A Natural Santa

I'm pretty sure that when 4 year-old AKIM — the superstar responsible for "Santa Claus Is A Black Man" — warbled his wishes for "A Natural Santa" on the B-side of that holiday classic, he was not envisioning the joker above. I learned of this song via a Christmas cassette made for me by Lois Maffeo many years ago, and was thrilled when I finally found my own copy.

AKIM & The Teddy Van Production Company "A Natural Santa"

Enjoy!

A Long Winters Wonderland

The following Q&A originally appeared in Festive! #8, in slightly altered form. All photos of John Roderick as Santa at the 2004 Three Imaginary Girls Christmas party courtesy of Kelly O.

IN THE BLEAK MID-WINTERS:
Christmas With John Roderick Is The Best

John Roderick is forever associated with hot pink in my mind. Not that he’d ever wear such a shade – John, with his ample beard and proud Alaskan heritage, is just a little too manly to go prancing around in neon attire. But in the winter of 2003, I was painting the wall of a so-called loft (actually an unfinished airplane hangar), in which Mark and I would soon reside, an eye-popping pink. My soundtrack was an advance copy of When I Pretend To Fall, the second album from Roderick’s ensemble, Seattle indie rockers the Long Winters. Slapping up coats of “the Navy blue of India" (bright pink), Florida orange, buttercup yellow, and robin’s egg blue, I grew intimately familiar with its stellar songs: “Cinnamon,” “Prom Night At Hater High,” “Nora.”

To my delight, a year later, Mark and I are ensconced in a much nicer abode (with such frivolous amenities as heat and a kitchen) and The Long Winters have recorded a holiday song, “Christmas With You Is The Best,” featured – along with selections by Low, Jimmy Eat World, the Ravonettes, and eels – on Music from The OC Mix 3: Have A Very Merry Christmukkah!. In the spirit of the season, and because I don’t spend nearly enough quality time with him, I took John out to lunch at the Red Line coffee shop to chat about Christmas tradition. He ordered the pulled pork sandwich with a side salad and a Dr. Pepper, I enjoyed the grilled chicken on ciabatta, and coleslaw, and we both had a swell time.

* * * * *

JOHN RODERICK: [Picks up promo CD and scans track list] I haven't actually seen this thing yet… well, we're in good company."
FESTIVE!: How did you get approached to participate in this project?
JR: The OC has developed a nice working relationship with Barsuk Records, because one of the characters has a Death Cab for Cutie story line written into their character. Their love of DCFC is the way they establish their identity as an indie kind of kid. I think it's the lead kid… this one here… he has a Death Cab poster on his bedroom wall. So the story is that he's an indie rocker. Which has been a great way for the OC to introduce all of these indie bands into their plot lines and soundtrack. They certainly have featured much more prominent bands than The Long Winters. Major-label indie bands. If it doesn't upset the oxymoron gods to say such things like that.

FESTIVE!: Actually, I believe that since signing with Atlantic, Death Cab now qualify as a major-label indie band.
JR: True. Anyway, in the trickle down economics of that kind of Hollywood largess, it has now trickled down to us. And that's great. They commissioned us to do a Christmas song. We didn't already have one.

FESTIVE!: Has your music been featured on the show before?
JR: No. It has not. Although they have talked about it. But I think the music supervisor has 700 bands she could use for any given episode.

FESTIVE!: Yes, but most of them are not The Long Winters.
JR: That's true. But they are the Shins, or the Postal Service. Bands that have rockin' profiles. They've used Nada Surf, who are also on Barsuk, and friends of ours. I don't know the music of Jimmy Eat World or some of these other bands, so I'm not in any position to say anything about them.

FESTIVE!: Judging from my experiences as a record store clerk, appearing on a successful TV soundtrack could do great things to raise your visibility and sales.
JR: It could, although the composition of “Christmas With You Is The Best” was done with tongue firmly in cheek. So if that was your first introduction to the band, I don't know if that would lead you to our catalog.

FESTIVE!: Is it just you playing on this track?
JR: It's the bass player, Eric Svengold, and I. And he actually wrote all of the musical parts. My involvement in the construction of the music was helping him take the parts, and create a song out of them. There are so many different styles of being a musician, and I have a talent for arrangement. We were in the studio, and he was coming up with all these great bits. And, because of computers, it really easy to just input a bunch of loops, and then build a song out of it: “Okay, that's been going for a minute… let's change it to something else…” Then I just went and wrote some lyrics in the backyard. It was done in a day. From start to finish, it was executed in the space of a single day.

FESTIVE!: The lyric, about having a “non-traditional, non-denominational celebration,” and spending the day in bed, is more than a little cynical. Do you hate Christmas? Or was this is a character exercise?
JR: No, it wasn't that. The combination of writing a Christmas song, for an evening soap opera, on Fox Television, that caters to the teen/early-20s demographic – all four of those parameters are so far outside of where I normally operate, that I felt like I was addressing an audience that I only barely understood or identified with. Because I don't watch Fox Television. And I meet these kids that enjoy the show, in the context of being on tour, so I know who they are, and I like them. So I was trying to write a song for them.

Now that I'm over the age of 35, I'm constantly struggling not to lecture people when I talk to them. I'm becoming a curmudgeonly old father. And every time somebody that's 22 years old makes a comment that I think is dubious, I hear myself go into this fatherly tone: “Now, listen here, child, while I explain the ways of the world.” So the Christmas song I was trying, frantically, not to be this hectoring, father creature, while simultaneously railing against political correctness, and also pandering to a Southern California mall culture. And, also, all the while, unable to keep a creepy, pedophiliac tone out of it. I can't excuse the outcome, or explain it. I'm not ashamed, though.

FESTIVE!: Have you ever actually had sex on Christmas morning?
JR: Christmas has, for me – like for most people – has been a terrible experience over the years. Every Christmas, you're just holding on for dear life, praying to God that nobody gets into a screaming match. Hoping to get through the whole family thing, so you can go to the movies.



FESTIVE!: Oh God, and you’re sober, so you soldier through it without booze or drugs.
JR: Yup. For years, the routine was just to start drinking as soon as you could. And then, as soon as you finished with the folks, you could start smoking pot and just let the day fade away. But now I can't do that. So I go to the movies. I've had relationships that were completely ending right at Christmas. I broke up with a girl on New Year's Day a couple years ago, and Christmas was just a complete nightmare, each of us staring at the other, not recognizing the other any more. [Adopts exasperated voice] “Oh God, here are your presents.”

I think that I was – again, pandering to a teenage audience – trying to envision the adult Christmas Day that every teenager would maybe dream of one day having for themselves. Where they could make the decision to not deal with their parents, and stay home and “get jiggy wit it.”

FESTIVE!: So this is the grown-up John Roderick writing a song for the adolescent John Roderick about what his pending adulthood might hold in store, ideally?
JR: Yes. And completely inventing a reality. That maybe, even now, is a dream. “Oh, maybe one day my Christmas will look like this, too.” But every year, you get sucked back into, “Oh, everybody is flying in, and we're going to have a tree.” Whee!

FESTIVE!: Where does your family live?
JR: They're spread around. You know I'm originally from Alaska. My uncle and aunt and cousins are coming down to go to Port Townsend this year. My Dad lives in Tacoma, my Mom lives in Seattle.

FESTIVE!: I take it they're separated?
JR: Yeah, adding that divorced-parent vibe to every Christmas past, too.

FESTIVE!: Do they try and celebrate together, “for the sake of the family”?
JR: For years they did that. And it was the source of many total meltdowns on Christmas. Then they abandoned that idea.

FESTIVE!: And now they fight over the privilege of your company?
JR: Yeah. And have, for fifteen years. But that's a year-round activity. Any time you're with one parent, the other one is wondering why.

FESTIVE!: Does the Roderick clan have any family traditions at Christmas? Do you tether a moose to an evergreen in the front yard?
JR: When you live in Alaska, it's really easy to get into the Christmas spirit, because it's snowing and, of course, there are moose in the yard, and you're already bundled up in your winter clothes. So I had a three-piece, red wool, plaid suit that I would don annually on Christmas Eve, and go take fudge and cookies to all the neighbors. In my red plaid suit. I did that for many years. But down here? Nobody would take that seriously. So that tradition has been lost.

My sister was the one that really kept trying to keep Christmas alive. A few years ago, after my sister moved to California, my Mom and I decided that we were just going to pretend to celebrate Christmas. When people would call on the phone, we'd be like, “Oh, yes! Christmas!” But we would actually do nothing. We would not decorate, we wouldn’t get presents. We might put Christmas decorations in the windows, so people wouldn't torch the house, but that was it. And that worked out quite well. But now, my sister has decided to come up this Christmas, so that tradition is out the window now, too.

Over the last five Christmases, I have gone to the movies, either with Jewish friends, who are sitting around going, “We can't get Chinese food in Seattle on Christmas,” or with my various angry, atheistic friends – the ones protesting the W.T.O. every day of their lives.

