Category: altrock

State Twenty-Four: Michigan

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.

State Twenty-Two: Ohio

FIFTY DAYS OF ‘MERICA-MAS
Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, bitches!
Brandston altrocks “Christmas in Ohio” as a metaphor for how much you cheer me up, babe. Which is all poetical and slick, but not holiday.
Laura Elder has sent up “Christmas in Killarney” by singing about Ohio. She’s all home-canned sweet preserves, she is. Irish humor is the best, all dancing and laughing and hitting below the belt.
Chantilly Lace has got a startlingly sinister bit of nostalgia entitled “Christmas in Cleveland.” Something, so the song relates, went wrong with young love around the holidays way back when, and it sounds like like we’re about to suffer a snow-covered body count by some Santa-looking killer. Well, that’s my read on it.
Keeping up with that new sound the kids like in their rock and their roll (’90s-style), I’m gonna pop open my advent to The Raveonettes’ “Christmas in Cleveland” from their album Wishing You a Rave Christmas. These are, wait for it, Danish indie rockers (purportedly influenced by the Everly Bros). I like the garage post punk noise here. It reminds you that Christmas is about young people lost in the world… y’know like Jo-boy and Mary-baby looking for some friendly refuge for birthin’. Sune Rose and Sharin Foo are old school cool, despite their overmodulated indecipherable lyric-noise. Don’t join in and sing along!

State Seven: New York

FIFTY STATES OF ‘MERICA-MAS
Oy. There are not quite as many songs about New York Christmas as there are denizens of The City. Apart from one ditty I discovered about Christmastime in Syracuse, the rest of the state is hardly considered. Certainly boroughs get some due: I hope you’re familiar with Run DMC’s “Christmas in Hollis.” Classic. Kanye has a “Christmas in Harlem.” Master P’s is “Christmas in the Ghetto,” also by Gary Barner and O.F.T.B. Dnasty lays down some rhymes over the ‘Christmas in Hollis’ beat karaoke style with his “Christmas in Compton.” He tries but seems to run outta breath. Or–even better: “Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto.” I’ve got that by Snoop Dogg, James Brown, and Mojo Nixon –plenty more cover that old chestnut! And hey, remember ol’ Bootsy Collins? “N-Yo-City” is mostly a seasonal party song (from Cincinnati). Trying to get upbeat and ’70s style pop is Jim Indell with “Christmas on Staten Island.” (He rhymes ‘smilin” with ‘Island!’ and ends with a ‘…yeahhhh!’)  Abigail Breslin and Rob Thomas have interesting, earnest entries on Gotham as well, if you want to feel lost and alone. NYC’s got an overstuffed cornucopia of Christmassing. One of the most overplayed big apple holiday haunters is alt rock The Pogues’ piece: “Fairytale in New York.” It’s so seminal I’ve got a couple covers on that, too. Listen to it, laugh and cry over it. It’s even got at least one parody (a Minecraft Parody, i’m sorry to say): “Fairytale of Spisco.” But the, you know, get over it.
Funnier caroling includes “Christmas in Brooklyn” by Erik Frandsen. It’s the usual fugeddabowdit kinda stuff.
My official offering is from a group called Marah, off an album entitled A Christmas Kind of Town, and later collected on Oh Santa! New & Used Christmas Classics from Yep Roc. The band has been alt-country-ing for 20 years and have a following which includes self appointed Pop of King, Steven King: “These guys are either the American U2 or close enough for government work.” This particular strummin’ bit of fun was inspired by and played on This American Life ’05.

More It’s Too Early for Decoratin’

One way to channel your irritation with inappropes iterations of Christmas collages is to go garage rock. Root Boy Slim and the Sex Change Band rasp and wrangle their way through rude rollickin’ reminders that KMart provokes people toward their dark side in his antic anthem “Christmas at KMart.” The 1980s were full of such brutal truths.

Hey, don’t believe me: this Root Boy Slim guy, Foster MacKenzie, was a Yale grad who had a psychotic break after LSD and helmed his own band. Is that not a recipe for insightful novelty nuance? Smarter people than we had tried to explain the Yuletides, yet have we listened? It’s time. Give RBS a chance to connect you with early shopping syndrome and falala fatigue.

P.S. Big ups for including the name of the album in the lyrics as a purchase suggestion. Keeping the spirit of the message alive.