10 Songs is a weekly list of ten songs that happen to be on my mind at the moment. The lists are usually dominated by songs played on the previous Sunday night's edition of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl. The idea was inspired by Don Valentine of the essential blog I Don't Hear A Single.
This week's edition of 10 Songs draws exclusively from the playlist for The 24th Annual This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio Christmas Show. This show is available as a festive podcast.
JOHN & YOKO: Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
From 2020:
John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" was my favorite rock 'n' roll Christmas song for a long, long time, and it's still probably my all-time # 3 (and yes, the two that surpassed it will appear in the paragraphs below). I know that some folks don't like it or are sick of it, and that some even prefer that dishwater Paul McCartney thing (aka "The Cringe That Stole Christmas") when 'tis the season.
I don't get that. Dig what you dig, of course, but man...I don't get that. To my ears, John and Yoko's Christmas single remains a stirring and engaging plea for peace on Earth, good will toward all. An obvious sentiment? I'm not looking for Proust here. "Happy Xmas" supplies the feels I want in my holiday music, its childlike hope (and children's chorus) never falling prey to the cynical or the overly earnest. It added an aching sense of melancholy forty-two years ago this month. But I never get tired of hearing it.
I'm not one of those who blithely bash Paul McCartney, either. Seeing Macca perform live in 2017 was the highlight of my concert-goin' career, I listen to solo Paul more often than I listen to solo John, and they were equal partners in the greatest rock 'n' roll band this world will ever experience. Nonetheless: I can't stand "Wonderful Christmastime." I absolutely adore "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)."
LAURIE BIAGINI: Christmas In The Air
Each year's annual TIRnRR Christmas show has to accommodate a number of classic Dana & Carl holiday perennials, whether it's Dana spinning Marvin Gaye's "Purple Snowflakes" or me making sure to include "The Man In The Santa Suit" by Fountains Of Wayne. A three-hour time slot doesn't allow anywhere near enough airspace to squeeze in all of the Christmas music we wanna play.
But we always try to make some time for a few new Christmas tunes alongside your Pretenders and your Ronettes. Laurie Biagini scored some significant TIRnRR spinnage throughout 2022--it's no spoiler to say that Ms. Biagini's music will appear in our big year-end COUNTDOWN!! show on January 1st--and we were delighted to open The 24th Annual This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio Christmas Show with Laurie's "Christmas In The Air."
BIBI FARBER WITH THE MICHAEL LYNCH ORCHESTRA: Gonna Ask Santa Claus
From 2020:
My favorite pop-rock Christmas song of this young century so far, and my second favorite all-time. (We'll talk about my # 1 pick in just a sec.) This track is magic, and I mean it as a compliment when I say it sounds like something of a much older vintage, classic '50s or '60s rather than 2013. It's never been issued on CD. Somebody should remedy that.
DOLPH CHANEY: Jingle Bells
HA! It's a Van Halen Christmas, except without Van Halen! From the 2020 holiday sampler album Big Stir Singles: The Yuletide Wave, TIRnRR stalwart Dolph Chaney shrugs off his good twin--that's an in-joke for the TIRnRR faithful--and embraces the nice 'n' naughty notion of remaking "Jingle Bells" as it would be if the li'l ditty self-indentified as VH's "Panama." Preposterous? You'd be surprised by how many songs you think you know that believe themselves to be something else entirely. Especially Christmas songs! Must be something in the eggnog.
THE FLIRTATIONS: Christmas Time Is Here Again
I often whine about the legions of one-hit wonders who well and truly deserved greater acclaim than the mere fifteen minutes (if that) a fickle public allowed them. From the Knickerbockers to the Bobby Fuller Four to the Easybeats and more, it's clear that a lot of acts capable of coming with ONE!! killer record--seemingly outta nowhere--probably also made other records of note. If more people had heard them, more people would have loved them, and a one-hit wonder woulda been a two-hit wonder, a five-hit wonder, maybe even a friggin' superstar. There is so, so much great stuff out there. And we miss out on hearing so, so much of it.
The Flirtations were one-hit wonders for their fabulous 1969 smash "Nothing But A Heartache." It was not their only fab soul-pop triumph, but it was the only one that got played. Its B-side was a groovy seasonal shot called "Christmas Time Is Here Again," and it oughtta be on everyone's Yuletime playlist.