FESTIVE!: Are you looking forward to any holiday blockbusters in particular?
JR: No. I hate the movies. But you go, out of a sense of escapism. Especially now, living in a drug-free world, the movies are the only place I can go and have my senses assailed for two hours.

FESTIVE!: Maybe it’s time to follow your sister to California. I mean, you're involved with The OC now. That makes you a Hollywood player.
JR: It's so funny. Several years ago, in this town, the idea of commercializing your music, just in the form of selling it as a recording, was really questionable. Everybody was so anti-merchandise.

FESTIVE!: Five years ago, the Lashes would have been stoned to death in the middle of Pine Street.
JR: Three-quarters of the bands in this city would have been. The sort of naked ambition that bands in Seattle have now, and the way they feel completely justified about sending out weekly e-mails, about how their guitarist had a really satisfying shit two days ago, and sending it out to you. “Here are more cute pictures of ourselves.” Five years ago, bands were reluctant to talk about themselves at all, except with some form of lengthy apology, for caring about anything other than music in the purest form. And now, it's changed, culture-wide, so all these things, like The OC. There are tons of opportunities like this. “Oh, Starbucks wants to do this” or “We got an offer from Target.”

FESTIVE!: Wow, you mean you might be able to earn a decent wage doing what you like?
JR: It’s an opportunity to get paid a check. There's a Long Winters’ song selling Ford cars in a commercial in Spain. There's a long history of that being okay abroad, but not at home. In Japan, Michael Stipe will sell ground-up baby brains as an anti-aging cream. But here in the States, he has to pretend he's above it all. I'm still struggling to make the transition to this new way of thinking. “Oh, it's okay to just use your music and sell it?” I'm cool with that. In a sense, I always was.

FESTIVE!: Plus, “Christmas With You…” is a special instance, where you got hired to write on spec. It’s not like you whored out an existing Long Winters’ song, about deep, painful loss, to shill personal pan pizzas.
JR: Most of my songs are written as coded messages to ex-girlfriends, telling them what all their problems really were, because I couldn't find a good way to say it when we were dating. They're all like, “You know what? Here's your problem…” put to music.

FESTIVE!: Are there any particular Christmas songs of which you are especially fond?
JR: This is going to sound strange, for a variety of reasons, but Harvey Danger has a Christmas song that they have finally released this year, “Sometimes You Have To Work on Christmas (Sometimes).” And not only do I think it’s a great Christmas song, I think it's a great song, period.

Several years ago, before it had been released, when I was a member of Harvey Danger – this is in 2000 or 2001 – I actually went home and taught myself how to play it on piano. And I played it for Sean [Nelson] as kind of a Christmas present, and then we went out, and he and I played it at some kind of party. But in the process of learning it, I felt that it was one of Harvey Danger's best songs. The recorded version has an ending that feels a little tacked-on. It could have been a minute shorter, and a minute better. But of all the Christmas songs I’ve heard, that's the one that best tells the story of being young and alone on Christmas. It’s just really well done. Enough so that I think it stands up any time of the year: It isn't just for Christmas any more. That one has to really be at the top of my list of Christmas songs.

When they were on a major label, they submitted that song, and the label didn't know what to do with it. They were like, “Duh… maybe we'll release it this summer.” The label blew it. It should have been a staple for the last five years, but instead, it never got released. It's great the band is doing it now.

FESTIVE!: So the version on their CD single is a recent recording?
JR: No. They did it in 1998. Long before I was in the band. Their first record was already done, and they had been signed, and were in the midst of their big rock explosion. But it was before they had started work on the second album. It's an older tune.

The lyrics are a real accomplishment for Sean. A lot of times, Sean crams his songs full of images and vocabulary and intricate rhymes. This one is just a narrative tune. And every image in the story resonates, especially with anyone who has ever had to work on Christmas.

FESTIVE!: Are there any Christmas songs you hate? I ask because, as much as I love Christmas music, “The Little Drummer Boy” sends me screaming for the hills.
JR: Oh really? I really like “The Little Drummer Boy.” It always felt kind of like Rachmaninoff, translated into the dumbest possible context. A nice, driving, Russian-sounding march.

I had two Christmas song experiences recently. I went to a Thai restaurant the other day. And they were playing a looped collection of Christmas Muzak, Andy Williams crooning “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” and so on. I was the only person in the restaurant, so when the waiter came over, I asked, “Can you turn off the Christmas music? I'm the only patron here, and I have to assume that you and everyone on staff are Buddhists. Can we dispense with the charade?” And he was like, “No, I'm afraid we can't. It's Christmas, and we need Christmas music.” So that was a nightmare.

And then I went to the Levi's store, because they're selling corduroys again. I didn't find any pants, but in the fifteen minutes I was there, they were playing Christmas songs by Creed and Weezer and Green Day. Happy, pop-punk Christmas songs. And that was hell, too. So I think I really hate all Christmas music, with the exception, perhaps, of “Little Drummer Boy” and that Harvey Danger song. Those are the two I could hear over and over.

FESTIVE!: Well, like it or not, you added to the canon now.
JR: And if I hear it in a Thai restaurant in a couple years… [chuckles]

Silver and the Golddiggers

This morning I interviewed Peter Zaremba about the Fleshtones' Christmas record, Stocking Stuffer, holidays on The Cutting Edge, and other subjects. He was a total doll and completely cuckoo for Christmas; I'll get our chat up ASAP. At one point, the subject turned the song "We Need A Little Christmas" from Mame, which in turn led to a discussion of The Golddiggers' amazing version of same, which is a must for any seasonal party mix.

The Golddiggers "Need A Little Christmas"

Does anyone know if the Golddiggers ever made a Christmas TV special? My knowledge of them is embarrassingly scant, and many of the clips on YouTube seem to be "Where Are They Now?" or "The Golddiggers... Today!" type nonsense.

Smash Hits' "Happy Christmas from the Stars"

One of my all-time favorite items in my holiday record collection actually features very little music. A flexi-disc packaged with a 1982 December issue of Smash Hits (the other best '80s music mag, along with Trouser Press), "Happy Christmas from the Stars" was the brainchild of the mag's then-editor Neil Tennant (Pet Shop Boys). The two-sided record features silly holiday greetings from a slew of pop contenders, as well as multiple adverts for Black Levi's.

The cast includes ABBA, ABC, Adam Ant, Bananarama!, Bucks Fizz (who lose big points for saying they "hate" Christmas), Captain Sensible, Culture Club, Duran Duran, Fun Boy Three, Haircut 100, Imagination, The Jam, Madness, Musical Youth, the Police, Steve Strange of Visage, Toyah, and Ultravox.

My favorite participants are, of course, the less-famous ones. Mari Wilson, "The Neasden Queen of Soul," has been a staple of my holiday mixes for many years; her signature hit "Just What I Always Wanted" may not be specifically about Christmas, but it certainly celebrates gift-giving. And then there's ska revival outfit the Pirahnas... back when my record collection was very small, their 45 "Tom Hark" was in heavy rotation. Not for the A-side, which was a minor UK hit, but its flip sides, "Boyfriend" and "Getting Beaten Up," both micro-anthems in my small circle of friends. (Sadly, the Pirahnas didn't hold up so well once my tastes matured, but I still enjoy them in small doses.)

Unusually for a flexi-disc, "Happy Christmas..." has grooves on both sides. So I broke it up accordingly here. Enjoy!

"Happy Christmas..." flexi Side A

"Happy Christmas..." flexi Side B

Disclaimer #1 - like many sound samples on "Festive!" this is just a simple needle-drop. I make no apologies for the fidelity.
Disclaimer #2 - I AM sorry the advertising on the page that hosts the links isn't more queer-friendly. Sorry dudes!

The Singing Saws speak!

One of the most exciting Christmas music releases of the 2008 season has go to be The Singing Saw at Christmastime (on Merge), a holiday collection assembled by musical anthropologist Julian Koster (The Music Tapes, Neutral Milk Hotel). The half-hour set includes haunting renditions of “The First Noel,” “Silver Bells,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and nine other traditional tunes.

Listen to “Jingle Bells” from The Singing Saw at Christmastime.

As Julian goes to great lengths to make clear in interviews and press materials, human beings do not actually play the saw, like they would a drum or a piano. Saws sing of their own free will, and can be coaxed into doing so by any good-natured mortal who cradles them gently in a lap, and massages them with a bow. Along with his pal Nesey Gallons, Julian traveled to Manitoba, Canada earlier this year to capture the Yuletide preparations of some especially musical saws – and brought along some of his own saw friends to join in the fun.



In keeping with the spirit of the season, Mr. Koster and two of his saw companions planned to spend much of November and December on a caroling tour of the East Coast, South, and Midwest. Each night, the well-wishers visited multiple homes and performed a brief set of seasonal favorites. (For complete details, go here.) FESTIVE! caught up with Julian as he made his way towards Houston, TX in early November.

How have your visits to each city been going?
It’s been wonderful. It’s been ten or eleven nights of caroling so far. This has been one of the nicest traveling adventures I’ve ever had.

