There is the three-CD compilation Christmas Hits BMG which re-runs the old Band Aid Dido The Darkness Eva
Posted in General on 26. Sep, 2010
There is the three-CD compilation Christmas Hits (BMG), which re-runs the old Band Aid, Dido, The Darkness, Eva Cassidy, T Rex and an out-of-control “live” Bruce Springsteen among others. And there’s the reissue of ‘N Sync’s feeble 1998 stab at a festive album, Home For Christmas (RCA) “Keep the music nice and low,” they chant. I couldn’t agree more.I feel differently about Chet Atkins’s mid-Sixties effort, Christmas with Chet Atkins (BMG). This is solid-gold 100 per cent kitsch.Who knows what The Beach Boys meant in 1964 with Christmas With The Beach Boys (Capitol)? If they were serious, then they should have been arrested for crimes against rock’n'roll, as the following doggerel (set to the tune of “Little Deuce Coupe”) shows: “There’s a real famous cat all dressed up in red/ And he spends the whole year workin’ out in his sled/ It’s the little St Nick.” That’s as good as it gets.Roger Whittaker’s Christmas Album (RCA), from 1976, takes your breath away. This’ll have you bouncing around the living room: it had my 16-year-old son rolling around on the floor as he put it on repeat for about half an hour.Barry Manilow’s reissued 1999 effort, Because It’s Christmas (Camden), has problems with consistency of message, starting on-line with a luvvie-ish but cosy rendition of “The Christmas Song” but floundering off-line with “Baby It’s Cold Outside”, in which his banter with KT Oslin sounds as spontaneous as a Tony Blair joke As for “Jingle Bells”: don’t go there.It gets worse.
It’s exhausting.After that, it’s a relief to turn to the surreal Top of the Pops hysteria of Feliz Navidad by Jos?eliciano (BMG), released originally in 1970. Perhaps her deft avoiding of all the more formal carols means that she has avoided the absence-of-taste trap by cheating.Toni Braxton rakes a similar course on Snowflakes (Arista).There are those who return to haunt us like Jacob Marley’s ghost. Mario Lanza (Naxos) is back this year, belting out “don we now our gay apparel” and decking all our halls with gales of high-velocity operatics. That sounds pretty gloomy, too.Dianne Reeves (Blue Note) shows them how it should be done: she actually sounds as if she’s enjoying herself as she plays with the melody of “The Little Drummer Boy”, while a sinuous acoustic bass riff insinuates itself into your head. But what has Cliff done this year? He has boxed clever by putting out a single, “I Cannot Give You My Love” (Decca).
It’s not just the bells that ring hollow.
On this year’s Christmas tree of shame there are those with good intentions, such as Aled Jones (Universal). In league with that well-known ensemble The English Session Orchestra, he simply sounds miserable I think he’s trying to give it some gravitas It makes me pine for Cliff Richard. That they are performed by people who, in many cases, are otherwise sane and rational human beings adds to an aura of unreality. Christmas albums are indulgent by definition Every sentiment is twee; all delivery is cute.
“And I think one of the gorgeous things about TG is that we will go from something amazingly serious and important and significant in terms of the world and life, and then do something ludicrous and absurd,” adds P-Orridge.”We take every aspect of our lives and then magnify them because it’s interesting and puzzling and baffling all at once to go through each day.”. They want to put on a CD and stand next to it – it’s our quick-fix culture. They would feel much better if they found some way to express themselves.”A fan of a live performance he saw of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, P-Orridge would like to see a more open-minded and flexible live scene. “Bands should try to create a temporary situation where the audience feel relaxed enough to let go of whether they look cool or whether they know the correct response and for a while, whether it be an hour or two, they feel liberated enough to surrender to the experience of the sound rather than analyse it or critique it or want it to be exactly like it was before.”Their simple word of advice to aspiring artists is to be honest – something very few people actually manage to achieve. They are so empty but they want someone else to say it for them.
If somebody’s in the middle of Ohio or Cornwall and there is no local shop and finally they hear some kind of music they think ‘That’s like me’ and they feel that bit less isolated.” Tutti then elaborates: “That works on a popular culture level anyway when people get really into the most mundane love songs going, its like desperation you know. “We are in a moment where intelligent subtlety is the more shocking strategy than gratuitous actions because the media have already trumped everything you could do as a performance with so-called reality. The potency has gone from certain strategies.”He later observes that, “The status quo is presented as something to aspire to, whereas for us the status quo was something we wanted to shatter in order to create the space for people to choose for themselves.”Music remains a uniquely powerful social force for P-Orridge. “The fact that we’ve all played in literally dozens of countries and cultures and had a very positive response means that there is some other language – a non verbal language. Sometimes it’s as simple as helping people to feel less isolated.