A Christmas Gift For You

2022

Noëlle Hampton, Christmas Time (2001)
Noëlle Hampton's Jazz Up Your Country Christmas is a very good album released on CD over 20 years ago - and then largely forgotten. I am sharing just one song from the album for a couple of reasons. First, I hope that at least a few of you will be inspired to track the CD down. But, good luck with that, because the album was released during the dark days when the compact disc's dominance was under siege by file sharing services like Napster and Limewire, but before companies like iTunes and Spotify stepped in to fill the void. After a limited run (sold, if memory serves, through CD Baby), the album has never been reissued for download or streaming or whatever - and that's the other reason I'm sharing the track. You see, Noëlle Hampton later moved to my hometown of Austin, Texas, and remains active, so I'm hoping to goose her into putting it up on her Bandcamp page or something. Plainly put, it's worth saving! If Noëlle doesn't respond, maybe I'll share the whole thing next year...

Anyway, Jazz Up Your Country Christmas (2001) is a largely acoustic collection of traditional songs and pop standards. Noëlle Hampton is the marquee artist but, if you bother to look, she shares equal billing with André Moran and Nils Erickson, and all three of them play a variety of instruments. Between the kitschy cover art and the fact that the trio was based in San Francisco, you might expect the album to be a send-up of country music - or perhaps the swing revival that petering out about that time. It is not. It is tuneful, heartfelt, and lively - if relatively low-key. These were three young, earnest musicians recording Christmas music in their living rooms, and the warmth and musicality remain vivid despite the meager budget and spare arrangements.

Songs like "White Christmas" and "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" get some genuine twang. Standards like "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" and Nat King Cole's " Christmas Song" give the boys a chance to show off their jazz chops while allowing Noëlle a showcase for her soulful, expressive voice. But, the song I've chosen to spotlight is the album's lone original composition. Written by Hampton, "Christmas Time" is wistful, sweet, and melancholy - the great holiday song Sheryl Crow never got around to writing (or singing). And, Hampton sings the hell out of it, and she clearly recognizes its merit: She's recorded it two more times, for a benefit album in 2012 and as a single in 2014.

Before recording Jazz Up Your Country Christmas, Hampton had some brushes with stardom. In the 90's, she opened for artists as famous as Bob Dylan, Chris Isaak, and Wilco, and she earned a slot at Lilith Fair - the storied rock festival founded by Sarah McLachlan. A few years after Country Christmas, she and André Moran - also her romantic partner - resettled in Austin. Over the years, Hampton has played sessions with a number of notable local musicians, including Will Sexton and Charlie Fay, but her solo career had largely wrapped up by the end of the decade. After that, she and Moran formed a synth-pop band called The Belle Sounds, recording several albums and EP's to date.

So, Noëlle, if you are listening - this is one little corner of the interwebs that thinks more people deserve to hear your long-lost Christmas album, and here's one reason why.

Klark Kent, Yo Ho Ho (circa 1980)
It's not exactly common knowledge, but it's no secret that Police drummer Stewart Copeland is really "Klark Kent" - sometimes spelled "Klerk Kant" after DC Comics threatened Copeland with copyright infringement. Under that pseudonym, Copeland recorded a series of singles from 1978 to 1980 for the Police's label, IRS Records, some of which were included on a brief, eponymous LP in 1980. Later, nearly all of his solo recordings for IRS were, ahem, collected on Kollected Works (1995).

But, none of those included "Yo Ho Ho," Copeland's twisted yuletide tale. It would not appear until the 1990 commercial release of Just In Time For Christmas, an IRS holiday compilation. We are left to assume it was recorded roughly a decade earlier, but we have no evidence for or against. Regardless, "Yo Ho Ho" is a goofy hoot that conceals nostalgic sweetness with studied weirdness. "Everyone's home," Copeland sings. "It's so cold out there, it's so warm in here." What's not to like?

After its inclusion on Just In Time For Christmas, however, "Yo Ho Ho" receded from view. The album was deleted, and "Yo Ho Ho" was not included on Lost Christmas 3 (2016), which about half of Just In Time - albeit in digital form. "Yo Ho Ho" also appeared on Ho Ho Ho Spice: A Hospice Awareness & Benefit Project (2002) but, well, good luck finding that.

Your Vegas, Christmas And Me Are Through (2008)
Here's one of those singles from the internet age that only ever existed in digital format and is rapidly disappearing from the face of the planet. Yes, it's (barely) still available to stream on Spotify. But streaming? Come on, we're adults. And yes, it's on YouTube - but so is everything, up-to-and-including videos about how to properly maintain your cuticles. Your Vegas, lest we forget, were an English rock band from Leeds fronted by Coyle Girelli, and they were briefly a pretty big thing. Universal Republic Records released their debut album A Town And Two Cities in 2008, and they signed a bunch of now-regrettable cobranding deals with companies like Playboy and Pan Am. In fact, "Christmas And Me Are Through" is apparently most notable for its appearance in a Christmas episode of the TV show Chuck. But, the band never managed a follow-up and eventually petered out.