How many homes have you been able to visit each night?
It’s varied, depending upon the length of the drive. My friend who is organizing it, he is sort of the General, telling us where to go each night, and he what order. He strategizes how many houses we can possibly go to. I haven’t tried to do more than six in one night, so far. But we might. Up till now, it seemed that, in order to spend enough time in each place, once there were that many homes, it was better to just encourage people to go to one of the other houses.

Plus that promotes community, and allows folks to make new friends.
A lot of times, what I’ve imagined will be going on when I knock on the door and walk in has been very different from what’s really happening. There have been several places where it just seemed like it was this group of people who’d known each other for a long time. But when I left, and thought about it, and talked to my friend who is traveling with me, he said, "I don’t think any of those people knew each other at all."

They just came to see you and the singing saws.
Yet they ended up being together, with cookies and mulled cider, and listening to records and talking. The way this has worked out is that usually the General – Grant, back in Athens – actually, now he’s the ambassador… but he tells everybody a window of about an hour, or hour and a half, of when we’ll show up, because it’s a little hard for us to know exact times, and get around. So there is this period of time where everybody is going to spend an hour, or an hour and a half together. It feels neat. That’s been part of the really nice feeling that’s been enfolding this, that people are meeting each other.

Did you go caroling a lot in your youth, or is this a caroling first for you?
The truth is, I don’t believe I ever did carol when I was a child. I have memories of carolers passing my house. And those are nice, early childhood memories; there’s this sort of dreamy, surprising quality that surrounds the whole feeling, and my sense of what caroling is.

I realize that this is not a tour, nor even house concerts, per se, so you don’t have a rider. But are you being greeted with cookies and wassail and eggnog everywhere you go?
A lot of cookies. A lot of mulled cider, and other delicious things. I have come up with a theory about why Santa Claus is fat: It’s because of all those cookies we left out for him. Nobody leaves him anything but milk and cookies! And there he is, racing around the globe, working up tremendous hunger, and stuffing his face at every stop. And he feels obligated to eat them, because it would break a child’s heart if Santa didn’t touch their cookies. And then they made that Coca-Cola commercial, which probably didn’t help matters.

Well, you know how Cookie Monster now has his modified position on cookies? Where they’re a “sometimes” treat? Maybe we could introduce the idea to children that they should also put out some carrot and celery sticks, so the reindeer have something to snack on. And Santa could nibble those, and just stuff a cookie in his pocket for later.
Put out a nice field green salad. That’s a good idea.

I’ve only known one singing saw in the past, so correct me if I’m wrong: Carpentry saws can be played so that they sing, but not all singing saws are suited for carpentry, correct?
Almost every carpentry saw in the world can sing, and most of them sing beautifully. But a lot of singing saws… gosh, I don’t know if I should say this. I don’t want to give away any trade secrets. It’s my feeling that a lot of singing saws are just saws that were recognized by certain people for their versatile singing abilities. And those folks figure out who manufactures which of those saws, and which ones have a nice range and sing well, and then they buy those and re-sell them. I could be wrong, but that makes sense. So you’re kind of supporting someone who knows about the phenomenon of saws that sing, and has known about it for a long time, and who helps to let other people know. And what they’re doing for you is providing a saw you know will be a good singer once it gets comfortable in your lap. It’s a good thing. It’s not a bad thing in any way.

Right. It’s not like a saw slavery ring. It’s more like saw job placement.
It’s just recognizing good singers, and then helping the people who might want to encourage them to sing to find saws that will be easier to encourage.

Have you been anywhere terribly cold yet on the tour?
In Texas, it’s lovely. I mean, “it’s lovely if you like warmth.” I actually love winter. But we went up into St. Louis, and we have to go back up north again. And we were freezing! Because we’re borrowing a little standard Fiesta, which is tiny and has amazing gas mileage. But what we didn’t know is that the heat is broken. And it’s not a very airtight car. We were shivering, our teeth were chattering. I would go in to a home to carol and I couldn’t feel my toes. So we’re going to try and get the heat fixed while we’re in Texas.

I asked because climate – humidity, temperature, etc. – can effect any instrument, be it the human voice or a guitar. How does climate influence the singing saw?
Humidity effects the treble saws. They get very cranky when its humid. And they sometimes don’t like to sing at all. It’s difficult to convince them to sing when it’s humid. But the cold is fine. Sometimes, the cold helps them. The thing about saws is they sing very differently depending on where they are anyway. They sing differently in every room, every space. So the cold is just another factor that can make them behave differently, just like people. And it’s usually a nice thing.

When you were working on the album, did you notice any patterns in terms of the repertoire the saws preferred? Are they drawn to particular tempos or keys or moods? There don’t seem to be a lot of peppy tunes on the album.
Oh, there are some on that record, like “Frosty the Snowman” and “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town,” those are quick ones. But it really depends on the saw. One of my littlest saws, Thrifty, seems to like fast songs more than some of the others. There’s also my influence on them to consider a bit, because some of my favorite songs are on the comforting, angelic side of things. I listen to a lot of Hawaiian records, things like that. That’s the sort of music that makes me happiest, and the saws are always trying to please the human around them. They’re like children in that way. Their mischievousness is very innocent, and they’re very sweet creatures – despite the fact they’re made of metal and serrated.



How many of the saws are out on the road with you right now?
Only Thrifty and Badger. Everybody else was tired, and in different parts of the country. I live up in Maine, but I’ve been spending most of my time in Athens, GA for the last few months. Some of my saw friends are up in our house, on the island we live on in Maine. And others are scattered around Athens. So only two came with me.

And I imagine it’s pretty tough for an unescorted saw to travel on a commercial airline these days.
Yeah, it would be hard for them to travel alone after September 11.

I collect a lot of esoteric Christmas music, but to the best of my recollection, there hasn’t been much of a singing saw presence in Yuletide music to date. Am I overlooking something prior to your album?
Not that I know if, and I’ve always looked for it. Now I have to point out that my concept of record shopping is a bit stilted, because I’m usually in thrift stores. But I’ve been waiting my whole life to find a singing saw record in a thrift store, and I still haven’t found one. And I know if I find it, I’m sure it will be one of my favorites. That’s why I like to encourage my saws to sing on recordings. Sometimes that the nicest motivation to make a record, if you want it to exist and it doesn’t. A lot of the things I do happen for that reason: I want that record, I want it to exist. Sometimes I think I’m making the record I’d like to just find somewhere.

But I know there must be [singing saw Christmas records]. I’m often told of a woman in New York who seems really nice, called the Saw Lady, and I get the sense she records a lot. And has probably made a Christmas record. But I don’t know for certain. (Ed. – She has, and it’s called Hark! An Angel Sings.)

I have albums of Christmas ukuleles and music boxes and even the zither, but I always yearned for a holiday singing saw record, so I’m very appreciative you made this one.
I’m glad it exists. I’ve just had the experience of being in my bedroom in Maine, and having a saw singing in my lap, and listening to them sing Christmas carols. I’m going to try and record them doing more carols in the future, because I feel like I’d like to express the range of things they can do even more fully. The saws love celebrating Christmas, and the sense of memory, the funny feeling of hearing something from another time and place that exists in their voices, makes me very happy around Christmastime.

Why did you choose to record in Canada?
The saws that we recorded in Canada, there was a barn up there. I have some friends with a big workshop, and they suspected this went on in their barn on Christmas Eve. So we went up, and went about the very delicate process of asking the saws if it was okay if we recorded them. And gaining their trust. I brought my saws, to act as intermediaries. And they were really nice about it, and let us observe and record it. And Manitoba has a lot of nice communities where things are a bit more the way that they were a long time ago.

Which ties in nicely with the air of nostalgia that the sound of singing saws evoke.
Exactly. And the fact that is was a nice old-fashioned barn, and that things around us were being done in a manner not so different from how they were done 100 years ago.

What is a suitable Christmas gift for a singing saw? What are you giving your saws?
They like bows, and they like rosin. Because it is like petting, it’s petting that draws the song in them out. It soothes them, and encourages them, and makes them feel… well, the nice way being petted makes one feel. They’re crazy about bows. They are not so crazy about mallets, for the record. Some people play saws with mallets, and they don’t much care for it.

There is a tremendous range of prices for bows and rosin, so that will keep you busy for a long time, providing them with that. And they like freedom. Like anybody else, they like to have the things that make them special acknowledged, and they like to have the freedom to play. And they like to sing. For Thrifty and Badger, who are on tour with me now, this is about all they could ask for: Getting to sing this much, and see the country.

KEXP Yule Benefit 2008

KEXP 90.3 FM Seattle, where I DJ on Wednesday mornings, has announced the line-up for its 6th Annual Yule Benefit on Dec. 12 & 13. TWO nights with Shearwater? Plus Thao & Get Down Stay Down? Tell Santa he can skip my house, that's plenty of seasonal cheer for me. Complete details and line-up here.

Also, I'll be reminding folks throughout the season, but I am DJing on KEXP on Christmas Day from 10 AM to 2 PM PST. Expect to hear lots of holiday music, old and new, plus some of my favorite selections from 2008. Listen to me while you open presents, sip wassail, or gnash your teeth until dinner time. (Remember that old Everything But The Girl video: "Every day's like Christmas Day without you/It's cold and there's nothing to do"?)

