Christmas Without Schmaltz

I've heard more than a few people complain about Christmas music and how vapid and horrible they find it. Some people hate really religious numbers like "O Holy Night" and others hate pop tunes like "Silver Bells" or that thing about chestnuts roasting. I agree about the overwhelming sentimentality, however there are a few tunes that bring up images of Christmas without broaching upon issues of religion or spending money on presents.

A pretty good example is The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album, which sounds very Christmas-like, songs like "I Know There's An Answer" or "God Only Knows". You could play Pet Sounds all through Xmas and still get the holiday spirit. And old JC or Saint Nick get no mention anywhere in the lyrics.

At any rate, here are a few of my personal selections of music that could convey the Christmas spirit but don't get enough play.

Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D Minor (Ode To Joy) - Wendy Carlos

Taken from the Clockwork Orange soundtrack album, this particular track definitely conjures images of wintertime solstice and Christmas joy, courtesy of the great mind of Ludwig Van Beethoven. I'm not sure the extremely violent footage from the movie accurately conveys that Christmas spirit, but enjoy the music anyway.

By the way, I remember The Beatles singing Beethoven's Song of Joy in the movie Help! to calm down a wild lion from tearing Ringo apart in a German cellar. Great movie!

On The Rolling Sea When Jesus Speak To Me - Van Dyke Parks

While not a Christmas song at all, but still an inspirational tune written by Bahamian guitarist Joseph Spence, Van Dyke Parks' arrangement is one of the most surreal ever recorded. Parks bangs gospel piano sounding more like a roadhouse saloon, all Elmer Gantry grooves galore while a robust choir sunnily chant the lyrics, the volume of their voices going from fortissimo to pianissimo and then back again, the timbre shifting up and down like the waves of the sea. Salvation Army horns blast away with a strong Charles Ives southern gothic flair, and the whole thing is alternately exhilarating and horrifying.

I remember hearing this first on the Warner Brothers Records compilation "Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies" in 1970 and never forgot it, so hearing it again on You Tube is nothing short of great!

The Man With All The Toys - The Beach Boys

The standout track on The Beach Boys' Christmas album is this merry song about Santa Claus, a very perky little number with a light wintry guitar sound. It's funny how they have Santa Claus on the brain, what with this tune and Little Saint Nick also praising the great toy giver.

Jingle Jangle Jump - Dexter Gordon

A pretty jazzy tune about Christmas for hipsters sung by Gladys Bentley and featuring the great tenor sax playing of bebop icon Dexter Gordon. Bentley's definitely no Dinah Washington, but that's okay, this one's strictly for Gordon fans. Another cool Christmas song played by a legendary jazz giant is It's Christmas Time by The Qualities featuring Sun Ra.

Other songs I could mention is Slade's million-selling "Merry Christmas Everybody", Roy Wood's Wizzard's goofy "I Wish It Was Christmas Every Day", and Jethro Tull's dour message tune Christmas Song. No matter what the genre of music there's no shortage of Christmas music that's bound to be halfway fun to listen to without resorting to depressing maudlinity. Yeth!

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Another tiny pleasure is this brilliant Mad Magazine beatnik takeoff on The Night Before Christmas illustrated by Wally Wood. Mad Magazine, beatniks, and Wally Wood; it doesn't get much better than this:

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Chaos

Normally this time every year I work busily away at an office job, enjoying all the free cookies, candies and cakes my generous co-workers have to offer. Unfortunately this year has been such a shitty wash employment-wise that I've decided to do something I've never done this time of year: I've become a professional runner.

In the past I've been a runner for wardrobe houses and special effects arts teams, but this time I'm a runner for an agency that caters to upper level boutiques across the Westside - mostly Beverly Hills 90210, with clients ranging from movie stars to foreign royalty (a Russian Princess, for instance).

It's an easy job and I get to drive around Bel Air a lot, it's kind of nice, blah blah blah. But then again it is Christmas season and people are more than a little out of their heads with holiday hysteria. One of the perks of the job is getting to watch how terrible people are at driving. The more lousy the driver the more indignant they are at their fellow drivers not giving them the right of way.

