Merry Xmas From The Tim “Napalm” Stegall Substack (or “I have no gift to bring, pa rum pum pum pum….”)
Being broker-than-broke this Xmas, how about I bring you another holiday cheer playlist?
“And to all, a good night….”
Merry Xmas (birthday of noted messiah, Jesus X)! Now, before you throw your mulled punch at the screen, let me clarify: I ain't no Scrooge. I love Xmas like a coyote loves a roadrunner leg. It's the lights, the smells, the eggnog hangovers that last longer than a Kiss farewell tour – the whole damn shebang. (By the way, what the fuck is up with those ca.-2000-video-game digital avatars they’re supposedly sending out on the road in their stead?!) But there's one Grinch in every grotto, and for me, it's the soundtrack. You know, that saccharine symphony of jingle bells and choirs that could make a candy cane weep?
Growing up, Xmas morning meant waking to Mom and her AM radio blasting The Norman Luboff Chorale, bless their angelic hearts, wailing The Yuletide Top 40 at Ted Nugent volume, year-after-year. I most decidedly did not wish ye merry gentlemen got one second of rest, whether God requested it or not! And what the fuck was a “White Christmas” anyway, Bing?! I grew up in SOUTH TEXAS! It was enough to put the dearly departed back to sleep, trust me.
Then I discovered rock ‘n’ roll Christmas music! Hark, those herald angels sang more mellifluously to me than a stack of Mormon Tabernacle Choir records! Last year, to accompany a load of reviews of recently rockin’ Xmas platters, I put together a playlist of some of my favorites from over the years, titled It’s beginning to look a lot like Xmas. Chock full of seasonal slashers from Chuck Berry, The Sonics, Elvis and Darlene Love, that playlist warmed the cockles so beautifully. Click that link up there and see for yourself.
Well, this year? I have no new Xmas records to review. I am also so goddamned broke, I can’t afford gifts for anyone this year. ‘Tis one of the reasons I am running this subscription special until the end of the month, where your PERMANENT(!!) subscription price — whether you’re a new paying subscriber, or upgrading your free subscription — is $40 annually (down from $50) or $4 monthly (reduced from $5)! You will get all the paying subscribers benefits, such as The Tim “Napalm” Stegall Substack Interviews fully unlocked or the “RADIO NAPALM” podcast (once I relaunch that here)! So, click all this crud here and benefit from these savings by supporting my hard work here directly at a 20% savings!
So, that’s one gift from me. The other is this year’s Xmas playlist, this time annotated by me! I’m getting all Little Drummer Boy on ya this year: “I am a poor boy, too/Pa rum pum pum pum…Shall I play for you?/Pa rum pum pum pum/Me and my drum….” Only I’m a guitarist, not a drummer. But I can man the metaphorical turntables and spin some Yuletide sides for ya, and tell you all about ‘em. If they seem a little more cynical than last year’s selections? So be it. It was kind of a crappy year….
Nice transition, huh? Yes, this is that hoary auld Yuletide standard “The Little Drummer Boy,” rendered in a hilarious first-wave Britpunk fashion by that snotty seasonal alter ego of OG London melodic punks The Boys. Their 1980 Christmas Album is a side-busting collection of comically young, loud and snotty carols, such as a ramalama “Silent Night” translated to German, prefaced with a Hitler speech! (And no, The Boys were not Nazis! Stop it!) Commencing with (not that) Jack Black’s mid-tempo bicka-bicka-rat-a-tat beats, Matt Dangerfield and Honest John Plain lay down a field of chugging palm-muted chords, as Kid Reid’s callow vocal cords lead the entire band into a pub-singlalong-at-2AM rendition of the tale of that kid playing his drum for baby Jesus. A nice way to ring in this year’s festivities.
The Kinks – “Father Christmas”
“Have yourself a merry merry Christmas/Have yourself a good time/But remember the kids who got nothin'/While you're drinkin' down your wine….” Ray Davies is one cynical bastard, ain’t he? Leave it to him to write a carol about a department store St. Nick mugged by impoverished street urchins, demanding money rather than toys this year since Papa’s unemployed. Then he set it to a musical bed that’s part Springsteen-doing-Spector, and mostly the livewire power chords Ray’s little brother Dave taught the punks back in 1964. “Father Christmas,” like anything else by The Kinks, rocks harder than a gingerbread house dropped by a goddamned pack of rabid reindeer.
The Damned – “There Ain’t No Sanity Clause”
“(Rat) Scabies got the rabies now he's down on all fours,” Dave Vanian yelps on The Damned’s November 24, 1980 contribution to Christmas culture. “Hasn't helped his drumming, changing hands for paws/Afraid he's quarantined, means no more foreign tours/Ah ha, there ain't no sanity clause.” Named for a scene in The Marx Brothers’ 1935 cinematic lunacy A Night At The Opera (“You can’t fool me,” Chico fires back at Groucho as he attempts to explain a business contract. “There ain’t no sanity clause!”), it’s a vintage Damned blitzkrieg. Every element is in place: Captain Sensible’s bludgeon riffs, Scabies’ Ludwig detonation (even though he apparently has a bad case of hydrophobia), Paul Gray’s Entwhistle-like weight, and Vanian crooning nutty limericks about all his bandmates. The middle eight delivers a miniaturization of “Father Christmas”: “Here comes Uncle Nick/ Let’s give him some stick!”