Speaking of Divine

For those of you who don't own a copy of the original issue, please savor the original cover of FESTIVE! #9, drawn by Freddy, King of Pants.

Oh John, not on Christmas!

(This was the cover story for Issue #9, the last print edition to date.)

FESTIVE TROUBLE:
The FESTIVE! interview with John Waters

After the woefully overexposed Jesus and Santa Claus, John Waters has done more to promote Christmas cheer than any individual in history. In one of the pivotal scenes from his 1974 movie masterpiece, Female Trouble, protagonist Dawn Davenport (portrayed by the immortal Divine) wreaks havoc on Christmas morning when she doesn't receive a new pair of cha-cha heels. In 1985, Waters penned the heartwarming essay "Why I Love Christmas" for National Lampoon (reprinted in the must-have anthology Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters), touching off a nationwide search among desperate record collectors for an original copy of the 1974 single "Santa Claus is a Black Man" by preschool-age soul sensation AKIM & the Teddy Vann Production Company. And in his 1997 guest appearance on The Simpsons, he used a remote control Santa Claus robot to rescue Homer and Bart from a herd of murderous reindeer.

Most recently, the celebrated filmmaker, artist, and actor (check out his star turn as a pesky tabloid journalist in Seed of Chucky), gifted his adoring public with the compilation album A John Waters Christmas. Running the gamut from the emotionally-fraught "Little Mary Christmas" by Roger Christian and the raucous R&B romp "I Wish You A Merry Christmas" by Big Dee Irwin and Little Eva, to the flat-out vulgar "Here Comes Fatty Claus" by Rudolph and Gang, and the digital debut of "Santa Claus is a Black Man," this twelve-track selection is just about the best gift any Waters fan could wish for. Aside from a new pair of cha-cha heels, of course.

Mr. Waters graciously took time out of his busy schedule to chat Christmas with FESTIVE!. Our conversation, conducted via phone from Seattle to New York City, appears below verbatim, minus some light editing for legal reasons and/or in the interests of making your editor appear a little more on-the-ball than he was in the moment.



FESTIVE: I have not been this giddy to talk to someone in I-don't-know how long.
JOHN WATERS: Great, good. You don't hear that word much any more.

FESTIVE: Giddy, swell… all the good words are gone. Replaced by words like "re-purpose."
JW: Mm-hmm. Eew!

FESTIVE: You are directly at fault for the inception of FESTIVE!, because I started making my own Christmas cards, as per your instructions, years ago.
JW: That's good. Those are the only ones people save, pretty much.

FESTIVE: But I got to a point where I was making three or four hundred.
JW: Well, I send 1,600. Of course, I have them printed, but I make them.

FESTIVE: Oh my God. Well, I was doing each and every one by hand…
JW: Each one is unique! Well, that's really pushing it.

FESTIVE: So that's why I started the fanzine. But enough about me. Let's talk about your Christmas record. What were some of the particular challenges of licensing these songs, particularly "Santa Claus Is A Black Man"?
JW: I worked with Tracy McKnight, who also did my A Dirty Shame album. And she is basically like a private detective. First of all, I had to find it. I couldn't even find the record. Anywhere. Even with the record companies. So I bought it on eBay, for a lot of money…

FESTIVE: How much?
JW: Oh, not a lot. Like, $100 or so, for a 45. But the real reason I needed to buy it was to find out who to approach! We couldn't find the information, what was written, anywhere. And you have to make two deals when you put out a record. You have to do one with the writer, and one with the publisher of the song. So you had to find these two people, who were fairly obscure.
With this particular song, the record had not ended well, when it came out, and, as far as I could tell, the parties were estranged. So we had to make a deal with both of them, when there was a lot of bad blood. But it worked out. Other times, we talked to people in nursing homes. To find these people, and talk them into it, you have to be like a private detective.

"Santa Claus Is A Black Man" is a song I remember from the '70s in Baltimore, and really loving it, thinking it was a liberated song. And in my neighborhood, if Santa Claus had been a black man, things would have been a lot more fun, really. So it's like a treasure hunt, an Easter egg hunt. You have to find where things are hidden. Because I tried to pick songs that most people didn't know about. Or, I wanted to surprise people that were cultists and music buffs.

FESTIVE: You got me. I only knew three selections out of a dozen.
JW: You probably knew Tiny Tim… Hell, I had never heard "I Wish You A Merry Christmas," by Big Dee Irwin and Little Eva, until I started working with [Associate Producer] Larry Benicewicz. He worked with me on finding all these songs. He's a record lunatic, that knows every record in the world. And I knew a lot of them, but we listened to a thousand Christmas carols to find these.

FESTIVE: Was there anything you wanted but didn't get?
JW: Nope. We got every one we wanted. It was hard. Sometimes, at the very last minute, you thought, "Oh God, this one is gonna fall through?" Because… it used to be that, if you couldn't find the person, you'd take an average price that the other tracks went for, and put it in a bank account, and say "contact us…" but they won't let you do that any more.

FESTIVE: Really? European labels still do that.
JW: Well, we're not in Europe.

FESTIVE: No, we're not… although we may be relocating soon. Did you ever consider including "A Natural Santa" by AKIM & the Teddy Vann Production Company on the CD, too?
JW: No, and I don't know that I know that one.

FESTIVE: It's the flipside to "Santa Claus Is A Black Man.
JW: [Sounding awed] Is it? I have to listen to that.



FESTIVE: You get that 45 out and turn it over: [Singing] "I want a natural Santa Claus/that wears an afro just like me…"
JW: Ooh, that sounds great. Well, that will be on the sequel.

FESTIVE: My only complaint about that one is there is a little too much of the background singers on it.
JW: You mean like Chipmunks-type?

FESTIVE: No, I think it might be Mrs. Teddy Vann, trying to channel the Supremes.
JW: Well, I still want to hear that. Stupidly, I never played that side. I was so happy to get it, but we had to send the record off immediately to find the people who made it.

FESTIVE: I wish I had known you needed one. I bought mine for $3 via mail order, from some tiny store in Georgia that had no idea what it was or why I wanted it.
JW: Sure! That's always the way it is. It's when you're looking for it that you have to pay. Like anything. You go in thrift store and find something for ten cents, and then go to New York, where someone else found the same thing, and it's priced at $1,000.

FESTIVE: In your "Why I Love Christmas" essay, you discuss why you hate most classic Christmas films, i.e. It's A Wonderful Life, etc. Are there any recent holiday films that don't make you wretch?
JW: Well, that porno movie, It's A Wonderful Ass. I liked Bad Santa. But, generally, Christmas movies are very cloying. One that I love is Christmas Evil – which is going to be re-released, with the original title, which is You Better Watch Out – by Lewis Jackson. That's the best Christmas movie ever, a really smart, good film. But other than that…

I usually don't go see Christmas movies. They seem like they would make me hate Christmas – and I love Christmas. I'm very secure in my love for Christmas. I don't need to be reminded of the maudlin parts of it by Hollywood. I just never thought that, as a genre, Christmas movies were that promise. It seems so limited. And people are always so touchy at Christmas. You can't do anything – and I think it's the time when you should do the most, because half of America is going insane because it's Christmas.

FESTIVE: If I ruled the world, the Christmas morning debacle in Female Trouble would be a whole film unto itself.
JW: That could be. Like, there's one song on this album, called "Here Comes Fatty Claus," which is an anti-Christmas song in a way, but a funny one, like a hillbilly sing-along: "Here comes Fatty with a sack of shit." I had never heard the song, but certainly there are people who feel that way, who go into deep depression because they end up owing so much money, and the rest of the year they're working to pay off really bad presents that even the kids didn't like. So Christmas can be discouraging, if you don't plan properly.

FESTIVE: Well, you yourself instructed us, twenty years ago, that if you aren't bankrupt by New Year's Eve, you aren't celebrating hard enough.
JW: Or you haven't really captured it properly. That's how most stores survive, anyhow: Christmas. It's like being a summer store in a beach town. You only have three months to make a profit. Without Christmas, most stores would be out of business, because that's when the profit comes in, for the whole year. Divide it up.

FESTIVE: And just think about specialty food merchants like Hickory Farms and Harry & David. Where would they be without Christmas?
JW: There are all these stores that I'm amazed by where it's Christmas, twelve months a year, 365 days a year. There's one in Provincetown – at the beach! – and it feels so creepy to go in, in July. Who goes in there? And there are no ironic Christmas gifts…

FESTIVE: Exactly! It's all hand-blown glass ornaments.
JW: Who would go on their summer vacation and buy cutesy Christmas gifts? Or decorations? That's something I don't get… one of many things I don't get.

FESTIVE: Were you in Provincetown this summer?
JW: Oh yeah, I'm there every summer.

FESTIVE: Did you catch the Dina Martina show?
JW: Yes! Very funny. I knew [Dina] from Seattle, when I had an art show out there. [Dina] is doing great right now.