All the same, I think "Christmas And Me Are Through" is a neat little melodramatic, disaffected-white-boy ballad - and more than a little reminiscent of actual Las Vegas band the Killers. Christmas is over, we are to believe, because the singer's heart is broken. "Throw the presents out of my door 'cause she’s gone." Oh, boo hoo! But, all kidding aside, most of us have been there. Hell, I've experienced "Monday and Me Are Through" and "Tuesday And Me Are Through" and, well, you get the picture.

While hardly a household name, Coyle Girelli went on to some fairly lucrative, if not high profile gigs. After Your Vegas bit the dust, he fronted a new band, The Chevin, and he released his solo debut, Love Kills, in 2018 followed by his own holiday EP featuring a new version of "Christmas And Me." But, he also started writing and producing for other artists, including the worldwide #1 single "Heartbeat" by K-pop superstars BTS. Nice work if you can get it...

Babs Gonzales, Watch Them Resolutions (1955)
Last year, I teased that I might share this song - one of four holiday tales told by be-bop poet Babs Gonzales, and one of the rarest. This year, I follow through - even if it's just a bootleg of a bootleg. Of the other three, "Be-Bop Santa Claus" (1955) appeared on two fine CD compilations, Hipsters' Holiday (1989) and Christmas Past (1998), and "Teenage Santa Claus" (1959) pops up with regularity on public domain collections, while "Rock & Roll Santa Claus" (1958) is pretty rare. That's why I shared it last year, and I'll refer you there for more details about Babs and the fascinating character that he was.

"Watch Them Resolutions" appeared on a King Records reissue of the "Be-Bop Santa Claus" 7-inch, and it has never been properly reissued during the digital age, appearing only on a CD of dubious origin, Cool Whalin' - which is where I got my copy. "Watch Them Resolutions" features the same often-impenetrable hipster jive that makes the a-side so fascinating. Here, Babs is downcast on New Year's Eve - "sufferin' with the shorts" (i.e broke) and formulating his resolutions. He's gonna "save all my bread," "quit chasin' them chicks," "keep my vines (clothes) out the pawn shop," and "stop my land props from singing the blues" (that is, pay his rent on time). Most tellingly, Babs wants to "start tasting them cooler brands instead of Sneaky Pete" - that is, not drink less, but drink better.

Of course, it doesn't work out that way. After a few "blacks" (nights), Babs "lamps his bread" (takes his money out of the bank) and heads back to the bar to hang with his old friends. He falls for a glamour gal, only to be left broke and alone again. The next "bright" (morning) on the way to his "haim" (home), he wonders, "Am I really that much of a lame?" Apparently not, because he resolves again, "Next year, I'm sure I got to have better luck." Hope springs eternal, I guess.

The Screaming Tribesmen, Santa's Little Helper (1990)
Rockin' Bethlehem was a brief, two-volume series released in Australia just as what we've come to think of as "alternative rock" was coalescing. Not surprisingly, it's very Australian, and most people won't recognize most of the bands unless you're from Australia or a big fan of the big sounds produced Down Under - and maybe not even then. For what it's worth, I've already uploaded the complete Volume One and Volume Two to my YouTube channel, but I thought I'd start sharing out the tracks starting with one of the most Australian of the bunch - the Screaming Tribesmen's crazed, craven "Santa's Little Helper."

Sounding like an unholy admixture of AC/DC, the Lime Spiders, and a sociopathic Midnight Oil, the Tribesmen describe what amounts to a festive booty call. "Daddy, does Santa only come once a year?" they ask, and the answer is both yes and no. In this case, Santa's little helper is female, and she comes around once a year to deliver toys and favors of a different sort. By the time she leaves, "all the creatures are stirring." It's loud, silly, stupid - and a lot of fun.

As noted, Screaming Tribesman aren't well known outside Australia, and even in their native land they probably qualify as minor, if fondly recalled, figures. The band coalesced in the early 80's around lead vocalist and guitarist Mick Medew plus former members of punk band Fun Things, and this version of the band cut their landmark single "Igloo" in 1983. Later versions of the band included members of notable Aussie bands Radio Birdmen and the New Christs, and their biggest album was Bones + Flowers (1987), which scraped the bottom of the Australian charts. To hear more, check out Raven's 2003 compilation All Hail the Tribesmen: Anthology 1982-1993.

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