Now, I hear you: Not everyone likes Christmas songs. Maybe you're one of those people who complains the first time you hear an xmas ditty at a store. Where you're buying beer for a Fourth of July cookout.
I'm trying to say cookout not barbecue since I moved from San Francisco to North Carolina, where barbecue — get this — refers not to a type of party but to a type of FOOD.
But even if you're plenty Little Drummer Boyed out by December 6, even if you've had enough Last Christmasing and Sleigh Riding and Jingle Belling and even Jingle Bell
Rocking to last a lifetime just in the week since Thanksgiving, you shouldn't grinch out on The King Teen Christmas.
Do any of the songs they play on your least favorite streaming playlist reference guillotines? How about deporting Santa Claus? Does SiriusXMAS or whatever it is have any sexually explicit songs about station wagons? Phil Spector was a murderous psychopath and
even his Christmas music was more wholesome than mine.
Come on out!
I don't want you to think I'm anti-Christmas though. I'm not kidding about loving it. I watch It's a Wonderful Life every year, as well as A Charlie Brown Christmas, The Grinch Who Stole
Christmas and at least one remake of A Christmas Carol, which I also read. It's a book you know. The George C. Scott version is best, in my view. Movie, that is.
My favorite Christmas record is Elvis' version of Blue Christmas. I've Jingle Belled and Sleighridden all I need to for this lifetime thank you but I love non-canon Christmas music, from Trim Your Tree by Jimmy Butler to the sinister-sounding but not at all sinister Santa's Coming for Us by Sia.
On second thought, you can think whatever you want about me. What I mean by saying all
that is feel free to give me presents. And come to The Cave Saturday.
Bandcamp Friday
It's Bandcamp Friday again. To review, that means Bandcamp doesn't take its fees today so all the dineros go to the artists. So if you're thinking of
buying yourself or your Christmas list some music, today's a good day to do it if you want to slide your favorite artists a little extra gravy.
I mean any artist, of course, but as long as we're talking here my debut EP Us Ugly Guys Got Style is in stock in both digital and the popular compact disc format. As always on Bandcamp Friday, I take every penny I get from sales, not just profit, and donate it to the international humanitarian foundation Project Hope.
Duets
I regret to inform you that in my research on how to credit a duet on a record I learned nothing of value about Dolly and Kenny, Nick and Kylie or Cardi and Bad. But I did learn a second fun fact about Barbra and Neil, who smoked cigarettes together on the steps of Erasmus Hall High School in Flatbush in the '50s and then sang a duet of You Don't Bring Me
Flowers 20 years later.
They didn't date each other in high school, which isn't unusual, but one reason they didn't is kind of funny: It's because Barbra had a big crush on another classmate, Bobby Fischer, who was already a record-setting chess champion and went on to become an internationally famous antisemitic whacko.
She should have gone with Neil. I wish they'd have done some duets in the '60s when Neil was churning out one banger after another before he evidently switched from tobacco to weed and started going around barefoot and putting out stuff like I Am, I Said, which is about a talking chair. Don't do drugs, kids!
I feel like I've strayed from the point of this newsletter. See you Saturday!