(And yeah, we deliberately played the Flirtations' "Christmas Time Is Here Again" immediately prior to spinning the Beatles' 1967 Christmas message, which is also called "Christmas Time Is Here Again." Different song, sure, but we hope Santa will make note of our ingenuity on behalf of the greater pop good.)
TALL POPPY SYNDROME: Come Some Christmas Eve (Or Halloween) [holiday mix]
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Here's the holiday mix of Tall Poppy Syndrome's "Come Some Christmas Eve (Or Halloween)," a track also heard in its original mix on our irresistible 2022 compilation album This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 5. And I tell ya, that compilation makes a superswell gift ANY time of year.
THE MONKEES: Riu Chiu
The Greatest Record Ever Made!
THE IDEA: It's About That Time
From 2020:
I can't fully explain why I love this song so much. Oh! I know! Because it's perfect. Perfect blend of giddy abandon and cool control, perfect embrace of December joy, perfect use of casual holiday elements--streets painted white, windows aglow with colored lights, on the TV It's A Wonderful Life--to craft a perfect Yuletune like no other. Yuletunes is the name of the 1991 Christmas compilation that gave us "It's About That Time" by the Idea (later Phil Angotti and the Idea), and it remains one of the all-time greatest Christmas albums. "It's About That Time" will likely always be my all-time favorite rockin' pop Christmas songs. Perfect.
NAT KING COLE: The Christmas Song
Phil Angotti's "It's About That Time" is my favorite rockin' pop Christmas track. Nat King Cole's rendition of "The Christmas Song" is my favorite holiday standard. Nothing else is in its class.
A few days ago, we talked about my favorite Christmas story, which is writer Mark Evanier's lovely account of an afternoon when "The Christmas Song" co-author Mel Tormé was...oh, just go read it. That story reinforces the connection I feel with the song, how it conjures my emotional concept of Christmas spirit, of an idealized Christmas from the POV of tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and a simple phrase offered to kids from one to ninety-two (and beyond).
I wrote this a few years back, and it remains in my mind every Christmas:
The holiday season can invite reminiscence, a collective conjuring of the Ghost of Christmas Past. We remember things as we think they were. We rejoice in memories of good times, wince at the lingering ache of sad times. We picture family, friends, lovers, many of them now gone from our own lives. Death. Distance. Discord. Time.
A little kid becomes a teen, with Doc Savage paperbacks and Beatles records on Christmas morning. A college student. There is another family trip to Missouri, spent recovering from a stomach bug and missing a girl I'd met at school. The college student becomes a college graduate. And suddenly, a young adult, alone one Christmas morning with a stack of old comic books and a bottle of Jack Daniels, knowing solitude won't last, but knowing it has to be that way in the moment, knowing a loved one is dealing with something much worse. Years fly by. Jobs change, addresses change, circles of friends change. Faces that were always there aren't there anymore. We deck the halls, but feel this loss we may be able to define, but can't deny.
So we close our eyes. And we wish.
In the mind's eye, all is as it was. Everyone we ever loved remains with us. I remember the bright and the dark: coming home from an overnight Christmas Eve shift to share a bottle of champagne and a Christmas kiss with my girlfriend, whom I would marry the following year; my chicken pox Christmas, when I was 36; Christmas Eves with my wife and daughter, eating Chinese food and cruising through Lights On The Lake; doing a Christmas radio show while trying to cope with tragedy, playing Gary Frenay's "Christmas Without You" and becoming too choked up to speak, unable to continue; watching the wide eyes of my daughter as she grew up under the bright glow of the season, and delighting again this week in the sight of her and her mother lighting the Chanukah candles together; seeing fewer and fewer places and faces at family gatherings, always aware of the price that time demands of us all.
And still I believe.
I may not believe what you believe. I may not believe what you think I believe. But I believe. I believe in our promise. I believe in our capacity to grow, to be better. I believe in a magic we make together.
I wish you magic. I wish you hope. I wish you love. I wish you the merriest. Somehow. Santa will find you. Light will find you. Believe in light. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.
GEORGE HARRISON: Ding Dong, Ding Dong
Ring out the old, ring in the new. Happy Holidays from Dana & Carl.
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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.
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