What did you listen to today?

OK before we all go into Grinch mode, let's think about this thing called "Christmas music."

First there is the memory/nostalgia aspect--let's call it the BTO effect, after Bachman Turner Overdrive's "Taking Care of Business" one of the most banal of the three chord rock formula. I hated it when my friends (non-musicians) cranked it because it was banal. Today, I crank it, just for the memories, most involving 8 tracks and why weren't we all killed the way we drank and drove. So now I play Mitch Miller--the guy in a cave--b/c my dad played it for my mom. Say something ugly and I will stab you.

Then, there is the repetition. Some songs or styles you liked the first three times faded to tortious. Manheim Steamroller is that way to me. Chestnuts roasting...they're burning goddammit!  Any song over and over becomes torture.

Next, really bad music, musically. Start with "The First Noel" worse tonally than Star Spangled Banner, running a one syllable word over two measures up and down the scale. Go to the pops--"Here comes Santy Claus." Grandma got runover by a reindeer." Any Yanni. Most Christmas songs by otherwise decent artists. And the crown jewel: Little Drummer Boy.

So for relief, find the comedy versions. No, move past Spike Jones. Not novelty--all Christmas music is novelty. I mean masterpieces like "Walking 'round in Women's Underwear" which I have inflicted on my family--even in-laws--for decades. But even most of them grow tiresome.

Every band in a slump releases a Christmas album, a Hail Mary pardon the pun to get from the red into the black. It shows. The country artists are real whores in this regard.

There is no musical genre called "Christmas music". Compare Bing to Guaraldi to Oscar Peterson to Elvis. Brian Setzer is a favorite of mine b/c it's great big band rockabilly. Too crazy for some; they want Sinatra or worse, Yanni. Christmas Blues are a hard sell. Kountry Kristmas is an abomination. New Age?* Shoot me. So to keep peace in the household we go back to same tired "classics" and no one fights; they all just drink ("make bloody Mary's because WE ALL WANT ONE!")

Play English major and look at the real meaning of the songs--a child traumatized by seeing his mother in an adulterous embrace with a classic Christmas figure ("I saw Mommy...") Let me get you drunk, pretending to care about the perilous weather, so I can get in your pants ("Baby it's cold outside") Screw the freezing homeless, we got popcorn! ("let it snow"). And Rudolph--an outcast because of a birth defect, who only gains respect and acceptance because he resolves a weather condition.

Where is the new Christmas music?  Not the rehash. New.  Was Guaraldi the last one--50 years ago--other than Keen?

Solution? Stick to your memory faves. Look for real jazz. Pick only the exceptional of the new ones--like Robert Earl Keen Jr.'s "Merry Christmas from the Family."





*New Age Thinking is to thinking like New Age Jazz is to jazz.