(Ahh, memories of when it was warm enough in a California December to cut down the Christmas tree in short sleeves…)
The holly jolly person in you will be pleased to know that my Christmas mixes from the last two years are also now re-upped, after a wrestling match between me, my server, and some impudent FTP software. It got real ugly.
But these songs? These are mostly pretty, and seasonally appropriate. Please enjoy; Merry Christmas.
Well today is a snow day in my part of Colorado, bringing everything outside to a deadened, frozen, thickly-blanketed crawl. It’s gorgeous and quiet, and perfect weather for putting the finishing touches on my annual Christmas mix. I do love Christmas music, as you might remember from pastyears, but I also have a picky palate and am always amazed when I turn on the radio (as I did last night while we played cards) at how many many Christmas songs should have never been made. If I have to hear “Wonderful Christmastime” again, I might gouge out my eardrum with a candy cane to the beat of those synthesizers.
Even though there’s room on this mix I’ve made for the fun and light-hearted (I am in love with the opening remix track), I do tend to find myself drawn to the reflective and traditional songs at this time of year. Maybe it’s some slight seasonal affection disorder, or the natural rhythms of winter — or an internalization that this is a month of hope and light but that there is such need out there as well. I went to an ecumenical advent service this weekend at the old stone chapel on the college campus where I work, and one of the professors from the Classics department read a bit from the book of John about how the light shines into the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it. I found the simplicity of that inspiring in a way that surprised me. I sat there in the candlelight thinking about dichotomies of light and dark, hope and despair, kindness vs. letting ourselves be hard and stony.
Anyways, there’s a bit of reflection from me on how this season is wrapping itself into my thoughts, as I sit here beside this pretty twinkling Christmas tree, warm under a fuzzy blanket. I also delight in how all these music blogs have made such a rad collection of alternative holiday tunes available for the endless mixing.
Now I’m gonna go watch Elf.
…Oh! and we’ll hope Edward Hopper won’t mind the bastardization of his moody Nighthawks painting too much. It made me smile, and is exactly how I feel today.
(Note: I want to put my last two years’ mixes up as well, but am having trouble with my FTP router-port stupid thingies and stuff, so those should come soon, once I get stuff fixed around here.)
A friend of a friend from Berkeley came up with a most excellent and hilarious holiday game, to while away the hours you spend with your extended family this holiday season.
You can also go back and award yourself points for all those awkward and wonderful interactions you remember from this weekend, too.
I (mostly) successfully roasted my fourth turkey ever, except this year I couldn’t find the giblets and ended up leaving the bag in the bird. Hey, at least it was a papery bag. And that thar is my Christmas tree, which I also managed to put up this weekend. I am a holiday goddess of sorts.
I’ve been sitting on my hands since the beginning of the month waiting to revel with you in this bonus track from Julian Casablancas’ new solo album. Now that turkey day comes tomorrow, and after we are all thankful, the Christmas season officially begins — I feel ready to take this step with you and open the seasonal floodgates.
The thing with the head rotating forward and to the side! Oh, Chris Kattan.
And then Casablancas goes and makes it a bonus track on his new album, and makes it sound like early Strokes — which is a good thing that we sincerely, truly wish he would do more often.
As he’s apparently “Astral Interplanet Space Captain” this year, many of the songs are of the synth-Casio variety, and I’m kinda finding the mood a bit off-putting, compared to the way I love his banjo with my whole backwoods heart. I mean, “Wonderful Christmastime” should have never happened. Have we learned nothing from the past! Christmas means no synthesizers.
But in any case, there is one sweet piano-based tune on the new EP that has risen above the interplanetary action to warm my heart. I do hope your day was happy.
Christmas is coming and kids are having fun (so said the chorus of my fifth grade play “Shaping Up Santa,” for which I still know all the words and thankfully no longer have to wear the green elf costume).
I have a love/hate relationship with this time of year because of the overabundance of really bad, synthy, jingly, repetitive Christmas music that bombards me at every pass. But tonight I was listening to my friend Dainon’s superb radio show out of Salt Lake City and he filled two and a half hours with the kind of Christmas music that reminds me why I do love it.
