Stanford Continuing Studies Offering a Course on the History & Music of the Grateful Dead, Taught by David Gans: Starts on Monday, January 22

in Music, Online Courses | January 21st, 2024

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

A quick heads up: On Mon­day, Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies will kick off an online course called Psy­che­delia and Groove: The Music and Cul­ture of the Grate­ful Dead. Taught by David Gans (author of Play­ing in the Band: An Oral and Visu­al Por­trait of the Grate­ful Dead), the course got a nice shout out from drum­mer Mick­ey Hart on Insta­gram. Open to any adult, the course descrip­tion reads:

The Grate­ful Dead­’s ground­break­ing fusion of music, coun­ter­cul­ture, and com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment forged an endur­ing lega­cy that tran­scends gen­er­a­tions while shap­ing the evo­lu­tion of music and cul­tur­al expres­sion. Fresh off the farewell per­for­mance of Dead & Com­pa­ny in San Fran­cis­co in July, this course invites stu­dents to delve into the phe­nom­e­non that is the Grate­ful Dead through a cap­ti­vat­ing explo­ration of the band’s his­to­ry, music, and cul­tur­al impact.

The course will start by trac­ing the band’s evo­lu­tion, from its hum­ble begin­nings to its leg­endary sta­tus as one of the most influ­en­tial bands in music his­to­ry. We will explore the band’s for­ma­tion, the ear­ly San Fran­cis­co music scene, its unique approach to tour­ing, and the var­i­ous eras of its exis­tence. We’ll next embark on a son­ic jour­ney through the band’s diverse and ever-evolv­ing musi­cal cat­a­log. Stu­dents will dis­sect the dis­tinc­tive blend of rock, folk, blues, and impro­vi­sa­tion that defined the Grate­ful Dead­’s sound.

Final­ly, we’ll exam­ine the band’s cul­tur­al impact on soci­ety, div­ing into the band’s con­nec­tion to art, lit­er­a­ture, and social change, as well as its unique fan cul­ture and the phe­nom­e­non of the “Dead­head.” By the end of the course, stu­dents will have a well-round­ed appre­ci­a­tion for the roots, strug­gles, and mile­stones that shaped the Grate­ful Dead’s tra­jec­to­ry, an under­stand­ing of its pro­found impact on music and cul­ture, and insight into a lega­cy that still res­onates deeply today.

Guest speak­ers for this course will include Steve Sil­ber­man, who was fea­tured in the doc­u­men­tary Long Strange Trip and is a reg­u­lar voice on the Good Ol’ Grate­ful Dead­cast. He is also a co-author of Skele­ton Key: A Dic­tio­nary for Dead­heads.

Again, the course starts on Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 22. Tuition is $405. You can enroll here.

Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies also offers many oth­er cours­es online, across many dis­ci­plines, at a rea­son­able price. Check out the cat­a­logue here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Stream a Mas­sive Archive of Grate­ful Dead Con­certs from 1965–1995

The Grate­ful Dead Movie: Watch It Free Online

How the Grate­ful Dead’s “Wall of Sound”–a Mon­ster, 600-Speak­er Sound System–Changed Rock Con­certs & Live Music For­ev­er

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J.S. Bach’s Opera, “The Coffee Cantata,” Sings the Praises of the Great Stimulating Drink (1735)

in Food & Drink, Music | January 17th, 2024

From the time that a name­less genius in either Ethiopia or Yemen decid­ed to dry, crush and strain water through a berry known for mak­ing goats ner­vous and jumpy, cof­fee has been loved and wor­shiped like few oth­er bev­er­ages. Ear­ly Arab doc­tors pro­claimed the stuff to be a mir­a­cle drug. Thor­ough­ly caf­feinat­ed thinkers from Voltaire to Jonathan Swift to Jack Ker­ouac debat­ed lit­er­a­ture, phi­los­o­phy and every­thing in between at cof­fee hous­es. Author Hon­oré Balzac even report­ed­ly died because of exces­sive cof­fee drink­ing (it was either that or the syphilis.)

Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1685–1750) was also appar­ent­ly a cof­fee enthu­si­ast. So much so that he wrote a com­po­si­tion about the bev­er­age. Although known most­ly for his litur­gi­cal music, his Cof­fee Can­ta­ta (AKA Schweigt stille, plaud­ert nicht, BWV 211) is a rare exam­ple of a sec­u­lar work by the com­pos­er. The short com­ic opera was writ­ten (cir­ca 1735) for a musi­cal ensem­ble called The Col­legium Musicum based in a sto­ried Zimmerman’s cof­fee house in Leipzig, Ger­many. The whole can­ta­ta seems very much to have been writ­ten with the local audi­ence in mind.

Cof­fee Can­ta­ta is about a young viva­cious woman named Aria who loves cof­fee. Her killjoy father is, of course, dead set against his daugh­ter hav­ing any kind of caf­feinat­ed fun. So he tries to ban her from the drink. Aria bit­ter­ly com­plains:

Father sir, but do not be so harsh!
If I could­n’t, three times a day,
be allowed to drink my lit­tle cup of cof­fee,
in my anguish I will turn into
a shriv­eled-up roast goat.

Ah! How sweet cof­fee tastes,
more deli­cious than a thou­sand kiss­es,
milder than mus­ca­tel wine.
Cof­fee, I have to have cof­fee,
and, if some­one wants to pam­per me,
ah, then bring me cof­fee as a gift!

The copy­writ­ers at Star­bucks mar­ket­ing depart­ment couldn’t have writ­ten it any bet­ter. Even­tu­al­ly, daugh­ter and father rec­on­cile when he agrees to have a guar­an­teed three cups of cof­fee a day writ­ten into her mar­riage con­tract. You can watch it in its entire­ty below, or get a quick taste above. The lyrics in Ger­man and Eng­lish can be read here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: London’s First Cafe Cre­ates Ad for Cof­fee in the 1650s

The Cof­fee Pot That Fueled Hon­oré de Balzac’s Cof­fee Addic­tion

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

The Hertel­la Cof­fee Machine Mount­ed on a Volk­swa­gen Dash­board (1959): The Most Euro­pean Car Acces­so­ry Ever Made

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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The Pixies Perform a Hypnotic Version of “Gouge Away” at the BBC

in Music | January 15th, 2024

In 2018, the Pix­ies per­formed live for BBC Radio 6 Music, play­ing some new songs (“In the Arms of Mrs. Mark of Cain”) and old clas­sics (“Here Comes Your Man”). In that lat­ter cat­e­go­ry, you’ll find a record­ing of “Gouge Away,” which I keep com­ing back to again, and yet again. About the video, one YouTu­ber had this to say: “This pro­duc­tion is just badass. The bass, the drums, every­thing. This spe­cif­ic record­ing is a mas­ter­piece. To see it taped is a rev­e­la­tion.” That kind of sums it up. Time to share it with you…

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch the Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Film, The Golem, with a Sound­track by The Pix­ies’ Black Fran­cis

Watch 450 NPR Tiny Desk Con­certs: Inti­mate Per­for­mances from The Pix­ies, Adele, Wilco, Yo-Yo Ma & Many More

Dis­cov­er an Archive of Taped New York City-Area Punk & Indie Con­certs from the 80s and 90s: The Pix­ies, Son­ic Youth, The Replace­ments & Many More

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Dance Like David Byrne! An Easy-to-Follow Instructional Video Shows You How

in Creativity, Dance, How to Learn for Free, Music | January 4th, 2024

This dance is seri­ous. This dance is nec­es­sary. Do you feel that change? — David Byrne

Every­one can dance, though some of us need a push from an enthu­si­as­tic, encour­ag­ing instructor…like singer-song­writer David Byrne.

Move­ment has long been a hall­mark of the for­mer Talk­ing Heads frontman’s per­for­mances, when he was a pal­pa­bly ner­vous 23-year-old sol­dier­ing through one of the band’s first New York City gigs.


Byrne drove the danc­ing in Talk­ing Heads 1984 con­cert film, Stop Mak­ing Sense and has col­lab­o­rat­ed with sev­er­al notable chore­o­g­ra­phers over the course of his long and var­ied career.

In 1981, Twyla Tharp com­mis­sioned him to write the score for her phys­i­cal­ly demand­ing, exper­i­men­tal bal­let, The Cather­ine Wheel.

In 1999, he pro­vid­ed the sound­track for In Spite of Wish­ing and Want­i­ng, a 2‑hour work chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Wim Van­dekey­bus cre­at­ed for the men in his com­pa­ny, Ulti­ma Vez.

