I Wish It Was Christmas Today - Part 10

We're in the process of reviewing the 41 tracks on my 20th annual holiday mix, "I Wish It Was Christmas Today," and it's time now to look at the next couple of tracks:

Track 27
Rock 'n' Roll Santa, Jan Terri (1994) 

Jan Terri

I first posted about Jan Terri in 2017, when I included one of her songs in my "It's Christmas Time Again" mix. The song I used that year was "Excuse My Christmas," and it's a real piece of work. Like many of Jan's records, my initial reaction to it was severe cringe. But slowly it grew on me, as her songs sometimes do. My reaction to "Rock 'n' Roll Santa" was pretty much the same, though I'd say that of these two tunes, this year's selection is the better of the two.

A native of Chicago, Jan comes from a musical family. As a child, she played in a local jug band with her mother, while her father performed in various Chicago clubs wearing blackface as "Black Elvis." After finishing school, Jan worked a variety of jobs and tried to make it as a musician. Whatever extra money she earned was invested in studio time and equipment, and she fashioned several crude music videos to promote her songs. While working as a limousine driver, she became friendly with a local advertising executive, who gave one of her videos to Marilyn Manson, the controversial shock rock artist who hit it big in the mid-'90s with such songs as "The Dope Show." Manson was taken with Jan's work, noting that her simple, frumpish lyrics and brash, unpolished style combined to form something greater than the sum of their parts. The IMDb website echoes this theme in its write-up of Jan, whom it describes as an "[e]ndearingly bad amateur Italian-American singer/songwriter."

Short (5' 1"), plain, and dumpy, with a gratingly nasal off-key voice and a strangely engaging abrasive, yet earnest persona, Jan possesses a certain lovably ham-fisted charm that makes her essentially the latter-day equivalent to notorious ‘60s freak celebrity old lady singer Mrs. Miller.

Any wonder why I like her?

In any case, Manson arranged for Jan to open for several of his Chicago area shows, which led to an appearance on "The Daily Show" in 2000. Sadly, the publicity failed to deliver any offers of a record contract, but it did help her develop a modest cult following. And that's how I came to make her acquaintance.  

It's not exactly clear when "Rock 'n' Roll Santa" was officially released. I've seen reports that it was originally included on her 2013 album "High Risk," though it doesn't appear on the latest version of that LP. I've also read that it was first released as a single in 2012, so that's the release date I'm going with. This tune also appears on her 2014 album "Holiday Songs," which includes "Excuse My Christmas" and songs about Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Halloween and April 15 — the day income taxes are due. 

So without further ado, here's this year's Jan Terri selection, presented by way of the video that accompanied her single release 12 years ago:

 

Jan performed the song live on the cable access show Chic-a-go-go in 1996, and fortunately for us, it was captured for posterity and posted on YouTube. Be sure to watch this one to the end as an exclusive interview with the artist herself follows the performance: 

You can read my first post about Jan Terri from 2017 HERE. Since I posted that first report, Jan's released a new album called "Songs for Hope," which came out two years ago.

Purchase "Songs for Hope" or One of Jan's Other Albums via the Bandcamp Music Site

Watch the documentary "Jan Terri:  No Rules" on the NightFlight+ Streaming Service

Order an Autographed Picture of Jan or Personalized Video or Phone Message

Track 28
Merry Christmas You Filthy Animal, Artist Unknown (from Home Alone 2) (1994)

I'm embarrassed to say that I can't share much information about this next track, which I ran across shortly before finishing my latest mix last month. You see, I have several folders on my hard drive that I use for short filler clips that I find during the spring and summer when Christmas isn't so much on my mind. Oftentimes I'll cut and paste something here without any identifying information thinking I'll be able to retrace my steps later on. Well, that's what happened here, and now it's too late to remove the track. I'll update this post if I can identify who's responsible for the track at some time in the future, and I'm confident that at some point I will.

I can tell you that the clip is an excerpt from the popular 1992 film Home Alone 2, and that whoever created this beefed-up version of it did so two years later. Of course, the heart of the track is the line "Merry Christmas, you filthy animal," which the character played by Macaulay Culkin lifts off a TV movie as we can see in this clip from the film:

The maker of the track I've used reworked the quote in question so that it appears several times with some additional heft added to each repetition. 

Check back later and I'll hopefully have some additional news to share.

That's all for now. I'll return with more in a day or two.