Missing the Chicago I Knew, More Musing on Christmas Music, and a Preview of Part III

This is the second installment of a yet-to-be-determined number in a series on the Christmas season at-large, focusing on the music of the holiday.

If you hosted Thanksgiving dinner, you are feasting on leftovers, today – the best part of hosting because so much of the meal is even better when reheated! Due to unforeseen circumstances, we had our Thanksgiving with my wife’s daughter, her husband, and the two other grandkids, on Monday of this week.

Not so long ago, I wrote of my affection for the Chicago, Illinois that I knew (but came to love less and less) for the better part of thirty years. 

One of the best things of that once-great city in the time I lived there was a particular terrestrial FM radio station – WXRT – by far, the best radio station in the city.¹

This is partly because ‘XRT (as it was affectionately known), played predominantly music of the Adult Album Alternative genre, and also featured local & regional acts that otherwise might not have received airplay anywhere else.

My favourite example of this is the band, Material Issue.² The band’s all-too-brief life and its end is nothing short of tragic, and a sampling of its catalogue leaves one wondering just what might have been.

It was also the best radio station because the on-air talent – morning man, the now late Lin Brehmer (“Your best friend in the whole world”), Marty Lennartz, Frank E. Lee, Johnny Mars – were exceptionally knowledgeable about the music being played, the history of the bands, and the backgrounds and influences of the members – in a way that didn’t insult the intelligence of the listeners. 

‘XRT’s programming was uniquely reflective of the sensibilities of its listening audience. Twice each week, listeners were treated to Lin’s Bin, several minutes of a most unique stream-of-consciousness take on various topics like my favourite, “Where Does the Time Go?”. Sadly, it won’t be found in the archives – I’ve been searching for it for years. 

Also twice each week, listeners could hear the latest about a new film on Goin’ to the Show with A Regular Guy, movie reviews from a real Chicagoan’s perspective. 

Once every week there was Local Anesthetic, a showcase for performers that were carving out a following and a niche in Chicago’s live-performance venues like The Metro, or The Double Door; and Saturday Morning Flashback was a highly enjoyable four hours of the most memorable music from any given year previous. 

The best weekly show and my personal favourite was Sound Opinions, hosted by Greg Kot,³ former music critic at the Chicago Tribune,⁴ and Jim DeRogatis,⁵ who was the music critic for the SomeTimes (the Sun-Times) from 1992 until 2010. Eventually, the show’s success locally attracted the attention of NPR, and its production moved to the local public-radio affiliate, WBEZ, where it thrives.

Sound Opinions was, and continues to be an hour-long deep dive into the latest from a singer/songwriter like Neko Case, or Adele (the first two years of her career, anyway – before she hit the big-time), as well as an exploration of the songwriters’ other works, their influences, and occasionally commentary on the rapidly changing industry – it was a fascinating peek behind the curtain, with some perspective from a couple of guys who had been there.

However, the best recurring special episode was and apparently still is the annual “Holiday Spectacular with Andy Cirzan” (the link is to last year’s spectacular). Mr. Cirzan’s life’s single preoccupation and consuming avocation is to find the most obscure, eccentric, and just plain bizarre Christmas music on the planet. Words cannot even begin to do these shows justice, so please give this one a listen, and then search the archive for shows of years past.

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My older sister, my older brother, and I grew up in a time when music – Christmas, or otherwise – wasn’t as pervasive in the lives of our parents as it is for many of their own children and grandchildren, today. If there was a soundtrack to the lives of our folks, they likely weren’t aware of it because they were busy raising a family. 

That isn’t to say that music wasn’t important, or that it didn’t have a place, just not one as prominent as for the generation that followed theirs, and the one after that. My dad (he, of impeccable taste) was fond of many of the songs of Roger Miller .

My mom had to have been the biggest fan of the Tenor, Mario Lanza, and they both very much enjoyed the music of Sandler & Young. 

The importance they did place on music, however, was enough to warrant a hi-fi system.

Eat your heart out, Don Draper!

