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It's Finally ChristmasIt's Finally Christmas! (Tim/Kerr, 1994) is one of the earliest albums from a modern indie label to feature all-original holiday rock music. It was hardly the first, though. By this point, we'd seen impressive compilations from Ze Records (1981), Midnight Records (1984), and Black Vinyl (1991), among others. But, It's Finally Christmas! was an early warning sign of the deluge facilitated by the coming digital revolution - when music became much easier to produce and distribute. By the 21st century, albums like It's Finally Christmas! would be a dime a dozen. At the time, however, they were rare birds - reason to sit up and take notice, if not necessarily celebrate.

Musically, It's Finally Christmas! is very much a product of its times, when words like "alternative," "grunge," and "post-modern" became marketing fodder. Grating noise became the calling card of many bands, and ironic became the resting state of an entire generation. So, unsurprisingly, the overall tone of It's Finally Christmas! is one of atonal irreverence. Now, I'm as jaded as the next guy, and I love grating noise, but a whole hour of this stuff can be, well, challenging. A few tracks, like Smegma's "Happy Holiday," seem designed to make you hit the "skip" button. By the end of the nineties, this kind of mewling sarcasm wouldn't seem like such a good idea, and bands like The Strokes, The Hives, and The Vines arose as an alternative to the alternative.

To illustrate, the best song title on It's Finally Christmas! is easily "Shoplifting You Something For Christmas" by New Bad Things. Unfortunately, it's also one of the worst songs. Remember what I said about grating noise? In flagrante delicto. Discogs describes New Bad Things as a band from Portland, Oregon, "belonging to a tradition of bizarre rockers more typical of Los Angeles and San Francisco. They write songs that could be radio hits if not for the demented rhythms, absurdist trumpet, and convoluted guitar phrases." That describes "Shoplifting You Something For Christmas" to a tee, and that's the problem with It's Finally Christmas! in a nutshell. There are some great songs here. But, too often they are obscured by pointless dissonance and hipper-than-thou diffidence.

Dandy Warhols, "Little Drummer Boy"An Appalling Dump Heap... Not!

So, It's Finally Christmas! is more an artifact of the alternative 1990's than an enjoyable album. Nevertheless, several diamonds emerge amidst the lumps of coal and - surprise, surprise - they are usually the more melodic, straightforward numbers. In fact, I rate nearly half of its 19 tracks as "essential listening" (see below), though none could be considered an unqualified classic.

The nearest miss is the groovy, hypnotic "Little Drummer Boy" from pop-psych-drone band the Dandy Warhols. Tim/Kerr also released it as a single, though I'd argue that the definitive version of the song is the sharper, pithier single the band would record for Capitol Records in 1997 - and that version is much more common these days, appearing on compilations like Alternative Rock Xmas. Significantly, 1997 was the year the Dandys became an "it" band following the release of their sophomore album, The Dandy Warhols Come Down. Later, they scored a worldwide hit with "Bohemian Like You" (2000) and would go on to a long career.

Even at the time, though, most of the bands on It's Finally Christmas! were not well-known outside Portland, Oregon, where Tim/Kerr was based. These days, most are positively obscure. In fact, two of the best tracks, "Christmas Dressed In Blue" and "Hey Santa," are by two of the most obscure groups - Iceberg Slim and Flaps Down, respectively. Neither group ever recorded much else. Others, such as Sugarboom ("Ave Maria") and Swoon 23 ("Merry Christmas To Me"), recorded an album or two, but never made much of an impact outside the Beaver State. My personal favorite, though, is the Whirlees' "Grinch" - one of two versions found on It's Finally Christmas! The band, who hailed from Salem, just south of Portland, wouldn't amount to much. But, their gleeful punk deconstruction is one of the best-ever covers of the Dr. Seuss classic - so there's that! The Whirlees capture the best aspects of Thurl Ravenscroft's original performance, but filtered through the Dictators covering "Peter Gunn"...

Dandy Warhols, "Little Drummer Boy"Three artists on It's Finally Christmas! stand out from the prevailing 20-something, alt-rock vibe. First, Meg Hentges' "Christmas Time Is Here" is a fairly straight cover of the Vince Guaraldi classic (plus some cool electric guitar), but it's notable mainly due to the singer's recent membership in Two Nice Girls, a self-proclaimed "dyke rock" act from Austin, Texas. Lest we forget, out-and-proud LGBTQ artists were rare in those days. Second, Dave Ray & Tony Glover's original acoustic blues song "I'm Mad At The Fatman" sounds like nothing else on It's Finally Christmas! Moreover, the duo is far and away the elder statesmen here, dating back to the folk revival of the early 60's as part of Koerner, Ray & Glover.

And finally, we have the Violets, whose cover of Jackson Browne's "Rebel Jesus" is another unicorn on It's Finally Christmas! A Portland band, the Violets were fronted by emotive singer Lisa Hayes, and their arrangement is closer to southern rock than alternative. In their hands, Browne's gentle protest song sounds like the Black Crowes fronted by a pissed off, slightly inebriated Melissa Etheridge. The Violets' "Rebel Jesus" is certainly over the top, but it's also an affecting, unguarded performance.

