Tonight we kick off the new year with a look back at 2013: The Best of James O’Keefe & Project Veritas.
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Tonight we take a trip back in time to the Roosevelt Grill in New York, as “Mr. New Year’s Eve” himself, bandleader Guy Lombardo, hosts New Year’s Eve, 1957.
Happy New Year, everyone! Here’s wishing you all a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2014.

Tonight, as we get ready for tomorrow’s festivities, we listen to the dulcet tones of Midwestern boy Andy Williams as he performs an effortlessly stylish version of Frank Loesser’s romantic 1947 composition What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?
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What most people can do only when they’re crapulously sozzled, Hal Leroy can do sober. What a guy!
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Tonight we attempt to reheat our frozen plosives with Desmond Dekker’s memorable 1968 hit Israelites.
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In tonight’s musical detour en route to the tips we listen to two consecutive short tracks from the 1970 album New Morning: The first is a street-level urban vignette, a kind of lucid dream centered around three ornamental plastic angels, perched high atop a pole, whose transcendental message goes unheeded by the big city denizens as they go about their daily activities below. The next, a soberly upbeat, wide-awake, rhythmically angular song of worship and praise contrasts with this slow reverie, but the similar underlying theme, and the otherworldly female vocals that swell up at the end of the first song and punctuate the end of each verse in the second, make both entirely of a piece, somehow: Here are Three Angels & Father of Night.
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Tonight, très mélancolie philosophe existentialiste Henri Le Chat Noir endures his Worst Noël.
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Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II delivers her 2013 Christmas message to the people of the Commonwealth nations.

Tonight Elizabeth Mitchell and her friends, including Amy Helm, get together in a nice old wooden room in Olivebridge, NY for a lovely acoustic performance of Baby Born Today.
Have a wonderful Christmas, everyone!
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Tonight we present in its entirety Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio BWV 248, as performed by the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists conducted by Sir John Elliot Gardiner.
If you’re on a slow connection, here’s a five minute excerpt from Part II, “For the Second Day of Christmas.”
h/t Hans Rupprecht
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Tonight’s Christmas music selection looks like it was recorded on a cellphone by a proud grandparent, but this visual fits the real-life performance, which is neither poppy nor sloggishly literal like so many other versions of this traditional carol. Don’t be put off by the unison singing at the start, btw, the harmony blossoms in the second verse: Here’s Denmark’s amateur ensemble Aarhus Pigekor (“Aarhus Girls Choir”) singing The First Noel.
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One of the most familiar and beloved traditional Christmas carols was composed, or perhaps assembled is a better word, by three different people — English Methodist leader Charles Wesley, German composer Felix Mendelssohn, and English musician and organist William Hayman Cummings — over the course of 126 years. It did come eventually come together nicely, though: Tonight, the Choir of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral is joined by the organist, a small orchestra, and the congregation in a performance of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.
Since there’s no moratorium on news during the Christmas season, even on weekends, the comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.

Good tidings to you, wherever you are! Tonight, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir brings their joyfully wholesome sound to the seasonal classic We Wish You A Merry Christmas.
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Tonight, a bit of non-traditional Christmas music: From the 2008 album “Come Darkness, Come Light: Twelve Songs of Christmas”, here’s Mary Chapin Carpenter singing Still, Still, Still.
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Has anyone else noticed that things have been a bit less Christmas-y this Christmas season? It seems to me that retailers started the pomp and hoopla later than usual, and toned it down a bit, and that there are fewer lights up, and less Christmas music on the radio, etc.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, or maybe Christmas Ain’t Like Christmas Anymore.
We’re gonna have to straighten all that out starting tomorrow.
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In tonight’s entertainment en route to the tips Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra, along with vocal group The Pied Pipers (whose members at that time included a young Jo Stafford) perform a swinging tune about the delights of Winter Weather.
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Tonight we listen to the lovely sound of England’s Cambridge Singers, as they treat us to the Somerset Wassail.
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In tonight’s entertainment en route to the Tips we listen to some feel-good gospel music, as the late Delores ‘Honey’ Sykes (her spirit-lifting performance of “Stretch Out” was featured here a few years ago) sings “Good News” before handing the stage to Rosemary Gage for a performance of “If You Need A Miracle.”
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Serve your country at great personal risk, then get screwed:

For the past four years, the Obama administration has been calling Robert Levinson a “private citizen” taken captive in Iran, but the truth has finally been revealed in a stunning Associate Press report. Robert Levinson was an FBI agent, working with the CIA, now seemingly abandoned by the Obama administration..

Related: John Kerry urges Vietnam to respect human rights.

Tonight the high-quality entertainment keeps rolling as we listen to the Mike Sammes Singers’ recording of Vespa. The audio is augmented by chroma key footage of stunt-y gals on Vespas to even further up the excitement quotient.
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