The Von Bondies - It Came From Japan

On a good day people get the Christmas spirit and tip - it's not required - it actually happens so seldomly that when I get something it always comes as a pleasant surprise. Wish I had a few more pleasant surprises this holiday season.

I have noticed that people in general are much more courteous to me in my delivery boy drag, opening doors and letting me use their restrooms at the drop of a hat. Try dressing like Ziggy Stardust and find out how nice people can be...not!

Christmas is a nice, pretty holiday, but watching people (mostly men) losing their shit over small stuff like somebody not driving fast enough or passing them on the freeway is pretty fuggin' crazy. Some Xmas spirit!

You can almost hear the All-American Consumer quietly screaming in his head, "IF I DON'T BUY SOMETHING SOON I'M GOING TO KILL SOMEBODY!" Pushing others aside, elbowing them out of the way violently, ready to bite anyone getting too close to any salable item needed or not.

Hopefully I'll score a nice clerical job next year so I can go back to being a runner on weekends only. And I could sell a few more books, too. Just got another royalty check, which is always encouraging.

Tyrades - Let Down

Since next year marks a special milestone in my life (guess) I'll be releasing not one, not two, but three books. One will be a children's book that even adults will like, because the best kid's entertainment should be smart and not talk down to kids; the second book will be a pretty comprehensive collection of my short works, which I'm pretty excited about; and, the third book will be yet another punk rock crime novel. Why not? The boy can't help it.

The Hentchmen - Yesterday's Trash

Sheitan (France, 2006)

Trashy, nutty and absolutely demented, “Sheitan” is one of those films that’ll leave you scratching your head wondering what the hell you just watched for the past 90-plus minutes. Sure, it’s a horror film, but one that treats Christmas Eve as a satanic ritual. It’s that twisted!

“Sheitan” begins with a clique of hip-hop club kids led by the annoying Bart (Olivier Barthelemy), a rowdy punk who tears shit up who basically gets his French ass handed to him all through the movie. He meets a comely nymphet, the mysterious Eve (a terrific Roxane Mesquida), and since he doesn’t have any wheels, persuades his pals to take them to her home so he can bang her silly. Here’s where the trouble starts.

The clique is a veritable United Nations of teenage immigrant punks, one from every continent, i.e. an Asian pal named Thai, an African guy (Ladj), and his date for the night, a cool Perisan girl named Yasmine, all out for sex and thrills.

Eve lives on a farm in the middle of Nowheresville, France, where they meet her uncle, Joseph, a creepy farmer played with lip-smacking relish by Vincent Cassel, much better here than in the turgid “Black Swan”. Joseph, looking like some demented Jethro Tull roadie, is all smiles, charm and racist remarks about the visiting ethnic teenagers. Before anyone can call him on his nasty remarks he treats everyone to a squirt of milk from an overly pregnant goat. The only taker is Eve, who happily gets on her knees and takes a fresh goat titty squirt of milk in her mouth.

Joseph takes an exceptional interest in Bart, even going so far as introducing him to his slutty niece Jeanne (Julie-Marie Parmentier), who looks like she’d go down on anything that moves. Actually she does a plum scene where she jacks off a big black dog. All the farm kids look inbred and deformed, with two boys in particular who resent the attention paid to Bart and his pals. All sorts of weird pranks are played on them, including a bed-ful of crickets and cockroaches.

Raising the blasphemy level ever higher is the fact that this all takes place on Christmas Eve, with the plan being that Joseph’s wife/sister Mary will be giving birth that night to a young Satanic king. Cassel plays a great French Satanist, investing generous amounts of dogma to his passionate speeches about the Devil and his omnipotence.

“Sheitan” is filled with great scenes of debauchery and depravity, one standout scene being a naked battle between Joseph, the urban club kids and the inbred farm kids. What starts out as good clean fun degenerates into raw aggression, with Bart once again getting his face smashed in.

The film reaches its grand climax when the clock strikes midnight turning the night before Christmas into Christmas Day, when Joseph’s wife Mary breaks her water and drops her baby. The baby, as it happens, is a doll with newly installed human eyes, eyes belonging to…guess who?

“Sheitan” will never be accused of being great art, but it’s trashy good fun and far more interesting and twisted than any teenage horror film produced in the past twenty years. Kim Chapiron directed and Vincent Cassel co-produced this dirty little gem, a pretty wild piece of French filmmaking that’s an antidote to junk like “Amelie”. It's also the only horror film about Christmas worth a damn, for whatever that's worth.

