I’m going to see Emmylou Harris with my parents in Portland, Maine, in a few weeks, and so I want to prepare for the show by listening to some of her music. Trouble is, I don’t own any Emmylou Harris CDs. So I asked a friend if I could borrow hers. “I’ve got Emmylou’s greatest hits,” she said. “And Emmylou’s Christmas album.”
“I’ll take the greatest hits,” I said.
I don’t care how great Emmylou is — I don’t like Christmas music. I wrote about my dislike of Christmas music in a column last year, and it turns out a lot of people feel the same way I do: I received more calls and e-mails about my Christmas music column than any other column I’ve written. (Click here to read it.)
Anyway, the other day I was driving around and listening to 98.3 when I realized it’s almost time for them to start playing Christmas music non-stop. For a moment, I was filled with despair.
I know, it seems premature and a little bit crazy to start worrying about Christmas music in October. But last year 98.3 started playing Christmas music in November and, if you ask me, that’s what’s really premature and crazy. Especially because 98.3 insists on playing really crappy Christmas music that nobody in their right mind would ever want to hear. (Whereas Emmylou Harris is awesome, and so her Christmas CD is probably pretty good.)
I thought my Christmas music worries were unique to me, but it turns out that I’m not the only person worrying about Christmas music. This morning I received an e-mail from a reader in Scotia, urging me to address the issue. Of 98.3’s two-month Christmas music barrage, this reader wrote, “With the holidays once again approaching, I am going to send an e-mail to 98.3 asking them to please not play holiday music for that length of time. We have 15 million Americans out of work, no national health care yet and consumer spending is reported to be down, plus the Capital District has its highest unemployment rate in 26 years, does 98.3 really believe that playing holiday music for two months will cheer people up?”
I don’t know what they’re thinking at 98.3 — let’s torment our loyal listeners with horrible music? — but this is exactly the sort of campaign I can get behind. I’m here to tell you that Christmas music isn’t going to cheer anybody up this year. If anything, it’s going to make people more depressed, as they contemplate spending money they don’t have, and worry about whether their unemployment benefits will last through the holidays.
Of course, I don’t like Christmas music even during a boom economy. The main reason 98.3 should stop playing it is because it’s annoying, and nobody likes it.
By the way, I don’t hate all Christmas music. Some of it is good, and there’s a time and a place for the good stuff. Like, say, Christmas. I like singing “Silent Night” by candlelight on Christmas Eve as much as the next person — maybe even more.
PIXAR
I’m a big Pixar fan, as I’ve mentioned before. This week the film blog The House Next Door is discussing all of Pixar’s movies, and it’s pretty interesting.
In the introduction, Todd VanDerWerff writes, “Every year, Pixar will release a new film, and every year, it will garner exceedingly kind reviews, often competing to be the best-reviewed wide release of the year on review aggregating sites Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. The reviews will contain some variation on the phrase, ‘Pixar does it again!’ and champion the studio’s ability to come up with children’s films that also hold appeal for adults and tackle bigger themes than your usual computer-animated monstrosity. At the end of the year, said critics will often pen a few words about how Pixar can never get any love at the big races at the Oscars, even when their films win big critics prizes (as did Wall-E). And then the topic of Pixar as reliable geniuses, practitioners of a kind of ruddily American innovation, will be put back in the box until it is dragged out all over again the next time a Pixar film is released, to be repeated with much the same series of beats.”
If you’re a Pixar fan, you should check it out. Click here for more.
ALSO, HERE’S AN EVENT THAT SOUNDS COOL
This weekend, the Historic Albany Foundation is hosting a three-day art and music event called Flux at St. Joseph’s Cathedral, a gothic revival cathedral that was abandoned and nearly destroyed before HAF acquired ownership and began restoring the building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Anyway, the event runs Friday through Sunday (click herefor times, and to learn more), and looks like a good opportunity to see a really beautiful building.
Got a comment? E-mail me at sfoss@dailygazette.net.
