These wildly original, cutting-edge, quirky meditations explore the flipside of the standard Yuletide themes: racial inequality, religious freedom, the devil, nuclear war, familial angst, conspicuous consumption, or simply the yearning sadness of being alone at the happiest time of the year.
Anarchic and subversive in spirit, with a pure, rock and roll heart, the film will be structured around the annual 24 hour Christmas music marathon by Princeton University DJ and practicing Jew, Jon Solomon, whose legendary WPRB radio show is entering its 20th year.
“Merry Christmas, I don’t want to fight tonight… I love you and you love me,
And that’s the way it’s got to be, I loved you from the start,
’Cause Christmas ain’t the time for breaking each other’s hearts”
– The Ramones, Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight)
Like Santa himself, good Christmas music is seldom seen (or heard). But Jon Solomon magically appears every Christmas Eve to make you a believer. His show features the most amazing, obscure, inspiring Christmas songs around. And each year brings a brand-new sleighful.
Amidst this merry mayhem, Jon invites musical guests into his tiny studio to perform live, takes requests, fields calls from lonely listeners around the world, and generally keeps company with folks long after Santa has come and gone.
“When you’re blue at Christmas time you see right through, All the waste, all the sham,
all the haste, And plain old bad taste. Sidewalk Santa Claus’s are much, much too thin, They’re wearing rented costumes, false beards and big fat phony grins.”
– Miles Davis with Bob Dorough, Blue Xmas (To Whom It May concern)
For decades, sentimental ballads like Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” touched the nation’s hearts and hit #1 on the charts. Back then, Christmas in North America was a universal experience, where one iconic song spoke to millions.
Tim Sewell, an obsessive Christmas music collector, found this out the hard way as a teenager, when his father asked him to prepare a seasonal selection of songs to be played during Christmas dinner. Tim spliced Jethro Tull’s “Christmas Song” – a current favorite – in between traditional fare by Sinatra, Bing and Nat King Cole. Then he waited as his family members gobbled down their bird. “When that song came on, my father leapt up from the table, dragged me to my room, and beat the shit out of me because I had the audacity to put sitar music on a Christmas tape. From that moment on I decided I was going to do Christmas my way”.
“Christmas my way” in the 21st century means a festive punch of family traditions, spiritual practices and diverse cultures, spiked with a modern concoction of anxiety, excess and irony.
Cult filmmaker John Waters created his 2004 “A John Waters Christmas” compilation CD to “help you actually appreciate the insanity of the Yuletide season” and he perfectly captures the irony that many of us take shelter behind at Christmas time:
“Some of us get neurotically religious during the holiday season, so “Happy Birthday Jesus” by scary “Little Cindy” will be just perfect to play if Christian guilt ever creeps into your celebration. Listen to this child’s voice; so godawful, so devout, so beautiful, so perfect. No second take in the recording booth for this motley moppet! “Little Cindy” regrets nothing and neither should you,” Waters says.
But it’s not all tongue in cheek. Christmas is still a powerful celebration for many of us, a time of family, spirituality, memory and emotion. As rock critic (and Creem magazine founder) Dave Marsh writes: “Christmas may be crass and commercial, sentimental and giddy, juvenile and romantic, certainly secular. But this American bacchanal of shopping, drinking and feasting has loftier sides to it too. It’s also a public occasion for expressions of emotion, of commitment to family, of fellow-feeling and love… and when these kinds of emotions rise up, only music can meet our needs.”
“Oh, if I could stop time, It would be a frozen moment just
around Christmas,
When all of mankind reveals its truest potential, And there is sympathy for the suffering,
Yes, there is sympathy for those who are suffering.
And the world embraces peace and love and mercy, Instead of power and fear.
And as sure as I’m standing here, I swear it really does appear that a change comes over us, Yes, some kind of change comes over us.”
– The Flaming Lips, A Change At Christmas (Say It Isn’t So)
And for every offbeat or satirical Christmas tune there is an original, heartfelt and intimate ode to the season that stirs us all. Singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell’s stunning Christmas song “River” evokes her childhood on the frozen Canadian prairies. It was there that young Joni, in hospital with polio, credits a Christmas tree for her miraculous recovery. “I don’t know who I prayed to. I addressed it to the Christmas tree. I said, ‘I’m not a cripple. I’m going home for Christmas.’ I walked. I went home for Christmas. So polio, in a way, germinated an inner life and a sense of the mystic. I’ll always be thankful for that beautiful tree.”
Jingle Bell Rocks! will freely explore this alternative Christmas universe as we follow Solomon’s marathon radio show. Songs, comments and performances will spark fresh ideas, clips and interviews with collectors, musicians, fans and pop culture critics. By the time Jon switches off his mike, we’ll have discovered how and why this surprising groundswell of alternative Christmas music came to be.
“Why cant-a Santa pause for the cause? Give up the dough! Give up the dough!
Give up the dough on Xmas yo! I’m gettin mine, you gettin yours, that’s how Xmas is supposed ta be. A very merry Xmas for everybody, fight poverty, give to the needy.
Don’t be like the Grinch, cause the Grinch is greedy.”
– Run D.M.C., Christmas Is
From the strange, sublime and unsettling universe of Xmas song poems to hardcore punk rock rants, from hilarious honky tonk tales to heartfelt one-hit wonders, rap to caustic hip hop, the film takes a fresh, ear-opening, and irreverent look at the astonishing collections of this vast subculture’s biggest connoisseurs, whose passion for Xmas songs is their unique way of coping with a holiday music mainstream most of us would rather avoid.
“I waited in the shadows all night, But when he came he gave me a fright,
I wanted to reach out and hug him, But I just stood there, my knees trembling.
Santa came and took away my smile. Santa came on a nuclear missile.”
– Heather Noel (Song Poem singer), Santa Came On a Nuclear Missile
In addition to an array of recording artists, we’ll meet legendary collector Andy Cirzan, who’ll dig just about anywhere for that one elusive Xmas gem; celebrated DJ and musicologist Dr. Demento, the godfather of the Christmas novelty song; Christmas music maniac James Austin, VP of A & R at Rhino Records, the hippest retro record label in the world; and punk rock singer/songwriter El Vez, whose Merry Mex-Mass concert we captured on film for the first time this past December.
Equal parts social history, pop culture pilgrimage and revealing character study, Jingle Bell Rocks! explores in charming, intimate, personal detail our love/hate relationship with Christmas music and how it helps us celebrate – or simply survive – the Yuletide season.