I tend towards the melancholy, the meaningful, the achingly pretty at this time of year, and tonight’s show inspired me to finally put the finishing touches on my own mix of music for the season. Twenty-five songs to get at the goodness under the busy surface this time of year. Enjoy.
In all my years of collecting the Pearl Jam Christmas singles, I can tell you for a fact that the annual 7″ has never arrived on Christmas Eve, in the purple twilight, with snow dancing all around me.
I stopped by my mailbox a few hours ago on the way back from last minute grocery shopping for the Christmas dinner I am making tomorrow. As I stood there shivering, fumbling the key with my frozen-in-two-seconds fingers, I got a fantastic Christmas present in plain brown wrapping, stamped “Ten Club” in the corner. As every year, my heart began to thump as I savored the slow unwrapping. Most years we use the term Christmas single loosely because it turns out to be a Presidents Day present or an Easter gift. But for 2007, Ten Club — your timing was impeccable.
Mmmmmm. Cookies. My 4-year-old and I baked those Rudolph cookies last weekend. There was sugar and M&Ms everywhere, and don’t even get me started on how hard it was to bite those pretzels into antler shapes. Unsanitary, but it gets the job done the only way I could figure out how. The end result was fantastic, and we’ve been delivering (what I now realize are little saliva-contaminated) batches to our good friends all week long.
While we baked, we listened to my new Christmas mix for 2007 that I’ve been tweaking and perfecting for weeks. I think I’m good now, and since I just realized that Christmas is in 5 days, we should hop to it. Let me just say that there is so much annoying Christmas music out there. Good heavens, no one should be allowed to cover Little Drummer Boy again, and nothing with synthesizers, ever.
These 20 tracks have passed my Grinchy muster, and all 20 of them are non-annoying — good Christmas listening that won’t bug the snot out of you.
One note: Luke Flowers, who covered Sufjan up there in spot #9, is a talented local artist here in Colorado Springs. I saw him perform that song Tuesday night at a coffeehouse in my neighborhood, and he recorded the whole set. By the magic of the internet we can listen again and recreate that event. You can download the 12-song live Christmas album for free on his site: some lovely reworkings of traditional tunes, 4 Sufjan covers, and an original song about his Christmas pony that froze solid. Merry Christmas!
Just watching Chris Kattan’s straight face while he plays the important role in this SNL Christmas song performance of 1) holding the keyboard and 2) turning his head back and forth makes me bust up laughing. My friend swears that this song must be the inspiration for Josh Rouse’s “Hollywood Bass Player” tune (although I say Rouse’s is clearly the better), and he says whenever he puts on the new Country Mouse City House album, he wants to do “the Kattan.”
And by the way — what, exactly, is Tracy Morgan’s function in this song? Jogging and gesturing? That is so awesome.
And for those of you who have asked, I am indeed putting together a Fuel/Friends 2007 Christmas mix. Just hold your one-horse open sleighs – that’s coming soon.
Coldplay is streaming a lovely cover of the Pretenders song “2000 Miles” on their website with the above description. I’m definitely a Pretenders fan, and this song is filled with a melancholy longing and wistfulness, those things that a greeting-card Christmas isn’t supposed to be . . . but often is.
In these frozen and silent nights sometimes in a dream you appear outside under the purple sky diamonds in the snow sparkle our hearts were singing it felt like Christmastime
Name: Heather Browne Location: Colorado, originally by way of California
"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."
—Nick Hornby, Songbook
"Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel." —Hunter S. Thompson
"I am fuel, you are friends / we got the means to make amends."
—Pearl Jam, Leash
Mp3s are for sampling purposes, kinda like when they give you the cheese cube at Costco, knowing that you'll often go home with having bought the whole 7 lb. spiced Brie log. They are left up for a limited time. If you LIKE the music, go and support these artists, buy their schwag, go to their concerts, purchase their CDs/records and tell all your friends. If you represent an artist or a label and would prefer that I remove a link to an mp3, please email me at browneheather@gmail.com
Submissions
Got something I should hear? Email me at browneheather@gmail.com. Digital's usually best, but music submissions can also be sent to: Fuel/Friends, PO Box 64011, Colorado Springs, CO 80962-4011.
Name: Heather Browne
