Here Comes Santa Claus, Part 5

I've been sharing some background about the various tracks on my latest holiday mix, titled Here Comes Santa Claus. We've already covered Tracks 1-11, and turn now to Tracks 12, 13 and 14.

Track 14

The Montreal Express, by Al Sears and His Countrymen (c. 1969)

This isn't a holiday song, strictly speaking, but then neither are such classics as "Winter Wonderland," "Frosty the Snowman," or even "Jingle Bells," for that matter. Somewhere along the way we seem to have reached a consensus that songs about snow and winter weather, which must certainly be considered "seasonal," also qualify for the "holiday" label. It's a curious issue when you stop and think about it, with some interesting implications. For example, a good friend of mine who was raised a Jehovah's Witness tells me he was forbidden from singing or listening to Christmas carols as a child because his family's religion ignores Christmas due to its quasi-pagan origins. His mother, a wonderful, generous and otherwise open-minded woman is especially doctrinaire when it comes to religion, and she brooked no nonsense when it came to Christmas songs. Forget about arguing the secular grounding of songs about snowmen, sledding or sleighs, my friend recalls. If it's a song that was ever sung by carolers, it wasn't allowed in his home.

By that rather rigid measure, this particular non-holiday winter's tale might well be allowed. It was commissioned in the 1960s by the old Boston Gas Company for use in their radio and television advertising campaigns, and it quickly "went viral," to the extent such a thing was possible back then. Responding to public demand, the ad agency that devised the campaign arranged for the jingle to be lengthened and released as a single, after the lines referring to Boston Gas were removed, of course. TV weathermen (no females on TV in those days) used to work bits of the song into their forecasts, and even the Boston Pops started to cover it at their holiday shows in Symphony Hall. I'm not surprised the song caught on as it did. New Englanders are a funny lot, and while they pride themselves on suffering through the most miserable winter weather without complaining, there's nothing they like more than hearing others give them credit for their toughness and their quiet resolve. There were a number of different versions of the jingle, which typically ended with the lines:

Boston Gas heat's

The only way to beat

The Montreal Express

Here are the lyrics for the 45 RPM version I included in this year’s mix:

There's an arctic wind up in Canada

Howling like a wolverine

And it whistles on down into Boston town

Whenever it feels real mean

Up around the Pru

And out Route 2

People all sigh “ah, yes”

We must have sinned ‘cause here comes that wind

Called the Montreal Express.

It rattles sills in the old Blue Hills

With a terrible icy roar

Your BVDs and your pipes all freeze

And your heating bills just soar

It shivers and shakes

And big snowflakes

Toot! No school today

Why down in Hull they ground the gull

And the blue jays all turn grey

It dropped a pall on the City Hall

The thermom’s two below

When it descends on the old North End

You're up to your ears in snow

It's hootin' into Newton and Watertown

The Pike just gleams with ice

The traffic snarls along the Charles

So take this good advice:

Swap your miniskirt for some flannel shirts

And send out an SOS

'Cause it freezes all, this wind they call

The Montreal Express

I haven’t been able to find anything more about Al Sears and His Countrymen, and this seems to be the only record they ever released. But, hey, that’s one record more than I’ve ever done, and while they may be gone, they’re not forgotten. Incidentally, I was surprised to learn today that Boston Gas is no more. Since I left town, they were apparently acquired by a company called Keystone, which in turn was acquired by something called National Grid. As someone who hasn't yet adjusted to a world without Woolworth's, this is almost too much to bear. Fortunately, National Grid has kept the iconic Rainbow Swash by the wonderful Sister Corita Kent on its Dorchester Gas Tanks. Mustn't mess with that.  

Track 13

Holiday Greetings from Ozzy Osbourne (c. 1994)

I don't intend to write very much about this gentleman or his music here because I don't know much about him and I'm not eager to learn any more than I already do. I included this track only because I think it's deliciously ironic to hear a warning about drunk driving from someone who apparently bit off the head of a live dove during a meeting with record company executives because he was too inebriated to know what he was doing. With a background like that, of course, who could be better qualified to deliver this sort of warning? Besides, while I've only seen his wife on TV for a few minutes here and there, she seems kind of neat, and their daughter's a stalwart fighter for gay rights, so he can't really be all bad. Few people are.