FESTIVE: The Dina Martina Christmas Show is hitting New York City this year.
JW: I know… in December, when I'm not going to be here. But I'm going to try and see it. [Dina] sent me the dates.

FESTIVE: You should add The Dina Martina Holiday Album to your seasonal CD collection, too.
JW: Oh, I will. I'm a fan. I caught the act in Provincetown as soon as I got there.

FESTIVE: I know that the Christmas morning scene in Female Trouble was partially inspired by the anecdote about your grandmother being crushed under a Christmas tree…
JW: Yes. Which I exaggerated.

FESTIVE: Of course. That's what we do for dramatic effect. On that same note, was there ever a Christmas gift that you really wanted but didn't receive? Or perhaps you were given an unacceptable substitute or knock-off?
JW: No. When I was young… I don't know why, but I wanted a BB gun. And my parents would never get me one, which was probably a wise decision, or I would have had my own Columbine in fourth grade. With BBs. But my parents would usually give me whatever I wanted.

There is a picture in our family album, of a Christmas, and I'm really young. I was still a puppeteer then – I guess I was about nine or ten – because one of the presents I asked for was a puppet. And I have a hand puppet on one arm, and in the other, the album I had asked for: The Genius of Ray Charles. So it's a picture of me with this puppet and a Ray Charles album. I guess that was a good picture what I was like as a kid. I was in both worlds.

FESTIVE: Soulful, yet manipulative.
JW: With a show business career. Which I had. I made a lot of money with puppet shows when I was a kid… from about ten to thirteen years old.

FESTIVE: Did you do special seasonal productions?
JW: No, I didn't have Christmas version. Usually, I worked the birthday party circuit.

FESTIVE: Do you have a fondness for any of the classic Christmas TV specials? Any Rankin-Bass skeletons lurking in that closet?
JW: I like the bad ones. Tracey Ullman has always been obsessed with the Rachel Welch Christmas special. That one makes her insane. I'm going to watch that one this year. All of the Judy Garland ones were kind of fun. Every year Liza would be there, and other gay date would come to pick her up. It was so bizarre: "That's her date?" It was always one of the chorus boys in the show. So that was always interesting.

I guess I watched Perry Como's when I was young, but when Perry Como was popular, I wanted The Johnnie Ray Christmas Show… even though there never was one. The entertainers I always wanted to have a Christmas show never seemed to have one. Like Ol' Dirty Bastard – that's a Christmas special I would have liked to see. Now, Brenda Lee was the closest. She had that Christmas hit, and she was great, and still is.

FESTIVE: What a world. I mean, why wasn't there a Claudine Longet TV special centered around her single "I Don't Intend To Spend Christmas Without You"?
JW: Because she vanished! And never, ever came back. Talk about a low profile…

FESTIVE: I think she's a radio personality in France…
JW: Oh, so she left the country. Like Michael Jackson.

FESTIVE: Well she had to. She got away with murder…
JW: She got away with manslaughter. Alleged manslaughter. And she didn't "get away with it," she was found not guilty.

FESTIVE: I believe that's correct…
JW: Well, that's not "getting away with it," legally. You better watch what you say, boy.*

FESTIVE: All of this content will be carefully vetted, I assure you. I just love the image of Andy Williams, sitting there through the trial, cheering on his ex-wife.
JW: Ugh, that was torture: Watching his kind of TV specials, with your family… you just wanted Santa Claus to break out with an axe. Me? I always wanted bizarre things happening at Christmas. There's always some horrible Christmas story in the news, that gets big, big play, because there's no other news. I don't like Christmas tragedies – you feel bad – but bizarre Christmas stories perk up your silent night.

FESTIVE: Do you still have "the girls," your life-sized "you-do-the-hairdos" Farrah Fawcett doll heads?
JW: The girls are in my studio in Baltimore. They just appeared again, because I have a show for here! Network, called John Waters Presents Movies That Will Corrupt You, and they are in the background of that. They came out as plates, too. There is an edition of three plates with the Girls on them, called "The Girls," which was shown in art galleries a lot. They still travel. They don't travel with me, though. Airport security and all; after 9/11, they had to stay home.

FESTIVE: Do they get dolled up for the holidays?
JW: No, they don't. They stay primarily in my art studio, where I do my photography work. They were in the house the other day, because we used them for [the wraparounds] for the here! series. And I try to get their faces in [the shots] whenever I can. But they don't get gifts. And they're jealous of Bill, my fake child that I had made recently. It's called a Reborn Baby, from these great women who rebuild dolls. It takes eight months. They hand-paint the veins, with real hair. It's the scariest thing in my house! So they're probably jealous. I hope they're not child-abusing Bill at home right now, while I'm away.

FESTIVE: That's creepier than those dolls that are duplicates of your own child.
JW: This is similar. Maybe this is meant to be a duplicate of the child you didn't have. That's even scarier.

FESTIVE: Any especially memorable Christmas gifts you've received from your stable of stars?
JW: I always get really good Christmas gifts. Divine gave me a dark green cashmere blanket that I still have in my bedroom. That's one I can think of that I still use. But people give me great presents. Usually, my closet friend, Pat Moran, asks me what I want, so I pick something. And my parents ask, too. Because it's easier. I'm not that easy… well, actually I am easy to buy for.

Because I collect books, and every book I own is cataloged, so you can just call my office and they'll tell you if I have it or not. They'll just look it up on the computer. So weird books are what I ask for, and that's what I give, too. Almost every person gets a book from me. And I have to buy about 100 Christmas presents.

FESTIVE: Heavens. Good luck finding a hundred copies of Liz Renay's My Face For The World To See in presentable condition.
JW: Actually, that particular title got appropriated for that book about Candy Darling. And I said to Liz Renay, "Isn't this terrible? They stole your title!" And she said, "Don't worry, I stole it, too."

FESTIVE: Hot! I have a great photo of her from the Miss Exotic World competition this summer, with my friend Scott and Tempest Storm.
JW: Yeah, I saw her last time I was in Las Vegas. And she came to my museum opening in New York… I think that's the last time I saw her. But I still see her. She comes around, she comes to the openings. She's back on the circuit.



FESTIVE: Looking back over all the films you've made, I can't think of a single John Waters star – including many of your celebrated cameo performers – who ever made a Christmas record. Am I missing someone?
JW: Did Tab Hunter ever make one? I don't know if Joey Heatherton made one…

FESTIVE: Joey didn't make one.** Did Ruth Brown make one?
JW: Blondie never made a Christmas record? Debbie Harry? Iggy Pop? I'm trying to think of all the singers… no, you're right. I don't know why. Every singer should make a Christmas album.

FESTIVE: Even Sono Bono never made a Christmas record.
JW: Sonny and Cher had a Christmas special… but that's not just Sonny. I don't know why. They just weren't thinking…

FESTIVE: No A Pia Zadora Christmas…
JW: Oh, no, you're wrong! One of them did: Chris Isaak. He made a Christmas album last year. A whole album… and it was great, too.

FESTIVE: Would that he had worn a slightly more revealing outfit on the record sleeve. I do love me some Chris Isaak… preferably in a state of undress…
JW: Well, I don't think you've ever seen Chris Isaak undressed.

FESTIVE: Oh, no. I only wish! It made me angry when he had his own cable TV show, and there would be bare-breasted women running around, but we never got to see any shots of Chris' naked fanny.
JW: That's what you get when you're the director: You get to chose the nudity. It is called The Chris Isaak Show, isn't it?

FESTIVE: Are there any shops or department stores – in Baltimore, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, or any of the other fabulous cities that you visit around the globe – where you look forward to seeing the Christmas display windows?
JW: My friend Simon Doonan's windows for Barney's are the most famous. And I think Simon is a very funny writer. So I am always quite interested to see what he'll do, every year. And, if they do anything, I would love to see the Comme des Garçon windows in Tokyo. I was just in the Dover Street Market, which is the Commes des Garçon department store in London, and it is insane and great and unbelievable. And I don't know if they do Christmas decorating, but if there was anyone's Christmas decorations I would want to see, it would be Commes des Garçon.

FESTIVE: When you agreed to be a guest on The Simpsons***, was part of the attraction the idea of being on an episode with a Christmas twist?
JW: What? I did a Christmas thing? I'm trying to remember…

FESTIVE: The enraged reindeer at Santa's village.
JW: Oh, yes, that's right. No. I was just so flattered to be asked to be on The Simpsons that I said yes, immediately. And I liked the script. But no, to be honest, I think it was more that they were making a gay version than a Christmas version. I'm sure that episode is known more as the gay Simpsons than a Christmas one, because there are so many Christmas Simpsons. Of course, there are more gay ones since Patty came out of the closet.

FESTIVE: I would argue that The Simpsons is the gayest TV show ever.
JW: That's what Johnny Knoxville always said when I asked him when he was going to make a gay show: "Didn't you see Jackass?"

FESTIVE: Male bonding taken to very sexy extremes. Any notable additions to your annual Worst Toy collection?
JW: No, they haven't released the list yet. They do it every year in December. And I think they got wise to the fact that, when they called something the Worst Toy, they brought it great notoriety, and people bought them on purpose. So they're a little more obtuse. They say Unsafe Toys, or something like that. But every year, I clip that article. I look forward to it: It's like Oscar Night for me.

