Daily Jam - Christmas Time Is Here (Instrumental)

Merry Christmas everybody!  Do something good today.  Here's the Vince Guaraldi Trio with some holiday music.  Listen to "Christmas Time Is Here (Instrumental)" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Little Drummer Boy

While Darlene Love's "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" is my favorite Christmas song, Low's take on "Little Drummer Boy" has got to be my second favorite.  Let's listen.  Check it out below, our Daily Jam.  Merry Christmas.

Dean & Britta & Sonic Boom

Dean & Britta made a Christmas album with Sonic Boom.  Far out.  Here's a track from it.  Listen to "Pretty Paper" below and get the "A Peace of Us" LP here from Carpark Records.

Daily Jam - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

This column was originally published during Christmas of 2015. And while I do realize it's the middle of July now, I guess let's just let this one be for any of those crazy Christmas-In-July type people.

Full Disclosure: I am an atheist…and I LOVE Christmas.

I love the lights and the decorations. I love the cooler temperatures, the TV specials, the gaudy, inflatable, light-up crap people put up in their front yards (not in my yard though), the ugly sweaters, the food and gifts and family, and all the parties and festivities. Hell, I even like Christmas shopping. Finding something to give to a loved one makes me feel good. There’s just something about the whole season that gets under my skin and makes me happy, allows me to look past and ignore the commodification and consumerism and exploitation that come along with the holiday. I don’t care about all that. Nor do I care about any of the religious stuff surrounding the whole affair. Sure, it’s important stuff, especially with it actually being a religious holiday and all, but I’m more about the feelings of love and brotherhood and goodwill that are supposed to accompany it. I’m more about the good vibes and good tidings we’re all supposed to be putting out there. Give me that Christmas spirit. And give me Christmas music. I really love Christmas music. And maybe that makes me weird, but I don’t care.

(Gets off soapbox.)

If you’re looking for nostalgia in your music, it all starts with Christmas tunes. Listening to them, you’re either tapping into your own youthful memories with the songs of yore, or going even deeper into your parents’ nostalgia, jamming to the songs of your childhood as well as your parents’ childhood. It’s a kind of nostalgia for nostalgia, but not in a bad or culture-less way. Rather, it’s a line to connect generations with one another. That’s why most of the prevailing Christmas songs are so old, just modern acts of the time doing their own cover versions of decades old classics, a veritable succession of carols on repeat. But every generation seems to get to throw one new song into the Christmas cauldron, a song to stand the test of time. For better or worse, my generation’s contribution is either Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” (a non-guilty pleasure) or Elmo and Patsy’s “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” (a sonic abomination). So let’s do this Christmas (in July) edition of Endless Loop on a song from parents’ generation instead. Let’s do my favorite Christmas song. Let’s do Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” from 1963’s A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records, or from Phil Spector, depending on which edition of the record you have.

I first heard the song in Joe Dante’s Gremlins, a kind of mean-spirited little anti-Christmas movie that anyone around in the 80’s (or even beyond that) probably has fond memories of. Nothing like a bunch of little monsters attacking a small town to bring out the Yuletide spirit. Ever since, the song has been knocking around in my brain, bubbling to the surface every December. Harnessing Phil Spector’s trademark Wall Of Sound and 1960’s girl group aesthetic, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” is a pop song first and foremost, and a Christmas song second. Love’s vocals are filled to the very brim with affection and yearning, and paired with Spector’s glorious production, psychotic weirdo though he may be, make the song an instant classic. It belongs on every Christmas mixtape, every playlist, every record player whilst drinking coffee and opening presents, or driving around the city looking at all the lights, or sitting in front of a fireplace just letting the day and night pass.

Check it out below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Silent Night

Happy Christmas Eve to everyone out there.  Here's a classic hymn/carol as performed by Low.  Listen to "Silent Night" below, our Daily Jam.

