The night before Christmas...

I'm losing my mind over this Christmas, trying to grind for everything on this wishlist:
1. Forgiveness
2. New knees
3. A little upwards twist to my wheel of fortune
4. Death to all snitches

A couple of weeks ago, when scheduling the remainder of my vacation days at work, I figured I wouldn’t need any days off during the holiday period. In a few altruistic moments I thought I’d let the people who have families take their days off, and I’ll just take my vacation days early 2010 when I have some touring planned. Win-win right? Well not really, because this week has been the slowest four work-days I’ve been through in the last six months. I like my job and I won’t complain about it, but the thing is: I just love Christmas and it bothered me to be working when the rest of the world was preparing the Christmas days or celebrating early. I know it’s uncool and cheesy for a man my age to admit enjoying the Christmas season, but here’s why: there is just so much great Christmas Music out there! And the problem is I can only listen to it during a two weeks every year… So I have a strict personal policy that says during the days leading up to Christmas, nothing but X-Mas music will be played in my car, as several of my friends are able to confirm. I’m gonna keep this short because it’s Christmas Eve and I have places to be, but let me just share a glimpse of which albums the X-Mas playlist on my iPod consists of, among too many songs to list here right now...

- Jim Jones And Skull Gang Present: a tribute to Bad Santa (hosted by Mike Epps - 2008)
- Jim Jones – A Dipset X-Mas (2005)
- Various Artists – Christmas On Death Row (1996)
- Various Artists - Christmas Rap Volume II (1987)
- Johnny Cash – Christmas With Johnny Cash (2003)
- Booker T. & The MG's – In The Christmas Spirit
- Crass – Merry Crassmass EP (1981)
- Vince Guaraldi - A Charlie Brown Christmas
- Snoop Dogg - Landy & Egg Nog: A DPG Christmas
- Snoop Dogg - Christmas In Tha Dogg House (2008)

Besides these albums, my X-Mas Playlist consists of dozens of other random Christmas-themed songs. One of these is the version of 'do they know it's Christmas' that Fucked Up recently released. These Canadian punks recorded this cover with the intent to donate all money to charity, so please support some good causes and enjoy so good music at the same time. Here's some more info on this song and the causes, directly from the band:

"Hi everyone, we're finally ready to go with this year's installment of our benefit Christmas-themed 7"/mp3. This years edition is a cover of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" which is available NOW via ITUNES. HERE. Now before you ask or text your friends - we know that this song is a lame 80s relic and that we are posers who "jumped the shark" so long ago and that the combination of these things is enough to make you go into convulsions apoplexy and make you want to throw the Fucked Up records you haven't sold on ebay yet into the fireplace, just remember that you'd be missing the point. The point is Christmas, people.

Like last year, this release will be %100 for charity. The money from the sale of this mp3, and the 7" (where this song will be the b-side to a new FU song called "Davids Plan", and will be released mid February) will be split between three groups:

Justice for Missing and Murdered Ingigenous Women
Missing Justice is a grassroots solidarity collective based in Montreal that works to eliminate violence and discrimination against Indigenous women living in Quebec. The collective seeks to consult and collaborate with Indigenous communities and organizations to foster understanding and dispel harmful stereotypes commonly held in regards to Indigenous women who are targets of violence. As a collective, our overall strategy for achieving these goals includes popular education initiatives, media outreach, coalition-building, case work, poster awareness campaigns, research projects, information sharing, publishing and broadcasting, political demonstrations, and direct action.

DTES Power of Women Group
A grassroots group of DTES women who work to empower, educate and
mobilize around issues affecting their neighbourhood such as poverty,
housing, and violence against women.

Sisters in Spirit
The main objective of the Native Women's Association of Canada - Sisters In Spirit initiative is to address violence against Aboriginal (First Nations, Inuit and Métis) women, particularly racialized and/or sexualized violence, that is, violence perpetrated against Aboriginal women because of their gender and Aboriginal identity. Specifically, to increase public understanding and knowledge at a national level of the impact of racialized, sexualized violence against Aboriginal women often leading to their disappearance and death.

This is the real deal people. A great way to help out three groups working to represent an extremely marginalized group of people in Canada. As we've said before, we've always thought that the importance of marginalized art and cultural movements (punk, DIY, indie, you) is the ability to make connections and support other marginalized people within society. Issues like cancer are of course important, but for people like us, it's just as important to attempt to highlight and support causes that most people will never come in contact with.

As an added bonus, this song feature's many of your favourite indie rock a-listers, who graciously donated their time to sing on this track. Here are the technicals:

Cover Photo by David Waldman: http://kid-with-camera.blogspot.com/
Engineered by Jon Drew at Giant, November 2009
"Do They Know It's Christmas?" written by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, performed by J. Falco, Ezra Koenig, Bob Mould, Tegan & Sara, Andrew W.K., GZA, Kyp Malone, Yo La Tengo, David Cross & Kevin Drew.

Anyways, we've had all our albums leaked and downloaded months before they came out. Thats NBD, and every member of FU torrents the shit out of some free albums. But if you swap or trade this song you are a cretin - it's 99 cents to buy, and for a good cause. It sounds pretty cool and is funny to. SO BUY IT IF YOU READ THIS AND WHO CARES IF WE ARE LAME NOW. Thanks! Tell yr friends. Also don't forget you need to do this through itunes. If you don't have a credit card just borrow your moms."

Make sure to support these causes and enjoy a good tune by buying this song from iTunes HERE!

All there's left for me to do is to wish you all a Merry Christmas, and if you're still not feeling it, please enjoy this video from Jim Jones' X-Mas Mixtape.