Rettsounds - Take Off Your Furry Suit and Listen

Whenever this season comes upon us, I ponder on that line Phoebe Cates delivers in Gremlins about the high suicide rates during the holidays: "While everyone else is opening their gifts, others are opening their wrists." That line really stuck with me throughout the years. Lately, it really jumps forward in my cerebral cortex whenever I’m walking to work in Midtown and see one of those people dressed up in some furry costume standing out in some cold-ass weather hugging kids and taking pictures for nickels. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad these people are making an honest living and not sitting in the comfort of their squat cooking up a Kickstarter fund for the line of oceanic jewelry they wish to kick off, but fuck… it’s gotta be hard times before I don a costume and endure kid spittle; that’s all I’m saying.

In the sick little snow globe I keep in my brain, I envision a curmudgeonly wise one coming home, removing their ridiculously huge Cookie Monster mask/helmet and slumping down in the middle of the couch whilst continuing to wear the rest of the hairy costume. Sitting smack dab in the center of the couch, lonesome style, the beaten but unbowed one cracks beer after beer whilst letting out sigh after self satisfying sigh, pondering on the monotony of human existence, pigeons in the park, and other such poignant shit. Then—and only then—I imagine he or she would walk over to their hi-fi system and play a succession of tracks such as the ones I’ve strung together and present to you below.

1) Shoes – ‘Do I Get So Shy’
2) Thin Lizzy – ‘Little Girl In Bloom’
3) Renderers – ‘This Shining Life’
4) Mike Fellows – ‘A.M.’
5) Empire – ‘Impulse’
6) Harpers Bizarre – ‘I Can Hear The Darkness’
7) Barbara & Terri Manning – ‘Run to Me’
8) George Edwards – ‘Never Mind, I’m Freezing’
9) Bergen White – ‘Bird Song’
10) Sarah Louise Hardiman – ‘Frozen Lake’
11) House of Love – ‘Loneliness is a Gun’ 
12) Pete Dello – ‘It’s What You’ve Got’
13) Another Sunny Day – ‘It’s OK if You Don’t Love Me’ 
14) Rosemary Krust – ‘Sand’
15) England’s Glory – ‘Bright Lights’
16) Jimmy Webb – ‘If You See Me Getting Smaller, I’m Leaving’
17) Go –Betweens – ‘This Girl, Black Girl’
18) Verlaines – ‘Slow Sad Love Song’

Have a Merry One -- TR

Previously – White Christmas