Track 12

The Wrong Way to Celebrate Christmas, by Rev. Edward W. Clayborn (1928)

I’ve previously featured recordings by the Rev. J.M. Gates on two of my previous holiday mixes, both of which were recorded in the 1920s and simmer with the righteous energy of a true Southern preacher. While this track was recorded around the same time and carries a similar kind of message, it has a very different feel than either of the recordings by Pastor Gates. Unfortunately, very little is known about Rev. Clayborn, who billed himself for a time as “the Guitar Evangelist.” The picture included here is apparently the only picture of him that exists, and I’ve seen his last name spelled four different ways while trying to find out a little more about him. About all I can report is that he recorded some 40 tracks for Vocalion Records between 1926 and 1930, and the message he carried is one that millions revere to this day.

The Rosebuds: Best New Christmas Album of the Year

One of the very best of this year's new releases is Christmas Tree Island by The Rosebuds, an indie rock band from Raleigh, North Carolina. The principal members of the group are Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp, and they've got a thing for holiday music. In between their commercial releases for Merge Records, they've taken to releasing one or more holiday tracks on their own each year, often in partnership with some good cause or another. This year's release is even more substantial than the norm -- an entire album of original tunes. "Melt Our Way Out" and "Xmas in New York" are already on my "best ever" list, and all 13 tracks qualify as bona fide holiday treats.   You can download the whole album for less than $8 on bandcamp, where you can also stream any or all of the tracks for free (as of now). Also available on iTunes and amazon (where the whole album's only $5.99 today!). If this were a just world, something from The Rosebuds would soon knock Wham! or Band Aid off the charts, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Holiday Charts Expose the Radio Wasteland

In 2007, Bruce Springsteen recorded a song called Radio Nowhere, which, among other things, lamented the death of quality rock radio at the hands of corporate media giants like Clear Channel and Infinity Broadcasting. Of course, a lot of people never got to hear it, because Radio Nowhere and most of the rest of the Boss's catalog were quickly banished from the nation's airwaves by those same corporate interests. When Bruce and I were growing up, rock radio, like rock music itself, was dynamic and edgy. Stations competed with one another for talent as well as listeners, and the best announcers threw themselves into developing their own unique styles and finding the best and most exciting music to play. Over the past 30 years, however, nearly every station of consequence has come under the control of one of the media giants, which invariably results in the adoption of small, tightly controlled playlists and a stifling of creative independence and personality. I hardly ever listen to the radio any more, but I've heard enough to know I'm not missing much. With respect to holiday music, the radio soundscape is just about as flat and uninteresting as you can get, which point is driven home by the by the first Billboard sales and airplay charts for this new holiday season. Haven't seen them? Well, don't worry. They're pretty much identical to the charts from last season, or for that matter any random season of the past dozen years or more:

Considering the significant number of original, topical, funny and/or movingly beautiful holiday tunes that are released every year and the vast catalog of outstanding older material that's also available, it's maddening to realize how few seasonal songs are getting airplay. It's not that the songs getting airplay are necessarily bad songs; heck, one of the songs that made both the "top songs" and airplay charts is on my Christmas comp this year. The bigger point is that these are pretty much the only songs you hear these days because the lifeless corporate drones in charge of programming don't know any better. Little wonder that the number and variety of holiday music sites on the web seems to be increasing each year.

On a more positive note, the only two songs on the first of this season's Top Holiday Songs charts that weren't on last year's final chart displaced two monstrosities by Justin Bieber, so even though those two "new" entries (Andy Williams, at #7, and Wham!, at #10) have a total of 73 years of age between them, there's a silver lining to be found in most every cloud.

TOMORROW, we return to our annual review of the individual tracks on my latest holiday comp CD. (Gee, when you put it that way it sounds pretty grim, no?) We'll be commenting on sounds by Ozzy Osbourne, Al Sears and His Countrymen and the Rev. Edward W. Clayborn, who was telling Americans as early as 1928 that we'd lost our moral grounding as a nation. I guess that puts him just a little ahead of the curve.

Time to Start Shopping, Everyone

Press on this lovely lady for the latest tally.

Thanks, Mondo Diablo.

Bo Inspects the White House Decorations