FESTIVE: Do you remember any of last year's picks?
JW: No. It's always toys that have little parts that could come undone, and be swallowed by toddlers. Every year. They're like Miramax movies – they sweep the whole list.

FESTIVE: We should invent a sort of oral strainer device, for children under four. I know you were raised Catholic. Did you go to midnight mass every year?
JW: No, we didn't. We would go Christmas morning. One of the last times I ever went to church, Divine went to midnight mass in drag. Very seriously.

FESTIVE: Oh… what did he wear?
JW: Black. This was before he was John Waters' Divine. He wasn't really Divine yet. There was a very short window, in between when he was a high school student and when he was Divine, the few times he did serious drag. Or, not serious… but he passed. Sort of. He went with a bunch of gay men, and they were probably stoned, so I don't know how much he passed. But he did go to midnight mass in full drag, and get through it. Although he did not go to communion.

FESTIVE: Now he should have made a Christmas record, darn it!
JW: He should of. And he had a lot of records out there at the end. I guess there weren't any early techno Christmas songs.



FESTIVE: So many lost opportunities. Do you own a copy of the Charo Christmas single, "(Mamacita) ¿Donde Esta Santa Claus?"
JW: No!

FESTIVE: And you still own a record player?
JW: I do. As a matter of fact, I had to play my 45s the other day, because we had to find a title song for my TV show. So I still have those little spindles that go in the middle. You can't find those any more. They used to be, like, ten for a dollar. They cost like forty dollars if you have to buy one now! But I do have a record player, and it plays 45s. I do not have one that plays 78s.

FESTIVE: Well, I'm not going to send you anything that old. But you might receive your own copy of the Charo Christmas record if you're not careful.
JW: Wow. She had the best line, in all movies, when she said – in whichever Airport movie she was in**** – "You miscon-screw me."

FESTIVE: All because they tried to kick her and her little dog off of the Concorde.
JW: She's great. She's still great. She had a Christmas album, right?

FESTIVE: No. She put out a Christmas disco 12-inch, but I don't know of a whole album, unless she did one of classical guitar, which I don't know about.
JW: Well, I'd love to see a Charo Christmas record, even if I was just looking at it.

FESTIVE: You just watch your mailbox. And thank you ever so much for talking to me. Happy holidays!

* Mr. Waters is correct on all counts, and I am wrong. In connection with the 1976 shooting of her boyfriend, skier Spider Sabich, singer/actress Longet was only found guilty of criminal negligence. She was sentenced to 30 days in prison (which she served) and two years probation. Today, Longet is retired from show business and resides quietly in Aspen, CO.
** No, but the Golddiggers did, entitled We Need A Little Christmas, in 1969. However, at this point, it appears Joey was not part of their line-up.
*** Episode #8.15, "Homer's Phobia"
**** The Concorde: Airport '79

A Trifle is No Small Affair

(This article also appeared in Issue #7 of Festive! Much less traumatic than the gingerbread house debacle of Issue #4...)

A TRIFLE IS NO SMALL AFFAIR
Another Christmas culinary extravaganza
from the Festive! test kitchen

"Oh my God, I've turned into my mother!"

That's what I blurted out as the lady at the liquor store rang up my purchases. Because instead of my beloved Knob Creek or some trendy brand of flavored vodka, this Saturday evening I was buying sherry and Irish Crème liqueur – Mom's two favorite holiday drinks. (As you might have deduced, Mrs. Reighley does not imbibe immodestly, unlike her eldest son.) No, this wasn't some sort of weird, holiday-related therapy exercise. The latter seemed like the only booze suitable to offer the guests at our Sunday evening dessert party, while the former was a key ingredient for the celebratory sweet in question: Trifle.

What the hell is a trifle? I have often asked the same question. Longtime readers may recall a few years ago, when I penned a scintillating expose on Christmas puddings, in which I confessed to mistaking Yorkshire Pudding – which is basically just a quick bread flavored with beef drippings – for the gooey British dessert known as trifle. So this year, after fielding complaints because last year's Festive! contained no recipes, I decided to explore the enchanted world of trifles, and their culinary cousins, fools and syllabubs. (God help me, that reads like something out of an Oz book.)



The trifle, as it is known today, is a relatively simple creature: Stale cake, soaked in alcohol, layered with fruit and/or jelly, slathered with custard and whipped cream, and festooned with cheery garnishes. But it has taken roughly four centuries for this incarnation to evolve. The first known recipe for trifle, published in 1596, is much more like a fool (an old English sweet made of pureed fruit and cream), and often the two terms were used interchangeable; in the mid-17th century, Joseph Cooper, cook to king Charles I, published a recipe for what he called a "foole," but which, with its strata of booze-soaked cake and cooked cream flavored with spirits (syllabub), was much closer to what is now considered a trifle.

By the end of the 17th century, domestic arts doyenne Hannah Woolley had begun adding rennet (i.e. the stomach-lining membrane of a horse or cow, used to facilitate curdling – mmm, mmm, good) to the cream mixture, so the custard would set. Decorations also began to adorn the crowns of trifles around this point: Woolley sprinkled French comfits (small candied fruits, nuts, or seeds) over hers. Booze began to enter the trifle bowl with greater regularity in 1700s. Trifle-like dishes with hopelessly whimsical names like Tipsy Cake and Tipsy Hedgehog (wasn't that a character in The Wind and the Willows?) involved dousing cake with liquor, then surrounding it with crème anglaise or syllabub, and dotting with almonds, jelly, or, for the wealthier classes, small precious stones. In the 19th century, fruit came to be a popular addition to the dish, and the modern trifle had reached its more-or-less final state.

Rather than follow any one particular recipe to the letter (what is a recipe anyway, except a set of guidelines?), for my debut trifle I took my cues from a James Beard recipe featured in a 1959 issue of House & Garden, and an 18th century one that appears in Lizzie Boyd's British Cookery (Overlook Books, 1979). For a serving dish, I used a lovely cut glass salad bowl from Value Village. Later I learned that the ideal trifle bowl should have straight sides and a flat bottom, so the layers will be evenly distributed. We used frozen ladyfingers (look for them near to the frozen puff pastry at the grocery store), and Mark made the custard. I used aerosol whipped cream, because I'm very, very busy, but if you have time to whip it from scratch, do so: It looks much nicer. We didn't use fruit in our trifle, but probably would in the future, to cut the sweetness of the dish and add some texture.

The results of our virgin foray into trifle, while messy, met with round approval from our Sunday evening guests: Scott, Ali, and their young son Max, (for whom we made an alcohol-free mini trifle) and Bethany Jean Clement.

KURT and MARK'S TRIFLE 101
Serves eight to ten

24 ladyfingers
1 12 oz. jar of apricot jam
1 cup sherry
6 eggs, beaten
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
3 cups half & half
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Whipped cream
Glacé cherries, diced citron, sliced almonds

Split the ladyfingers and spread each one generously with apricot jam (you probably won't use the whole jar), making little sandwiches. Line serving bowl with ladyfinger/jam sandwiches. Pour sherry over ladyfingers. They should be thoroughly moistened, but not soggy. (If you see booze pooling at the bottom of the bowl you're being too generous.) Put bowl in the refrigerator to chill.

Put sugar and cornstarch in a heavy saucepan and whisk well. Whisk in beaten eggs, then the half & half. Place pan over moderate heat to cook, stirring constantly until mixture thickens (about 4 minutes). (Warning: If heat is too high, the custard will curdle or burn, and then you'll have to start over – wasting precious Christmas moments.) After thickened, remove pan from heat and blend in vanilla. Pour into a bowl to cool.

Pour the cooled custard over the bowl of ladyfingers and refrigerate until firm. To serve, cover top with a generous layer of whipped cream. Garnish with glacé cherries, diced citron, sliced almonds, or whatever other oddities from the baking aisle strike your fancy.

* * * * *

While doing research for this article, I was not surprised to learn that the legacy of shame that is the History of British Cooking is represented by only a few volumes at the Temporary Central branch of the Seattle Public Library. However, I did find one slim volume on Irish cooking as represented in literature that I felt was worth sharing, for a trifle inspired by one described in Further Experiences of an Irish RM (1908) by Somerville and Ross.

For those you who napped through Irish Literature in college, Somerville and Ross were the pen names of second cousins Edith Oenone Somerville and Violet Florence Martin. The former was a Paris-trained artist and illustrator, the latter a journalist – the two first collaborated on the cheap "shocker" An Irish Cousin, published in 1889, and went on to pen a series of novels (including the critically acclaimed The Real Charlotte, 1894), short stories, and travel books, the bulk of which were set in the Emerald Isles. Ross died in 1915, but Edith claimed that her former partner still communicated with her from beyond the grave, and thus their collaboration continued until Somerville passed away in 1949.

