Day 1
The Ramones: “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)”
Why is it that family feuds seem to go hand-in-winter-mitten with Christmas? Too much booze + resentments galore + a disappointing gift + the loudmouth boor that won’t shut up + noisy brats going bonkers + the selfish prick who wants to control everything = a ticking time bomb. Well, here are the Ramones, those punk rock pioneers from Forest Hills, Queens, to remind us all that Christmas ain’t the time for breaking each others’ hearts. This video features vocalist Joey (Jeffrey Hyman, a nice Jewish boy who knew a thing or two about family feuds), lead guitarist Johnny (John Cummings), drummer Marky (Mark Bell), and bass player C.J. (Chris Ward). Original bassist Dee Dee (Doug Colvin, whose memoir is fittingly called “Lobotomy”) played on the studio version of this song, which was released as the B side of the single “I Wanna Live” in 1987. (Factoid: The Ramones have written at least eight songs with the words wanna or want to in the title.)

Day 2
The Futureheads: “Christmas Was Better in the 80s”
I think almost everybody has an era they’d like to revisit…a time that evokes bittersweet memories of people and places we miss…the days when we had better hair and hips. But you know darn well those “good old days” weren’t really THAT great while we were actually living them. Just like now, we were bitching about one thing or another, looking back at so-called happier times, and dreaming of better days ahead. Now here’s a British post-punk band called The Futureheads, reminiscing about a favorite time: Christmas in the 1980s. Ah, the MTV years! Kids woke up to find Sony Walkmans, Cabbage Patch dolls and Nintendos under the tree, while adults entertained themselves with porno tapes on the newfangled videocassette player — and cocaine!  For me, the best thing about the ‘80s was…hmmm… well, let’s see…Men Without Hats, maybe? (Actually, my favorite holiday was Christmas of 1967, when I received my all-time favorite gift: my Aurora HO-scale slot-car racing set; it still works and I still play with it.) Now, check out this delightful video from The Futureheads. I hear shades of Devo and XTC here!

Day 3
James Brown: “Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Ghetto”
There have been plenty of great soul-stirring Christmas songs by black R&B artists through the years, but leave it to James Brown to keep White Christmas from becoming too White Bread. His “Santa Claus, Go Straight to The Ghetto” is a delicately jazzy stocking-stuffer of a tune, wrapped with ribbons of social commentary. Hey, Johnny, Mary, Donnie and Gary: say it loud, be black and proud…and then thank James Brown for telling Santa to get on the good foot and drag his butt to the inner-city. The Godfather of Soul did his part to help advance civil rights in the 1960s — from appearing on stage at the 1966 March Against Fear Rally, to performing a live TV concert in Boston to help quell potential rioting the day after Martin Luther King’s assassination. This little Christmas treat is often overlooked, but its message packs a tender wallop. Never thought I’d realize I’d be singing a song with water in my eyes.

Day 4
R.E.M.: “Christmas Griping”
I’m so sick of hearing about Grandma getting run over by a reindeer that I’m ready to throw myself under a speeding sleigh. I need something new in the dark humor category, don’t you? Take a minute to listen to Michael Stipe and his R.E.M. bandmates conjure up some even stranger scenarios:

I’ll tell you what: if I hear ‘Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer’ one more time I’m gonna go up on a tower with a high powered rifle…
Wouldn’t you just love to throttle the person that invented fruit cake?…
Take a white marshmallow, put it on a coat hanger, put it on the fire, get some chocolate bars and some bread crackers, and then you slush it, and then you eat a hundred of them and vomit…
I’m still having nightmares about Burl Ives…

Aren’t they merely saying what we’re all really thinking by now? Okay, so this isn’t much of a song, but it was the one R.E.M. chose to release as the 1991 Christmas single for their fan club (a tradition started by The Beatles, by the way). This little nonsense tune is really growing on me. It’s got a great beat and I can bounce up and down to it while I act all bah humbug and shit. Boom shaka laka laka, ho ho ho.

