The Holiday City Hot Cha Kitchen Band / mp3

T.S. Eliot wrote “April is the cruelest month,” but it’s really just a bit awkward and a little confused. April’s mood fumbles around in a schizophrenic/bi-polar haze (one day sunny, the next day uncontrollable weeping); there is a lot of exposed pasty, white flesh; and it starts off with mean-spirited tricks played on you. April is the pubescence of the calendar year.

To help usher in April with all it’s fresh-faced, goofy glory, I present to you The Holiday City Hot Cha Kitchen Band — a gaggle of “active [ladies] 52 and over” from Toms River who warble the American classics like they mean it, because they do. I’m Looking Over A Four Leaf Clover, Silver Bells And Silver Hair, I’m A Yankee Doodle Dandy/You’re A Grand Old Flag, and God Bless America are crooned over a bed of organ, washboard, kazoos, and tambourines.

It reminds me of a stint I did at a Senior Center in Manhattan, KS. I would deliver Meals-on-Wheels, help a sweet, old woman with Alzheimer’s play BINGO, and read to people with failing eye sight. On the 4th of July I was invited to watch the Manhattan Senior Service Center Band play their patriotic favorites. The band consisted of one person on synthesizer, one on guitar, four on triangles, and a solid section of twenty tambourine players. They played with all their failing hearts. As the concert swelled to a fever pitch, a 98 year old woman who used to do Vaudeville and burlesque set her tambourine down, took her walker out into the middle of the floor, and started shaking her booty in the most furious, yet disturbing way.

Recommended tracks:

• Hey Look Me Over
• Welcome to Holiday City
• Sweetheart Mountain — with a full band! (I saved the best for last.)

Many thanks to Oddio Overplay for providing us with this shining gem of Americana. And a happy April Fools to all y’all.