TIPSY TRIFLE
(from A Trifle, A Coddle, A Fry: An Irish Literary Cookbook by Jane O'Mara and Fionnuala O'Reilly, Moyer Bell, 1993)
Serves eight

1 lb. sponge cake, one day old
½ lb. jam of your choice
½ pt. sweetish sherry
½ wine glass brandy
½ wine glass liqueur of your choice
3 oz. sugar
1 pt. milk
6 eggs
1 pear*
1 banana*
1 apple*
1 orange*
½ tsp. vanilla extract
1 pt. whipped cream
1 oz. toasted almonds

* or fruit in season

Two 9 inch sponge tins make about 1 lb. sponge, though good shop ones would do. Spread jam to cover sponge and cut into square chunks. Take a large serving dish (Ed. – the authors suggest a big soup tureen.) and place one layer of the sponge on the bottom. Combine the sherry and spirits and pour about one-sixth of it over the sponge, then make another layer, until the sponge and booze are all gone.

Make a custard as follows: Dissolve 3 oz. of sugar in the milk. Beat the eggs and add to the milk in a dribble while the milk heats but does not boil – stirring rapidly all the time. Return saucepan to low heat for about 10 minutes, until it begins to thicken, stirring constantly. Take it off the heat the second it begins to thicken or it will curdle (have an ice cube handy in case it does). Chop the fruit and place on top of the sponge. Add the vanilla to the custard and stir. Allow to cool completely, then spoon the custard on top of the fruit. Lastly, whip the cream, spread it on top of the custard, and decorate with toasted almonds. Fionn decorates trifle with heartsease or comfrey flowers. (Ed. Note: These are two types of edible flowers.)

* * * * *

The word "trifle" comes form the Old French term "trufle," which means something whimsical or of little consequence. Please keep this in mind as you invent your own trifles: The dish isn't supposed to be a lot of work. In the U.K., using instant custard or tinned fruit (since trifle is a dish most popular in winter, when most fruits are out of season) are widely accepted practices. At the other end of the spectrum, there are desserts that try to pass themselves off as trifles, yet defy the inherent simplicity of the dish's name. I came across the following recipe in the November, 2002 issue of Saveur. Upon seeing how much work – and how little booze – this one called for, I renamed it the "Trifle Quel Horreur."

TRIFLE BELLE HÉLÈNE
(from Trifle by Helen Saberi and Alan Davidson, Prospect Books, 2001)
Serves 4

1 15-oz. can pear halves in syrup
12-15 boudoir biscuits or ladyfingers
2 tbsp. amaretto liqueur
4 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 cup mascarpone
¼ double cream
3 tbsp. confectioners' sugar
2 tbsp. sliced almonds, toasted

Drain pears, reserving syrup from can. Slice pears lengthwise in ¼"-thick slices and set aside. Arrange biscuits in the bottom of a footed deep glass dish or medium glass blow and sprinkle with amaretto and ¼ cup of the reserved syrup. Arrange pear slices over cookies in a single layer and set aside.

Put chocolate and ½ cup of the reserved syrup into a small heatproof bowl (discard remaining syrup or save for another use) then set over a small pot of gently simmering water over medium-low heat and heat, stirring constantly, until chocolate is completely melted, about 5 minutes. Remove bowl from heat and set aside to cool for 5 minutes. Pour chocolate sauce over pears, smoothing it out with the back of a spoon to coat pears evenly.

Put mascarpone, cream, and sugar into a medium bowl and whisk until smooth, then spread over chocolate. Garnish trifle with almonds.

Christmas with JAMES CHANCE

The following interview originally appeared in Issue #7 of FESTIVE! (the full-color cover, "Christmas On Mars" edition).

CHRISTMAS WITH SATAN
The Festive! Q&A with James Chance
By Kurt B. Reighley

For those of you unfamiliar with the name James Chance (a k a James White, James Black, or, to his family, James Sigfried), fie on you, and here's hoping Santa stuffs deadly vipers in your stocking this year.

In the late 1970s, this pioneering "no wave" saxophonist managed to rub both the leather jacket-clad habitués of CBGB and Downbeat subscribers the wrong way with his propulsive fusion of punk, funk, and free jazz. A founding member of Lydia Lunch's Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, he split to form his own ensemble, the Contortions, whose 1979 debut Buy featured the abrasive underground smash "Contort Yourself." That same year, under the moniker James White and the Blacks, most of the original Contortions also dropped a disco LP, Off White, featuring a spastic reading of "Heat Wave" that drags the Irving Berlin classic kicking and screaming from Tin Pan Alley down to the Bowery.

This year, Yuletide music buffs have an extra reason to celebrate: The twentieth anniversary re-release of "Christmas With Satan," Chance's contribution to the 1982 classic A Christmas Record, which featured such ZE Records luminaries as Was (Not Was), the Waitresses, and Suicide. Paired with the equally heartwarming "The Devil Made Me Do It," from Chance's 1983 LP Flaming Demonics, "Satan" is currently available as a limited-edition 3-inch CD (on Tiger Style) at better record vendors. Forget the frankincense – bring on the brimstone!

James was doing a handful of interviews to promote the forthcoming 4-CD boxed set Irresistible Impulse (due out Feb. 18, 2003), and he graciously took a few minutes out of his afternoon watching the sentencing of Wynona Ryder to chat with Festive!.




FESTIVE!: What have you been up to lately?
JAMES CHANCE: I've got this 4-CD boxed set coming out. Just about all the studio stuff I did in the late '70s and early '80s is on it, except for [the Brian Eno-produced compilation] No New York. The 3 albums I did for ZE: Buy The Contortions, Off White by James White and the Blacks, and Flaming Demonics. And the Sax Maniac album. Then there's some other stuff that's never been released. There's an album called Melt Yourself Down that was only released in Japan, around 1983, there's gonna 3 tracks from that. And there's another session that I did, from about '88, three tunes from that that have never been released, including a cover version of [Gene Pitney's] "Town Without Pity." And then there's also this Grutzi Elvis EP [from 1979] – that's never been re-released. Oh, and a couple live tracks. I think three live tracks from one of the RIOR albums, and, of course, "Christmas With Satan."

FESTIVE!: I know "Satan" from the 1982 edition of the ZE A Christmas Record…
JC: Right, that's where it originally came from. Although, they didn't put the whole song on there…
FESTIVE!: It's truncated!
JC: There's a whole intro, just piano and sax and me singing, that has been restored [on the single].
FESTIVE!: Did Michael Zilkha at ZE chop the intro off without asking, or did you edit it for him? Where did those three minutes go?
JC: I don't know! That ZE Christmas album had already been released [in 1980] when he asked me to do that track. I had a big estrangement from Michael and ZE records for several years. And then I got back together with him, because [our falling out] was just a misunderstanding that got blown totally out of proportion, having to do with some people that worked for him. Typical music business nonsense. Which was very unfortunate, because it brought my whole recording career to a halt at a very bad time, right after Buy the Contortions and Off White came out. But anyway, a couple years later, I reconciled with him. And that was the first thing he asked me to do after that. He was putting out another pressing of the album, and said he'd add that… but I guess they didn't have room for the whole [track].

FESTIVE!: How did you respond when you found out he'd lopped off a huge chunk of the song?
JC: I didn't even realize it until a long time after it had been released. Nobody really knew about that track anyway, because the album had already been released, and reviewers had already reviewed it. So that track kind of got lost. I've always felt like it was something that got totally ignored and it's a unique thing, not only as far as my catalog, but also Christmas songs.

FESTIVE!: When Michael at ZE approached you about writing a Christmas song, what was your reaction? Did you spit up your cocoa?
JC: Yeah. My first reaction was, "What a drag. Of all the things he'd want me to do…" I wasn't that enthusiastic about the whole idea, but I did it, because I wanted us to get back together. And it took me a long time to come up with an idea that was any good. I worked pretty hard on the lyrics, but I came up with music about an hour before the session. And at some point I got the idea to put all these snatches of different Christmas songs on top of it. Which, to me, is kind of what makes the track.

FESTIVE!: Do you recall ZE records ever having a Christmas party? I just have this crazy image of Lydia Lunch sitting on the photocopier as Cristina careens around waving a bottle of Moet…
JC: No. The problem is, as I mentioned before, I had this big falling out with them right in the beginning, I was never around at Christmas. And by the time I got back together with Michael, the label was on its last legs.

FESTIVE!: How did you feel as you helped assemble the Irresistible Impulse box?
JC: I think most of it holds up pretty well. The only thing that sort of horrified me was Grutzi Elvis. That one is a little… the Elvis song didn't sound quite as bad as I thought it was going to, although if I did that song ("That's When Your Heartaches Begin") – I love that song – now, I'd do it very differently. But the rest of the stuff on that EP, the instrumentals, is just sort of No Wave doodling. But for the personnel alone… it's Bradley Field and George Scott and Arto Lindsay. And on all the songs, except for the Elvis song, they all just played percussion.

