We're definitely in the home stretch of our review of the 42 tracks on my latest holiday compilation, Hey! You! Get Off of My Roof! Today we look at Tracks 35-37, which leaves just five more to review between tomorrow and Saturday. Believe it or not, I think we might just make it, so do check back as you scramble to complete your own holiday preparations.
Track 37 White Christmas, Patti Smith Group (1978)
Patti Smith
The other day, my Twitter feed included an interesting question among the recent flood of lunatic MAGA posts and increasingly pathetic messages from Elon Musk — namely, what female musician would you most like to spend an hour with over a nice meal? An impressive list of talented and interesting women quickly came to mind, but for me there was one clear favorite: Patti Smith.
I've been a big fan of Smith's going back to at least 1978, when she had her first and biggest hit single with "Because the Night," a song she wrote with Bruce Springsteen. Since then, she's released eight amazingly great albums, completed numerous successful tours (I'm grateful to have seen her on four of them), written over a dozen books of prose and poetry, and appeared in several films, including a cameo in Jean Luc Godard's Socialism (2010). She's also recorded a couple of great Christmas songs.
The track I've included on this year's mix, "White Christmas," was recorded with the Patti Smith Group on December 20, 1978, at Bearsville Sound Studio in Bearsville, New York, while she was recording what would be her 1979 album "Wave." Longtime band member Lenny Kaye first played this song live that year while guest hosting a Christmas show on WNEW-FM in New York.
Smith will continue her tradition of playing a couple of year-end live dates in New York with shows in Brooklyn on December 29 and 30, followed by shows in Germany and Scandinavia next June. Earlier this month she completed a short run of appearances reading excerpts from her latest book "A Book of Days," which included one date performing songs with her band in Los Angeles. Sadly, that show sold out before I could get tickets. I sure hope she'll be back.
Track 36 Deck the Halls, The Dixie Chicks, featuring Sandra Bernhard (2008)
This short track was produced as part of The Gap's 2008 holiday "Merry Mix It" promotional campaign, which included six TV commercials and a series of musical clips that customers could mix, match and send to friends from the store's holiday website. This particular clip featured The Dixie Chicks (now known simply as "The Chicks") who were just finishing a busy few years. In 2003, group member Natalie Maines had sharply criticized President George W. Bush and the planned U.S. invasion of Iraq, which resulted in a sharp backlash against the group, particularly on their home turf in the American south. After a brief hiatus, the group released the album "Taking the Long Way" in 2006, in which they essentially stood their ground. By then, the tide had turned against the Bush administration and their album and its lead single, "Not Ready to Make Nice" were not only top sellers but swept the Grammy Awards, too. Thus, in 2008, The Dixie Chicks were popular enough to star in national ad campaigns.
Track 35 Holiday Greetings, Sandra Bernhard
Appearing with The Chicks on Track 36 and all alone on Track 35 is Sandra Bernhard, one of my favorite entertainers since I first saw her with Robert De Niro and Jerry Lewis in Martin Scorsese's 1983 film The King of Comedy. Her 1989 film Without You I'm Nothing, based on her one-woman show of the same name, is an outrageously funny look at American culture. It features an especially funny bit known as "Sandra's White Christmas" in which she imagines herself as part of a traditional American Christian family on Christmas Eve. One of these days I may use it on one of my mixes.
While it's not as well known as it should be, Bernhard wrote and performed a beautiful Hanukkah song called "The Miracle of Lights," which I included in my 2008 mix, "Home for the Holidays." Known primarily for her outrageous comedy and personality, Bernhard has a wonderful singing voice that is on display in the two clips that appear by way of the links below.
Back when I was growing up, our family had a stack of Christmas albums that we kept in a special section of the bin beneath our stereo console. I'd guess there were maybe 30 holiday albums of various different styles including a couple by the Boston Pops, one by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and another by organist E. Power Biggs, a favorite of my Dad's. Many of the albums were picked up from various gas stations where you could often score free Christmas albums, cutlery, or glassware with every fill-up. One thing you wouldn't find in our collection was anything by the bigger stars in pop music. Sure, a few pop groups released their own holiday albums back in the 1960s and '70s; we later added one by The Partridge Family to our collection. But few of the rock groups that were regularly topping the charts back then had much of an association with the holiday genre. That all changed 35 tears ago, however, with the release of "A Very Special Christmas" in 1987. Within several years, nearly every serious rock fan who was also into Christmas music had this album or one of the nine later records in the series in their collection.
