Back when music videos meant something…
The Supersuckers w/ Kelly Deal - Hungover Together
2009
For a friend who likes his whiskey… maybe as much as I do.
Various Artists - Do Not Open ‘til Christmas
- Shanghai Dog - Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
- No Fun - No Fun At Christmas
- Bolero Lava - This Little Boy
- The Spores - Christmas Jeers
- The Grapes of Wrath - Happy Christmas (The War is Over)
- Der Blitzen - O Tannenbaum
- 54/40 - Christmas Time
- The Reptiles - Merry Christmas
- The Subterraneans - You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch
- Slow - Hair of the Dog
- Green River - Away in a Manger
- The Soreheads - You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch
- No Fun - XTOOVVVVV
- A Merry Cow - Don’t Believe in Christmas
- Zamboni Drivers - Jesus Christ
- The Reptiles - Christmas Heat
I’m deviating from my Top 50 Albums of the Nothings list for a day to answer a special Christmas request, “could you please post the classic Vancouver alternative band Christmas cassette from 1986?” Why yes, I’d be happy to…
For the record, and since it’s the holiday season, I have to take a moment to admit something. I gave this cassette to my sister for Christmas in 1986, and then promptly stole it back. I think she may have owned it for a total of 5 minutes. Kate, if you’re out there… I’m not sorry.
Some FYI’s about this cassette:
It was put out by a Vancouver ‘zine called The Devil’s Advocate. During The Devil’s Advocate’s short life, they put out several awesome, and very rare, cassettes featuring hard to find Vancouver bands. This Christmas one is the only one I own. If you have one of the others, please let me know.
The “Christmas-ness” of the songs varies widely… from “very” (Bolero Lava), to “not at all” (Slow… included here, I believe, solely because they are covering a song by Nazareth.
Green River were not from Vancouver, they were from Seattle. When they broke up, their members went on to form Mudhoney and Pearl Jam.
Yes… You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch is on the cassette twice.
Christmas Heat, by The Reptiles, is my all-time favourite Christmas song.
Annual re-blogging of myself. Just in case you need some different Xmas music
Krucoff (and anyone else who loves classic West coast Canadian punk) alert!
Nomeansno - Revenge
There has always been a special place in my heart for Nomeansno. There are many reasons… not the least of which is that they are/were a great band. Additionally, in their early days when they were still based in Victoria, they would always bring another Victoria band to town to open for them. Because of that, I got to see a lot of other amazing bands… bands that I still enjoy to this day. I appreciated being exposed to new good music, and I appreciated the fact that they supported their local scene.
But, perhaps the main attraction for me was the fact that I identified with them. Unlike a lot of the other Punk bands of the time, Nomeansno seemed like the people I hung out with. We weren’t grotty art urchins like Johnny Rotten, or adrenalinized bodybuilders like Henry Rollins, or makeup wearing midgets like Glenn Danzig… we were suburban nerds. Sure, we did our best to hide it, but that’s what we were… chess club members… D&D playing outsiders… dudes who hung out at the library and constantly struck out with the hot librarian chicks… eggheads, weirdos and burnouts. You know the type. What we had in common with the rest of the Punks was anger. Not necessarily anger at being on the dole, or anger at someone surfing on our beach, or anger that no one appreciated just how psycho we were… more an anger at the whole bully mentality, whether we were talking about US vs Nicaragua, 10 Skinheads vs. 1 Black/Gay/Asian/Commie/luckless bystander or Them vs. you. You know… the whole getting beat up after school because you were smaller and/or slower and/or younger and/or not in with the in crowd. We weren’t all useless gimps, but for he most part we were much better off fighting with words than with our fists, and as such harboured a strong dislike for the testosterone fueled, might makes right, shaven gorilla yahoos we saw everywhere… often at the same Punk gigs we frequented.
Revenge captures that anger almost perfectly. “Revenge” is the battle cry of the nerd, and on a larger level, is the voice behind guerrilla warfare throughout history. If you can’t (because, perhaps, it would be foolish to) stand up to and fight the (insert your oppressor here) who just kicked your ass… why not blow up their car? In the immortal words of Ho Chi Minh, “You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win.”
Hmmm, I seem to have ended up going off on a bit of a Columbine-ish tangent there.
Anyway… WOOO!!! NOMEANSNO RULZ!!! FUCK YEAH!!!11!!
From the album, Sex Mad (Wrong Records)
