So this is a bit of an odd New Year’s Eve.  Kurt Loder e-mailed me and told me that the actress and singer Eartha Kitt died on Christmas (I read it late). :( Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the world". Eartha was famous for her 1953 version of the song Santa Baby.  Santa Baby is the Switchblade Kittens’ holiday song and Kurt is quite found of our version.  Kurt said “This is a GREAT, great track.” Awww thanks Kurt, you are the cat’s meow! Every time I get an e-mail from Kurt it is very informative.  I think he has been working at MTV news for so long he can’t help but be the fountain of music happenings.  Kurt runeth over.

Here is Kurt being informative:

And here is where you can hear our version of Santa Baby.

Here you can see the Ertha Kitt version of Santa Baby.

So that news was a bit of a bummer. 

Then I discovered that I was not going to be able to attend any of the usual Z list New Year’s Eve parties AGAIN this year.  As you all know, our new CD Rebel Princess will be dropped on January 9th….VERY soon. So of course there were issues with 3 of the songs sooo we had to mix a song. We are here mixing the song “Size 12 is Not Fat” which is about Heather Welles.  The song is ending up sounding like a big party, so if I can’t be at a party at least I can have a party in your ear buds. Much of our New Years party sound is actually in the song.  You can hear Pep talking and me laughing and Reggie the studio cat meowing. (Yes, Reggie is an actual cat.)

Good times. The count up in the bridge became inspired by the New Year’s Eve countdown.  So it kinda bites that I’m mixing on New Year’s Eve but I think it made the song more interesting.  As the night wore on, due to massive technical problems, one track could not be saved…not even by the New Year sprites.  As a result, there will only be 12 tracks on the new Rebel Princess CD instead of 13.  We did all we could but sometimes songs just die and there is nothing anyone can do.  It is a sad fact of life and computers.  So that is how I am ringing in the New Year, out with the old in with the new CD.

So New Year’s Eve is focused around Pep and I (band representatives) Dan the mixer and Sue his partner in crime.  So in between mixing (to rest our ears) we watched Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2009  at Times Square.  This show has live acts perform while the counting down the New Year till the ball drops at times square. This show was entertaining in the way that I could be happy knowing I was in sunny California and those NYers were freezing their bums off.  It looks really, really cold there and I am wondering about our judgment having a CD release party in New York in the middle of snowstorms. But watching this new year broadcast brought up some questions. Why do people in New York get engaged on New Years Eve? Why was Lionel Richie dressed as Shaft???  Does anyone feed the Jonas Brothers? And WHY was Ryan Seacrest wearing his sleeping sack?  Alas these new year questions will need to be answered in the coming year.

Then I watched the Nutcracker, not the ballet.  Every year my grandmother took me to see the Nutcracker as a child. I really wanted to see the ballet during the holiday but we were too busy working on the CD and I could not be spared for a 2 hour ballet.  So I watched Barbie in the Nutcracker. The Nutcracker starring Barbie as Clara.  The animation is a bit outdated but the characters are kinda spunky.  Speaking of the Nutcracker, I received a large painted wood Nutcracker doll set for the new year. This is significant because I complain that there’s the Nutcracker King but never the Nutcracker Queen and somehow a mate of mine found the pair.  It is a new year miracle because I get to toast the new year by saying “God Save the Queen” and my Nutcracker Queen will come alive at night and be nice to me. I hope.

We interrupt this blog to bring you ninja cat:

Wow the world makes sense now.

And no New Year would be complete without resolutions. So here are my new year resolutions:

1. Start the next Switchblade Kittens CD early so I am not forced to spend the holidays mixing.  I mean it this time. (I am writing a song as I am typing this… mentally writing it anyway.)
2. Start writing my novel, I set time aside to write it and then something happens with the band that I have to sort out, well not this year, even if Pep is tied to a train track with a train coming and Tabbie is attacked by a giant lint monster while printing our t-shirts I will and MUST ignore them and write my novel!  (Ok maybe I will save Pep cause he would get squished.)
3. I will move forward on my degree.  I am attempting a PHD in history; at the rate I am going I will be one of those 80 year-old graduates that get their degree after fighting in a war or something noble except my poor sad excuse is I have a band.
4. I will finally build that bookcase.  Meg Cabot stayed in a hotel in London on her last book tour and her room had a bookcase that spanned the entire wall.  I REALLY want that bookcase. I have literally hundreds of books roaming the house and hallways, they must be contained.

But most all this New Year one must remember to taste the rainbow!

And there’s a hand my trusty friend!
And give us a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll take a right good-will draught, for auld lang syne.

~taste the rainbow~