FIFTY DAYS OF ‘MERICA-MAS
Day Twenty-Three: Michigan
It’s a dark place of failed American Dreams, it’s a lush land of scenic hunting and paranoid manor-holders… I don’t know what you are: Wolverine State of Great Lakes/Peninsulas.
And it took a while to find you some plum pudding plainsongs, but when i did… Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam circumspice!
The prettiest and most Chamber of Congress worthy is Brian d’Arcy James (that guy in all those musicals!) off his solo album From Christmas Eve to Christmas Morn (which is the longest night of the year). You can buy a download of “Christmas in Michigan” from his website, or see it because some big fan ‘tubed it. Holy holly, that guy’s got pipes!
Now, you can help me. Another posting by the Meijer Choral Group, “A Michigan Christmas Card,” is a dearly pleasant piece reeking of community and adult pop. But who/what is this? PR for some megalomaniacal corp? Quick cash for some kids with a recording studio? The lifelong dream of some tunesmith(s) (Robertson-Farnsworth)? I must know! For 1985 this is pleasingly inoffensive.
Paul Ritchie, who has written for Xmas in KY and KS, rhymes ‘Michigan’ with ‘wish again’ in “Christmas in Michigan.” You can sample a bit of it on Youtube or buy it i guess. The melody is a bit lazy but i do dig the turn of lyric.
Dan Adamini wants to get more narrowly regional with “Christmas in Upper Michigan,” but his cliche-carpeted walk in the woods makes me shiver. Setting your keyboard to Church Organ doesn’t festivate the tune, dude.
Dewey Longuski wins for most in-jokes with his “Christmas Time in Michigan is Here.” (Land of the Hand?!) But his twanging, children’s piano tinkling, nasaling funtimes is a discordant diorama for demograghics. Instead of a being a cutesy song for the very young, or an alt song for the recently young, or even an MOR for the Boomers, this seems to be a song for childlike adult news announcers to underplay their local news outros.
So, let’s go to Detroit (no one else is). Karen Newman sings “Christmas Eve on Woodward Avenue,” a real show stopper full of little cherubs backing up the talent. Adorably twee. But this gets a little too local for me; not so much referentially, as pathologically.
Lest you think these people have no sense of humor for the holidays (Hello, Da Yoopers!), lemme drop a “Christmas in Detroit” number on you. Genesis the Church has set up the most unlikely looking entourage of white hiphoppers gassing local lyrics to ‘Christmas in Hollis.’ Love the scenery, gaped at the gentirfication, and worried about the small mentions of “The D-E-T.” So, not it.
Finally, I’m going to double down on the dark. As I did with Ohio, I’m going unwashed after hours club music. “Christmas Day in Flint, Michigan” by Beth Cahill from Songs for Sarah is not christmas at all. And she’s Canadian. It’s a dark folk lullaby, a real woman’s song. I insist it’s listenable. Merry Mary.