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I recently saw Gregg Araki’s 1995 film “The Doom Generation”, a combination of Jean-Luc Godard nouvelle vague and Richard Kern erotic psychomania. The Godard influence can be seen in the first half with his patented hipster frolicking of “Band Of Outsiders” and “Pierrot Le Fou”, even down to naming his three main characters Red, White and Blue. The Richard Kern influence begins with Rose McGowan pinch-hitting for Lydia Lunch by playing the cunty vamp, culminating into a full-on, explosive Cinema Of Transgression finale, where a gang of jocks brutally assault Red, White and Blue while reciting “The Pledge of Allegiance”. Pretentious as hell but still worth a view. Outside of “Mysterious Skin” I don’t think Araki’s made anything else of substance -Smiley Face, Nowhere, Kaboom are just plain awful- but at least he knows how to grab your attention.

Freezy's Big Day

In 2006 I posted a video on YouTube called "Freezy's Big Day". Rebecca took a series of photographs illustrating Freezy Sliddle delivering packages for Santa Claus to all the Liddle Kiddles. I wrote the text to this series of pictures and compiled it for a video on iMovies.

The music originally chosen for the video was The Beach Boy's "The Man With All The Toys", but unfortunately it was too short to pad out the duration of the film, so I had to choose another song. At the time Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols had a radio show called "Jonesey's Juke Box" and he was playing a lot of hoary old glitter chestnuts on his show like Showaddywaddy and Alvin Stardust, but the one that brought back the best memories of Rodney's English Disco was Mud's "Dynamite". Perverse soul that I am, I decided to use "Dynamite" as the music to accompany Freezy's Yuletide flight to help jolly St. Nick to deliver packages to all the kids of Christmas.

Christmas With The Hip Chicks

Saddle up a satellite, baby, and I’ll spin you a wild yarn about two hip chicks, the Scooby Dooby Sisters, why they might be the craziest chicks you ever did seed, keed. It was Christmas Day and Ellie and Millie bugged out on making the scene at their Mom’s humble three-story pad. They stayed in and sipped their holiday espressos, digging their crazy Christmas branch, a thick branch from an elm tree with a red balloon on it with glitter. There were four presents under this Christmas branch. One for each of them from their mother and one they bought for each other.

Ellie, the blonde with the ironed hair, opened up her Christmas gift from Moms, and pulled out a beautiful black Christian Dior formal. “Dig this. What am I supposed to do with these crazy threads?”
Millie, her sister with the ratted out auburn locks, shook her shoulder. “Zilch! She laid a century on you, though”, and pointed towards the $100 bill that fell out of the package.
“Crazy! Benjamin Franklin, dig those crazy shades. Never did make the presidential scene”.
“What a drag”.
Millie opened up her package from Mom and another $100 bill tumbled out along with a necklace of double string pearls. “Pearls? Dresses? Man, somebody GOOFED!”

Ellie picked up something that looked like a pair of bongos poorly wrapped up in some newspaper scraps stuck together with scotch tape that had blonde hair strands stuck on the ends.
“Hey, sis, dig this crazy present”.
“Man, that’s one suave-looking gift, lay it on me, chick”, Millie grabbed it and tore off the wrapping. “New bongos! They’re the most!”
“Lay some sounds on me!” Millie drummed wildly on the bongos while Ellie did a wild interpretive dance. This went on for five minutes until they both got tired.
Millie picked up her package and thrust it at Ellie. “Dig my bodacious bundle. Merry Commercial Christmas!”
Ellie tore open her package and it was a stolen library book called, “Famous Presidents In American History”.
“Ooh, solid, baby! All my faves are here: William McKinley, James Buchanan, the only swinging single President ever, Millard Fillmore –“
“-and don’t forget Zachary Taylor, the coolest President alive. He split the scene seven weeks after he got elected!”
“Yeah, he cut out right after he copped the Big Chief gig!”
The chicks got so jazzed that Millie picked up her dirty bongos again and Ellie went into her abstract expressionist dance with her book in her hands, the very stern face of Abraham Lincoln peering out of the cover. Her wicked dance cast shadows set by the flickering candle in the room, the shadows playing against the cheap Picasso prints and bullfight poster on the wall of their humble beatnik apartment.

