Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas

I was raised in America, which means it's pretty much a given that I have some measure of familiarity with Christmas, as do most of us here. A bunch of Christmas carols and Christmas-related hymns are ingrained in my brain on various levels, but they were instilled so early that many of those songs have no major standing, or have been turned to white noise via repetition. It certainly doesn't help that I was convinced for many years that there was a place called Orientar, of which there were three very vocal kings.

It means that, these days--as with many things--I tend to aim for my own sense of both tradition and "Christmas," which often has interesting results. Because a lot of traditional music leaves me cold (for reasons I can elaborate on, but don't feel the need to here), it means pursuing Christmas songs from less traditional sources. Of course, this doesn't mean that this is a novel idea. There are fantastic lists of unusual or more recent lists of Christmas or holiday songs from various bands and artists over the last few decades, from faithful covers with rock instrumentation to strange, twisted covers on into both sincere and tongue-in-cheek songs written only in that same time frame.

Normally, I'm very lazy about this: I open my chosen media player (MediaMonkey) and create automatic playlists with filter words like "Christmas," "Xmas," "Winter," "Snow," and "Santa." Liking black metal can make this a multi-step process ("snow" and "winter" tend to show up as indicators of entirely different notions). Of course, plenty of other artists skew those results, too. It takes a bit, and for some reason I find myself starting over every year. I tried to start it up this year and found myself, instead, booting up the Christmas bonus levels of Epic MegaGames Jazz Jackrabbit--the original game having a solid soundtrack, and the Christmas levels having carols worked into the same style to great effect.

I did eventually get the list together and, as with every other year, a few tracks consistently and without question show up in that list:

"364 Days" and "Dead by Christmas" by the Murder City Devils
"Father Christmas" by the Kinks
"Homeless for Christmas" by the Black Halos
"Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas" and "Christmas Is Going to the Dogs" by Eels
"Merry Fucking Christmas" by White Town
"Thanks for Christmas" and "Countdown to Christmas Party Time" by XTC
"The Closing of the Year" by the "Musical Cast of Toys" (Wendy & Lisa, former partners to Prince)

I suppose the most amusing of these tends to be the tracks by the Devils, Halos and Eels (once you hear it, White Town's track is less obvious by far). Of course, I use the word "amusing" at somewhat of a stretch. "364 Days" is from the Devils' last release, Thelema, and it is actually titled to reference the amount of the year that St. Nick spends "all alone." Spencer does invite Nick to "take off [his] boots, pour a drink," but then does add that, in doing this, he should "try not to cry, try not to think." It's a clever conceit for the song, and was not placed on the album to indicate its Christmas-relations. Its first release, though, was on the "Christmas Bonus Single" 7" in 1998, backed by, of course, "Dead by Christmas."¹ Self-loathing, nihilistic stories of infidelity are nothing unusual for them, but this Hanoi Rocks cover's Christmas setting certainly puts a different spin on it. As a song, though, it remains far more upbeat than the plaintive and aching "364 Days."

The Black Halos were a small Canadian punk band who actually shared a lot of labels with the Murder City Devils, both releasing their first albums on Die Young Stay Pretty before moving to Sub Pop, though the Devils stayed there until their initial breakup, while the Halos moved to a sublabel of Century Media who are usually known for metal releases. In any case, "Homeless for Christmas" is another inappropriately upbeat song, wherein Billy Hopeless, their vocalist, intones his desire not to be found, well, homeless for Christmas. As with many bands of the more independent stripes, this was another 7" release originally, a split with a band called Tuuli I know essentially nothing about (who are of course also doing a Christmas song on the release).

Eels' "Christmas Is Going to the Dogs" was actually from the live action Grinch movie, and tells of a Christmas celebration from a dog's perspective and does so quite well, though it predates front-man/only-man E's ownership of Bobby, Jr, Eels' dog mascot. Working in a chorus like "Christmas is going to the dogs/We'd rather have chew toys than yule logs," should get some kind of award, honestly. "Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas" is probably the most "normal" of all these tracks, though it still comes from the deep, dark life that E has had in its way. It's a beacon of hope and optimism in the midst of that sensibility, though, and it shows.

