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Bummed Out Christmas!Bummed Out Christmas! (1989) is a wonderful and harrowing concept album about the dark side of the holidays. Suicides, after all, spike during the holiday season. Rhino Records, our host for this unhappy half-hour, collects 12 yuletide laments - some tragic, some comic - that document divorce, depression, death, larceny, murder, incarceration, several cases of drunk driving, and "Viet Cong all around me." The weather outside is, indeed, frightful.

Despite some reservations (detailed below), I chose Bummed Out Christmas! as one of my Top 20 Albums. Why? Certainly, it's an entertaining and revealing concept, but the songs back it up with verve and variety. These tales of woe come in all flavors: country, rock, soul, blues, gospel, and ragtime. In fact, nearly half of Bummed Out Christmas! ended up in my Top 100 Songs. These include garage rockers by the Sonics and the Wailers, who express explicit white outrage at the happiest of seasons. Meanwhile, Ron Holden and the Youngsters express black outrage in the only way permissible at the time - humor and self-deprecation. My remaining Top 100 track - the Staple Singers' "Who Took The Merry Out Of Christmas?" - expresses the black experience differently, reflecting 10 years of progress towards racial justice, as well as the Staples' religious perspective.

What remains is nearly as impressive. Johnny & Jon take us to Vietnam to experience the war through the eyes of two grunts (read more). George Jones narrates a desolate "Lonely Christmas Call" from the road. Clyde Lasley (and Santa Claus) take us on a tour through every brand of whiskey behind the bar. And, the Everly Brothers present us with what may well be the most depressing Christmas song in existence, "Christmas Eve Can Kill You." As one reviewer warned, "Do not listen to it with a loaded gun in the house."

Doug LegacyThe only thing wrong with Bummed Out Christmas! is that it could have been even better - or, at least, longer. Rhino Records was a fairly young label when they released Bummed Out Christmas! They hadn't yet fully embraced the compact disc, which was well on its way to dominating music sales. As a result, Bummed Out Christmas! suffers in comparison to the great collections Rhino just starting to unleash on holiday music lovers like us. For about a decade at the height of the CD era, we got marvelous compilations documenting holiday music in a dizzying variety of genres: country, jazz, blues, doo wop, reggae, punk, new wave, and swing (read more). Most of them included at least 18 songs, but Bummed Out Christmas! runs just 12 tracks totaling 34 minutes - roughly half the capacity of a compact disc. And, it's minimally annotated, at least compared to future Rhino releases.

My other complant if curatorial. On their compilations of historic music, Rhino had a propensity for throwing in a few newer tracks, apparently trying to prove the relevance of the compilations to the modern music scene. Usually, all this did was dilute the high quality of what remained. On Bummed Out Christmas! we are treated to nine tracks spanning 1954 to 1972, then three from 1984 to 1987. Happily, one of those - "Somebody Stole My Santa Claus Suit" by the Christmas Jug Band (a Dan Hicks side project) - is pretty great. Doug Legacy's "Christmas In Prison" is fine, too, but I feel compelled to point out that it's a cover of a song that belongs to its author, John Prine - and his 1973 original would've been a better choice. That said, Legacy's version is an extremely rare recording featuring a who's who of 70's West Coast studio talent, including Jim Keltner, Ry Cooder, and Van Dyke Parks. So, that's cool.

Meanwhile, Sherwin Linton's "Santa Got A DWI," an obscure 1986 single, is just plain silly. Still, all three latter-day tracks fit the "bummed out" theme like a glove.

Altogether, Bummed Out Christmas! tells a vivid, harrowing story, albeit one usually relegated to B-movie houses and dusty jukeboxes. The holiday season is fraught with emotional peril, and tidings of joy do not comfort the lonely, desperate, and depressed. But, good songs and good humor can help us resist the darkness, to not go gentle into that good night. [top of page]

Albums Albums

SongsEssential Songs

  • Christmas Eve Can Kill You (Everly Brothers, 1972)
  • Christmas In Jail (The Youngsters, 1956) Top 100 Song
  • Christmas In Prison (Doug Legacy & The Legends Of The West, 1984)
  • Christmas In Vietnam (Johnny & Jon, 1966)
  • Christmas Spirit?? (Wailers) Top 100 Song
  • Don't Believe In Christmas (Sonics) Top 100 Song
  • Lonely Christmas Call (George Jones, 1962)
  • Santa Came Home Drunk (Clyde Lasley & The Cadillac Baby, 1960)
  • Somebody Stole My Santa Claus Suit (Christmas Jug Band, 1987)
  • Who Say There Ain't No Santa Claus (Ron Holden, 1960) Top 100 Song
  • Who Took The Merry Out Of Christmas? (Staple Singers, 1970) Top 100 Song

Further ListeningFurther Listening

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