In keeping with the somewhat guarded and uncertain tone of the current holiday season, I wanted to throw a light on my favorite left-of-center Christmas song: "All the Wrong People are Dying", by the Styrenes. While it's true that its holiday sentiments are limited to a brief mention of It's a Wonderful Life, I've been annually inspired to play it on the radio towards the end of every December since it came out in 1996. I'll be honoring the tradition again this Monday, December 22nd (8-11 PM), when I fill in for Trent Wolbe and his excellent Sound and Safe program. The Styrenes EP from which the song comes is already packed away in the record bag I'll be bringing along for the evening's festivities.
A quick summary of the Styrenes would be next to impossible, but there's a classy and informative overview available on their MySpace page that'll get any newcomers sniffing in the right direction. For my part, I've been a proud fan since first discovering a split-spined copy of their "A Monster and the Devil" LP in the record stacks back at WPRB. From that starting point -- an imagined soundtrack to an urban noir fantasy -- I worked backwards through their earlier recordings, albums by their artpunk affiliates in the Electric Eels and Mirrors, and wound up anticipating the Styrenes' We Care, So You Don't Have To with a kind of excitement that I'm usually something of a stranger to. Good rock bands come and go all the time, but the Styrenes' endurance and forever-changing lineups and sonic explorations have made me a fan for life. It was a distinct honor to invite their participation in WFMU's Sinister Moody benefit concert back in 2002, and then something even more gratifying when they performed on my show a few weeks later. [Archive here.]
"All the Wrong People are Dying" is an epic tragedy that addresses the complex emotions and anxieties that the death of a trusted friend often inspires in those they leave behind. It also weighs in on the redistribution of personal obligations that tend to follow such events, and the drunken or medicated haze in which we sometimes reconcile them. Although the song is shored upon a funerary dirge, the narrative moves quickly from the plague of sorrow to the appealing clarity that an arrogance towards our own mortality can offer. There's an impressive list of departed musicians and artists namechecked in the song (Stiv Bators and Johnny Thunders among them), and their legacies are admiringly reflected upon through unexpected comparisons to It's a Wonderful Life's George Bailey and Clarence the Angel. Aided by storylines both real and imagined, "the affirmation that life is good and worth living" strikes a unique pose at center stage, and summons a kind of holiday warmth that's a million miles away from the usual Hallmark hokum. I believe I very nearly wept during the first Christmas radio show on which I aired this track.
For this recording, the Styrenes were:
Mike Hudson (vocals), Paul Marotta (piano), Jamie Klimek (guitar), Paul Laurence (drums), Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello), and David Newman (bass). The Drag City EP from which the song originally comes is out of print, but the song can now be had on a CD that also includes "A Monster and the Devil". Buy it here from Insound.com. Other Styrenes records, including the brilliant "We Care So You Don't Have To" are likewise available, or can be had via eMusic.
Boy, was doing this song at karaoke a mistake I wish I could correct.
Posted by: Jon Solomon | December 15, 2008 at 04:47 PM