Author: Kim Simpson

“Canary in a Coalmine” (1980) – The Police

“Canary in a Coalmine” (1980) – The Police * Written by Sting * Produced by the Police and Nigel Gray * LP: Zenyatta Mondatta * Label: A&M

A song like this, where the singer expresses exasperation over someone’s environmental hyper-sensitivity, someone you imagine wearing a surgeon’s mask at the grocery store as standard practice, would have sounded woefully out of step only five years previous, when environmental consciousness still made for relevant pop music subject matter. Sting likely drew from Dave Edmunds’s 1977 cover of Bob Seger’s “Get Out of Denver” for the wordy Chuck Berry-like cadence in “Canary in a Coalmine,” an ideal match for their brand of sped-up ska. And what an appropriate source song, implying an exit from a fresh-air Rocky Mountain environment or an era where singers like John Denver used to sing about it.

“Carioca” (1934) – RKO Studio Orchestra

“Carioca” (1933) – RKO Studio Orchestra * Written by Vincent Youmans, Edward Eliscu, and Gus Kahn * 78: “Raftero” (Nat Finston and Studio Paramount Orchestra) / “Carioca” * Label: Victor

“Carioca” is an early manifestation of the soundtrack trade, taking music directly from a film—in this case the 1933 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers vehicle Flying to Rio—and selling it on disc. Curiously, it includes none of the vocals that accompanied its opulent movie sequence, in which Fred and Ginger did their very first dance on film together, and in which the other dancers introduced an odd move involving the touching of foreheads. Although many versions of “Carioca” turned up in the movie’s wake, this source version, in spite of being credited in blasé fashion to the RKO Studio Orchestra, is the peppiest one. The title is a Brazilian term for the people of Rio De Janeiro and has no connection with the Japanese term karaoke. The song on side A, credited to Nat Finston and the Paramount Orchestra, is “Raftero,” named for George Raft—normally typecast as a gangster—who dances to it in the 1934 film Bolero.

“Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” (1979) – Elmo ‘n’ Patsy

“Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” (1979) * Written by Randy Brooks * Produced by Gary Potterton * Label: Oink * Charts (first appearance): Billboard Christmas (#1) * Chart Entry: 12/17/83

In his Sleigh Rides, Jingle Bells and Silent Nights, Ronald D. Lankford, Jr., reports that songwriter Randy Brooks had found inspiration for “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” from Merle Haggard’s “Grandma’s Homemade Christmas Card” (1973). In that recording, Haggard describes his subject against the steel guitar backdrop of “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” with all cues pointing toward a maudlin death that never happens. So Brooks took that as a challenge (and stole the VII7-IV-I hook from Haggard’s “If We Make It Through December” along the way). After showing his creation to Elmo and Patsy, who recorded it on their own label in 1979, the record became America’s favorite perennial Christmas crudity. It could be that songs that never go away contain some sort of open-ended message that keeps our subconscious minds engaged. In this song, it’s most certainly the refrain “as for me and Grandpa, we believe.” The word “believe” is loaded with yuletide pixie dust as it is, but that seven-word line alludes to 1) factual reality (the belief that Grandma got run over), 2) a statement of faith (the belief that there must really be a Santa Claus, with Grandma’s possibly fortuitous death offered up as evidence), and 3) a fearful warning (the belief that Santa lives, and he may not only withhold presents from you but he might also kill you). Additional interpretations are by all means conceivable. Side B is a penance-flip that plays Christmas straight.