FESTIVE!: Having never been able to afford a second-hand copy of Grutzi Elvis, I must say I'm looking forward to hearing it.
JC: There are also three live tracks, with the No New York era band, that were part of the Grutzi Elvis project, on the box. Grutzi Elvis was a film that was never released, by this scene maker-type guy named Diego Cortez. He was a close friend of Anya Phillips. It was a movie, something to do with Elvis' death, but also those German terrorists, the Baader-Meinhof Gang. I don't know exactly. The movie was never finished. So I don't know how they put those two ideas together. But that's why I did the Elvis song on the Grutzi Elvis EP, the ballad "That's When Your Heartaches Begin." And then on the live cuts, there's a version of "Jailhouse Rock." And the other ones are "Throw Me Away" and "Twice Removed."

FESTIVE!: People love to romanticize the New York music scene of the late '70s and early '80s. What do you miss about that scene – and what, if anything, do you prefer about New York today?
JC: What do I prefer about New York today? Virtually nothing. Even though I don't like for things to be sentimentalized, I think [that era] kind of deserves it. Because I don't think there's been anything like that since then. It was a really unique moment, in music and just more generally. Certainly nothing like that could happen now, especially in New York. The conditions of living are so totally different. Everything has gotten so tightened up. At that time, all these people, totally on their own, totally independently, decided to come to New York and create some kind of scene. No one had any money. It wasn't like today, where people in bands have some kind of day job. Nobody had a day job! My apartment on Avenue A and 2nd Street cost $102 a month. It had holes in the walls, but it was possible to survive with virtually no money. It was a real scene. There were only two clubs: Max's and CBGB, up until about '79. And everyone knew each other. In a way, it was kind of like high school, stratified into all these little cliques. When I first started hanging out, you had to go through a period of… you see, I wasn't there from the very beginning. I came to New York at the very end of '75, the last week of 1975. Before that, I'd been living in Milwaukee, going to a music conservatory, studying jazz. I had a little jazz group, the only avant garde, free jazz group in Milwaukee, which shows how backwards Milwaukee is. But I was just really fed up with Milwaukee. And I started buying The Village Voice, because I'd always wanted to come to New York, and looking at all the ads for clubs. And besides all the jazz stuff that was going on, I started seeing all these ads for CBGB and you couldn't even tell from the ads exactly what it was. It would just say "CBGB" with a little picture of the Ramones or the Heartbreakers. But I could just tell from that that there was something happening.

FESTIVE!: When you arrived in New York, was it difficult to find your niche? Did you try to play with jazz people?
JC: I did. When I came to New York, my real ambition was to become a jazz star, even though I always loved rock and soul. In Milwaukee, I played in a Stooges/Velvet Underground-oriented band called Death. But my burning ambition was to be a famous jazz musician. And at that time, there was this big thing called loft jazz. A lot of the main lofts were a block away from CBGB…
FESTIVE!: Along Bowery?
JC: On Bond Street. Two of them were on Bond Street. And then there was a club called the Tin Palace, just half a block from CBGB, on the corner of Bowery and 2nd. And that was one of the places that had jam sessions. And I would go, and sit in at different places, but I didn't really fit in. It wasn't just the fact that my sax playing wasn't technically up to most of these people – my whole style and attitude was just incomprehensible to a lot of the jazz musicians, not to mention the audience. They were basically all stuck in the hippy era.

FESTIVE!: Speaking of style – people used to put a lot of emphasis on your visual style. Where did that look originate, with the vintage suits and the pompadour?
JC: Most of it originated from Anya Phillips, to tell you the truth. Before she became my manager, and then we started living together, I looked pretty different. If you ever see any of the pictures of the really early Contortions, or when I was in Teenage Jesus, [my look] wasn't so elegant. I wasn't wearing suits. [My look] was almost a little bit androgynous. had these jackets from women's suits that I would wear sometimes, and high-heeled boots. It was a lot more unfocused. Anya really came up with my whole look. And then I realized that that was the way I'd always wanted to look, without being able to put it together myself. She cut my hair, she basically totally created my look. And to some extent, the band's – although they were always uncooperative about it.

FESTIVE!: "You will put this pomade in your hair, and you will like it!"
JC: When I started using black musicians, we had this one guy, a bass player from the Bronx. We used to call him "Funkmaster." This guy was hardcore – he wore polyester suits with bell bottoms. And we got him this really nice, silver-gray sharkskin suit to wear. And he was totally embarrassed by it. He wouldn't even put it on until five minutes before we went on stage. He didn't last very long. He just couldn't handle the whole… at that time, when I started using different black musicians, a lot of them, they could play funk, but they couldn't see the whole concept.
FESTIVE!: The fusion of the disparate genres threw them off?
JC: And the whole visual thing. They just couldn't relate to that. It was just alien. For one thing, the mainstream of black people are so totally into whatever the current style is. The idea of wearing something old was totally alien to them.

FESTIVE!: Looking at what you were doing musically, fusing together all these different styles, my first thought is, was it difficult to find receptive audiences… and, secondly, did you care?
JC: Yeah, I did care. It was really important to me to do something… by that time, the first wave of bands from that scene had all been signed, the ones that were going to get signed. And, to me, they had pretty big audiences. Compared to the whole music industry I guess they weren't that big. But it was important to me for that audience to like what I was doing, and be able to relate. I didn't want it to just be this arty thing, that only a few people from Soho liked. That was the original audience, and the other No Wave bands never went very far beyond that audience. That was one of the main reasons I started attacking the audiences, because those Soho people just infuriated me so much. They thought they were so cool… and they weren't! I pretty much had to do that to get a response out of them. But it was important to me that a rock & roll oriented audience could relate to it, that it had some kind of rhythm they could respond to, and the whole presentation, that it had some kind of roots in rock & roll.

FESTIVE!: And Don Christensen's drumming, especially on the first two albums, is so rhythmically propulsive. Even when the music makes your head spin, there's still that beat that makes your hips do something.
JC: That was always very important to me, to have both of those elements. I'm from the Midwest, and growing up there, everybody danced. And when I came to New York, these clubs like CBGB didn't even have dance floors. Everybody was just into hanging around and posing and acting cool. That was one thing about the scene that I really hated. Where I came from, people got up and danced. Just sitting there was so passive. So it was very important to me to get people up and dancing… somehow. And if they were going to sit on the floor, then I would go kick 'em.

FESTIVE!: "You will enjoy yourselves!" Is that desire to make people dance what prompted the evolution of your sound between the Buy The Contortions and Off White albums?
JC: When Michael Zilkha signed the Contortions to a contract, he said he wanted to record the Contortions, but he also wanted me to do a disco album…
FESTIVE!: Really? He said, "I want you to make a disco album?"
JC: Yeah. And he gave me a budget and said, "Do a disco album." And he didn't say anything else. He didn't define it in any other way. And he didn't come to the sessions. So it had to be my concept of disco, somehow.

FESTIVE!: How did you feel about disco? The genre was at a nadir at that point. Did you like it, hate it… were you making fun of it?
JC: There were things about it that I always liked, and there was a lot about it that I hated. I liked the idea of what it could have been. But, generally, what it was, most of the time, was pretty awful. But I could see possibilities in it. The whole idea of this totally hypnotic beat appealed to me, the whole trance-idea, and creating this environment…but the actual commercial disco music was so whitened, and there were so many extraneous elements – like horrible string arrangements – added, and the beat itself was so stereotyped. But I could see where, if it was really stripped down, to just the beat part of it, and then built up again, with other elements, you could really do something.

FESTIVE!: Did you guys have fun making the Off White album?
JC: I had a lot of fun making it. I know that [bassist] George Scott says, "I fell asleep through those sessions." But he had a bad attitude. That band was full of all kinds of tensions. Not just between me and the other band members, but between the band members themselves. You had the two girls/lesbians, Pat [Place] and Adele [Bertei], versus these straight, pretty macho guys. Then you had Jody Harris and Don Christensen, who were pretty much school musicians, versus the other three; Pat and Adele had never played instruments before. Adele was a singer, she'd never played a keyboard. And Pat had never played anything. And George Scott had played in rock bands, but I basically had to teach him how to play those bass lines note-for-note. In fact… we used to rehearse at this space that was owned by this black guy who was sort of hostile towards white people. We'd been rehearsing there for a couple of months, and one time we were taking a break, and this guy burst into the room and said, "I can stand this shit you guys are playing any more!" And then he turned to George, and said, "I want to hear you play some funk – just you, by yourself!" And George couldn't improvise a funk bass line by himself for anything. He couldn't do it.

FESTIVE!: In Future Pop: Music for the Eighties, you said, "I believe in intensity in music. I can't stand blandness. Most of the new music of today is so boring." What current music do you like?
JC: To tell you the truth, I don't listen to any new music. I just don't. Once in a while, I hear something I kind of like, but I couldn't even tell you what it is. I listen to very little music made after 1970. I listen to a lot of jazz singers, and R&B from the '40s and '50s, blues shouters and people like Dinah Washington and Little Jimmy Scott. I listen to a lot of Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn. I've always wanted to go to the source in my music, and I don't want to be influenced by other people who are interpreting it. I'd rather go to the motherlode. That's just what appeals to me. I really think American culture reached a peak in the '40s, '50s and early '60s. After that, it fell off into an abyss.