His most fruit­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion has been with Big Dance The­ater’s Annie‑B Par­son, who chore­o­graphed Byrne’s 2012 Love this Giant world tour with St. Vin­cent, as well as Here Lies Love, his 2013  immer­sive rock musi­cal about for­mer First Lady of the Philip­pines Imel­da Mar­cos. Most recent­ly, the pair worked togeth­er to adapt Byrne’s Amer­i­can Utopia tour for Broad­way.

In an inter­view with Vul­ture, Par­son recalled ques­tion­ing why some­one with Byrne’s nat­u­ral­ly cool phys­i­cal instincts would seek an out­side par­ty to han­dle the danc­ing:

I was like, Huh, you’re my favorite chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, what are you doing!? Being able to make move­ment for your­self and being a chore­o­g­ra­ph­er are quite dif­fer­ent, and he’s not inter­est­ed in mak­ing move­ment for oth­er peo­ple. He is a dancer. Some of the stuff he does in the show he total­ly made up for him­self.

No ques­tion about it. The man has moves.

Here’s Parson’s favorite:

He does this thing where he slaps his hands while cross­ing the stage in Slip­pery Peo­ple that’s so amus­ing to watch. He goes down on the ground at one point in Once in a Life­time and I asked him what he was doing, and he was like, “Um, I’m going down to the water in the ground.” He’s imag­in­ing things and feel­ing the music. “Loose” wouldn’t be the word because nei­ther of us are loose at all. He’s incred­i­ble as an artist in the way he thinks and acts on things. I’ve always felt that I have a huge amount of free­dom.

Feel the Byrne next time you hit the dance floor by head­ing back up to the top of this post and fol­low­ing along with his instruc­tion­al video for the social­ly dis­tanced par­tic­i­pa­to­ry dance expe­ri­ence he co-host­ed for two weeks in New York City’s Park Avenue Armory’s 55,000-square-foot Drill Hall.

If only every dance teacher showed up in such a buoy­ant mood (not to men­tion a util­i­ty kilt and Eng­lish sand shoes…)

Shake your hips!

Pup­pet legs!

Hold the traf­fic!

Vibrat­ing arms!

Those lucky enough to score one of the night­ly-assigned danc­ing spots that ensured SOCIAL!  would be, as adver­tised, a social­ly dis­tanced dance club, exe­cut­ed these, and oth­er dance moves, that Byrne’s pre-record­ed voice called for over the pow­er­ful P.A. sys­tem.

The New York­er gave a feel for the pro­ceed­ings:

Some parts were instruc­tions for line dances; oth­ers were more abstract (“Let me see you move like you’re in a new world”) or his­tor­i­cal (“This song is by the first inter­ra­cial band to play Carnegie Hall”); some were idio­syn­crat­ic Byr­nisms (“C’mon, baby, let’s think about your ten­dons”).

Reporters for Van­i­ty Fair and the New York Times (who felt reas­sured that Byrne is “him­self an invit­ing­ly imper­fect dancer”) list­ed some of the steps they’d attempt­ed at Byrne’s behest:

Hand-san­i­tiz­ing (“You’ve got too much! Flick it front, flick it behind!”)

Thread­ed through crowds on a New York City side­walk (“Don’t step on that piz­za!”)

Move like a zom­bie

Sub­way surf

Float a la Gaga

Dou­ble-dutch

Back­stroke 

Reach for the rafters (“Maybe you’re rais­ing your hand in praise or to feel the light or to represent—or because you have a ques­tion. Is any­body answer­ing your ques­tion? So much uncer­tain­ty these days.”)

Pre­sum­ably, they, like Late Show host Stephen Col­bert, below, also learned to “pol­ish the plates.”