Day 5
The Knife: “Christmas Reindeer”
This quirky little song about a Scandinavian reindeer is the true oddity of this bunch. I wanted to present one tune from another country (besides the U.K.), and this is my favorite. Too bad it wasn’t sung in Swedish. It would have enhanced the hypnotic mood of the song. But at least with English lyrics you can better appreciate the somewhat poetic words: and you move like shadows / in the dark / and you glitter and you glimmer / and you bark. Now, here’s Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer – a brother/sister duo called The Knife – with their electro-pop “Christmas Reindeer” song. I don’t think Rudolph has anything to worry about.

Day 6
Hurts: “All I Want for Christmas is New Year’s Day”
Did you ever have a year so bad you couldn’t wait for it to end? I know it’s silly to think that the simple act of turning a calendar page will wipe the slate clean and give us a fresh new start, but we all wish for it, don’t we? Here are singer Theo Hutchcraft and synthesist Adam Anderson – two guys from Manchester who call themselves Hurts – singing about the hope that the new year holds. All of the bells ringing out for Christmas / I’m saying goodbye to the year before / I know that the next one will be different / so much more. The song’s original video features stylishly solemn mourners at a grave site. As they bury the old dead year, a lovely tree of hope emerges and lifts their spirits. This is haunting, dreamy, and beautifully melancholy – three of my favorite states of being.

Day 7
Poly Styrene: “Black Christmas”
Don’t be fooled by this tune’s lively reggae beat. It’s a big slice of devil’s food realism, not angel food faith.  But I’m including it because it represents how an artist was personally affected by news of a horrendous event. Punk rock pioneer Poly Styrene (Marianne Joan Elliott-Said) was inspired to write this song following news of a Los Angeles man, Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, who went on a killing spree dressed as Santa Claus in 2008.

Ms. Styrene, the daughter of a Scotch-Irish legal secretary and a dispossessed Somali aristocrat, fronted an early U.K. punk rock group called X-Ray Spex. The band’s 1977 anthem “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!” is considered a seminal song of the era. Poly described it as “a call for liberation,” adding, “Bondage—forget it! I’m not going to be bound by the laws of consumerism or bound by my own senses.” She stood out from the crowd with her dental braces, DayGlo clothes and combat helmets. Billboard once described her as the “archetype for the modern-day feminist punk…one of the least conventional front-persons in rock history, male or female.” Her daughter Celeste co-wrote “Black Christmas” and appears in the video with her. Poly died of breast cancer at age 53 a few months after this video’s release. So, check it out, and remember that many people may well be echoing the song’s lyrics at this time of the year: All alone, drowning in my sorrows / Christmas time always brings my sadness home / oh no, I’m not merry, no.

Day 8
Low: “Just Like Christmas”
This gorgeous song by a 3-member indie band from Duluth, Minnesota, has cut me deep. I only recently discovered it, and yet I feel like this sound has been buried somewhere in my heart all my life. It’s a weeping willow of a tune, with a shuffling beat, sleigh bell sounds, and distant thundering drums — sung by a woman named Mimi Parker. She and her bandmates Alan Sparhawk and Steve Garrington appear to have found a fan in singer Robert Plant. In 2010 he recorded two of Low’s songs for his “Band of Joy” LP. That same year he praised their album “The Great Destroyer” during an interview with Chris Talbott of the Associated Press, saying, ”It’s great music; it’s always been in the house playing away beside Jerry Lee Lewis and Howlin’ Wolf…” Click here to learn more about Low.

But first, take a listen to “Just Like Christmas.” Sometimes the tiniest ornament is the shiniest.