Goldblade with Poly Styrene – “City Of Christmas Ghosts”
“The idea for the track was to write an honest song; one that reflected the real Christmas, not the gurning celeb fest and consumer insanity,” wrote Goldblade leader John Robb of the storming holiday single his 21st century punk outfit did with iconic X-Ray Spex singer Poly Styrene. “Instead it could be filled with wonky euphoria and a streak of melancholy, littered with ghosts, a time to reminisce about lost friends and comrades and celebrate their lives.” Set to steaming old-school punk with spaghetti western guitars, Robb and Styrene sound almost joyous as they warble "we raise a toast to the ghost of the friends that we lost last year." Sadly, three years after Goldblade initially dropped this Noel nugget, Poly was gone, claimed by cancer, rendering it a bit melancholy now. A few days ago, a new version was released, remixed by Killing Joke’s Youth, featuring (appropriately enough) a new sax part from fellow X-Ray Spexite Lora Logic.
Elvis Presley – “Santa Claus Is Back In Town”
“Got no sleigh with reindeer/No sack on my back,” The King Of Rock ‘n’ Roll rasps on his filthiest Christmas hit. “You're gonna see me comin'/IN A BIG BLACK CADILLAC!!!” Santa’s apparently wearing gold lame this season, as DJ Fontana pounds out a vintage stripper beat, and Scotty Moore and Bill Black lay down the greasiest blues they gave the boss this side of “One Night.” “Hang up your pretty stockings/And turn off the light/Santa Claus is comin'/DOWN YOUR CHIMNEY TONIGHT!” I bet he is….
“Fuck Christmas – it’s a waste of fucking time,” warbles Monty Python’s profane Cole Porter, on the most honest carol ever written. “Fuck Santa – he’s just out to get your dime.” Idle's songs are sonic banana peels, slipping on satire one minute, then tripping over toe-tapping melodies the next. His lyrics are a word salad tossed with wit and vinegar, skewering everything from pomposity to mortality. He's the bard of the absurd, the jester of the jugular, a Pied Piper of Pythonesque pandemonium. And of course, he has to liberally sprinkle obscenities all the way through – there’s a “fuck” in every line here, as Idle dismantles every aspect of the modern holidays: “Go tell the elves to fuck themselves/It’s Christmastime again!”
“Don't despair/Just because it's Christmas,” Lee Ving roars over Los Angeles punk deconstructionists/destructivists Fear’s minor key notion of the blues. “All the children on the street/Hope they get something good to eat,” he continues, before recognizing how devastating the season can be for the dispossessed: “But for me it's not so great….” Once the thrash part kicks in, Ving howls “FUCK CHRISTMAS!” ten times, and it’s done. It's a 44 second middle finger to the forced cheer, a boot to the throat of commercialism, and a fist-pumping anthem for anyone who's ever felt like December's joy is a spiked punch bowl of hypocrisy.
Fear — “Another Christmas Beer”
18 years later, Ving apparently needed another 2:28 to vent more about the season: “Fighting malls with/Christmas balls to/Get my shopping done,” he rants over a more “Jingle Bell Rock”-ed arrangement of their “I’ll Have Another Beer.” “Lay away, don't have to pay/Till after/January one/It's no doubt I'm/Broke flat out soon/Tax time will be here.” By the time the last cymbal crashes, he’s lashed out at his relatives (“Well, jingle bells/Who needs motels 'cause/They're all stayin' here!!”), but appears appeased by this year’s Yuletide loot (“Guitars, fishing rods and guns/Yuletide tubs of/Icy Buds when/The family gathers near”). Irving Berlin’s got nothing on Lee Ving!
Cheap Trick – “Christmas Christmas”
For years, the most rockin’ band to come from Rockford, Illinois released an annual Christmas single to benefit some near-dear cause or other, usually a holiday-themed remake/remodel of one of their own nuggets like “Come On Christmas” (AKA “Come On, Come On”). Come 2017, Rick, Robin, Tom and Daxx finally released an entire Christmas album, filled with (Cheap) Tricked-out blasts through seasonal goodies from Wizzard (“I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day”) and Slade (“Merry Xmas Everybody”). The title track, closing out the album, may be the best of the bunch, a compressed shriek of an original, with a delightfully minimal lyric repeated endlessly for 2:16: “Christmas Christmas time is here/Peace on earth, wish you were here/Christmas Christmas time of year/Time for family, friends and cheer/To all Merry Christmas christmas Christmas/To all Merry Christmas.” Then it closes out with the most soused rendition of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” you’ll ever hear. This may be the best thing on this playlist.
The Wailers – “Christmas Spirit??”
In the mid-’60s, Tacoma, Washington indie label Etiquette Records released an album called Merry Christmas From The Sonics, The Wailers, and The Galaxies. Featuring the area’s top garage punk talent, it was a blast of sawtoothed distortion and holiday pisstakes. But none were as potent as the scene’s godfathers The Wailers waxing Dylanesque over massed acoustic guitars: “It’s in the air – can’t ya hear it?/It’s ev’rywhere – that Christmas spirit!” Whoever is standing in for Bob – is it Buck Ormsby – spits vitriol over everything from gift-giving (“The only thing that counts is the brand and the amount/ And that it comes from an expensive store”) to Santa (“He’s a dime store commercialized manufactured product/Directly descended from a saint”), until he finally stops a stranger on the street and asks if he knows whose birthday it is: “I’m not sure…but I think/It’s one of our Presidents/Ain’t it?” This really should be the last track, but we gotta end with….
Joan Jett & The Blackhearts — “The Little Drummer Boy”
Appended to her breakthrough I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll album, St. Joan played it a little more straight than The Yobs. She wasn’t here to trash “The Little Drummer Boy.” She played her “Pa rum pa pum pum pums” a lot more straightforward, though taking a similarly stomping midtempo groove, adding some Who-style bash-and-crash and some Steve Jones-esque bent strings to the coda. You can practically see Joan windmilling her way through the changes, though that’s hardly her style.
Thank you all for your support this past year-and-a-half. Merry Xmas to all, and to all, a good night.
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