It's Beginning to Sound a Lot Like Christmas
By Richard Whittaker, December 24, 2014, 9:00am, Picture in Picture
Forget carols and devotional music. In my house, it's not really Christmas until we break out the A Charlie Brown Christmas CD.
There are endless reels of Christmas movies. But not so many movies about Christmas. This year has actually seen two documentaries about the most wonderful time of the year: First, Tommy Avallone's I Am Santa Claus, chronicling the year-round commitment of the men behind the big white beard. Jingle Bell Rocks explores another aspect of the season: Christmas music.
"Who wants to acknowledge that you love Christmas music?" asks seasonal tunes obsessive/director/producer Mitchell Kezin after he strip-mines the Christmas albums section at L.A.'s Amoeba records. The truth is, he quickly peels back the wrapping on a world of tunes and collectors.
This isn't an overly stuffed turkey of a movie, but an adorably and lovingly overflowing stocking, full of factual treats and personal delights. Kezin isn't ashamed to cut through the glitz and glitter to talk about the music industry's obsession with an extremely lucrative genre (for the longest time, the two biggest selling singles in America were "White Christmas" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"). However, he also lays bare his own tragic emotional connection to the music.
And that's why Jingle Bell Rocks! will make your heart grow three sizes this year. Whether it's Bob Dorough going back through the masters of recording "Blue Xmas" with Miles Davis, or Wayne Coyne explaining the sleep-induced story behind his movie/concept album Christmas on Mars, it's about a search for authenticity, for a record that feels real.
Where it gets really interesting is when the material moves beyond the glitz and chintz of outsider artists and half-drunk icons, slurring through old standards. Rev. Run's dissection of the cultural background to Run-DMC's "Christmas in Hollis" opens up a surprisingly charming and incisive cultural history of what it means to be black or brown or live in a vast city, and finding meaning in a holiday whose iconography is all European forest snowscapes and ruddy-faced white kids. It's about Clarence Carter, as he puts it, "being naughty" with "Backdoor Santa," or the visceral pain in the voices of Private Charles Bowens and The Gentlemen from Tigerland through the crackles and pops on a 45 of "Christmas In Vietnam."
So just remember: If Christmas songs are good enough for James Brown, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Leiber & Stoller, and John Waters, they're good enough for you.
Jingle Bell Rocks! (Oscilloscope Laboratories) is available on DVD and digital download now.
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