New Monday #97
Happy Monday!
Happy Holidays!
Recently, I was somewhere where there was Modern Commercial Christmas Music playing. Perhaps I was trapped in some gulag of a mall. I think it was a Michael's in Plattsburgh, New York. For those readers outside of the US, Michael’s is a craft store chain. Craft supplies: kinda like art supplies but more all encompassing. Anyway, Christmas music can be bad enough to make me want to find the "Rope and Noose Supplies" aisle at Michael’s.
Modern Commercial Christmas Music (that sounds like its own section at Michael’s) presents this joyous facade, evoking people in love, dashing ‘round the Christmas tree, Christmas cheer, wide-eyed children. The optimism does make sense—do we need more reality? And “All I want for Christmas is You” is a better lyric than, “All I want for Christmas is a nap, someone else to do the dishes, and my credit card balances to vanish."
This is a more realistic Christmas song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqN483jm6JE
Robert Earl Keen... Here’s the version I grew up with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P37xPiRz1sg. I love the crowd singing along. That’s sort of the point of Christmas music.
Robert Earl Keen is a criminally unknown singer-songwriter. He has a very worthwhile podcast. Here’s a link to an episode he did with the late great Todd Snider, who died last month.
One can’t have the thing without its opposite. "I’m doing good" only makes sense if one understands what doing bad feels like. There is no Christmas joy without seasonal sadness, no togetherness without isolation. Some Christmas songs really nail this.
One of my faves is I’ll Be Home for Christmas. Here’s Sinatra’s version if you want to listen, but the lyrics are really all you need:
I'll be home for Christmas
You can plan on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents on the tree
Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love light gleams
I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams
I grew up with Frank’s version. We kids would play an eight-track cassette of it until my parents—especially my dad—wanted to kill us. Ah, nothing like Christmas trauma. Here's some more:
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas was another depressor on the Frank Sinatra Christmas album. The original was written for a movie, Meet Me in Saint Louis, and was sung by Judy Garland. Here’s the scene from the movie. Judy Garland was the best actress who could sing, the best singer who could act.
Judy needs to comfort her younger sister, Tootie, who is upset about moving to New York from Saint Louis. So, she sings a depressing Christmas song. Garland was smart and had some star power. She recognized a good song and insisted on changes to the original lyrics, which were horrific. I mean, you’d have to be a sociopath to “cheer up” a scared, grieving kid with:
Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
It may be your last.
Next year we may all be living in the past.
Kids are especially targeted at Christmas time. Familiar with this dismal ditty?
He's the little boy that Santa Claus forgot
And goodness knows, he didn't want a lot
He sent a note to Santa
For some soldiers and a drum
It broke his little heart
When he found Santa hadn't come
In the street he envies all those lucky boys
Then wanders home to last year's broken toys
I'm so sorry for that laddie
He hasn't got a daddy
The little boy that Santa Claus forgot
Of course, a shmaltzy arrangement and the “this is the reason you need to chain smoke” voice of Nat King Cole make it palatable, but I have a hard time getting past the title The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot.
We also watched A Charlie Brown Christmas religiously for years. It was melancholic—the balding loser kid fucks up repeatedly throughout it—but the music by pianist Vince Guaraldi is so damn on point that it became its own genre.
Let’s Dive In a Bit
Put on the headphones and listen to Linus and Lucy while you read.
This is a lovely little recording. Probably three track (a format that was fairly unique to the US in the 50s and 60s) mixed to stereo, it sounds to me like the Vince Guaraldi Trio is in a room, drums and percussion over to the left, upright bass to the right, and Guaraldi’s piano right down the middle. It very well could be one mic on each instrument—the bass booms on certain notes, the drums sound like an overhead pointed at the snare, the piano forward in the mids, less so in the bass. I’m thinking the drum ambience you hear at certain points is leakage—these guys were all in a room together at once.
I found a breakdown of the original tapes from a mastering engineer who worked on it a few years ago. This is kinda cool.
Christmas Wrapping
I tumbled down a rabbit hole of depressing Christmas music, but I really wanted to write about the 1981 oddball holiday classic Christmas Wrapping, by the Waitresses. Have a listen:
Christmas Wrapping
It’s a musical holiday romcom with a fantastic bassline, courtesy of Tracy Wormworth, who went on to play with the B-52s, Paula Abdul, David Lee Roth, toured with Sting, etc. Great player. Also on the track is drummer Billy Ficca, who was in Television.
The writer/producer and head Waitress was Chris Butler. From Akron, Ohio, which had a kind of scene in the 70s, with bands like DEVO, Pere Ubu, and Butler’s own band, Tin Huey. They signed to Warner Brothers, released some interesting records that went nowhere, and broke up/morphed into The Waitresses. I’m glossing over the history a bit.
The Waitresses were signed to ZE records, were touring the US hoping to get some traction for their first single, I Know What Boys Like, when they were forced by their record label to get their butts in the studio and cut a Christmas song.
Butler’s childhood was full of toxic family memories. He hated Christmas. He wrote the song in a week and they found themselves at Electric Lady. Christmas Wrapping was cut across three days to 24-track tape using a Datamix console—the same console that was used to mix Frampton Comes Alive but not the same Datamix used to record most of Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland album—that was cut on the Datamix at The Record Plant.
Datamix consoles were very hit and miss, down to “this channel sounds great, this one sounds awful.” They featured a three-band passive inductor EQ—I wrote about this a few weeks ago. I suppose they sounded good enough—a lot of great records were cut on Electric Lady’s and The Record Plant’s.
The singer on Christmas Wrapping was Patty Donohue, and there’s something so perfect about her performance on the tune. She manages to embody the character and the lyrics, hitting a wonderful blend of charm and snark. Ficca’s drums are huge and articulate... and the bass is frickin’ killer.
It charted in the US, and has a resurgence every holiday season. The Waitresses broke up after another album, then there were battles for the name. Donohue was a chain smoker; she died of lung cancer at 40. Butler did a bunch of production and eventually moved back to Akron and bought the house owned by serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. He has a record label, Future Fossil, and he’s grown to appreciate Christmas Wrapping.
Mr Butler strikes me as an errant genius, and anyone who loves Dorothy Parker is a friend of mine! In 1996 he released The Devil Glitch. It’s one song and it's really long. Guinness Book of Records long. It goes through sonic and textural variations as it winds its way across the same three chords for 69 minutes.
The lyrics always begin with “Sometimes you can fix something by...” Like this:
Sometimes you can fix something by just leaving it be,
Accept the imperfections
Sometimes you can fix something by just setting it free,
Let it run in all directions
Sometimes you can fix something by just taking the bridge,
Dammit, the tunnel's always a mess
But Mr Butler is too much of a provocateur to leave things alone. Because sometimes you can fix something by making it longer...
He invited the world to add to The Infinite Glitch. And people have done so. The song, which started as a five-minute ditty, is now almost six hours long! Go here and follow the instructions: https://infiniteglitch.net/. You’re invited. Don’t dawdle.
Oh! Look at the word count! I had hoped this to be short, but rabbit holes are as long as they need to be. Whatever. Sometimes you can’t fix something by making it longer.
Happy Holidays, all.
I hope this week, and every week, you find yourself in a world that accepts and perhaps celebrates what is unique about you, and that you’re often with people who you love, and who love you back.
Luke