Alabaster DePlume

Here's a wonderful and melancholy new Christmas song from experimental jazz artist Alabaster DePlume that serves as tribute to Refaat Alareer, the Palestinian poet and professor who was killed by an Israeli air strike earlier this month.  DePlume shared the following statement with the track as well:

At this specific time, may I reach you with appreciation, for I admire you for living, and I come to tell you I believe in you. I have faith in you. You are humanity and this time is in your hands. You survive moment by moment, while crimes are committed against you. And there is no state that can defeat you, no nation state, authority, project nor organisation on this earth can ultimately deny you, humanity. I am reaching to you with my love, and this little Christmas song, where at this time I feel grief. In case it voices a grief for you too, I love you.

Check out "Gifts of Olive" below and download it here.

Clouds Taste Satanic

I think it's probably pretty safe to say that the only Christmas song from the last 30 years to actually enter the cultural lexicon and stay there is Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You."  As i just got all the Christmas decorations up over the weekend, here's Clouds Taste Satanic giving us a metal rendition.  Check it out below and get the new "All I Want for Christmas Is Your Soul" EP here from the band.

Cookin Soul - WU XMAS

In between presents and feasting and what have you today, spend a little time with Cookin Soul's latest collection of Christmas-themed remixes, this time around tackling tracks from Wu-Tang.  Listen to all of "WU XMAS" below and get it here.

Mac DeMarco - I'll Be Home for Christmas

It's just two more days until Christmas.  Wild.  Here's Mac DeMarco doing a very Mac DeMarco version of Bing Crosby's "I'll Be Home for Christmas."  Check out the video below.

Boris - Last Christmas

If Boris covering Wham! doesn't put you in the right kind of holiday spirit, then you're just a lost cause my friend.  A lost cause.  Check out the noise of "Last Christmas" below and get it here from Sacred Bones.

Cindy Cane - Blue Christmas

Cindy Cane covered "Blue Christmas," probably most famously sung by Elvis Pressley.  It's nice and weird.  Check it out below and get it here.

Daily Jam - Merry Christmas

A Bonnie Tyler Christmas song written and recorded for a 30+ year old French movie about a kid defending his home from a psycho Santa.  Merry Christmas everybody!  Here's "Merry Christmas," our Daily Jam.

Dean & Britta - Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

Speaking of Christmas covers raising money for good causes, Dean & Britta give us a wonderful take on John Lennon's and Yoko Ono's "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)."  The funds will be going to The Sled which provides assistance to underprivileged NYC public school students and their families.  Do it.  Listen below and get the music here from Double Feature Records.

Black Midi - Jingle Bell Rock

UK experimental post punk band Black Midi recorded a couple of Christmas songs.  Weird, i know.  Anyway, it's to raise funds to help out a venue the guys play at across the pond.  Check out the kind of faithful rendition of "Jingle Bell Rock" below and get the jams here.

Daily Jam - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

Like this wasn't going to be the song today, Darlene Love's "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), our Daily Jam.

Dr. Dog - Panpepato

I haven't thought about indie band Dr. Dog in forever.  But here they are, with an EP of folky, quirky Christmas songs.  Listen to "Panpepato" below and download it here.  Christmas is in two days.  I have SO MUCH to still do.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Cookin Soul - DOOM XMAS

Spanish producer and DJ Cookin Soul took it upon himself to take a bunch of MF Doom acappella verses and lay them on top of some absolutely stoned samples of Christmas songs on his new release "DOOM XMAS."  It works like gangbusters, and i know what i'm listening to tonight.  Check out "MF Grinch" below and download it all here.

Sonic Advent Calendar: Day 24 - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Originally penned for the musical "Meet Me in St. Louis" with Judy Garland, the kind of bleak "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" has long been one of my favorite holiday tunes, the cold melancholy of it all hitting me in just the right way.  Greg Dulli of The Afghan Whigs released a version about a week ago, and it is appropriately moody.  I've heard better versions (John Denver and Rowlf from The Muppets comes to mind), but this one will do just fine.  Watch the video below...and try to get some sleep tonight.

Friday Horror Trailer (A Day Late) - Silent Night Deadly Night 2

Forgot to post this yesterday.  Merry Christmas!