Day 9
Gordon Lightfoot:  “Circle of Steel”
‘Cause from the lips of some old singer we can share the troubles we already know,” sang Elton John in his 1984 release “Sad Songs (Say So Much).” So, here’s one from a now-old singer — the legendary Gordon Lightfoot — the man Bob Dylan once called his favorite. “Circle of Steel” tells the story of a family drearily decking the halls of a hollyless, jollyless neighborhood. Can you relate? Maybe. Maybe not. But this mournful melody can’t help but slither into your brain (and mine is a dangerous neighborhood to begin with) and make you feel a bit of sympathy for the less fortunate. Christmas can be sad, no matter where you dwell. Come on, admit it.

I guess you could think of this song as a Yuletide version of Elvis’s “In the Ghetto.” But this one has a more beautifully forlorn melody.

“Circle of Steel” is from Gordon’s 1975 LP “Sundown.” It was one of the albums I requested for my 15th birthday. Click here to read more about “Sundown,” from the Hip Quotient vault.

Day 10
The Pogues: “Fairytale of New York”
This song by Celtic punk/folk band The Pogues is said to be the most popular Christmas carol in Ireland (do people stroll from house to house singing it?). Well, it’s one of my personal favorites as well – at any time of the year. On the surface, it’s about despair and disillusionment: the dreams of dysfunctional immigrant lovers fly away with the sidewalk soot of the big city. They fight and they curse, in high Irish style:
He: You´re a bum, you’re a punk / You´re an old slut on junk.
She: You scumbag, you maggot / You cheap lousy faggot.

But the melody is lovely, with lyrical references to two beloved Irish tunes, “Galway Bay” and “The Rare Auld Mountain Dew” (I turned my face away / and dreamed about you). You may think I’m nuts, but I sense an aura of hope tucked away in this song. The closing words convince me that these two alley cats are going to stay together for a long time. It’s them against the world, after all.
I’ve got a feeling this year’s for me and you.
So happy Christmas — I love you baby.
I can see a better time where all our dreams come true.

So, here then is the lovely duet by razor-toothed, whisky-wracked Shane MacGowan and the late Kirsty MacColl. Pogues producer Steve Lillywhite said of “Fairytale:” “It’s for the underdog.” I guess that’s why I love it so much. (The group’s original name, Pogue Mahone, is an Anglicized version of the Gaelic expression póg mo thóin, meaning kiss my arse.)

Day 11
The Everly Brothers: “Christmas Eve Can Kill You
Christmas Eve was always a special night when I was a kid. In keeping with the Italian “Feast of the Seven Fishes” tradition, my grandmother would cook up an assortment of frutto del mare (vermicelli in anchovy sauce and fried smelts were my favorites), and we’d open all our presents afterwards. Daddy would tell salty stories and play practical jokes — lovingly tormenting his favorite victim, my cousin Louie (that’s them in the photo). I’d laugh wickedly as Daddy chased Mommy and her sisters around the room with his Bell & Howell. But they could never escape his lens. Mom would shake her head and say, “Okay, Freddie, that’s enough,” but she liked that his antics would ensure at least one memorable Christmas moment that year.

Nannie, in a halo of mist from the oil of fried baccala, would wait till everyone else had eaten, and finally sit down at the table to sample each of her dishes (“I think the smelts were bigger last year,” she’d always say.) I’d take lots of pictures and start slicing open the covers of my new LPs with my thumbnail, eager to play them afterwards on the old Sears Silvertone.

One year aunt Babe tried her hand at making martinis. We were more of a Seagram’s and Schmidt’s family, but we all took a sip of her concoction. Aunt Dolly and cousin Rhonda would go toe-to-toe with Daddy in the risqué -language competition. And then we’d drive home — cautiously — hoping that Daddy didn’t get pulled over and fail a breathalyzer test. That was Christmas Eve with the Heads of the Five Families: Scalise, Diana, Spiardi, Bellman, and Strong. The next day was anti-climactic in comparison.

