Side effects of Christmas: nostalgia, regret, remorse, music….
Alter Egel begins their calliope rock melody: Fifteen years ago today You had enough and ran away Every Christmas since that one was sad. But a “Blue Christmas” results from you returning. Don’t want that. ‘Cause then you’d leave again. Then there’d be peeing on your makeup and driving the van with the tree nailed to it off a cliff. You know how that goes.
Chumbawumba has a postmodern rocker (with hollow chanting and vinyl pops) that goes: Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree How bent your branches seem to be; Nineteen twenty-one and all’s well, Another fifteen years and we’ll be laughing in hell. “Rubens has been Shot” presages WWII, and the weird new art scene, and perhaps existentialism. Yeah, let’s say that.
But, you wanna get freaky?! “Chrismysteries” from Johnathan Boggarty and the Yoghurt Man is expressionistic word jazz, f’r ‘zample: It’s been fifteen Christmases Since I’ve thought of you last, Since that time I’ve had a think And I don’t understand your past. Is this a remonstration on JC? Or uncanny valley AI poetry?
David Prince writes a country history of “My Christmas Wish” from 5 years old to ten years old to My greatest Christmas wish at fifteen was a new guitar. Not sure about you, but this sorrowful, modulated mess makes me sorry about that wish.
Also torturous, “Christmas Morning” is alt-pop froth from Evie Calabasas about–missing you?? Fifteen so many dreams, A town too small for us, Christmas Eve sat on your rooftop, Pen tattoos would never last. I can see it as a series on Prime, but i can’t see it.
You want “Heikki Lunta” on your side, especially if you’re Da Yoopers–they can get whatever they want when this upstate medicine dances. I remember Christmas Eve 15 years ago all the kids were crying; they didn’t have no snow. Punk polka tells the story of what happens next!