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| Cover art by Jean-François Octave |
Sweeping up leaves on the driveway, I realized there were only six days until Christmas. I tugged at my fleece pullover and wondered where had the time gone. It seems like the other day it was October and the leaves were only beginning to change and we were on the eve of deciding whether democracy lived or died. Wherever the times goes, to the land of lost socks, the forgotten news bin of people in New Jersey mistaking planes for alien drones or the recycle bin of my desktop – I suppose it does not matter.
I found new Christmas music between cleaning out the garage, painting a room and browsing online sales that were rather lackluster this year. My soundtrack for much of the last month has been the double album Ghosts of Christmas Past (Remake) released in 2015 by the Belgian record label Les Disques du Crepuscule.
It is a mix of thirty-five tracks of offbeat, eclectic, amusing new wave and post punk Christmas songs. The artists on it include Aztec Camera, Tuxedomoon, The Durutti Column, Michael Nyman, Isolation Ward, Ultramarine and others. It is the type of album that holds your attention and takes surprising turns down streets unfamiliar. I think of it as wearing Raybans on an overcast day because why not?
It sure as hell beats another suffering
through of Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You. That song makes me think of the kind of person such as an ex who was so shallow that he would sing that song to himself and point at a mirror or any shiny reflective surface.
Some of my favorites on the album are:
Isolation Ward's Lamina Christus
The Wake's Jesus From The Block
Winston Tong's Twelve Days of Christmas. Who doesn't want seven Arab houseboys?
Swinging Buildings' Praying for a Cheaper Christmas
Marsheaux's We Met Bernard Sumner at a Christmas Party Last Night. The title alone makes it a favorite.
Those are only a few of my favorites, I have enjoyed listening to the album from beginning to end over and over. There is only one song that I dislike, The Arcadians' Write Your Letter. It stands out from the rest of the album as it sounds as if it is straight out of the 1960s. I hear it and think I should put a flower behind one ear, a feather behind the other, wear a fringe vest and hitchhike barefoot through Laurel Canyon.
My world is like a cloudy day of gauzy memories, the evening is fading, the lights are just coming on to battle against the night and anything is possible. I brush the bangs out of my eyes and finger the hole in my wool sweater listening to this album and it reminds me of my ghosts of Christmas past.
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| My old Nissan 200SX in the falling snow Christmas morning 1993. |
For a minute I am in the early nineties walking out the door of my mother's house on a dim Christmas morning. Snow showers are gushing flakes and I am there with my video camera recording all of it. I am twenty years old turning to look at the stickers for Amnesty International, the World Wildlife Fund and 99X on the back of my car. The earthy scent of the fallen pin oak leaves is overpowering and my hands are cold. Where has the time really gone?
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