Contained in that very stylish and fashionable cabinet was a vertically-recessed LP-sized turntable that could accommodate several LP vinyl discs stacked on a spindle, an AM/FM receiver, and two speakers on either end.

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If you are of a certain age, then you grew up with what I refer to as the Golden Age of Christmas music. Christmas-themed songs that gained popularity from movies and other pop-culture institutions from circa 1942 (just after America was drawn into WWII), until the end of the Korean War.⁶

Time was that unless you were Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, or maybe Barbra Streisand, Ella Fitzgerald, or Louie Armstrong, putting out an album covering overplayed (even then) Christmastime favourites was a dead give-away that your career was as good as over – that is, if making the move to covering standards from the Great American Songbook wasn’t (see Linda Ronstadt).

That is no longer true, though. The now late Jimmy Buffett put out two albums of Christmas music – popular holiday “classics” covered in his imitable style, and some new ones. My preference is for his first, Christmas Island, and this track in particular:

Of course, Christmas music is now a classification so large and encompassing of virtually every genre imaginable (even hip-hop, I suppose) as to almost be its own industry. 

If memory serves, the extent of Christmas music in our house was comprised of two, or maybe three LP vinyl discs of songs performed by Andy Williams, Nat “King” Cole, Bing Crosby, Percy Faith and his orchestra, the Ray Conniff singers, et al. and it was played as background while hosting a party, decorating the tree, baking cookies, or opening presents on Christmas morning.

The typical album of Christmas music in our collection

These records were all acquired with the qualifying number of fill-ups at a Standard Oil, a Texaco, or a Phillips 66 gas station. Also included in that meager collection of Christmas music was an album of holiday favourites sung by a number of players for the Minnesota Vikings.

For my own purposes, a distinction is made between what I consider to be Sacred music – that which is focused on the birth of the Saviour, the Hope and Peace it represents; and Music of the Yuletide – and within it, two categories. 

The first is that which celebrates the more secular aspects of the holiday, including the misplaced emphasis on romance during the season.

Hey! Thanks, Hallmark Channel!

The songs in this category best lend themselves to being covered by jazz musicians and combos, and judging by what is available on Spotify, there is seemingly an infinite number of these collections and albums that can be downloaded to create any quantity of playlists. Incidentally, I recommend all of them. 

While my preference is for that which I distinguish as Sacred, it is Music of the Yuletide that I listen to almost all the time between Thanksgiving and December 26. It’s what dominates my playlists on Spotify. It helps to keep the mood light, especially while working – since I work from home, it’s nice to have it playing in the background. Truth be told, it also reminds me of the Christmases of a much more simple time – a time I miss more and more.

Over the years, I’ve run across one or two new (to me, anyway) songs that fit into this category that quite pleasantly took me by surprise. This one by Tom Petty, for example:

…and: 

I only learned later that Ms. Musgrave’s is an updated cover of a much older song. Nonetheless, I chuckle every time I hear it!

The second category is that which celebrates national and/or cultural traditions, like The Nutcracker, which you may think is Russian in origin because the music for the ballet was composed by Tchaikovsky, but really, it is not.⁷ Regarding the music of The Nutcracker – the entire ballet⁸ – I absolutely love this decidedly updated interpretation of the suite:

Then, there’s the English Traditional Christmas pudding,⁹ as mentioned in the carol, “We Wish You A Merry Christmas”, though it makes reference to Figgy Pudding, which I have since learned is the same thing.¹⁰

This is also the treat the Cratchits enjoy in Charles Dickens’, A Christmas Carol.

As an exception that “proves the rule” (as it were), is that to the best of my knowledge there is no song or carol celebrating the Norwegian “delicacy” of Lutefisk (Lyoo-te-fisk).¹¹ If any of my readers are aware of even one such song, please let me know in the comments!

If you grew up in Minnesota¹² at the same time as I did, there was a very large Scandinavian population, mainly those of Norwegian and Swedish descent (and only one Finn of which I knew), and among the Norwegians, there was a holiday tradition of eating Lutefisk. Björn¹³ was the only one of my friends of Norwegian descent for whom this was an annual ritual – not even Günnar’s parents subjected him to it. 

