Holiday Hits Pt 3: Less Traditional Holiday Sounds

One of the first Christmas albums (if not the first--my memory sucks so I can't remember if it was this or the Jewel one) I bought was the Very Special Christmas 3 compilation.  Those compilations take holiday songs from modern artists like U2 or Bon Jovi or Madonna instead of the old tried-and-true crooners and such.

Anyway, this was the mid-to-late 90s and we couldn't just download stuff yet so I bought the whole album pretty much for one song:  Christmastime by Smashing Pumpkins.  Man, I still love that song.  You got all the traditional holiday bells and flutes and stuff and then you got Billy Corgan's creepy voice singing, "Christmastime has come for you" which has a slightly ominous ring to it.  So on some level I enjoy it ironically because that's how I roll.

There are some other good songs on there too by Dave Matthews Band, Natalie Merchant, Enya, and Hootie and the Blowfish.  Yes, Hootie and the Blowfish, remember them?  I just skip the Puff Daddy one but other people might enjoy that.

It was years later when I bought the heart of my non-traditional holiday music collection.  Again I think it was because of Pandora.  It played a few songs from this compilation album "Maybe This Christmas Tree" which was actually third in the series.  There were songs from indie pop/rock groups like Death Cab for Cutie and Pedro the Lion (which is pretty much the most depressing-sounding Christmas song ever) and so forth.

I looked the album up on Amazon but you couldn't download it for some reason.  You couldn't buy the CD at the time either because it was a limited edition charity thing from a couple of years earlier or something.  I decided I really wanted it, so I went to EBay and made the mistake of buying it from some hoser in Toronto.  Not only did I have to pay much more than the disc was worth, the jackass sat on it for over a week before mailing it, so I didn't even get the thing until AFTER Christmas!  I gave him negative feedback and he was like, "What?  I shipped it within two weeks."  Hey genius, you ever think I might want a Christmas album BEFORE Christmas?  The post offices in Toronto can't be that far away you couldn't have dragged your ass over there to put it in the mail!  And actually since I live near Detroit it would have taken me far less time to just drive across the freaking river and find the schmuck in Toronto.


I'm digressing.  Anyway, when I finally did get it, I really liked the whole album, or at least most of it.  There was one crooner-ish song I could live without.  The "Christmas for Cowboys" by Jars of Clay always makes me think of "Brokeback Mountain."  They could have played that in the movie when it snows and they wind up fucking in the tent.

The next year Amazon finally got all three of the albums so you could buy them for reasonable prices and not from Canadian jerkoffs who wait around for a week to ship the freaking thing.  (Ironically this year only the third one is available to be downloaded on Amazon and the other two are terribly expensive in the CD section.  So I guess if you want to buy those check Ebay but beware Canadian buyers!)  Almost all of the collection is good with songs from Coldplay, Dave Matthews Band (again), Barenaked Ladies, Ben Folds, Rufus Wainwright, and so forth.  Unfortunately there's one by my mortal enemy Jack Johnson that I have to skip. (That's less of a problem thanks to the wonder of digital media, where I just delete it from my hard drive or MP3 player.)

I think I like these because they're close to the music I listen to the rest of the year and some of them are interesting takes on the traditional songs, so it's not the same stuff you've been hearing for the last 60 freaking years, which is good.  Because again, I only need to hear Bing Crosby once and then I get tired of it.

Besides the three "Maybe This Christmas" CDs there was a Nettwerk Records Christmas album that predated those and has the same Barenaked Ladies/Sarah McLachlan song as the first "Maybe This Christmas" album (which was also on the Barenaked Ladies Christmas album but mercifully not the Sarah McLachlan one because four copies of it would be too many).  If you ever listen to that, don't listen to the last track, which some lame Canadian "comedian" going on for 23 minutes about nothing.  The dude makes Carlos Mencia seem funny by comparison. (And that joke is better than anything in those 23 minutes.)

Anyway, after those I started to seek out more stuff in a similar vein.  There are a lot of compilations out there.  Plus some bands like The Killers put out holiday singles, but not a whole album.  Really by now maybe every artist has a Christmas album, even the Jewish ones.  It just seems that way sometimes at least.

A couple of years ago as part of the free singles Amazon gives away (1 each day in December), they had "Slower Than Christmas" by a group called The Boxmasters that's fronted by actor Billy Bob Thornton.  I really liked the song because it was funny and yet true in a lot of ways.  Eventually I bought the whole album.  It's got a rockabilly sound that's not what I usually listen to usually but makes a nice change-up for the classics like "Silver Bells."  And with songs like "Slower Than Christmas" and "I Won't Be Home This Christmas" there's the gritty redneck humor like Jeff Foxworthy or "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer".  And with Thornton involved it reminds me of "Bad Santa."  So that's become a staple of my holiday listening.

And here's a great Christmas song for the atheist in your family, called appropriately:  The Atheist Christmas Carol by Vienna Teng:

And my favorite Trans-Siberian Orchesta song, The Christmas Canon.  Both versions!

There are some of my recommendations for holiday music if you're sick of the traditional holiday stuff.  Now over the next couple of days we'll get into movies and TV.  Huzzah!