Monday , November 16, 2009
Heavy Rotation: Christmas-y Songs That Don't Suck
Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas from nogoodforme! We hope you're having a lovely holiday wherever you are. As a little holiday bonus, we made a little holiday-themed Heavy Rotation in honor of the day -- above and beyond in the most random ways, that's nogoodforme's gift to you! Thanks for joining us for the ride, dear readers, and we stick around for more joy in 2009.
Run DMC, "Christmas in Hollis"
These are the best Christmas lyrics ever. It's really a story about a dude who's walking on Hollis Ave. on Christmas Eve. He sees a bearded guy in the park with what he thinks is a weird-looking dog that he realizes is a reindeer. The bearded dude takes off but leaves behind a wallet full of Gs and a license (to ill?) made out to Santa Claus. Dude's all about to mail it back to return the money ('cause it's wrong to steal from Santa) when he gets a letter under his tree the next day saying the money's for him. God, isn't that awesome? (Kat)
The Fall, "(We Wish You) A Protein Christmas"
The idea of a band like the Fall doing a Christmas song is kind of beyond the beyond, and yet somehow it's perfect. They must have realized this themselves, because they've created a bit of a mini-canon of truly off-center and slightly unhinged Christmas songs. This one is my favorite, because it's a weird reworking of a track off my favorite Fall record, Country on the Click. It's kind of like your drunken uncle telling some bizarre, incomprehensible story at Christmas dinner and he falls out of his chair and bumbles around the room but keeps telling the story. And he's still telling it, three hours later and falling into the vat of eggnog. That's pretty much how I imagine Mark E. Smith spending his holidays. And you know, I wouldn't have it any other way. (Kat)
Juliana Hatfield, "Make it Home"
This is from the Christmas episode of My So-Called Life, which my little sister and I watched Christmas Eve Eve and I totally cried. (Liz)
The Mamas & the Papas, "Dream a Little Dream of Me"
One of my favorite Christmastime things is to drive around the Hollywood Hills at night and look at all the pretty lights and listen to non-Christmas songs that somehow sound so much like Christmas. "Dream a Little Dream of Me" is the most perfect (and makes the most sense for Laurel Canyon), but some other good ones are "Fireworks" by Animal Collective, "Everyone" by Van Morrison, "Bros" by Panda Bear, and - for those particularly reflective/contemplative moments - Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah." (Liz)
PS: Hey, Y'all! My name is Laura Jane, and I think the Holidays are totally heinous. The only Christmas Song I like remotely-at-all is "Little Saint Nick" by the Beach Boys, which sounds mad better in July than it does today. I'm not going to overstate the case and make some obscenely bold and probably false pronouncement along the lines of, "Christmas songs are for losers!" (since the four tunes featured on our jukebox this week clearly prove otherwise) but, like, hey- I'll meet you back here in two weeks with two way-killer non-Christmas songs. We'll all be happier that way.
Tags: Christmas, Juliana Hatfield, My So-Called Life, Oh Laura Jane, the Hollywood Hills, the Mamas & the Papas
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Posted by Kat in Heavy Rotation |
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