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 This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio # 1316: The 27th Annual THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL RADIO Christmas show
THE WEEKLINGS: Gonna Be Christmas
Why, yes! It IS gonna be Christmas! Very soon! Following our standard Christmas show introduction--John and Yoko's "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)"--The 27th Annual THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL Christmas show opens with this delightful track from the Weeklings' Christmas album. It's a perfect song to kick off our seasonal celebration, its eyes bright with wonder and its heart open to the promise of possibility. It's gonna be Christmas. Here's a toast and a wish for the best of what that might be.
BLAINE CAMPBELL AND THE CALIFORNIA SOUND: Christmas Day
The annual TIRnRR Christmas shows are built in large part with familiar favorites. We don't want to do the same ol' show every December, but Dana and I do have a few specific tracks we're hell's-jingle-bells bent on programming. We never even come close to accommodating all of the music we wanna play, and this year's holiday playlist (like its 26 predecessors) did not have time to include a number of our perennial picks. Santa understands our dilemma, and he does not assign us naughty points for our omissions.
As berths on the playlist fill up faster'n a little kid's Christmas wish list, we still try to squeeze in a little bit of new Yuletunes alongside our beloved classics. We debuted 2025 offerings by Perilous, Jamie Hoover, and the Krayolas on last week's show, and saved this gem from Blaine Campbell and the California Sound's recent Holidays EP for this week.
QUINT: Almost Christmas Eve
I'm not much of a Hallmark-style Christmas TV movie fan, but I recognize the sweet sugar-cookie comfort appeal of those flicks, and more power to those who celebrate. Love at Christmas? Can't fault that.
Before my mom passed in 2021, I used to catch extended glimpses of some works within this ho-ho-Hallmark genre playing in the common room at her nursing home. I think the only one I've ever deliberately watched in its entirety is 2021's Blending Christmas, which I made a point of seeing because TIRnRR's long-time friend Robbie Rist is in it (as are some of his former castmates from The Brady Bunch). I didn't get around to seeing Blending Christmas until well after he fact--I don't think I was aware of its existence until last year--but it was inoffensive and agreeable, and there's nothing wrong with that.
For the TIRnRR Christmas shows, the Hallmark and Company movie music content comes from Beaus Of Holly, a 2020 production with soundtrack contributions by Quint, which is our Robbie with film director Anthony C. Ferrante. Some years we play "Bows Of Holly," the de facto title theme as performed by Quint with guest vocalist Karen Bassett. Sometimes we go with "Almost Christmas Eve." Can't go wrong either way, and you can stuff your own virtual stocking with digital copies of both songs on the Quint collection Yes, It's Christmas.
Warmth and comfort. Love for Christmas. Meet cute. I refuse to summon snark against anything that brings joy to the world.
ELVIS PRESLEY: Santa Claus Is Back In Town
King Elvis I. Repeating what I've said in previous years: It's not Christmas without the King.
DARLENE LOVE: Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
One long-ago holiday season, back when our pal (and Radio Deer Camp host) Rich Firestone was slavin' away in commercial radio, a clueless suit once told him that nobody wants to hear anything from Phil Spector's Christmas album A Christmas Gift For You. See, that guy's getting coal for Christmas. The late Spector himself is also getting coal; in fact he's probably helping to produce the (literally) damned coal nowadays--warm and toasty!--but I digress.
We endeavor to include a track from Spector's Christmas album in each year's TIRnRR Xmas Xtravaganza. The picks vary from year to year; last year and the year before, it was the Ronettes' "Frosty The Snowman," and in 2022 it was the Ronettes' "Sleigh Ride." We've skipped some years, but A Christmas Gift For You is always in the mix as we consider what to play on our Christmas show.
The above-mentioned "Sleigh Ride" is the track I most remember hearing on December AM radio airwaves when I was younger, and it's a fabulous number indeed. But the truest classic on the Spector Christmas album is Darlene Love's "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," and it was way overdue for a return to our playlist. This year, it finally comes back home.
SLADE: Merry Xmas Everybody
Slade's 1973 we're-gonna-have-a-GLITTERY-Christmas treat "Merry Xmas Everybody" was a huge, huge hit in the band's native England, but it's merely something of a cult fave rave on these shores. Pity, because I've absolutely adored it since first hearing it on a various-artists Christmas collection more than a decade later.
Does your Granny always tell you that the old songs are the best? Then she's up and rock 'n' rolling with the rest
Old and new. As the philosopher Linus once told his friend Charlie: That's what Christmas is all about.
