Morning Song – Bringing In A Brand New Year

2014 is almost over and the emerging consensus is clear:  it was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad year.  Disappearing airplanes, Ebola outbreaks, the emergence of the Islamic State, the self-induced deaths of (among others) Robin Williams and Philip Seymour Hoffman, the police-induced deaths of (among others) Michael Brown and Eric Garner, real median incomes lower than they were 15 years ago…the only thing more depressing than that list is how quick and easy it was to make.

Fear not.  The MassCommons Department of Inexplicable Mood Changes is here to cheer you up on the eve of a new year.  We can’t exactly say why 2015 will be better—or how—but look at it this way: we’re celebrating New Year’s Eve this year with Charles Brown’s 1961 organ trio version of “Bringing In A Brand New Year”…so things are already looking up.

At the stroke of midnight on that great big holiday,
We’re going to have a ball, and that ain’t all;
I’m gonna chase my blues away.