Friday Music Day

Friday Music Day: Week of Christmas

56 Comments

Anyone want to talk about Christmas music? I've barely listened to any this year, but maybe you're different.
Otherwise, randoms and whatevs are good. Save any year-best-ing for January 2, 2015.

56 thoughts on “Friday Music Day: Week of Christmas”

  1. 1. Coil “Driftmix” The Snow EP
    2. The Field “Sweet Slow Baby” Looping State Of Mind
    3. Hello Saferide “Nothing Like You (When You're Gone)” Introducing...
    4. Nine Inch Nails “Fist F--- ” Fixed
    5. Tori Amos “The Waitress” Under The Pink
    6. Aaron Dilloway “Tremors” Modern Jester
    7. Eric Copeland “Doo Doo Run” Doo Doo Run 7"
    8. Coil “a warning from the sun (for fritz)” moon's milk (in four phases)
    9. Matthew Dear “Her Fantasy (Tornado Wallace Remix)” Beams (expanded)
    T. Dawn McCarthy & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy “Poems, Prayers, & Promises” What the Brothers Sang

    1. Notes:
      1. I put this (and all of the other mixes of "The Snow") on my iPod Christmas Mix. But I haven't put it on my iPod at all this year.
      8. This is from the "Bee Stings" EP "issued" on Summer Solstice, 1998 (but it wasn't actually available then). The four seasonal EPs were collected as the double-album listed (with one bonus live track). I've got the Winter Solstice EP, "North" on my iPod Christmas mix, too. Particularly for "Christmas Is Now Drawing Near", technically by Rosa Mundi (which is Coil and Rose McDowell):
      httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoproVuIZP4

  2. There was a time in my life where I enjoyed Christmas music. But it dawned on me there are about 7 Christmas songs written and they all get recycled by everybody. That said, I do enjoy a few songs like Tom Petty's "Christmas All Over Again" and Billy Squier's "Christmas is the Time To Say I Love You"

    "Day After Day" - Badfinger
    "Jungleland" - Bruce Springsteen
    "You" - Candlebox
    "Someday, Someway" - Marshall Crenshaw
    "She Come In Through the Bathroom Window" - Joe Cocker

    "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" -U2
    "Barbara Ann" - The Beach Boys
    "Aint To Proud To Beg" - The Temptations
    "Answering Machine" - The Replacements
    "Watching the Detectives" - Elvis Costello

        1. 'Actually' SelectShow

  3. I enjoy Christmas music. But usually I want a little bit of variety and non-Christmas music mixed in.

  4. My mother listened to the Manheim Steamroller Christmas albums from the beginning of October to the end of January, and that kind of ruined my Christmas spirit. That being said there's one Christmas song I really, really love.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUiZRWsIGAY

    1. That's a good one. I think that's on my mix, too.
      Mannheim Steamroller is awful. I think I have my CD still. I got it as a gift and only play it ironically.
      I think that Trans-Siberian Orchestra is just Mannheim Steamroller with electric guitars.

      1. MS was the bomb back 30 years ago (we were into Fresh Aire back then when the first came out) but even the good stuff gets stale after that long.

        I remember this one being okay when it came out (XYZ aka ex-Yes/Zeppelin)
        httpv://youtu.be/TZqRDCif7Ig

    2. Sez U.

      Both of Sufjan's 5 disc Xmas collections available for download at Amazon for the low low price of 9.99. Songs for Christmas, the older of the two, has a Seven Swans/Michagan feel for instrumentation while Silver and Gold is more orchestrated and occasionally gets Age of Adz weird--as the following vid attests. Love the way he eventually works "Love Will Tear Us Apart" into the mix. I'd recommend either of these collections if you were in the market for some new holiday tunes.
      httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_cPQn6vOdo

      1. Linds got me the second set (Silver and Gold) for Christmas last year. It's pretty great, but it doesn't really work for me apart from Christmastime, and she is not a fan of it, herself. I do love it, still.

      2. I'm halfway through this song now.
        It's weird. I don't know if it's particularly holidayish other than the words.
        OK, and it just changed. I thought it was going to be a Steve Reich cover, but that near-sample of Music for 18 Musicians was just a transition device.

        1. I tried listening last night but gave up about 5 minutes in. Should I have stuck with it? My only exposure to Sufjan's music has been through the WGOM and I'm having trouble seeing past all the weirdness to find whatever it is others are seeing (hearing?) in it.

          1. I don't think so. But then I've never gotten into Sufjan myself.
            There wasn't anything in the last seven minutes that are worth revisiting if the first five left you cold or confused.
            The change wasn't what i hoped for.

            1. I like the song (listened to it again while shopping over the weekend. good stuff to get into the whole "Christmas cheer" thing) but agree with your assertion that if you didn't like the first few minutes, the last few minutes are unlikely to change your mind.

              1. Fine. You don't want anything weird for Xmas.

                httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByMCAclZwVI
                httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hUyR2RbjQ0
                httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q14nus_QURw

                1. Whaa? I like the song. I want weird for Christmas.

                  I want Christmas songs about how the earth should be burnt up and that we're all wasting our time. These are things I enjoy.