“All Things Must Pass” (1970) – Billy Preston

“All Things Must Pass” (1970) – Billy Preston * Written by George Harrison * Produced by Billy Preston and George Harrison * LP: Encouraging Words * Label: Apple

Billy Preston’s Beatle connections went all the way back to 1962 Liverpool, when the starstruck foursome warmed up for their idol Little Richard, who included Preston in his touring group. So when Preston sat in on organ for their Get Back sessions in 1969, the comfortable music he made with them testified of their old-friend status. He recorded two albums for their Apple label, That’s the Way God Planned It (1969) and Encouraging Words (1970), with co-production and guitar work by the symbiotically God-conscious George Harrison. For Encouraging Words, Harrison allowed Preston to roll out two of his own songs, “My Sweet Lord” and “All Things Must Pass,” in September 1970, two months before he’d release his own versions. For his iteration of “All Things Must Pass” (which puts parentheses around “must” on the label), Preston adapts the song to an arrangement reminiscent of Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song,” working its way up to the IV in the verse beginnings, then scooting back down (III-II-I). By then the Christmas season market had become (and would continue to be) a major part of the Beatles’ commercial legacy, with Harrison’s All Things Must Pass release date of November 27, 1970, being a case in point. It’s hard not to hear Preston’s approach as some sort of St. Nicholas eye-wink, complete with falling snowflake strings at the end.

“Song of the Death Machine” (1970) – Bruce Haack

“Song of the Death Machine” (1970) – Bruce Haack * Written by Bruce Haack * Produced by Leroy Parkins * LP: The Electric Lucifer * Label: Columbia

Bruce Haack, the late Canadian electro music inventor and experimentalist, has such a reputation as an outsider that it’s easy to forget that his best known album came out with major label backing on Columbia Records. The Electric Lucifer, though, maintains the sort of homegrown, folk art charm that Moog masters, as a rule, are not expected to project. Haack’s liner notes declare his wish to end war with his music and also find him dwelling on the Milton/Blake subject matter of war in heaven. Standing on a larger stage than usual, Haack meant to unleash a “powerlove” so effective it could bring about the transformation and forgiveness of even Lucifer, the fallen “love angel.” The Christian angle gets more musically explicit near the end with yuletide signifiers. “Requiem” resolves into “The First Noel,” while “Song of the Death Machine” takes melodic cues from “Stars Were Gleaming, Shepherd Dreaming,” a children’s carol published in 1946 for the Presbyterian Hymns for Primary Worship (with lyrics by Nancy Byrd Taylor). But the music came from Poland, that most Christmasy of all Eastern Bloc nations, where it’s always been known as “W Żlobie leży” (in the manger).

“Będzie kolęda” (1968) – Skaldowie

 
“Będzie kolęda” (1968) – Skaldowie * Written by Wojciech Młynarski (lyrics) and Andrzej Zieliński (music) * LP: Wszystko Mi Mówi, Że Mnie Ktoś Pokochał * Label: Pronit
 
Communism could never squelch the Christmas spirit of Poland, whose Catholic roots and traditions ran too deep, so the appearance of a brazenly festive track called “There Will Be Another Christmas Carol” on a 1968 album by the popular rock group Skaldowie was hardly unusual for its time. (A girl group called Ali Babka joins them, flavoring it with some Phil Spector Americana.) The church bell-simulating vocal refrains at the beginning and end are possibly borrowed from the chorus of Gene Pitney’s “Just One Smile” (1966). The melody reverberated further in the TV theme for The Smurfs (1981), the Wycliffe Gordon-penned theme for NPR’s All Things Considered (1995), and South Park’s cheesy poofs theme (1998).
 

“Dawn” (1975) – Slapp Happy

“Dawn” (1974) – Slapp Happy * Written by Anthony Moore and Peter Blegvad * LP: Slapp Happy * Label: Virgin

Although Slapp Happy were one-third American (Peter Blegvad, later to create the surreal Leviathan comic strip), another third German (Dagmar Krause), and the final third British (Anthony Moore), they took shape in Hamburg and had an independent krautrock sensibility. This means that it’s not clear, when listening to the trio’s first two albums, if they’re being facetious, earnest, or experimental, because they’re being all three. “Dawn” sounds like they’re riffing on the Grass Roots or Tom Jones’s “She’s a Lady” but with retreat bugle calls and elliptical words about someone, in fact, in retreat. It also includes two separate insertions of “Oh Come All Ye Faithful.”

