erastotelia

you know that whole genre of '40's or possibly '50's holiday songs about unfortunates? and how they're all so candy-light it's almost impossible to understand what the hell everyone was thinking except that you can't help feeling it yourself? i'm thinking about roy orbison's "pretty paper," and the only reason i'm claiming it belongs to a genre is that the first time i heard it i thought the basic conceit sounded familiar: we're all busy and happy during christmas except for a guy on the street corner who's niether. he's the holiday weepy guy. it's non-specific as to why he's weepy: is he a panhandler? or is he just lonely?

roy orbison was crazy awesome. his songs that i've heard are all culled from other bits of songs. he's the frankenstein of his day. and then there are the songs that actually have structural integrity, and you can hear orbison sort of wandering around them going, where the hell am i? which kind of makes them great as well.