"Father Christmas" is actually another on the dark side. The Kinks released the track in the 70s, after their initial phases of critical acclaim and before their popular breakout on the U.S. (the one, at least, that was not stunted by a ban from playing here). Ray sings of dressing up as Father Christmas and being accosted by a group of youths who insist: "Father Christmas, give us some money/We got no time for your silly toys/We'll beat you up if you don't hand it over/Give all the toys to the little rich boys."

XTC released their tracks as "The Three Wisemen" on a 7" and managed to work a strong, heavily electronic synth and a quirky, shuffling, danceable beat into the rather odd "Countdown to Christmas Partytime," (linked is Andy's demo, rather than the band version that was released, as XTC's catalog is a mess of red tape, multiple releases and confusions in general).

As someone who intends to spend the day watching Gremlins, Die Hard, and Scrooged (with possible slots for Black Christmas and Home Alone), this list is the kind that makes more sense to me, but it's the theme from the movie Toys that I actually find most evocative of my personal perception of the glowing positives of Christmas, especially when married to the footage it originally appeared next to. I don't have access to show you that, but I can leave you with the music video Wendy and Lisa did record for it, which does include some of that footage (and lets Seal make an appearance):

¹There has not been a digital release of the track to my knowledge. The video of it uploaded to youtube involves a dead animal, so I'm going to spare anyone and everyone. If this doesn't bother you, feel free to search it up.

Record Store Day

Barry Andrews - "Rossmore Road"
Bronski Beat - Age of Consent
Kate Bush - The Kick Inside [US Release]
Cursive - Burst and Bloom*
Dr. John - Locked Down
Patterson Hood and the Downtown 13 - "After It's Gone"*
Hüsker Dü - Candy Apple Grey
Hüsker Dü - Flip Your Wig
Iron Maiden - Powerslave
Josef K - "Heaven Sent" 12" Single
Peter Koppes - Manchild & Myth
Luna - Rendezvous*
Magazine - Real Life
Magazine - "Rhythm of Cruelty"
Mclusky - Mclusky Do Dallas
Mission of Burma - Forget
New Order - Movement
Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance
Post Marked Stamps #5 "Project Mercury" - Aspera Ad Astra/Haelah
Public Image Limited - Album
Public Image Limited - First Issue
The Replacements - Tim
Leon Russell - Leon Russell

*RSD Exclusive/Release. I missed out on the Minus the Bear and Ryan Adams singles...

Hello, It's Me (Again) -- Artists Cover Themselves

I thought of writing about this as I was listening to The Move's B-side to "California Man," "Do Ya." Of course, it became more familiar when it was a single five years later by Electric Light Orchestra. In and of itself, not a surprise. Plenty of covers, like remakes of movies, become far more famous than their original incarnations. Even those of us who know often forget there were two versions of The Maltese Falcon before Humphrey Bogart's, because the others just pass out of the public conscious, even when they might be preferred by many who see or hear them (which isn't the case there, barring some random dissenters, but the point remains).

The Move

 

Electric Light Orchestra

I Need the Noises of Destruction When There's Nothing New (Or: I Like It When Voices Grate)

Vocals in a band can be something of a peculiarity. I listen to a number of artists that at least primarily lack them, and enjoy many of those artists on into the "upper echelons" of my taste in music. My affections for Goblin, Aphex Twin, Mogwai alone are enough that when they come up with some people it's with the acknowledgment that their appreciation stems from my own and the sharing of it. But instrumental music isn't always for everyone--heck, all three of those artists have used vocals in one way or another¹.

But vocals are more likely to be a splitting point for people, it seems. Sure, the 80s are maligned in general for their drum sound a lot of the time, it having become so dominant that The Church had their third album, Seance, rendered with gated reverb drums basically without their knowledge, let alone their consent. That, however, tends to be more association and generalized preference, and it hasn't had a major effect on things like popularity of songs overall. In a sense that might confuse the issue, it's similar to the usage of heavily auto-tuned vocals in the modern era, which tends to bug a lot of the same crowd that hates gated reverb. No judgment here, incidentally--but there is truly plenty of crossover there.

Unusual, especially off-key, non-melodic, grating, unusually pitched, or strangely toned or timbred voices can rapidly put people off an entire body of work. Some will even forego an artist's work until someone covers it, simply because the original author's voice is inexpert, amateurish, or just plain weird. Respect is occasionally given to these artists by folks who can't stand their voices, because it has nothing to do with the song itself.