LIBRARIANS WITH HICKEYS: Listen The Snow Is Falling
The Greatest Record Ever Made!
THE MONKEES: House Of Broken Gingerbread
Last week, for the first time in a long time, I listened to the Monkees' 2018 album Christmas Party. At the time of the album's release, I was disappointed--very disappointed--that the Monkees were following up the sheer triumph of their 2016 album Good Times! with a Christmas record rather than, y'know, a real record. This disappointment grew three sizes when the subsequent deaths of Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith meant that Christmas Party would be the final Monkees studio album.
The playlist for this year's Christmas show was already set, and the show itself already recorded, before I listened to The Spoon podcast's 2025 Christmas show. The Spoon, hosted by that Robbie Rist guy with his buds Chris Jackson and Thom Bowers, is always a must-listen event, and their holiday presentation this year includes a track from Christmas Party, as Michael Nesmith croons "The Christmas Song." Papa Nez wasn't exactly Nat King Cole, nor did he wish to be, but his rendition is warm and inviting. I didn't hate it.
That was sufficient impetus for me to spin the whole album again, half of it during my Saturday morning commute, the rest of it when I arrived at work. It's a better record than my knee-jerk resistance to it would have conceded at the time of release. Micky Dolenz has always been one of my favorite pop singers, and he acquits himself well here, even on a palatable version of Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Dishwatertime," or whatever we wanna call that awful Macca song I've despised for decades. Mostly produced by the late Adam Schlesinger, Christmas Party is almost a Dolenz solo album, with two independent contributions from Nesmith, two archival tracks by Davy Jones (whom we lost in 2012), and a heavily-autotuned solo vocal and banjo performance by a very fragile-sounding Tork on "Angels We Have Heard On High;" cancer claimed Tork in February of 2019, mere months after Christmas Party came out.
As noted above, our Christmas show was wrapped 'n' ready before I heard Michael Nesmith on The Spoon extolling the virtues of chestnuts roasting on an open fire, before my re-listen to Christmas Party. The Christmas Party track "House Of Broken Gingerbread" made its way to our playlist on its own virtue and vice and everything nice. Co-written by Adam Schlesinger and novelist Michael Chabon, "House Of Broken Gingerbread" is sung from the POV of a child of divorce, spending part-time holidays at the separate households of his estranged parents. Perhaps not the stuff from which traditional Christmas cards were crafted. Dolenz sings it so well, so commandingly, applying a candy-cane coating that does not conceal its underlying ache and discontent.
(The Monkees have appeared in some form on most of our 27 annual Christmas shows. Our usual go-to Christmas Monkees track is the simply gorgeous a cappella "Riu Chiu" from 1967 [discussed here], but we occasionally play "House Of Gingerbread" instead. This year, I was thinking of subbing "Christmas Is My Time Of Year," a 1976 single by Dolenz, Jones, and Tork, but as I was mulling song choices, Micky's insistent Fa la LA la la la-la-laaaaa from "House Of Broken Gingerbread" stage-dived into the visions of sugarplums that had been dancing in my head, causing 'em to flee for their lives. So: "House Of Broken Gingerbread" got the slot. Fa la LA...!)
THE RAMONES: Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight)
Seems like a worthy goal.
THE IDEA: It's About That Time
John and Yoko at the top. George Harrison's "Ding Dong, Ding Dong" at or near the end. In between, our Christmas show perennials generally include "The Man In The Santa Suit" by Fountains Of Wayne, "Purple Snowflakes" by Marvin Gaye, "Gonna Ask Santa Claus" by Bibi Farber with the Michael Lynch Orchestra, "Jesus Christ" by Big Star, "Christmas" by the Rooks, "I Don't Intend To Spend Christmas Without You" by Margo Guryan, "2000 Miles" by the Pretenders, usually "Father Christmas" by the Kinks, usually something by James Brown, the Waitresses' "Christmas Wrapping" when we can carve out enough space for it. Other than the Beatles' Christmas messages 1963-1969, no individual track has been played on all 27 of our annual Christmas shows.
The Idea's "It's About That Time" has been on most of them. It's my # 1 all-time favorite Christmas track, and it's not Christmas for me if I can't play it.
It's about that time. Gather 'round the Christmas tree, or just around the artifact of your choice. "Happy Holidays!" remains one of many valid and welcome expressions of well wishes, and these trying times are in dire need of as many well wishes as we can generate. Peace on Earth. Good will toward all. It should always be about that time. We wish you the merriest.
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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, streaming at SPARK stream and on the Radio Garden app as WESTCOTT RADIO. You can read about our history here.
