It Crawled Down the Chimney: It’s Another Green Monkey Christmas (GMX2011)

Holy Mo-ly. Another December, another X-mas album. Our best one ever! This year through the miracle of Facebook, we have reached our tentacles out around the world (sorta) to get Northwesters past and present to contribute to your holiday festiveness. It is a rather fun and entertaining notion to toss this idea out to the universe a couple three months before X-mas and see what you can pull together. Another happy result!

Even more thrilling, this year, you will be able to download the entire thing! Hot diggy dog! Like last year, we will give away every penny we make on this to the Millioniar Club. Learn more at www.millionairclub.org. You can also download the “best of” from the previous two years (It’s a Green Monkey Christmas!) – also goes to the Millionair Club.

So get to rockin’ for a jolly good cause and have a great holiday.

td

December 2011

Here’s the scoop on the tunes:

1. The Green Monkey Christmas Chorale starring Gary Minkler of Red Dress fame – with special guest Bill Bagley on the organ! – Christmas Time for Sailors! (Dyer) © ½ the World Publishing 2011
Gary Minkler – First Take Vocal. Bill Bagley – Bitchin’ fake Accordion. Tom Dyer – the other parts.
Produced by Tom Dyer at TDS Productions, November 2011.

When I put out this year’s call for entries, I sent Gary a note and asked if he would be willing to work with me on something. Answer = yes. A couple days before, I had written this tune when I turned the corner off 85th onto Aurora on my way to work one morning. Pushed the record memo button on the phone and spit it out from start to end. As you can see, it was a perfect fit. Gary brought his Red Dress colleague Bill along, who is a million times saltier keyboard player than I am. Viola! Done.
YouTube video here.

2. Tony Driscoll and His Yuletide Warblers – It’s Christmas (And I’m Lonely) (Driscoll) © Tony Driscoll
Tony Driscoll – Vocals; Joe Ross – Guitar, Finger snaps, Sean Wheatley – Bass
Produced by Tom Dyer at TDS Productions, November 2011.

Tony, as you know doubt recall, last graced these pages as singer for The Purdins at our record release party for the Anthology a couple years ago. Tony called me up and said he had a couple holiday tunes ready for the world. One you will run in down the way in this collection in all its choral glory. This one needed a recording assist and in came riding two of the Haggis Bros, Joe and Sean (Joe be a Green Pajama as well). Beautiful!

3. Tom Dyer – Peace On Earth (Dyer) © ½ the World Publishing 2011
All music played and recorded by Tom Dyer at TDS Productions November 2011.

I gots me a 1967 red Hagstrom Viking II guitar the day I recorded this, so here it is. Love the Hagstroms!

4. Gary Heffern & Beautiful People – The Night Before Christmas
Lyrics: Clement Clarke Moore (1822) Music: Rustman Arr: Gary Heffern & Beautiful People
Gary Heffern – The Reader; Selinda Shirley – Violin; Oulujoe – Drum loop and Percussion; Mad Mulligan – Bass;Rustman – Guitars, Drum machine, Organ, and Theremin.
Recorded, edited, mixed and produced by Rustman 2011. Recorded at Rustman’s Country Garage November 2011. Drum loop recorded by Oulujoe.

A little ex-patriot action from Finland for ye. Gary started punk rockin’ in San Diego and spent some years in Seatown in the 80’s/90’s, kinda part of the Walkabouts crowd as memory serves. Gary and the BP’s whipped up this awesome beauty just for you for this Christmas so enjoys it children! Sweet Theremin action.
www.myspace.com/thebeautifulpeoplemusic

5. Liar’s Club – Agnostic Christmas/Merry F___ing Christmas © 2011, BMI
Jayson Jarmon: Guitars, Vocals; Scott McPherson – Guitars, Vocals; Kevo X. Thomson – Bass, Vocals;
Sean Gaffney – Guitars, Vocals; Dana Sims – Drums.

I got connected to these Tacomans from our old art director pal Ben Thompson. These guys have several releases available on their bandcamp site of pretty dang frothy pop music (how did pop-meister Howie miss this?) According to Wikipedia they broke up in 1995, but they sound pretty healthy to me at the moment in this heartfelt expression of agnosticism. By the way, we here at GMR did not censor the use of “UCK” in fucking – that is a personal and artistic choice on the part of the artists. We support that!
liarsclub.bandcamp.com

Howie (whimp rock) Wahlen would like to point out that he is the proud owner of Liar’s Club – Evolution #9 CD and it is highly recommended.

6. Keith Livingston – All I Want for Christmas (Is You) (Livingston) © Keith!
Keith Livingston – All Instruments & Vocals

As regular readers recall, Keith worked at my studio in the 80’s and produced The Life’s Alone album which we will be re-releasing this January. This too is a mighty frothy pop confection, if on the possibly heartbroken side. Will Keith get the girl? Who knows? Sigh. FYI – Keith has a new music web site and may be about to produce a Landslide of Livingstonia.
KeithLivingston.com

7. Jeff Kelly – Winter (Kelly) © St. Brigid
Produced/performed by Jeff, December 1980.

This comes from Jeff’s fabled drawer of cassettes that mostly predates The Green Pajamas. I decided to back them all up digitally a couple years ago (making poor progress) and ran into this beauty. I believe Jeff plays every catchy hook himself. Highly recommended by Ben Dyer, who knows about such things.
Incidentally, the Green Pajama Country album or The Complete Book of Hours make equally great Christmas presents.
thegreenpajamas.net

