away on the road. Really small acts pass as well, mostly because they aren't big enough to command the big ticket prices that many venues command on the last night of the year. In today's Wall Street Journal, I write about some of the Iron-clad rock, pop, soul and disco artists who are performing this New Year's Eve, just as they have for years—including Gloria Gaynor (I Will Survive) [pictured at top].
Speaking of tomorrow night, for those of you who enjoy New York's annual midnight Times Square "Ball Drop," here's a little trip down memory avenue. Hey, there's nothing like a camera pan after the ball touches bottom to see who we were as a culture back then...
Here's 1957-58 (move the bar up to 4:15)...
Here's 1965-66...
Here's 1975-76...
Or if you're a big fan, here are all the drops since 1976...
A Happy, mightily Swingin' New Year 2012 to you, dear Marc!
My routine will be (as always), playing my favorite New Year's LP, which is "The New Year's Radio Dancing Party 1945/46" with really ALL jazz stars of the times:
Louis Armstrong, Harry James, Artie Shaw, (who featured not his clarinet, but "Little Jazz" Roy Eldridge!), Les Brown, Count Basie, Woody Herman, Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, Freddy Martin, Louis Prima, Stan Kenton etc. ... and last but not least Guy Lombardo's Royal Canadians, playing his traditional old-year's-end hymn "For Auld Lang Syne", announced enthusiastically as a "big P.S.":
http://www.answers.com/topic/new-year-s-radio-dancing-party
One uninterrupted hour of mostly swinging music from coast to coast, starting on December, the 31st 1945 on 11:00 p.m. and ending exactly at 0:03 a.m. on January 1st, 1946.
Most of the above bands disbanded during 1946. -- So, this LP represents the end of an era, and they all gave their musically best to entertain us, respectively the folks from 1945.
Happy New Year!
Posted by: Brew | December 30, 2011 at 06:53 AM