Well, the dolls got so tired from dancing and crashing from their caffeine jag that they both sacked out on the sofa, making the sandman scene, both snoring more atonally than Brubeck, Mulligan and Kenton all put together.

___________________ _______________________ ______________

Millie and Ellie stood around a dark ballroom with brightly colored gels projected on a stage. There were hipsters of all sizes wearing brightly colored clothes and the men had hair as long as the girls they were with.

“Dig this crazy fallout shelter!” Millie’s crazy orbs got big clocking the weirdo establishment they were standing around in.
Ellie nodded. “Like nervous, baby, nervous! These cats got some caveman action going on, hair down to their-“
“Say girls”, a hippie with a bushy beard and Ben Franklin shades walked up to them. “I’ve never seen you chicks make the scene at the Fillmore West before. What’s shaking?” He handed them both a dirty, wilted flower that smelled like sweaty dogs.
“I dig your glasses, Clyde, you got that presidential thing going on, bippity bop, boop bop”.
“Far out, sunshine! They call me Star Sailor. Hey, are you going to the Love-In at the park by Haight Street this Saturday? The Dead are gonna be jamming.”
“You wanna transpose that in another key, Long Hair Daddy. Why would you be loving a place called Hate Street? That’s abstract!”
“Dead people jamming, chicky”, Millie added, “that’s some freaky rebop!”
“Later, chicks, much, much, later”, the hippie walked away, disgusted.
“What’s his scene?” Ellie asked.
“Too many test patterns. Sold American”.

A voice came over the PA as a band got on stage. “Give a warm Fillmore West welcome to Big Brother and The Holding Company”.
The band tore into their opening number and Janis Joplin started squalling. “Why-ie-ie-ie I need a man to lo-ove…”
“Man, dig those crazy branches! I gotta have a major pow-wow with her”.
Janis shrieked for two more numbers. "Love's like uh bawwwllll-een-chayunnnn- waw-wowow..."
“She’s flipping out!”
“What a drag!”
“When does she make with the finger cymbals?”
A stoned girl in a huge mu-mu crashed into them and fell flat on her back, prompting our two hipsters to split towards the back of the club.
“Flip city!”
“Bugsville, like too bugged out!”

They looked around the club near the back and noticed one of their heroes double-fisting beers and chatting up an acid-bleached hippie hag.
“Neal Cassady? What’s he doing here?”
“Man, he looks beat, like more beat than he’s ever been beat”.
“What a drag. Mayhaps Sal Paradise or Ginsberg are making the scene, too”.
“Man, Cassady, he looks like fell off one of Kerouac’s crazy peaks and didn’t miss a boulder”.
“Neurotic”.

“You chicks made the scene! Far out!” a familiar voice piped up behind them. They spun around and smiled to see –
“SCRUFFY!” they both yelled. It was their beatnik crush, Scruffy aka Sterling Holloway Scarborough IV, hipper and even richer than them with a large trust fund. His hair was a little longer than they remembered, but his cooler looks were still as solid as ever.
“Man, what is this tee-pee we’re at? Clue us in”, Ellie asked.
“It’s 1967, you’re in San Francisco, it’s the Summer of Love, dig? This is the Fillmore West, where it’s all happening. Those crazy test patterns are called a light show and these kids are grooving to Janis on some prime psychedelic Owsley, baby”.
“Ows-what?”
“Acid, baby, acid!”
“No coffee? Bongos? Poetry readings?”
“Negative, but all the interpretive dancing you ever did see”, he pointed at a 300-pound girl nine months pregnant doing an Arabic snake dance with herself. “Dig that crazy way-out doll, she strips at a groovy club to all the square johns down on North Beach".
“You must be putting us on!”
Millie looked perplexed. “But why is it 1967? We're from 1955”.
“Just let your mind flow, dig the ride while it lasts”, Scruffy smiled. “Have some love beads”, and he placed love beads on both their necks. “Gotta split, like dig ya later. OOOOOM".

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Janis finished her set and the girls moved up towards the front. The stench of pot was overwhelming, hemp stank of marijuana so thick you could cut it with a saber.