8. Empire of Sleep – Star (Irwin) © City of Trees Music
Jim Irwin – Vocal and Guitar; Don Lange – Bass; Mike Dumas – Drums; Richard Irwin – Guitar; Matt Reiman – Acoustic Guitar

In case you didn’t know Seattle’s Moving Parts from the 80’s have jumped on the old dude band wagon and have made a new record under the guise of Empire of Sleep (featured as October AotM) which includes this song. In case you are thinking it sounds familiar, yes, a much earlier version from a Popllama X-mas cassette was featured on our first holiday album. Empire of Sleep is playing about once a month – go check ‘em out!
www.empireofsleep.net

9. Duane Hibbard – Snowing (Hibbard) BMI
All music played and recorded by Duane Hibbard November 2011.

Duane was my student at the Art Institute during the same period as his classmate and pretty famous producer Phil Ek. I thought Duane was insane (in a good way) back then and he probably still is. He lives the SoCal life nowadays, where I am pretty sure it never snows. Some friend of D’s said the chorus reminded him of the Beatles. I say piffle-dee-dee – I don’t hear nuthin. Besides, just look outside – it’s snowing, dude!
www.reverbnation.com/duanehibbard

10. Eric and Sari – This Year I Don’t Want to Do Anything for Christmas (Padget) © Padget
Eric and Sari – Singing and playing. Recorded by Eric under mysterious circumstances in November 2011.

Eric says “Here is a fairly lo-fi/mildly sloppy, but otherwise adorable original Christmas song.” Tom says hell, this is cuter than Alvin and the Chipmunks with their cheeks full of little holiday nuts. Eric wants you to know it consists of zero members of Red Dress though Sari was wearing a red shirt when they made it. Tom wants you to know that Eric is the singing star of Sigourney Reverb, whose Bees in Your Bed Bad is the perfect stocking stuffer and available from Green Monkey this very minute!
www.facebook.com/SigourneyReverb

11. Terry Lee Hale – Christmas In The Chapel (Hale) © Terry Lee Hale
Recorded and played by Terry Lee.

Another –ex-pat – this time from France. Terry Lee is a travelin’ man who managed to land for a chunk of time in Seattle where besides having a short-lived band with Jack Endino (The Ones) and playing as a solo guy, he booked the Central Tavern, Squid Row and other festive venues in the late ‘80s early 90’s. He’s got lots of records out in Europe (check his website) and kindly sent us this lovely tune.
www.terryleehale.com

12. The Washingtonians featuring Tony Driscoll – Snowed in With You (Driscoll) ©1996 Driscoll
Mastered from cassette by Tom Dyer at TDS November 2011.

This live recording comes to us from Tony D. of Purdins fame. This was the finale of a 1996 Christmas concert at the Seattle Unity Church put on by The Washingtonians Choir conducted by Scott Warrender. Onstage, Tony keeps a-pestering the director to let him sing his song. The director finally gives in and off we go, complete with full chorus and half-step modulation – wowsa! Tony thinks his singing partner may have been Geena or Jeanie, but he can’t say for sure.

13. Eric Lichter – Christmas Lights for Matadors (Lichter) © Lichter 2011
Eric Lichter – Vocal, all music except: Laura Vanderpool -Backing Vocal & Tom Dyer – Banjo.
Basic tracks recorded by Eric. Final mix by Tom Dyer at TDS Productions November 2011.

Eric is currently a member of The Green Pajamas (so’s Laura) and the main dude in Picture Day. He was also a once upon a time member of The Life, whose excellent album Alone will be reissued on GMR this coming January 2012. Eric cut this tune on his own and sent it over for a little spicing up with the always fabulous Ms. Vanderpool. It is my debut as a banjo player!
www.myspace.com/picturedayband

14. Stevie Nations – I Hope I’m Home for Christmas (Trettevik) © Trettevik 2011
Steve Trettevik – Vocals, Guitar, Mandola, Fake drums. Tom Dyer – Bass.
Recorded by Steve at home in Garageband. Additional Recording and Mixing by Tom Dyer at TDS November 2011.

Stevie T. of the infamous Icons whipped this little ditty for your listening pleasure. I was amused by the injection of angels into the lyric as Steve is not what I would call religious. Steve thought they sounded Christmas-y. The net effect works for me. Love this. By the way, The Icons’ Appointment With Destiny and Masters of Disaster releases are also fine choices for jolly Holiday presents that will be treasured for years to come.

15. The OF – We Three Kings (Traditional)
Ian Gray – Bass Guitar, Jim Morgan – Bass Guitar, John Carey – Bass Guitar
Arrangement by John Carey. Mixed by Tom Dyer at TDS Productions 2011, with a final tweak from John.

I know John from the Queen Annes, where he was bass player number two. John has a variety of projects he is foisting off on the world from his secret Roslyn HQ. Check out their Facebook page for some musical wackiness – nothing boring here!
www.facebook.com/pages/The-OF/113331488684217?sk=app_2405167945

This project was produced by Tom Dyer as usual.

Thanks to all the musicians who contributed. Thanks to Howie Wahlen for getting it going. Thanks to Vicki for putting up with the racket for the last month.