(l to r) Jimmy Iovine, Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen
Today's Washington Post features a terrific article about the first "A Very Special Christmas" album, which was coordinated by famed rock producer Jimmy Iovine to benefit the Special Olympics. Iovine, who had produced records for such performers as John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, U2 and Stevie Nicks, conceived of the idea shortly after the sudden loss of his father in 1985. Starting with Springsteen, he approached a number of his rock contacts with the idea of a charity Christmas album. There was immediate and enthusiastic support. Finding a beneficiary took a little more time. Iovine was insistent that all of the proceeds go to a respected charity, and as it happened his girlfriend knew Bobby Shriver, the son of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who founded the Special Olympics, the world's largest sports organization for developmentally disabled persons. Over the past 35 years, Iovine's vision has not only raised $145 million for the Special Olympics but also helped establish that organization's high profile and worldwide reputation.
As the Washington Post story explains, "A Very Special Christmas" and its progeny encouraged artists from a variety of musical genres to create holiday songs of myriad styles and removed whatever stigma may have existed about making Christmas records.
"This is such a huge album in terms of its impact, just because there hadn’t been anything like it. It changed the place of Christmas in pop culture,” says music critic and author Rob Sheffield, who believes “A Very Special Christmas” represents “a before-and-after moment in the history of Christmas in pop culture. It’s a thing that had never existed before, and afterwards was never going to not exist again. Pop stars now all want to do Christmas albums."
The article is by features writer Travis Andrews, and it's a great reminder of the quality and diversity of the music on this iconic record.
“There’s just something about those songs, man,” Iovine says. “When you sing them, you can’t be the Grinch.” He adds, “It was my least favorite time of my life, and I did something positive with it. When I see that album, I see one guy, and that’s my father. That’s all that mattered.”
Iovine and the other artists who contributed to "A Very Special Christmas" deserve a lot of credit for their work.
Strong's exit follows the recent departures of a number of other talented cast members, including Pete Davidson, Kate McKinnon, Chris Redd, Aidy Bryant and Melissa Villaseñor. Sadly, most of last night's show was on par with previous shows from this season, which is to say it sucked. Cecily will be missed.
Track 34 My Green Christmas Tree, The '60s Invasion (2012)
This year's mix includes two tunes from the New England-based group The '60s Invasion whose album Incense and Chia Petsis chock full of holiday parodies made from hit songs from the 1960s. In a previous post I offered some information about the band and the first of these two songs, "Christmas in New England," based on the Mamas and Papas' hit "California Dreaming." The second is a parody version of "My Green Tambourine," by The Lemon Pipers, called "My Green Christmas Tree":
This year's mix includes only one true "song poem," which I suspect a good many will say is one song-poem too many. What are song poems? Well, as the old saying goes, if you have to ask you probably don't want to know. Basically, they're just lyrics written by everyday people and set to music by commercial artists for a fee. I've included more than a few of these little gems on various previous mixes and I've written about them here several times, too, including a post from 11 years ago about the song "Santa Claus Polka," Track 31 from my 2011 mix "Gee Whiz . . . It's Christmas (Again)!"
This year's entry is "Ring Out the Bells," performed by Norm Burns and featuring lyrics by some unknown but no doubt earnest soul who paid a few hundred dollars to Sterling Records to have their poetry turned into a song. You can hear the result just as I did on Bob Purse's wonderful website The Wonderful and the Obscure. Bob's site is a treasure trove for song poem enthusiasts, featuring several hundred different song poems and lots of colorful background and commentary. Heck, there are more than 40 entries on Norm Burns alone, and Norm is just one of the many folks who made a living setting poems to music for regular folk like you and me.
For those who would like to know more about the wonderful world of song poems, the following video is a playlist that includes 22 different selections. It is not for the faint of heart, and it includes a couple of tunes that may not be safe for work because of adult language. Aw, who am I kidding, noneof these tunes is safe for work unless you want your coworkers to think you've lost your damned mind!
Give Me Your Heart for Christmas, Dora Hall (1965)
This is the second holiday song I've used by aspiring entertainer and corporate trophy wife Dora Hall following "Kissin' by the Mistletoe," which can be found on my 2016 mix Let It Snow. Hall is a former vaudeville performer whose dreams of stardom were rekindled when her husband took over the Solo Cup Company and started promoting her records on every package of Solo Cups. I previously provided some background on Hall, which you can find HERE. I love Dora's story and she brings a refreshing enthusiasm to her work as the spouse of a successful corporate executive. And I salute her husband, too. He used his position to advance his wife's singing career and singlehandedly created one of entertainment's greatest supplies of kitsch.
It's been mighty cold in Los Angeles lately, at least by Southern California standards. Hope you're keeping warm wherever you are. I'll be back with more sometime soon.
Every Saturday from Thanksgiving through New Year's Eve we dig deep into the vaults of NBC's Saturday Night Live and select a classic holiday sketch to share. Tomorrow is the first night of Hanukkah, and in honor of the festivities this week's SNL flashback is a collection of clips about Hanukkah. Best wishes to all those who celebrate this holiday.
We'll be back with another SNL clip next Saturday on Christmas Eve!
