If you’re looking for a list of the most beloved Christmas carols, you’ve come to the wrong blog. Times have changed, after all. The Little Drummer Boy is set to tour with Bruce, and Frosty’s a puddle on my front lawn – a victim of global warming. And if you’re seeking recommendations for the most popular rock and R&B-oriented holiday songs, you’ve landed on the wrong page. Chuck Berry has run-run Rudolph right into the hands of the hunters, and Brenda Lee has rocked herself senseless around that Christmas tree in an eggnog and opiate frenzy. BUT, if you’re the type of character who’s searching for a collection of interesting alt-Christmas tunes, you’ve found a home here at The Hip Quotient. Allow me to present my twelve days of Christmas music. These aren’t novelty songs or updated covers of traditional classics. They’re all original compositions from artists of all stripes. Imagine each one as a Charlie Brown Christmas tree of a song: small, tattered, unlovable and ridiculed at first glance, but guaranteed to grow on you like fungus on a pine tree.

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