                  1. Oops. That was meant for AMR and Pepper.

                    Carry on with your visions of sugar plum fairies raining hell fire upon mankind. 😉

                3. I think I burned a selection of these to a CD in my pre-iPod days.
                  I don't think I listened much.

                  I got a blind spot when it comes to Sufjan*: I don't get it.
                  *short of the little work he did on his non-relation Shannon's first album

  7. 1. Bring the Sun / Toussaint L'Ouverture - Swans - To Be Kind
    2. God Called in Sick Today - AFI - Black Sails in the Sunset*
    3. You Gotta Feel It - Spoon - Kill the Moonlight
    4. Change (in the House of Flies) - Deftones - White Pony
    5. Midnight Rambler - The Rolling Stones - Let it Bleed
    6. Oceans - Indian Jewelry - Totaled
    7. Monkey Gone to Heaven - Pixies - Doolittle
    8. Statues - Foo Fighters - Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace
    9. One Inch Man - Kyuss - And the Circus Leaves Town
    10. Magdalena - A Perfect Circle - Mer de Noms

    * One of my brother's friends used to sing this song with his band in high school, but he was too embarrassed to have people see him do the screaming parts, so he kind of hide behind the drummer for each chorus. Every time I hear this song I think of that.


  8. Because there isn't enough shoe-gazer dance music... 20 years on this record still sounds contemporary to me.
    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on20cbXxoxM

    1. Lots of people understandably focus on Loveless but My Bloody Valentine's Isn't Anything is a pretty cool album.

  9. For some reason I don't care to use my iPhone for playing music all that much. It just feels a little bulky and clunky and I worry about dropping it while I fiddle around with the controls. I used to have a nice little Sanyo mp3 player that I liked quite a bit, but it died a few years ago. But last week I found my oldest daughters first iPod that she abandoned years ago - white, first generation nano, fully functional clickwheel, clear screen, only minor case scratches, 1GB of memory. It holds about 10 hours of music, which is more than enough at a time for me, and it's got awesome retro chic. Now I just have to load it with music that's not intended for a 12 year old girl in 2005.

      1. It's entertaining for me, too.

        01. Avril Lavigne - My Happy Ending
        02. Destiny's Child - Soldier
        03. Justin Timberlake - Cry Me a River
        04. Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
        05. Jesse McCartney - She's Not You
        06. Panic! At the Disco - Lying Is The Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off
        07. Black Eyed Peas - Let's Get It Started
        08. Avril Lavigne - Don't Tell Me
        09. Gwen Stefani - Hollaback Girl
        10. Fall Out Boy - Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year

    1. This is me too - I love Christmas music at Christmas time. Any earlier than about the 2nd week of December and it seems out of place...except Vince Guaraldi. I could listen to that album anytime.

      1. EAR breaks out the Christmas tunes during the first big snowfall of the year. Except this year that was on Nov 10, which was too early, and we haven't really had anything since.

        1. I'm with Rhu_Ru & CoC – I don't want to hear Christmas music any earlier than 01 December. I like my holidays one at a time, with some breathing room between Thanksgiving and Christmastime.

          First snowfall of the year merits a spin of MJQ '52 at my house. First big snowfall brings the Pierre Monteux/Chicago Symphony recording of Franck's Symphony in D minor.

          1. I really love Christmas music and have a pretty large collection, for me anyways. I generally wait until we've had Thanksgiving meal to start playing any. We generally decorate the house on Thanksgiving (if we're at home by ourselves) of Black Friday and that's when we usually break out the Christmas music for the first time.

  11. 1. "Dilate" Ani Difranco Dilate
    2. "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
    3. "Bookworm" Margot and the Nuclear So and So's The Dust of Retreat
    4. "Boys & Girls" Alabama Shakes Boys & Girls
    5. "We Were Wealth" Wye Oak Civilian
    6. "Mineshaft 2" Dessa A Badly Broken Code
    7. "Us" Regina Spektor Soviet Kitsch
    8. "Lord Only Knows" Beck! Odelay
    9. "Verlaine Shot Rimbaud" Lydia Loveless Somewhere Else*
    10. "Hotel" The Antlers Familiars**

    *The randomness actually stopped here. Do you ever have one of those moments when you just keep skipping songs and you feel like you hate everything on your iPod? That happened to me this morning. I know that's not the point of random 10, but I decided to go rogue. I am SUCH a rebel, guys.
    **Yeah, this isn't even on my iPod. But I enjoyed it quite a lot, so thank you DK!

    1. *That's not how it works. This list is disqualified, and you lose a point.
      Next time, just list your junk however it comes out.

      I've gotten better at weeding out what's on my iPod so that there isn't too much that really bugs me.
      If I rate something as a "2", that's my flag to go back and remove it for the time being.
      1 means it absolutely stinks, and 3 means there's an error. 4s and 5s are for selecting tracks to add to mixes. (5s are definites, 4s are probably yesses until I've got to edit for length).

  12. Anyone want to talk about Christmas music?

    I've always been especially partial to this tune.

    httpv://youtu.be/YjggWxGYLdo

  14. Since I already failed at FMD on Friday, how bout I answer the Christmas music question 3 days late? I always listen to The Nutcracker and I'm also always compelled to pull out my cast recording of the musical Rent, although the show as a whole isn't Christmas-y. I'm sure some portion of you will roll your eyes at this, but I'll share it anyway:

    httpv://youtu.be/Zp5Eyt7knus

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