Perhaps this will help illustrate what I cannot adequately describe:

This might have been an indication that its place as a tradition to be kept was becoming less secure – but I digress.

There is a collection that is the definitive example of this second category, and it is The Chieftains: The Bells of Dublin. There is not a bad track on the entire album, but my favourite is this:

Personally, this version is about a million times better than Browne’s original.

I’ve been a big fan of George Winston’s talent for decades now – and his album, December, was a source of comfort to me in the first year I was completely on my own – working in retail management, not as an associate on the sales floor.

As collection albums go, Windham Hill does it as well any other label – The Carols of Christmas has been part of every Music of the Yuletide playlist I’ve ever created – whether on Apple Music, Pandora, Spotify, or even way back when you had to burn your own CDs if you wanted a customized playlist.

So, if you haven’t figured it out by now, music is of tremendous importance to me, especially during the Christmas holiday season, regardless of the occasion – a party, exchanging gifts, or just to get yourself in what is commonly referred to as, “The Christmas Spirit” (so-called) – we’ll cover that and movies in Part III. The right music – the right kind of music – can make all the difference between something joyous, and something else that is not.

Thank you, dear reader, for your indulgence!

Until next time…

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Work on this installment started on the Monday after the first one published. I’ve been at this for eleven days! It is nothing like the original piece with which I began.
I hope you’re enjoying these, anyway! The final one is expected to be quite abbreviated, and I’m thinking I may try my hand at creating an audio version like Sasha Stone does with hers.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WXRT

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_Issue

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Kot

4. That menstrual-period-blood-stained rag

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_DeRogatis

6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_music#United_States

7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nutcracker

Ivan Vsevolozhsky, the director of the Imperial Theatres, commissioned Tchaikovsky to compose a double-bill program featuring both an opera and a ballet. The opera would be Iolanta. For the ballet, Tchaikovsky would again join forces with Marius Petipa, with whom he had collaborated on The Sleeping Beauty. The material Vsevolozhsky chose was an adaptation of E. T. A. Hoffmann's story ‘The Nutcracker and the Mouse King’, by Alexandre Dumas called ‘The Story of a Nutcracker’.[4] The plot of Hoffmann's story (and Dumas' adaptation) was greatly simplified for the two-act ballet. Hoffmann's tale contains a long flashback story within its main plot titled ‘The Tale of the Hard Nut’, which explains how the Prince was turned into the Nutcracker. This had to be excised for the ballet.[5]

8. When I was younger, I had it in my head that one day, my wife and I would establish a number of Christmas traditions for our children. One of those would be attending an annual performance of the ballet, which in this yet-to-be-realized family would indicate the start of the season. Yes, I know it flies in the face of my well-known (among my faithful readers, anyway) refusal to have children of my own. What – have you never known a hypocrite?

9. https://www.essentially-england.com/christmas-pudding.html

10. https://www.daringgourmet.com/christmas-pudding/

11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutefisk

Origin
Preserved fish provided protein for generations in a part of the world with a strong fishing tradition. It is not known when people first started treating dried fish with lye. The reason was probably that the lack of major salt deposits in the area favored the drying process for the preservation of whitefish, a process known for millennia.[3][4]

Preparation
The first step in preserving is soaking the fish for five to six days, with the water changed daily. The saturated lutefisk is then soaked in an unchanged solution of cold water and lye for an additional two days. The fish swells during this soaking, and its protein content decreases by more than 50 percent, producing a jelly-like consistency.

When this treatment is finished, the fish is saturated with lye and inedible, with a pH of 11–12.

To make the fish edible, a final treatment of another four to six days of soaking in cold water changed daily is needed.

12. In all likelihood, all the radios in the house were tuned to clear-channel eight-three-oh WCCO or ‘CCO, “Your Good Neighbor to the Great Northwest”, and the morning drive-time was Charlie Boone, and Roger Erickson.

13. Björn, and Günnar – not their real names (as if anyone would know the difference, anyway).