The holiday cash-in shit is pretty thick, though it's pretty much always been that way in music. I wonder what it would be like if every artist who has ever cut a holiday song or album, instead chose a different unifying theme. Let's just say, I don't know, trees, or birds, or even a different day, maybe the first day of summer. Really, it's kind of a moot point, because there have been a gazillion songs written about everything so chances are that there are a whole bunch already about trees, birds, the first day of summer and everything else. They're just not packaged, and marketed as such, and pushed during a particular time of year. That may explain why there's so much holiday shake on music blogs this time of year. (Plus, people eat that shit up, so...)
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If you are into holiday music (disclosure: I'm ambivalent/suspect), some holiday albums are pretty much essential. Phil Spector's "A Christmas Gift For You" is one that should be in every cane-head's quiver. You should already know it: Darlene Love, the Ronettes, the Crystals and Bob B Soxx and the Blue Jeans doing straight-up Wall of Sound versions of classics. Here's the Ronette's "Frosty the Snowman" and Darlene's goosebump inducing "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)."
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The Black Crowes have a pretty decent version of "Backdoor Santa". (The original by Clarence Carter was sampled on Run DMC's "Christmas in Hollis"). No idea of the details as the mp3 is buried of a fan site, the content of which I'm hesitant to wade through. (They're just a little too close to the whole Grateful Dead type fanaticism for me to go through all sorts of live shit.) But the bitchen horns reminded me of the Daptone horns, so it lead to a search for Daptone related holiday music. I quickly found Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings "Ain't Chimney's in the Projects." And serendipity struck, on the same post was a Julian (ex-Strokes) Casablancas version of the endearingly silly Saturday Night Live classic "I Wish It Was Christmas Today."
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Though this may be sacrilegious to some, there's a remix of Billie Holiday's "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm" by some hooligan named Yesking, who has dropped a rocksteady rhythm over the original. Verve has allowed their catalog of classics to be pillaged for a handful of remix compilations and the results are always sketchy, but at least this one answers the question "Could Billie Holiday have cut it in mid-sixties Jamaica?"
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Another unlikely DJ JA mix comes courtesy of Go Home Productions' mash up of the Carpenters "Sleighride" with reggae backing legends Roots Radics. GHP is DJ Mark Vidler, whose Archies/Velvet Underground mash-up still gets laughs in these parts. Speaking of reggae, here's a bizarre treatment of the fatman by Lee "Scratch" Perry. Posted here for reggae curiosity seekers only (sorry to say, this madcap's best days are behind him as this pales next to his legendary work from the 70's).
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More later if I get all of my running around done...
Billie Holiday - I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm (Yesking Remix) mp3 with other remixes of Count Basie and Shirley Horn at Life Signs Project
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