When The Lights Go Down In The City
How do you feel about holiday music? We thought that KOIT started playing their 24/7 holiday programming a little early this year, but we do love randomly hearing Jose Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad" in our car. There are two holiday albums out this year that we've been enjoying. If you're a fan of Sarah McLachlan, you should buy her holiday album Wintersong. The CD has several traditional holiday tunes, but we were pleasantly surprised by a cover of "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" and "Christmas Time Is Here". And while no cover of Joni Mitchell's "River" can really improve on the original, it was still a nice inclusion. The other Christmas collection we highly recommend is Sufjan Stevens' Songs for Christmas. For around twenty bucks, you get 5 CDs gorgeously packaged with stickers, a poster and a singalong book. That's over 42 Sufjan Christmas tunes.
Listen to Sarah McLachlan's Wintersong
Download Sufjan's "That Was The Worst Christmas Ever" from Insound
'Tis the season for holiday parties. In doing our research for this week's column, we kept seeing "closed for a private party" over and over on venues' websites. So if your private party invitations got lost in the ether like ours did, there are still other holiday party options that are completely open to the public.
Load up on cocktails and latkes tonight at Vodka Latka: Festival of Rights featuring Golem, Conspiracy of Beards, DJ Anaan & special guests at the Independent. The Festival of Rights menorah lighting happens around 9pm and the bands go on afterward. On Sunday at Thee Parkside there's a toy drive from 5pm to 8pm with plenty of drinks and entertainment. The show is free but be sure to bring a toy, duh. On Tuesday Santa Squid & Santa Melmoth of Laughing Squid present a screening of "You Better Watch Out - Portland Santacon '96" at Cafe Du Nord. Admission is free to watch a documentary about hundreds of surly, inebriated Santas swarming Portland (and secretly think that the SF Santacons are better). On Wednesday, Jim Campilongo Band and Bobby Black play two "Home for the Holidays" sets at Make-Out Room.
If you love Joanna Newsom (but didn't score tickets to one of the three shows she's playing at Great American starting Monday): On Sunday you can discover the next amazing talent coming out of Nevada City, CA, at the Family Album release party for the Grass Roots Record Co. at Bottom of the Hill. This party features performances by The Moore Brothers, Mariee Sioux, Casual Fog and many more. If you can't make it to the show, at least buy a copy of the record because pretty soon discerning bay area music-lovers will be expected to be as well versed in the Grass Roots roster as they are in what does and doesn't qualify as hyphy.
Listen to the Grass Roots record player, especially Alela Diane's "Dry Grass & Shadows" and Mariee Sioux's "Two Tongues at One Time"
Of course there are shows that have nothing to do with the holidays that are still very much worth checking out. On Friday Devotchka play with Eric Bachmann at the Fillmore. Peaches does her thing with Whitey and Jeffree Star at the Fillmore on Saturday. And on Monday the lovely and talented Miss Joanna Newsom plays the first of three sure-to-be-amazing nights at the Great American. We've got our ticket for Wednesday!
Watch a short documentary on Joanna Newsom (link):