Merry Christmas

I want to wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all the readers of RJ Battles. Thank you for coming here and leaving the occasional comment; I hope you've enjoyed it so far- there will be a lot of new things coming in 2010 and you won't want to miss them.

Tonight I was looking back at the posts that I put up this year. I'm pretty happy with them, or most of them. I think I've collected some pretty cool images here at RJ Battles and I think if someone were to stumble across this site and wasn't even familiar with the 4AD artists or the Sugarcubes or Aimee Mann they could still enjoy the pictures.

Plus, I think my writing is getting better. I'm not a writer and I don't plan on being one ( except for my childrens book that I'm working on and maybe a play that I've started ) but I still wan to write well and clearly so that this blog is enjoyable to read.

*****

I remember going to Tower Records in Boston ( must've been December of 1995 ) and looking through their imports section ( or maybe it was just their CD single section and seeing Kristin Hersh's The Holy Single. I didn't buy it- my interest in KH/TM had cooled since I'd first heard the Muses in 1994- and I never did buy it though a few years ago I downloaded the songs.

Four tracks:

KH does a Alex Chilton song "Jesus Christ"- I don't like it; a churchy folk song;

"Can The Circle Be Unbroken" which I think is pretty sad;

"Amazing Grace" ( you may remember TM played this on the Counting Backwards EP- I love the Muses version; it's long and drawn-out in the same way that "Hook In Her Head", from the same era, is. It's one of the rare Muses songs where it sounds like they really enjoy playing, like they just wanna go on and on ) KH's solo version is beautiful with strong guitar work.

Probably the most Christmassy song is the new accoustic version of "Sinkhole" ( it's the sleighbells, I think ).