Okay, it’s time for “Confessions of a Former Christmas Caroler,” along with a few tips for getting your “carol” on this holiday season.
First, a little background. I grew up in a tony Connecticut suburb with a mom, dad and two older sisters in a town where kids still played on the streets until dusk without fear of getting run over, and where, though not particularly religious in my heart of hearts, I dutifully attended a white Protestant church every Sunday.
I enjoyed a happy childhood, and for a few years at least, caroling was just another curious and unquestioned adornment on a life full of both wonder and tedium. It was something I accepted as ordinary, even though I never saw the behavior performed by anyone else outside of old TV shows and movies. Childhood is full of stuff like that.
My parents, on the other hand, grew up in blue- and light-blue-collar New Jersey. I’m not sure they ever caroled as kids. In retrospect, caroling might have been a habit they adopted because they thought that’s what New Englanders did. But that’s not the kind of thought that would have ever passed through my mind back then.
So every December, at least one night during Advent, our parents would coax us away from holiday TV programming and out into the cold air with sheet music in hand. House to house, doorstep to doorstep. Our neighbors, god bless them, accepted our good cheer with patience. Some invited us inside for a snack, some didn’t. That’s life on the caroling beat.
Now for some Q&A:
Do people still carol? Yes! Caroling takes place all over. You, or someone you know, carols. As you might imagine, the activity is often tied to religious services. First Church in Cambridge, for example, will include carols during some of its services during the Christmas season.
When should I carol and what should I carol? Whenever and whatever you like. But there are some qualifications to be made here. Some caroling “purists” would have you wait until Christmas to sing the more traditional religious tunes. Not that anyone would complain, but if you want to cover your bases, you can sing the profane numbers such as “Jingle Bells” earlier in the season.
Is caroling only for Christmas? Once upon a time there were carols for all the seasons. Sowing carols, harvest carols, whatever you like. Christians, like religious adherents everywhere, love to sing! But the caroling tradition within Christianity does seem to have withdrawn into the stronghold of its most prominent religious holidays.
What should I wear? It’s always good advice to dress in layers for cold weather. But if you’re caroling door to door it’s all the more important, in case you get invited inside for hot chocolate and cookies and you want to keep your caroling appropriately climate controlled.
Hit this
Sunday: A Very Fundraising Christmas (The Burren, Somerville)
’Tis the season to attend a benefit concert. A collection of local music luminaries have gathered to help raise funds on behalf of Artists For Humanity. The nonprofit connects teens with cool (and paid!) part-time gigs in the arts and design fields. Do you believe the children are our future? Teach them well and let them lead the way. The bill includes Tanya Donelly, Merrie Amsterburg, Chris Brokaw, members of Buffalo Tom, Fuzzy, Muck & the Mires and more. If that weren’t already enough of a draw, you’ve got to see the annual lunatic Yuletide decorations at The Burren, decorated in the style of “Mrs. Claus as a hoarder.”
Wednesday: Skunk Jesus, Clamb (Lizard Lounge, Cambridge)
It’s a night of psychedelic free jazz jive at everyone’s favorite red-light-drenched subterranean dive. Seriously, seeing a show down there is like being an extra in a Safdie brothers film. Skunk Jesus was the brainchild of musicians Riley Stockwell and Mike Dettorre, who pull in a rotating cast of collaborators to create a unique improvisational footprint at every show. And Clamb claims they were “born out of a Dadaist desire to create music free from societal norms of perfection.” But that statement sounds far too programmatic for dadaism, right? I’ll suggest an alternate manifesto: “To impose your ABC is a natural thing – hence deplorable. Everybody does it in the form of crystalbluffmadonna, monetary system, pharmaceutical product or a bare leg advertising the ardent sterile spring.” That’s more like it.
Dec. 20-21: Blue Heron Renaissance Choir (First Church in Cambridge, Cambridge)
We reported on Blue Heron as recently as October, when the early music ensemble performed a number of early music classics plus one or two new compositions at a free afternoon practice session. Doesn’t look like they’re listing any freebie sessions this go-round, but their “Christmas in 15th Century France & Burgundy” set is an absolute banger that is worth the price of admission and will put you in the holiday mood. And as you sit in the wooden pews, listening to the celestial sounds of yore, think about whether the working class had it better in medieval times. They worked less days in a year than we do today, so they say. Whatever happened to technological advances freeing humanity for more playtime? I feel cheated.
Live: Mars Red Sky, Howling Giant, Black Lung, and Kind at The Middle East
Bordeaux is a city in France known for its namesake wine, soaring Gothic cathedrals and impressive public gardens. Less so for the kind of psychedelic stoner rock that residents Mars Red Sky make. But the French trio was looking to alter your perceptions about their hometown at a Middle East gig Saturday, lighting up the stage with all your favorite rock tropes on their North American tour.
It feels sometimes like rock ’n’ roll is on its way out. As a musical zeitgeist, “rock” must have peaked at some point during the ’50s, ’60s or ’70s, depending on how you measure it. We have been living for decades in an era of hip-hop as the culturally dominant form of popular music.
But “rock” lives on, in a quasi-zombified form, because boomers have the requisite wealth to purchase cultural influence through a desire to live dangerously close to their memories.
Bands that should have long since hung it up are still on tour at major arenas.
Halls of Fame are built to commemorate the rock bands that are gone but never forgotten.
A new Bob Dylan, or Janis Joplin, or Elvis Presley or Brian Wilson or John Lennon biopic gets released every year, along with endless merch.
It’s not a passion for music that moves all these units – it’s the insatiable, vampyric hunger to live within a kind of ageless hall of mirrors that reflect only what a certain generation looked like, or thought they looked like, when they were young.
More importantly, the heavy cultural patrimony eats into the wallets of subsequent generations, who have more debt and less buying power than their parents and grandparents and spend a greater percentage of their music dollars on music to which they have no living, breathing connection.
It’s hard to fathom what it means when you see a 12-year-old wearing a Doors T-shirt. It might inspire a young kid to form a band. Maybe. At any rate it’s $30 that never found its way into the pocket of a living musician.
If you want arts and culture to remain vibrant, you’re going to have to pay the piper. And that piper needs to be a living, breathing human being, not an estate. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single stoner rock trio from Bordeaux.
A stronger
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