Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Crickets / Music If for Some Reason You Want Christmas Music
Posted by Miles Raymer on 12.22.09 at 04:20 PM
I don't hate Christmas, but Christmas music makes me cringe. I'm not talking about Christmas carols—which every right-thinking person hates for a number of valid reasons—but rather about rock and pop songs that talk about Christmas. Darlene Love's "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" is a perfect piece of Spector-style pop rendered unlistenable by its lyric. "Christmas in Hollis" makes me shudder.
I've managed to avoid most Christmas music this year—the key is to never go out in public without in-ear headphones playing Tegan & Sara—but if somehow you do not hate Christmas songs or haven't exceeded your tolerance for them by this late date, here are a couple suggestions for Christmas-related tunes, after the jump:
Barry Phipps of the Coctails, who also founded the Tight Ship record label, has a rotating-lineup collaborative group called Holiday Music that gets together once a year to record a set of Christmas tunes. The group's latest effort, which includes an elegantly bummed-out version of Wham!'s "Last Christmas," is available at this link to a .zip file.
Geekier types might prefer Doctor Octoroc's 8-Bit Jesus, a collection of Christmas carols rendered using glorious old NES video-game sounds. Like I said above, Christmas carols are the worst, but Octoroc wisely chose combinations of carols and video games to provide maximum novelty value in their mashed-up titles: "Ryu the Red Nosed Ninja," "Bubbles We Have Heard on Bobble," "Have Yourself a Final Little Fantasy," et cetera.
Two recent Christmas records get a pass from me.
Fucked Up's version of "Do They Know It's Christmas" because a) it's Fucked Up, b) it's got Tegan & Sara singing with Fucked Up, and c) making fun of Bob Geldof and company's nauseating ode to self-righteousness and cultural insensitivity is always a thumbs-up:
And Bob Dylan is obviously just using the "Christmas album" conceit as a new way to fuck with peoples' heads for his own amusement:
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Don't forget King Diamond's "No Presents For Christmas"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a5fHMlb4V0
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Thee mighty astral travelers Wooden Shjips did two holiday tunes for 2008 which you can download from the WFMU blog. Spark up some holly, add a little extra nutmeg to the eggnog and orbit around the Christmas tree with these two lil' stocking stuffers:
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2008/12/wooden-shjips-f.html
This year for 2009, Riley from Wooden Shjips did a Christmas tune for his solo project Moon Duo which you can stream or download here:
http://www.myspace.com/moonduo
Put'em all on repeat and zone thru the holidaze. Merry Merry!
I will always have a soft spot for the Ramones' "Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight)."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mfS4ZqMKR8
Now I feel bad that I forgot Tom Waits's "Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12qBoy2rhVw
And the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrAwK9juhhY
Who'd have thought Shane MacGowan would outlive Kirsty MacColl.