Those days are long gone….everybody’s gone….and no matter what I do or where I go, I’ll always be sad on the 11th day of Christmas. I guess that’s why I relate so much to this obscure little gem from the Everly Brothers. It’s about a guy stranded on the road, cold and weary: Christmas Eve can kill you, when you’re trying to hitch a ride to anywhere. Well, that’s the literal interpretation, anyway. For me, it symbolizes the dream of thumbing a ride back to simpler times — in small, crowded kitchens, tables topped with vinyl covers and laden with fish and minestra, beer cans and ashtrays. Yes, Christmas Eve can kill you, when you can’t stop hitchhiking to the past.

The winter’s flaking snow is brushing through the pinewood trees
I stuck my hands down deep inside my coat.
I think of years ago and half remembered Christmas trees
And faces that still warm me with their glow.

Day 12
The Allegheny Goatscape Choir sings (Un)Silent Night
I know I had promised no novelty songs on this list, but after subjecting you all to a lot of melancholy tunes during the past 11 days, I thought you could use a laugh. Merry Christmas, loyal Hip Quotient followers! I’m hoping your new year is G.O.A.T. — the Greatest Of All Time.

© Dana Spiardi, Dec 25, 2020

The band’s early lineup included founder, guitarist and vocalist Joe Grushecky, bass player Art Nardini, drummer Ned Rankin, guitarist Eddie Britt, keyboardist Gil Snyder, guitarist Gary Scalese, and harmonica player Marc Reisman. These guys knew a thing or two about the blue collar life. Grushecky’s dad was a coal miner and auto body worker, Nardini’s father was a mechanic, and Snyder’s pop worked construction. By the late 1970s they had developed a loyal following in the clubs and shot-and-a-beer joints of Pittsburgh, blasting out sounds that sprang from the musical well of the E Street Band, the Asbury Jukes, and the J. Geils Band.

They released three excellent albums of original material between 1979 and 1981: “Love’s So Tough,” “Have a Good Time But Get Out Alive,” and “Blood on the Bricks.” The man known as the dean of American rock critics, Greil Marcus, called The Houserockers “the best rock band in the country” in a 1980 Village Voice article. David Fricke of Rolling Stone said that “Joe Grushecky’s lyrical muscle knocked the romantic stuffing out of pop’s generally sentimental portrait of working-class life.”

By the time I discovered The Houserockers’ working class repertoire in 1979, I had already been indoctrinated into Bruce Springsteen’s world of summer-in-the city street life and blue collar blues. It was a world populated on one hemisphere by dreamers and lovable ne’er-do-wells who scuffled on street corners and chased girls underneath the boardwalk, and on the other by disillusioned people with few choices, toiling away in factories and mills and bursting at the seams to break free of society’s chains.

But while the music and lyrics of The Houserockers’ songs were linked thematically to Bruce’s, they had a powerful and distinct sound and persona all their own. One major difference was the inclusion of harmonica on all their numbers. It gave the songs a gritty factory-whistle sound that perfectly fit the subject matter. Another difference was the overall mood of the material. In many respects, The Houserockers’ words and music went down much smoother than some of Bruce’s stark, angst-ridden songs from the post-“Born to Run” era. How many times have you felt the need to pop a Prozac after listening to his tales of end-of-the-line misfits going down to the river to self-destruct, or policemen at the door telling you your sweetheart died in a wreck on the highway? The well-drawn characters created by Grushecky and company were working hard and struggling to survive, but they managed to have a good time while snubbing authority…blowing off steam just like those factory pipes.

What’s especially significant is that Joe and his bandmates were writing their songs in the very midst of Pittsburgh’s massive steel mill demise, as thousands were losing jobs and entire neighborhoods were becoming wastelands. There wasn’t a single person in the Pittsburgh region whose life wasn’t impacted in some way by the loss of industry. Bruce, who never worked the fields or worked ‘neath the wheels, was writing about rust-belt blues from a bit of a distance; The Houserockers were writing with a full frontal view of the desolation in their own backyards.

Thirty-five years after buying my first Houserockers LP I can still say there’s not a single dud on any of those first three records. But if I had to choose only a handful of songs to highlight on this Labor Day, here are the ones I think best convey the desperation, dreams, fears, and follies of the working class hero.