I Dance Like This by David Byrne

I’m work­ing on my danc­ing

This is the best I can do

I’m ten­ta­tive­ly shak­ing

You don’t have to look

Can’t say I’m sor­ry

I can’t say I’m ashamed

Can’t think of tomor­row

When it seems so far away

We dance like this

Because it feels so damn good

If we could dance bet­ter

Well you know that we would

For even more inspi­ra­tion, check out the Insta­gram account Dai­ly David Byrne Dances.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch David Byrne Prac­tice His Dance Moves for Stop Mak­ing Sense in New­ly Released Behind-the-Scenes Footage

Watch a Very Ner­vous, 23-Year-Old David Byrne and Talk­ing Heads Per­form­ing Live in NYC (1976)

David Byrne Launch­es Rea­sons to Be Cheer­ful, an Online Mag­a­zine Fea­tur­ing Arti­cles by Byrne, Bri­an Eno & More

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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What’s Entering the Public Domain in 2024: Enjoy Classic Works by Virginia Woolf, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, D. H. Lawrence, Bertolt Brecht & More

in Books, Film, Law, Music | January 2nd, 2024

More than thir­ty years after it was first pri­vate­ly pub­lished in 1928, Lady Chat­ter­ley’s Lover became the sub­ject of the most famous obscen­i­ty tri­al in Eng­lish his­to­ry. Though the ulti­mate deci­sion of R v Pen­guin Books Ltd in favor of the pub­lish­er opened a cul­tur­al flood­gate in that coun­try, the nov­el was also sub­ject to bans else­where, includ­ing the Unit­ed States and Japan. Near­ly a cen­tu­ry after D. H. Lawrence wrote Lady Chat­ter­ley’s Lover — and a world apart as regards atti­tudes about pub­lic moral­i­ty — it can be some­what dif­fi­cult to under­stand what all the fuss was about. But now that the book has entered the pub­lic domain in the Unit­ed States, it could poten­tial­ly be made artis­ti­cal­ly and social­ly dan­ger­ous again.

The same could be said of a num­ber of oth­er notable works of lit­er­a­ture, from Vir­ginia Woolf’s sex-switch­ing satire Orlan­do to Bertolt Brecht’s piece of rev­o­lu­tion­ary the­ater Die Dreigroschenop­er (known in trans­la­tion as The Three­pen­ny Opera) to a cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non-spawn­ing sto­ry like J. M. Bar­rie’s Peter Pan; or the Boy Who Would­n’t Grow Up.

These and oth­ers are named on this year’s Pub­lic Domain Day post by Jen­nifer Jenk­ins, direc­tor of the Duke Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain. If not for mul­ti­ple exten­sions of copy­right law, she notes, all of them would have orig­i­nal­ly gone pub­lic domain in 1984, and we would now have almost four decades’ worth of addi­tion­al cre­ations rein­ter­pret­ing, re-imag­in­ing, and re-using them. Still, “bet­ter late than nev­er!”

At this point in his­to­ry, the arti­facts freed for any­one’s use aren’t just writ­ten works, but also films, musi­cal com­po­si­tions, and even actu­al sound record­ings. These include clas­sic Dis­ney car­toons Steam­boat Willie and Plane Crazy, which intro­duced the world to a cer­tain Mick­ey Mouse; live-action movies from major film­mak­ers, like Char­lie Chap­lin’s The Cir­cus and Carl Theodor Drey­er’s The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc; and such songs with broad cul­tur­al foot­prints as “Yes! We Have No Bananas,” “When You’re Smil­ing,” and “Mack the Knife” — or rather “Die Mori­tat von Mack­ie Mess­er,” in the orig­i­nal Ger­man from Die Dreigroschenop­er. Alas, those of us who want to do our own thing with Bob­by Dar­in’s ver­sion will have to wait until Feb­ru­ary of 2067.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ear­ly Ver­sion of Mick­ey Mouse Enters the Pub­lic Domain on Jan­u­ary 1, 2024

What’s Enter­ing the Pub­lic Domain in 2023: Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis, Vir­ginia Woolf’s To the Light­house, Franz Kafka’s Ameri­ka & More

The Dis­ney Car­toon That Intro­duced Mick­ey Mouse & Ani­ma­tion with Sound (1928)

John Waters Reads Steamy Scene from Lady Chatterley’s Lover for Banned Books Week (NSFW)

The British Library Dig­i­tizes Its Col­lec­tion of Obscene Books (1658–1940)

Bertolt Brecht Sings ‘Mack the Knife’ From The Three­pen­ny Opera (1929)

