Catshanghai

Between October and New Year, you will hear nothing in England’s high streets shops except for the same Slade and Freddie Mercury Christmas records. It is the soundtrack to tills opening and closing as part of the most spiritual of British past times; shopping. These awful cliched songs really make you just want to curl up in a corner and wish you had never been born. The music you hear is just so banal and predicatable. Whenever anyone asks me why I moved to Asia, I always tell them that I wanted to escape from bad Christmas music, but in Shanghai lots of people celebrate Christmas too. There is no escape. If anything, the Christmas music you hear in Shanghai department stores is even more insipid, because you get all the kitsch and fake sentimentality rendered through muzak. For my first Christmas, I was even asked to compile a playlist of seasonal music for our school’s staff party. I obliged!

With all this humbug in my heart, I was happy to read and pass on John Harris’ (writing for The Guardian) list of alternative Christmas music that will not make me want to vomit in the nearest waste paper bin. Here is the list, although I have not heard it and have no wish to spend a small fortune on a concept that is essentially corrupt:

1. Vince Guaraldi Trio: A Charlie Brown Christmas (Fantasy)
2. Waterson Carthy: Holy Heathens and the Old Green Man (Topic)
3. Aimee Mann: One More Drifter in the Snow (V2/Superego)
4. Sufjan Stevens: Songs For Christmas (Rough Trade)
5. Various: Trojan Christmas Box Set (Trojan)
6. Various: Midwinter: A Celebration of the Folk Music & Traditions of Christmas & the Turning of the Year (Free Reed)
7. John Fahey: The New Possibility: John Fahey’s Guitar Soli Christmas Album/ Christmas With John Fahey (Ace)

Mind you, I am a hypocrit having bought and enjoyed Low’s Christmas album.