I Can’t Take It. This tune, with its rollicking piano sound, was a perfect album opener. Poor Jimmy’s the coolest guy around, but it’s a lot of pressure being the town’s bad-ass role model.

Have a Good Time But Get Out Alive. I guess you could say this is “My Way” with a rock-n-roll sensibility. Don’t put those chains on me. I am young and I am free. And I’ll be what I want to be, that’s right.

Don’t Let Them Push You Around. Working hard all day at a job that you hate. Better cut yourself free before it’s too late. Stand your ground. Don’t let them push you around.

Rock-ola. In this beautiful ballad Joe references the Rock-ola, a popular model of jukebox back in the day. Working hard in the steel mill. Working hard to stay high. Nobody has any free will. They just do what they do to get by. His salvation lies in the music from that box. The fabulous Mick Ronson, David Bowie’s guitarist from the Ziggy Stardust era, plays piano on this song. Oh, I adore this one.

Old Man Bar / Junior’s Bar. This two-parter from the band’s acclaimed second LP is my favorite of The Houserockers’ work. The gorgeous accordion-laced “Old Man Bar” is about a young guy hiding from the world. He drinks 50-cent beers with grizzled men who have been sitting on the same barstools their whole lives, telling tales of World War II for anyone who will listen. The song segues into “Junior’s Bar,” a high-octane version of the same tune. Different bar, different words, same longing for love and meaning. Ronson provides the beautiful old-world mandolin music. A hard-driving lead guitar part is provided by an uncredited Steven Van Zandt, who also produced this song and four others on the album.

Pumpin’ Iron. This is The Houserockers’ quintessential song about the life of a mill hunk boy. It’s a Pittsburgh anthem. We revisit ‘ol Jimmy: He was a steel-driving man, just like his daddy was. Didn’t have a choice, just doing what he’s told…pumpin’ iron, sweatin’ steel, hearts of stone, dressed to kill…you can never understand the way I feel.

The Iron City Houserockers disbanded in 1984 after the release of their fourth album, “Cracking Under Pressure.” Joe Grushecky embarked on a solo career, while working a day job as a special education teacher in one of the toughest, poorest school districts in the state. In 1989 he repackaged The Houserockers (minus Iron City in the name) with new members, and began to forge a close, collaborative relationship with Springsteen. Bruce produced The band’s 1995 “American Babylon” LP, and together with Joe wrote the Grammy Award winning song “Code of Silence.” If you’ve seen a Bruce show in Pittsburgh during the last 15 years, you’ve no doubt watched Joe take the stage and play a few numbers with the E Street Band.

I’ve often wondered why The Iron City Houserockers never became a big national act. They were signed by a major label, MCA, right from the start. Their early songs and albums received glowing reviews from serious critics. They opened for some of the biggest acts in the business, from Bob Dylan and Dion, to Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. Heavy-hitters like Ronson, Van Zandt, Steve Cropper, and Ian Hunter arranged, mixed and produced various tracks. Through the years the band was featured on CNN, Entertainment Tonight, Solid Gold, and MTV. Maybe the music business only has so much room for what are known as “heartland rockers” — the Springsteens, the Segers, the Mellencamps, the Pettys. But it’s okay. The Houserockers will always be Pittsburgh’s own personal workingman’s band, moving the crowd with their poor-boy symphonies.

Today’s group, which includes original member Art Nardini, is always in big demand. I saw Joe and the guys play last month at the Flood City Music Festival in Johnstown, PA, and guess what? They’re still pumpin’ and sweatin’ that rock-and-roll steel just as hard as ever.

Is it just a coincidence that the photo on the back cover of The Houserockers’ first album, “Love’s So Tough,” looks so much like the picture on the back of Bruce’s second LP, “The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle”? Great minds think alike.

© Dana Spiardi, Sept 7, 2015

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