Watch Online: The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc by Carl Theodor Drey­er (1928)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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An Introduction to Vince Guaraldi, the Jazz Composer Who Created the Best Christmas Album Ever, A Charlie Brown Christmas

in Animation, Music | December 23rd, 2023

When A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas first aired 58 years ago, few had any con­fi­dence that it would be a hit. Its sto­ry and ani­ma­tion, bare-bones even by the stan­dards of mid-nine­teen-six­ties tele­vi­sion, made a pos­i­tive impres­sion on nei­ther CBS’ exec­u­tives nor on many of the spe­cial’s own cre­ators. They did­n’t expect that this very sim­plic­i­ty would turn it into a peren­ni­al hol­i­day favorite — nor, pre­sum­ably, that its sound­track by the Vince Guaral­di Trio would become one of the most beloved Christ­mas albums in exis­tence. Now that we’re well into the sea­son when the music from A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas is heard every day in homes, cafés, and shop­ping malls all around the world, why not get an intro­duc­tion to Guaral­di, the man and his music, from pop cul­ture video essay­ist Matt Drap­er?

“Born in San Fran­cis­co in 1928, Guaral­di cred­it­ed his two uncles with spark­ing his inter­est in jazz as a child, with the future musi­cian already learn­ing the piano by age sev­en,” says Drap­er. After serv­ing in the Kore­an War and return­ing home to study music at San Fran­cis­co State Uni­ver­si­ty, Guaral­di began to “pur­sue his love of jazz in local clubs.”

He soon formed his trio, and record­ing their first albums in the mid-nine­teen-fifties, he “expand­ed his use of Latin jazz and bossa nova.” In 1962 Guaral­di scored his first hit with “Cast Your Fate to the Wind,” a sin­gle from an album inspired by Mar­cel Camus’ Black Orpheus. It was a radio broad­cast of that song, so the sto­ry goes, that caught the ear of Lee Mendel­son, who would pro­duce A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas, as he crossed the Gold­en Gate Bridge in a taxi­cab.

Mendel­son ini­tial­ly com­mis­sioned Guaral­di to com­pose the music for A Boy Named Char­lie Brown, a tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary that ulti­mate­ly nev­er aired. But its record­ing ses­sions brought forth “Linus and Lucy,” which became Peanuts’ de fac­to theme song, and when Coca-Cola agreed to spon­sor a Peanuts Christ­mas spe­cial in 1965 — a scant six months before Christ­mas itself — Guaral­di was called back to score it. “A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas is a rather melan­cholic sto­ry cen­ter­ing on Char­lie’s search for mean­ing and worth in the hol­i­day sea­son,” says Drap­er, “so it’s fit­ting that a large por­tion of Guaraldi’s score is tinged with sad­ness.” Yet “Guaraldi’s melan­choly isn’t over­wrought or forced; rather, it’s minor and sub­tle,” unlike the aver­age film score that tries to “beat its lis­ten­ers over the head with emo­tion.”

The sound­track album, which you can hear (and see accom­pa­nied by a Yule fire­place) on the offi­cial Vince Guaral­di Youtube chan­nel, offers musi­cal vari­ety from the “ton of swing­ing style” in its ver­sion of “O Tanen­baum” to the “waltz brim­ming with ener­gy” of “Skat­ing” to “Christ­mas Is Com­ing,” with its “hints of rock-and-roll.” In the video just above, com­pos­er-Youtu­ber Charles Cor­nell explains what makes it “with­out a doubt, the best Christ­mas album ever” (a title held along with that of the best-sell­ing jazz album in his­to­ry after Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue), not least its being less “in-your-face Christ­mas” than oth­er sim­i­lar­ly themed record­ings. Yet he also acknowl­edges that Guaraldi’s most beau­ti­ful com­po­si­tion for a Peanuts spe­cial isn’t in A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas, but It’s the Great Pump­kin, Char­lie Brown, from 1966. When next fall fall rolls around, do make “Great Pump­kin Waltz” the first song you hear.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Inno­v­a­tive Jazz Pianist Vince Guaral­di Became the Com­pos­er of Beloved Char­lie Brown Music

Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rock­ing & Swing­ing Christ­mas Albums: From James Brown and John­ny Cash to Christo­pher Lee & The Ven­tures

Enjoy Clas­sic Songs from A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas, Per­formed by Vince Guaral­di Trio Drum­mer Jer­ry Granel­li

Why “White Christ­mas,” “Here Comes San­ta Claus,” “Let It Snow,” and Oth­er Clas­sic Christ­mas Songs Come from the 1940s

Charles Schulz Draws Char­lie Brown in 45 Sec­onds and Exor­cis­es His Demons

The Endur­ing Appeal of Schulz’s Peanuts — Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #116

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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David Bowie Sends a Christmas Greeting in the Voice of Elvis Presley (and Sings “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You”)

in Music, Random | December 22nd, 2023

After David Bowie died in 2016, we dis­cov­ered that the musi­cian had a knack for doing impres­sions of fel­low celebri­ties. Could he sing a song in the style of Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Tom Waits, and Bruce Spring­steen? Turns out, he could. And yes, he could do an Elvis impres­sion too.