“The Mistletoe and Me” (1969) – Isaac Hayes

 
 
“The Mistletoe and Me” (1970) * Written and produced by Isaac Hayes * Arranged by Isaac Hayes and Dale Warren * 45: “The Mistletoe and Me” / “Winter Snow” * Label: Enterprise
 
Three Christmas singles from 1969-1970 heralded a new era of increasingly sophisticated, adult-friendly radio fare. These were the Carpenters’ “Merry Christmas Darling,” Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas,” and Isaac Hayes’ “The Mistletoe and Me.” Each of these sound as though they could have been released at any point up to the present day since their appearance, but not prior. They also continue serving as templates for the art of the minimally-annoying Christmas record. Hayes’ seductive offering is a miracle of sound mixing, mood, and instrumentation. “Fate is Santa Claus, and Cupid’s his helper,” sings Hayes with his lady by his side and a quiet fire all ablaze. The song also stands as one of the towering indicators of promise for arranger Dale Warren, who had previously worked on Hayes’s “Walk on By,” but whose momentum and spirits gave way to alcohol and financial woes after apparently tying too many of his hopes to the doomed Stax label (which closed in 1975). Although all Christmas record arrangers like to cross-reference the standards, Warren is remarkably subtle. Listen for the interweaving melody snippets as the track plays: “Jingle Bells,” “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” “We Three Kings,” “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” “No Place Like Home for the Holidays,” and a piano toying with “Up on the Housetop” and “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire).” 

“Silent Night” (1978) – The Dickies

“Silent Night” (1978) * Written by Joseph Mohr and Franz Xaver Gruber (listed as Trad.) * Produced by John Hewlett * 45: “Silent Night” / “The Sound of Silence” * Label: A&M
 
The Dickies were punks from Southern California who drew slapstick (and stage prop) inspiration from England’s the Damned, whose cover art for Damned Damned Damned would have suited the Dickies just fine. Singer Leonard Graves Philips also sounded eerily interchangeable with Wire’s Colin Newman. One of their distinguishing factors, though, was a way with turning cover songs, which always started out seeming like mockery, into expressions of earnest tribute. On 1978’s “Silent Night,” with a misogyny-tinged picture sleeve that reinforces “punk-version” expectations, Philips sings his heart out and the guitar solo reaches for the stars. It becomes an un-silent yearning for silence that brings more layers of meaning out of the familiar song than countless other versions have ever managed. The silence shtick carries over to side B, a cover of “The Sound of Silence,” with an intro that makes you think of Loverboy’s forthcoming “When It’s Over,” and when the whole song really is over, silence never sounds louder.   

“Vanity Fair” (1997) – World Party

“Vanity Fair” (1997) – World Party * Written and produced by Karl Wallinger * LP: Egyptology * Label: Chrysalis
 
Welshman Karl Wallinger emerged from the Waterboys as a solo artist called World Party in the late ’80s. He sounded like a studio rock classicist with a voice only a few inflections shy of Mick Jagger and presented himself, in visuals and production, as a big fan of Prince’s Around the World in a Day. Most of the songs on his first two albums, Private Revolution and Goodbye Jumbo, had a save-the-planet theme, but by 1993’s Bang, the preoccupation had dematerialized. His fourth album, Egyptology (1997) contained his big meal ticket in a song called “She’s the One,” which had “sync me” written all over it in the placement-happy late ’90s, and indeed the WB Televison Network found an open snuggle-space for it in a 1998 first season episode of Dawson’s Creek. Singer Robbie Williams, a mega-star in the UK, then recorded a version that went #1 over there in 1999. As a whole, Egyptology survives that notoriety along with the TV stink and comes off now as an underappreciated pop artifact. Hear Wallinger’s feel for even non-classic pop-history detail on “Vanity Fair,” which starts out feeling like “Play with Fire” but sprinkles the chorus with flutes teasing on that recorder line in “Hitchin’ a Ride,” the 1970 record by British one-hit wonders Vanity Fair.