I don’t know about you, but when I think of Sid Vicious, I pic­ture a young Gary Old­man. The Sex Pis­tols bassist cer­tain­ly made an out­sized cul­tur­al mark in his 21 short years, and Old­man’s per­for­mance in the Alex Cox-direct­ed Sid and Nan­cy has become, for those too young or dis­tant to catch the band at the time, the author­i­ta­tive­ly vivid depic­tion of him. Though argu­ments rou­tine­ly erupt about the license Cox may have tak­en with the facts of Vicious’ life and death, you need only watch a clip of the gen­uine arti­cle to under­stand how expert­ly Old­man cap­tured his dis­tinc­tive kind of surly vital­i­ty. I rec­om­mend the above late-sev­en­ties broad­cast from The Efrom Allen Show on New York cable tele­vi­sion (part one, part two, part three), which finds the shirt­less Vicious sit­ting on a pan­el with his girl­friend Nan­cy Spun­gen (the tit­u­lar Nan­cy of the film), Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys, and Cyn­thia Ross of the B Girls. “THAT’S SID VICIOUS ON YOUR SCREENS, FOLKS,” scrolling text tells the view­ers. “IS SID VICIOUS? WHO CARES? CALL 473‑5386 TO SPEAK TO THE PUNK OF YOUR CHOICE.”

And call they do. Vicious responds with the same oscil­la­tion between artic­u­la­cy and inar­tic­u­la­cy you may recall from Old­man’s por­tray­al, and Spun­gen seems to pos­sess the same behav­ioral­ly con­cealed core of intel­li­gence that Chloe Webb gave her in the movie. She takes up the role of his defend­er when, lit cig­a­rette in hand, she unhesi­tat­ing­ly shoots down a caller who asks the faint­ly zoned-out punk icon why he’s “so deriv­a­tive”: “He’s as orig­i­nal as you get! He’s not deriv­a­tive of any­thing!” As the show goes on, this proves not to be the only accu­sa­tion of its kind. Oth­er calls include inquiries about post-Pis­tols projects, a sug­ges­tion to col­lab­o­rate with Ron Wood (of all peo­ple), and prompts for pre­dic­tions about the direc­tion of punk rock. “How should I know?” Vicious blurts. “I live my life day by day. I don’t plan years ahead.” Indeed, he did­n’t need to. The pro­gram aired on Sep­tem­ber 18, 1978, eight months after the Sex Pis­tols dis­solved. Less than a month lat­er, Spun­gen would be gone, and less than five months lat­er, so too would he.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Acoustic His­to­ry of Punk Rock Sheds Light on NYC’s Low­er East Side (NSFW)

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of CBGB, the Ear­ly Home of Punk and New Wave

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

It is, arguably, the most beau­ti­ful ver­sion of the most pop­u­lar hol­i­day tune: Nat King Cole singing “The Christ­mas Song” in his vel­vety-smooth bari­tone voice. Cole actu­al­ly record­ed the song four times between 1946 and 1961, but it’s the last record­ing that is most often played on the radio and in stores dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son.

“The Christ­mas Song” was writ­ten on a swel­ter­ing sum­mer day in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia by the croon­er Mel Tor­mé and his writ­ing part­ner, Robert Wells. Tor­mé and Wells had been hired to write a pair of movie scores. Com­plain­ing about the heat one day, the two men began talk­ing about win­ter at high­er lat­i­tudes. Wells jot­ted down a few men­tal images. “I saw a spi­ral pad on his piano with four lines writ­ten in pen­cil, “writes Tor­mé in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy It Was­n’t All Vel­vet. “They start­ed, ‘Chest­nuts roast­ing … Jack Frost nip­ping … Yule­tide car­ols … Folks dressed up like Eski­mos.’ Bob did­n’t think he was writ­ing a song lyric. He said he thought if he could immerse him­self in win­ter, he could cool off.”

When the song was com­plet­ed, Tor­mé imme­di­ate­ly thought of his friend Cole, accord­ing to Ace Collins in his book Sto­ries Behind the Great­est Hits of Christ­mas. The two song­writ­ers drove to Cole’s house in Los Ange­les and played it for him. Cole liked the song, and asked the writ­ers to hold it for him while he made arrange­ments to record it. Cole first record­ed “The Christ­mas Song” with his jazz trio in New York on June 14, 1946. Lat­er arrange­ments includ­ed strings and grew pro­gres­sive­ly more lush. The scene above is from the very last episode of The Nat King Cole Show, broad­cast live on Decem­ber 17, 1957. Cole is accom­pa­nied by Nel­son Rid­dle and his orches­tra.

For those cel­e­brat­ing today, we can think of no bet­ter way to send you our greet­ings than with this mov­ing per­for­mance, which ends with the mem­o­rable lines:

And so I’m offer­ing this sim­ple phrase
To kids from one to nine­ty-two
Although it’s been said many times
Many ways, Mer­ry Christ­mas to you