Top – Christmas songs
Bad child – JD McPherson
It’s been a good ten years since the guitarist JD McPherson and his band dynamited the spirit of old-school Rock n ‘Roll with force panache. Stronger than the pontificating boomers who can’t help but repeat to you at the top of their lungs how much they would have liked to “do Woodstock”, JD McPherson, him, it’s leather jackets, hairspray and rockabilly he misses. Between Little Richard and Eddie Cochran, the rocker’s music, certainly reminiscent of another time, but above all it is impregnated with all the ardor and the good-natured humor of a greased hoodlum who respects himself. As a good ambassador for the fifties JD McPherson, evidently impermeable to mothballs, decides in 2018 to bring back the good old Christmas album to the fore. Socks, it’s the title of the LP where you can hear the fabulous Mauvais garçon sumptuous rhythm and blues song with offbeat lyrics where a little rascal will settle his account with the big bearded man who never brings him any gifts. Christmas maybe, but Christmas for a bad boy. After all, it’s still Rock ‘n Roll…
There are no chimneys in the projects – Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
The projects refer in North American culture, to social housing built in urban areas, the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of the HLM in Europe’s suburbs. They are generally quite remote and are associated with high social misery and a high crime rate. Another characteristic of the projects , as the huge Sharon Jones quickly noticed, is that they have no chimneys, which makes the task of Santa Claus very difficult. With her group the Dap Kings , the soul singer playfully plays with the somewhat outdated image of Santa Claus distributing gifts through the chimneys, emphasizing how it is the product of a very different American reality from the hot neighborhoods. Indeed, the suburban neighborhoods, their garages, their gardens and their Christmas trees, Sharon Jones did not know them. It did not, however, prevent her from recording with her Dap-Kings an excellent Christmas album, It’s a Soulful Soul Holiday, with funk and soul colors where the, as amusing as touching, There are no chimneys in the projects stands out from the crowd …
The divine child is born – Siouxsie and the Banshees
Who would have thought that the pale, rebellious guys with a thousand rebellious locks of the iconic Siouxsie and the Banshees – a band quite rarely present in popular culture but highly ranked in the category “favorite band of your favorite band” – would one day throw their heart on an old Catholic Christmas carol. Indeed, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the mythical post-punk band that will have influenced the entire New Wave, the alternative rock, the trip hop and all the gothic teenagers in the world have one day recorded for French television a cover of ‘ It was born the Divine Child . If the choice of the standard is surprising, the fact that the band has made a successful version is even more so. Siouxsie Sioux’s canon voice makes one forget her awkward accent and the dark orchestration, pastiche of military marches, gives the whole a surprising majesty. The shift is accentuated by a lunar “clip” where the poor editor clearly had to deal with about four plans shot by the film crew. Plus, there’s Robert Smith from The Cure on cymbals. It’s a change from Tino Rossi …
Must be Santa Claus – Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is one of the few people of whom it can legitimate to affirm that had a thousand lives. By turns a beatnik with a nasal voice, the face of the American cultural revolution, a conveyer of U.S. musical tradition, a crooner, actor, poet, painter; the bard has crossed generations, roles, and eras while remaining just as elusive. Therefore, it is not surprising that in 2009 he released Christmas in the Heart, a Christmas album. In this collection of curious covers of Christmas classics where Dylan drags his more nasal voice for a penny – cigars and alcohol have been there – stands out hallucinated It must be Santa Claus. To a frantic polka rhythm, this repetitive standard that lists all the attributes of Santa Claus is inseparable from its disturbing and surreal clip where a man tries by all means to escape a Christmas celebration in a large house without really knowing why. Even when he sings Christmas, Bob Dylan is never really where you expect him. Elusive we tell you …
#Jingle #Bells #Rock #Liberté
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