[embedded YouTube video; if you can’t watch it, click here] Rounding out our week of alternatives to traditional Christmas music, we have this new song by British punk band Goldblade, featuring the legendary vocalist Poly Styrene. As befits a punk Christmas, it’s an elegy for lost friends coupled with distinctly anti-consumerist sentiment.
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Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime
December 25, 2008[Image credit : Len from the Jawbone Radio Show] As you may have gathered from an earlier post, I’m not so much about holiday music (hey, it’s a secular democracy, deal with it). So it’s perhaps unsurprising that “Chiron Beta Prime” by Jonathan Coulton is one of the very few Christmas songs that I like. […]
Working on Christmas
December 24, 2008It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m in my office, even though I probably shouldn’t be, so I can use my printer and my big monitor. I actually find it kind of amusing to send out letters time-stamped on Christmas Eve – doing my bit to remind people that our culture is pluralistic, not a monolith. But […]
Christmas songs for non-Christmas people
December 23, 2008So, as you could probably tell from yesterday’s post, I’m not a big Christmas person. My family doesn’t celebrate Christmas, never has. Jonathan Trigell puts it well: “I went to a Christian primary school. We all did back then; it was called “school”. At Christmas time, we prayed little-children prayers and sang jolly songs about […]
The death of the holiday single (hurrah!)
December 23, 2009Much has been made of the fragmentation of music into niches, so the annual UK Christmas single race stands out as one of the last bastions of mass music consumption. As you probably know, Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” took the top spot against the putative winner, the doubly-manufactured mediocrity backed by […]
The zed equals zee gift guide
December 13, 2009We like music, geeking out, and indie manufacturers. Two gorgeous prints by Cat and Girl. The one on the left is a timeline of hits by genre, and the one on the right is a list of first names in hit singles by here (click images for larger images and purchase links). Indie rock snark […]
Coverage: Nightmare Revisited
February 6, 2009[extended trailer for Coraline on YouTube; if you can’t watch it, click here] Guest blogger Scott writes: Coraline opens today and, while debcha might be most excited about the production of a favored author’s work, I have multiple reasons to be excited. I like gothic spooky, but can’t stomach horror (at least until a Hollywood […]
Threesome: alternative holiday songs
December 24, 2008In response to my ‘Christmas songs for non-Christmas people,’ guest blogger Scott offered up three finds. The first is “Father Christmas,” by the Kinks, which I immediately recognized as a staple of my local alt-rock station. It’s a heartwarming holiday song about getting a job as a department store Santa Claus and being mugged by […]
In the bleak midwinter
December 22, 2008I’m not normally about holiday music. But both Seattle and Boston just celebrated the winter solstice by getting positively hammered with snow, and that made me think of this Pipettes version of “In The Bleak Midwinter.” It’s always kind of tickled me because it’s up there with ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?‘ as an egregious […]
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