The clip above aired back in 2013 on “This Is Radio Clash,” a radio show host­ed by the Clash’s Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Top­per Head­on. “Hel­lo every­body,” this is David Bowie mak­ing a tele­phone call from the US of A. At this time of the year I can’t help but remem­ber my British-ness and all the jol­ly British folk, so here’s to you and have your­selves a Mer­ry lit­tle Christ­mas and a Hap­py New Year. Thank you very much.”

It’s maybe not as mem­o­rable as his 1977 Christ­mas duet with Bing Cros­by, but, hey, it’s still a fun lit­tle way to get the hol­i­day sea­son in swing.

Bonus: Below hear Bowie sing Pres­ley’s clas­sic “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.” I had­n’t heard it before, and it’s a treat.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Sings Impres­sions of Bruce Spring­steen, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits & More In Stu­dio Out­takes (1985)

Watch Bing Crosby’s Final Christ­mas Spe­cial, Fea­tur­ing a Famous Duet with Bowie, and Bowie Intro­duc­ing His New Song, “Heroes” (1977)

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

 

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The Story of The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York,” the Boozy Ballad That Became a Beloved Christmas Song

in Music | December 21st, 2023

Note: With the recent pass­ing of Shane Mac­gowan, we’re bring­ing back a post from 2018 and revis­it­ing The Pogues’ song “Fairy­tale of New York.” The off­beat Christ­mas clas­sic is cur­rent­ly #5 on the Bill­board Sin­gles Chart in the UK.

Drug­store Cow­boy, Barfly, Leav­ing Las Vegas, even Bon­nie and Clyde… we love a good sto­ry about doomed, down-and-out lovers. What­ev­er emo­tion­al reser­voir they tap into, when writ­ten well and hon­est­ly, such sto­ries have broad cul­tur­al appeal. Which in part explains the over­whelm­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of The Pogues’ 1987 clas­sic “Fairy­tale of New York,” the kind of “anti-Christ­mas song,” writes Dori­an Lyn­sky at The Guardian, “that end­ed up being, for a gen­er­a­tion, the Christ­mas song.”

Many hol­i­day sto­ries cyn­i­cal­ly trade on the fact that, for a great many peo­ple, the hol­i­days are filled with pain and loss. But “Fairy­tale of New York” doesn’t play this for laughs, nor does it pull the old trick of cheap last-minute redemp­tion.

Sung as a duet by Shane Mac­Gowan and Kirsty Mac­Coll to the boozy tune of an Irish folk bal­lad, the song “is loved because it feels more emo­tion­al­ly ‘real’ than the home­sick sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty of ‘White Christ­mas.’ ” Even if we can’t iden­ti­fy with the plight of a burned-out Irish dream­er spend­ing Christ­mas in a New York drunk tank, we can feel the ache of bro­ken dreams set in high relief against hol­i­day lights.

The song’s his­to­ry itself makes for a com­pelling tale, whether we believe the ori­gin sto­ry in accor­dion play­er James Fearnley’s mem­oir Here Comes Every­body: The Sto­ry of the Pogues or that told by Mac­Gowan, who main­tains that Elvis Costel­lo, the band’s pro­duc­er, bet the singer that he couldn’t write a Christ­mas duet. (Fearn­ley writes that they were try­ing to top The Band’s 1977 “Christ­mas Must Be Tonight.”)

Either way, a Christ­mas song was a good idea. “For a band like the Pogues, very strong­ly root­ed in all kinds of tra­di­tions rather than the present, it was a no-brain­er,” says ban­jo-play­er and co-writer Jem Fin­er. Not to men­tion the fact that Mac­Gowan was born on Christ­mas Day 1957.