The origins of It's Finally Christmas! go back a little further, by the way. In 1992, Tim/Kerr sent out a promotional cassette featuring Poison Idea's mauling of Elvis Presley's "Santa Claus Is Back In Town" backed with Ray & Glover's "I'm Mad At The Fat Man." Then, in 1993, they released the songs as a 7-inch called Single At Christmas - on several different colors of vinyl, to boot. In 1994, both songs would appear on It's Finally Christmas! and the photo from the 7-inch picture sleeve - a little Christmas diorama - would be recycled for the CD cover art.

Super Deluxe, "Electric Holiday"I'm Sorry, Tim Who?

Tim/Kerr Records was founded in 1985 to release The Elvis Of Letters, a spoken word collaboration between poet William Burroughs and filmmaker Gus Van Sant, but they didn't start cranking out music until 1991. They were one of several independent labels based in the Pacific Northwest that helped shape the alternative rock movement in the 1990's. But, Tim/Kerr doesn't loom as large in that history as Sub Pop (from Seattle, Washington) or Kill Rock Stars and Sympathy For The Record Industry (from Olympia, Washington), in part because they went out of business in 1999, relegating their not-inconsiderable legacy to the dustbin of history.

Most prominently, Tim/Kerr launched the careers of Everclear, the Dandy Warhols, and Super Deluxe, all of whom made the leap to the majors as part of a partnership the label formed with Capitol Records. Other important Tim/Kerr acts include hardcore stalwarts Poison Idea, garage rockers Dharma Bums, and the Oblivion Seekers, a punk band with early rock influences. More famously, Nirvana, their lead singer, Kurt Cobain, and his wife Courtney Love's band, Hole, all contributed to the Tim/Kerr catalog, albeit in a less substantial fashion.

All of those were contemporary artists from the Pacific Northwest, but it's worth noting that Richard Hell, Pere Ubu, and the Bush Tetras - artists whose roots extend back to the formative days of punk rock in New York City - all recorded for Tim/Kerr later in their careers. The label also released several albums by the Wipers, one of the first-ever Portland punk bands, formed in 1978 by singer, guitarist, and songwriter Greg Sage.

Everclear, "So Much For The Afterglow"Pointless Ephemera

For the morbidly curious, the name of Tim/Kerr Records was derived from the name of one of its owners, Thomas "Tim" Kerr - the other being Thor Lindsay, who wrote the surprisingly heartfelt liner notes for It's Finally Christmas! That said, by some accounts, the label was originally called T/K but changed their name to avoid a lawsuit by TK Records, the Miami-based disco label. And, to be sure, the label Tim/Kerr had nothing to do with the guitarist Tim Kerr, who very much ran in the same circles - albeit in a different part of America. Kerr was a founding member of influential Austin, Texas, punk band the Big Boys, and he later played with Poison 13, Bad Mutha Goose, and the Lord High Fixers, among others.

For you completists out there, It's Finally Christmas! represents most of the holiday music associated with Tim/Kerr - but not quite all of it. Most significantly, Super Deluxe release a nifty little EP, Electric Holiday, on Tim/Kerr in 1995, and then another, Bittersweet Noel (this time self-released) in 2000. Neither is easy to find, especially the latter. Tim/Kerr was also associated with a 1994 Victoria Williams single, "What A Wonderful World," released on the Singles On Label, and they placed two songs on a 1997 Capitol EP called Fruitcake distributed through the Coalition Of Independent Music Stores. If I live long enough, I'll review all that stuff, too...

Everclear's contribution to Fruitcake was a silly cover of Eartha Kitt's "Santa Baby," which had first appeared in 1996 on a Los Angeles radio compilation called Kevin & Bean's Christmastime In The LBC (1996). But, in 1997 - by which time their association with Tim/Kerr had ended - Everclear unleashed a real corker, the original song "Hating You For Christmas," a holiday rewrite of the aggressively melodic title track of Everclear's third album, So Much For The Afterglow. For years "Hating You For Christmas" was never released as a single and never included on a Christmas album. It was, instead, hidden at the end of the 13th track ("Like A California King") on So Much For The Afterglow. When the digital edition of the album was finally released, "Hating You For Christmas" was officially listed for the first time, thus making it available for download and streaming. [top of page]

Albums Albums

SongsEssential Songs

  • Ave Maria (Sugarboom)
  • Christmas Dressed In Blue (Iceberg Slim)
  • Christmas Time Is Here (Meg Hentges)
  • Hey Santa (Flaps Down)
  • I'm Mad At The Fatman (Ray & Glover, 1992)
  • Little Drummer Boy (Dandy Warhols)
  • Merry Christmas To Me (Swoon 23)
  • Rebel Jesus (Violets)
  • The Grinch (Whirlees)

Further ListeningFurther Listening

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