I Hear Sleigh Bells!
That picture, taken by someone who is no doubt an expert photographer (or a guy just holding his camera above the crowd willy-nilly, it’s difficult to tell), records a moment of what constitutes the whole of my Christmas music experience this year, save a few pieces of songs heard in a store or restaurant. It is from the front steps of the Texas capitol building, during the Tuba Christmas performance Monday afternoon. And yes, that one guy has a mouth painted inside his sousaphone.
I couldn’t find (or refused to attempt to find) tuba Christmas music for today’s post, and really, what would be the point? Tod has had the Christmas music thing covered every day this month, and I don’t think there’s much I could add. Also, I’m not a huge fan of Christmas music. So instead, I’ll just give you a couple songs that have nothing to do with Christmas by a band with a sort of Christmasy name, and let you get back to doing what you were doing. I hope that, regardless of whether you celebrate Christmas, and regardless of how you do so, you’re spending the day doing whatever it is you like to do this time of year.
That song is going to be stuck in my head all day. Which is a good thing, because it means “Jingle Bell Rock” won’t be, as it has been for pretty much every Christmas since 1982. Let’s have some more, so I can be absolutely certain Bobby Helms gets gone and stays there:
You know, both of those songs are in commercials (Apple and Dr. Pepper, respectively), so I guess they are Christmas songs in a way. OK, sorry, No Politics!
Let’s have one more, to be absolutely certain that “Jingle Bell Rock” makes it nowhere near my brain:
And a final one, just in case:
Argh, I talked about it too much. Now it’s in my head. Anyway, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and if I don’t see ya before then, Happy New Year.
Merry Christmas everybody.Report
I’d say Sleigh Bells were probably the second most-memorable show I saw this year (not that I saw very many) – I mentioned the first here, but it was pretty much the opposite of Sleigh Bells – quiet and intimate, as opposed to the SB steamroller.
I saw SB once before on the final LCD Soundsystem tour, and they were loud as hell, and super-fun (plus, they sounded terrific – that venue had a good soundsystem and acoustics, I think James Murphy is picky about that sort of thing).
So when they came around here recently, I talked a friend of mine into going – he asked what they sounded like, and I said “well, basically they apply the JAMC/MBV blown-speaker maximalist-noise aesthetic to like, Stacey Q pop/dance songs or something; it’s the kind of idea you can’t believe nobody came up with before.”
He was pretty blown away.
He called Alexis Krauss “a force of nature”; without that whole “bad-girl cheerleader” shtick she’s got going, he doesn’t think it would work.
At the show I thought of a much more succinct way to describe them:
“NFL Pop”.Report