Fin­er began the song as a tale about a sailor miss­ing his wife on Christ­mas, but after the ban­jo play­er’s wife called it “corny” he took her sug­ges­tion to adapt the “true sto­ry of some mutu­al friends liv­ing in New York.” Mac­Gowan took the title from J.P. Donleavy’s 1973 nov­el A Fairy Tale of New York, which hap­pened to be lying around the record­ing stu­dio. After a promis­ing start, the song then went through two years of revi­sions and re-record­ings before the band final­ly set­tled on the ver­sion mil­lions know and love, pro­duced by Steve Lil­ly­white and released on the 1988 album If I Should Fall From Grace with God.

Orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed as a duet between Mac­Gowan and bass play­er Cait O’Riordan, a ver­sion record­ed with her was “not quite there,” gui­tarist Philip Chevron has said. Soon after, O’Riordan left the band, and Mac­Gowan record­ed the song again at Abbey Road in 1987, singing both the male and female vocal parts him­self. Even­tu­al­ly Lil­ly­white took the track home to have his wife, Eng­lish singer Kirsty Mac­Coll, record a tem­po­rary guide vocal for the female parts. When Mac­Gowan heard it, he knew he had found the right foil for the char­ac­ter he plays in the song.

“Kirsty knew exact­ly the right mea­sure of vicious­ness and fem­i­nin­i­ty and romance to put into it and she had a very strong char­ac­ter and it came across in a big way,” Mac­Gowan lat­er remarked in an inter­view. “In operas, if you have a dou­ble aria, it’s what the woman does that real­ly mat­ters. the man lies, the woman tells the truth.” As part of her character’s “vicious­ness”, she hurls the slur “f*ggot” at Mac­Gowan, who calls her a “slut.” The offen­sive words have been cen­sored on radio sta­tions, then uncen­sored, and good cas­es have been made for bleep­ing them out (most recent­ly by Irish DJ Eoghan McDer­mott on Twit­ter).

Mac­Gowan him­self has issued a state­ment defend­ing the lyrics as in keep­ing with the char­ac­ters. “Some­times char­ac­ters in songs and sto­ries have to be evil or nasty in order to tell the sto­ry effec­tive­ly,” he writes, adding, “If peo­ple don’t under­stand that I was try­ing to accu­rate­ly por­tray the char­ac­ter as authen­ti­cal­ly as pos­si­ble then I am absolute­ly fine with them bleep­ing the word but I don’t want to get into an argu­ment.” What­ev­er posi­tion one takes on this, it’s hard to deny that Mac­Gowan, co-writer Fin­er, and Mac­Coll total­ly hit the mark when it comes to authen­tic­i­ty.

The gen­uine emo­tions “Fairy­tale of New York” taps into has made it the most beloved Christ­mas song of all time in TV, radio, and mag­a­zine polls in the UK and Ire­land. It has become “far big­ger than the peo­ple who made it,” writes Lynskey. Or, as Fearn­ley puts it, “It’s like ‘Fairy­tale of New York’ went off and inhab­it­ed its own plan­et.” An artist can’t ask for more. See mak­ing-of videos by the BBC and Poly­phon­ic at the top. Watch the band slop­pi­ly mime the song with Mac­Coll on Top of the Pops fur­ther up (Mac­Gowan can­not actu­al­ly play the piano). And just above, see the offi­cial video, star­ring Drug­store Cow­boy’s Matt Dillon—filmed inside a real police sta­tion on the Low­er East Side dur­ing a freez­ing Thanks­giv­ing week in 1987, for max­i­mum hol­i­day vérité.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glen Hansard & Lisa O’Neill Per­form a Stir­ring Ver­sion of “Fairy­tale of New York” at Shane MacGowan’s Funer­al: Watch Their Send-Off

David Bowie & Bing Cros­by Sing “The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy”: A Won­der­ful Christ­mas Chest­nut from 1977

Shane Mac­Gowan & Sinéad O’Connor Duet Togeth­er, Per­form­ing a Mov­ing Ren­di­tion of “Haunt­ed” (RIP)

An Old-Time Radio Yule­tide: Hear 20+ Hours of Vin­tage Christ­mas Radio Shows (1938–1956)

Hear Paul McCartney’s Exper­i­men­tal Christ­mas Mix­tape: A Rare & For­got­ten Record­ing from 1965

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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