A short, thick Japanese girl with fried black hair down to her ankles got on stage with a guitarist playing noisy feedback. “Don’t worry, Don’t worry, Don’t worry, Don’t worry, KYOKOKYOKOKYOKO, AIEEEEEEE!” She shrieked and wailed like a cat caught in a threshing machine. The Hip Chicks clutched their ears and winced with pain.
“Bad scene!”
“Whaaaat?”
“BAD SCENE!”
“We gotta split from this oxygen tent, like, NOW!”

“AAAIIIIIIEEEEE, PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE, GET IN THE BAG, KYOKO!” She growled and screamed, her demented Japanese witch face all screwed up. The high-pitched frequencies of her shrieking coupled with her grotesque features made our girls cry.
“Cut the rebop, Kabuki Witch!” Ellie cried, tears streaming down her face.
“Make with that square Hollywood jazz, sister, say it!”
“There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home”, Ellie chanted, clicking her scuffed moccasins over and over again. “There’s no place like home!”

_______________ _____________ _____________

Millie and Ellie both woke up from the sofa to the piercing whine of the test pattern with the Injun head on their tiny television set.

“I just had the craziest dream, sister”.
“I dig, like ditto. It was wilder than that test pattern on the boob tube”.
“Scruffy was in mine, and–“
“Me too, and Neal Cassady was in it making like a dirty old man, dig!”
“Yeah, and this beat geisha witch was screaming about bags and peace–“
“Ditto, chicky baby, ditto! That voice of hers jammed my wavelength.”

“Let’s cross our paws and wish it stays 1955 forever”.
“I dig, 1967 sounds like a stone cold drag”.
“All I gotta say is, we wish you a real gone gasser this Yuletide”, they both smiled and said. “And a groovier New Year”.

When The Devil Rides

Great news, Angelenos. On Christmas Day and New Year’s Day all MTA bus rides are absolutely free, free, free! There’s only one catch:

The bus drivers are drunk as fuck and they don’t care.

Before I raised enough scratch to buy a car I had to take the bus on Christmas Day. After waiting an eternity for the bus to show up, I ascended the steps to be stared down by the driver, who silently mouthed “fuck you” at me. I may not have heard it, but I sure as Sam smelled it: the fumes rushed at me like a Johnny Walker fart cloud punching me in the face. The driver did this to just about everyone who boarded.

And how about the driving? Narrowly side-swiping parked cars, running two red lights and braking on a dime to avoid the third raced light sending us flying out of our seats! The ABM (Angry Black Man) in the back yelled, “Yo! Quit bullshittin’ aroun’ man!”
The bus driver glared in his rear view mirror at this remark. In defiance the ABM lit a Kool cigarette.
The driver turned around and shouted, “There will be no smoking in the coach!” (English translation: “If I can’t smoke, you can’t.”)

All this would be screamingly funny if it was out of a Bukowski novel, America’s most lovably zany alcoholic, but no, when the devil rides and you’re in the “coach”: Run, Motherfucker, Run.

New Year’s Day was almost as bad: our driver was pissed he had to work on New Year’s and dealt with it by snubbing the riders.

“Sir, how many stops until Sherbourne?”
Silence from the driver.
“Uh, sir?”
Dead silence.
“Sir, could you tell me-“
“SHERBOURNE, NEXT STOP, COMING UP!” he finally yelled.

After tiring of the silent treatment he relied on sarcasm.
“Yo, driver. Sunset Boulevard cross Fairfax?”
“Well, Sunset Boulevard crosses a lot of streets. I suppose it crosses Fairfax?”
“SHEE-IT!”

I think you know where I’m going with this. I don’t know of any other service industry that shows more contempt to their customers on the holidays as the Bus Co. To which I offer this: the next time these guys go on strike, pull up to the picket line, put your car in PARK, and rev your engine up, over and over, and then step on it. Let the smoke choke them and the revving noise blast out their protests. They won’t mind, they’ll be dead drunk.

Have A Merry Scary Christmas

If there's one thing glitter rock loved it's Xmas. Good songs, scary visuals. Enjoy!

P.S. The band on top is Roy Wood's Wizzard, and the band below is Slade. Enjoy!