As hard as it might be to imagine holiday songs battling it out, the plain fact is … Christmas songs mean big bucks. Over and over and over again. A Number One Christmas song can mean early retirement for the writer, with a nice pension income supplemented every year in December.
We’ve been swaying in the sluice of commercial music’s fetid breeze for so long that we’ve lost the ability to appreciate the slow burn, the rolling, creeping emotional wash of songs and artists that paint outside the lines of commercial success. The post-MTV era has led us down a path of saccharine, instantly gratifying need where our senses are over-stimulated – like a million neon roadside billboards or a caffeine rush to the soul in an effort to forget we live banal or uninteresting, tedious lives.
This week I’ve been discussing a reunion of my old cover band Spare Parts with the original participants – Maureen Leeson (vocals), Duanne Welsh (drums) and Geoff Wilson (guitar). We were a ‘thing’ from 1993 through 1997. By thing I mean a true-blue working act at clubs across southern (and north-eastern) Ontario getting paid to make people drink beer, dance, grope inappropriately and puke in restrooms. Achieving all four in an evening was considered a success by bar owners and audience members alike. More times than not we could do all four or at least fashion a passable trifecta. Oh, and we were really fucking good at what we did which might be why we were employed every other weekend for four years straight.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 