To ease us into something that will eventually start annoying the hell out of some readers, let's start with the voice of one Tom Waits:

That Make a Small Portion of the World Cry -- B-Sides

There are, I don't know four or five major types of bonus tracks included on reissues and special versions of albums: studio out-takes and "alternate" versions, live tracks, b-sides, BBC sessions (which are occasionally live), and non-album singles. Similarly, there are about four major types of compilation: the best of or greatest hits, which typically collects singles with an occasional popular deep cut;the live album, which may contain a concert or two, or tracks excised from a variety of performances, either on a single tour or throughout a band's career; rarities albums that contain a mix of the "bonus tracks" I've just listed, and occasionally focusing exclusively or almost exclusively on one of them like b-sides or BBC sessions; and "comprehensive" (sometimes!) anthologies of a band's entire career that typically contain all of the above, though they're sometimes just pretentiously named "best of" compilations.

Now, there's debate, concern, wariness, and about every negative (and probably every positive) attitude you can think of when it comes to these "extra" or "bonus" tracks. Some people are annoyed when they interrupt the repeat flow of an album, when playing it numerous times in succession on a CD player or the like. Others think it's a cheap gimmick to gouge people for money. Some people just find them extraneous junk and trim them away in digital form or just eject the CD when the album proper ends. Some artists or labels acknowledge this and program in an extra bit of silence to separate the album from its errata, often using the "negative space" that CD technology allows (I'll talk more about this some other time, as it's actually quite interesting), or doing like Rhino did with their 2008 Replacements reissues, and sticking in an audio cue, which, in that case, was the sound of someone walking to a door and locking up to leave (which I appreciated at the end of "Here Comes a Regular," but was disheartening to find on every other album, including the far more raucous Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash or Stink, where it was less appropriate to the song it followed). They're a mixed bag in "anthologies" and the like, too, being seen in the same light as "valueless filler" to some, and the entire point to others.

Me? I love them.

Indeed, for whatever it says about me, there's little I love more than dissecting these extra tracks--or, better yet, whole compilations of them!--and discovering where they came from, the context they originally appeared in, and how they were originally presented, if at all. My digital music database is filled to the brim with excessive information, like replacing an album title with the name and location of a studio for "unreleased" tracks, which I arrange by their recording dates. It's interesting to find a studio appear in common between seemingly disparate artists, or to find a studio that has seen a huge chunk of a genre come through it. Trident Studios in London, for instance, saw Harry Nilsson recording for Son of Schmilsson, David Bowie recording for many of his earlier albums--and the Buzzcocks, recording demos shortly after Howard DeVoto left to form Magazine.

But let's pare me down here, and for now, let's talk about my favourite of these options: The B-Side.

What Do You Call That Noise That You Put On? -- XTC and Obsession

This is pop?

Right now I'm listening to the Replacements and dipping into some early 90s hits for my own entertainment. I've been listening to Paul Westerberg's (of the Replacements) solo material for a lot of the day, spent last night listening to Ryan Adams and the rest of today listening to early Bee Gees, Dinosaur Jr, Meat Puppets, and Badfinger.

Despite all that, though, I went out to Charlotte's Manifest Discs and Tapes, which I last visited about eight years ago, yesterday, and though I walked out with some of the Ryan Adams and Meat Puppets I just mentioned (as well as some long-desired Thin Lizzy and Church reissues), the find of the night was an object that's been in my peripheral vision for a while, then suddenly went out of print. I'd seen a copy at my old friends CD Alley but it had even left there--and they often have box sets that just hang out until they go out of print and one of us stumbles in and goes, "Hey, waitasec..."

Somehow, this thing was sitting there with that TWEC-style sticker¹ denoting their online usage of TWEC's SecondSpin.com (not worth linking to, I'm afraid) and consigning many of their prices to absolute weirdness (see: unusually long footnote). Sometimes a great deal, sometimes a horrendous one not worth touching. Indeed, this particular item is out of print, as I noted, so that makes the price a huge gamble. The list price, when in print, was around $60, and that's become the starting used price for most of the year. This one, though, was marked $37.99. So, screw anything else I was going to find--this was coming home with me.

So, what was "this"? Well, here, of course, is a picture: