Mark Elliott passed away April 4, 2021. If you grew up watching white clamshell VHS prints of Disney movies, Mark’s voice is forever part of your childhood.
OK, most of 1992’s “Lethal Weapon 3” was made in and around Los Angeles, but the building that goes boom at the beginning is the old City Hall in Downtown Orlando. Here’s Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, and their stunt doubles running out of “International Control Systems Inc.” You can even see a WFTV 9 live truck on the left side of the screen, but the mast is down, so it couldn’t have been going “live.”
Today, that area isn’t far from what most people call the giant asparagus statue, although it’s officially the Tower of Light.
And here’s the moment, captured forever on the backglass of the Lethal Weapon 3 pinball machine.
Wrapping up (get it?) my series of posts about Christmas music with Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member and Grammy-winner Darlene Love. Love is one of producer Phil Spector’s discoveries and featured on 1963’s “A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector” album. That record still sounds great, but we now know that Spector is a monster and a literal murderer. I’d rather think of happier things on Christmas, so let’s focus on Love. From her official YouTube channel, here’s an animated video for “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”
In 1986, Love first appeared on “Late Night with David Letterman” to sing her signature holiday tune. Between Letterman’s NBC show and “Late Show with David Letterman” on CBS, Darlene Love performed “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” 28 times. (The scaled-down tradition continues on “The View.”) Here’s a Leterman supercut through the years.
“Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” has since been covered by both Mariah Carey and Cher, who is rumored to be a back-up singer on the original. Another rumor is that Love helped out U2 with their version by singing back-up herself.
Today’s Christmas song is not exactly undiscovered or forgotten, but doesn’t get nearly the plays it should this time of year. “Christmas All Over Again” from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers is the lead track from 1992’s “A Very Special Christmas 2.” What I like about the song is that it embraces the season, but is also kinda casual about the whole thing.
This is just audio, but we’ll get to video in a bit.
Time to talk about another Christmas song, one a day until December 25. “Christmas Must Be Tonight” by The Band is so much better than you’d expect from a song stuck at the end of side one on their 1977 odds-and-ends album, “Islands.” This was their last album for Capitol Records, scraped-together leftovers so the soundtrack for “The Last Waltz” could come out on Warner Brothers.