"White Christmas," Patti Smith (Jason)

The label claims it's produced by "The Runt," which savvy travelers will recognize as the nickname of Todd Rundgren, who produced one of Patti's albums. It's a fairly conventional reading in Patti's distinctive voice and only a single verse long, but it does the job. Its artist credit is "r.e.f.m.," but we know it's Patti. This is from sometime in the late 70s; her only other Christmas release is "We Three Kings" on A Very Special Christmas 3. I had originally claimed this was a bootleg, but Martin Johns writes in to correct me that this was an official release. He goes on: "The Patti Smith 45 was recorded in an effort to help musician/producer Lenny Kaye launch an independent label... But, of course, she was under contract (I'm not sure if she was ALREADY under contract or whether the song was recorded first and she signed before its release), so they came up with the acronym "r.e.f.m." (which I believe was something like "Records Exist For Music" or "Records Entirely For Musicians"...something which expressed Patti's reservations with the industry). I'm fairly certain that "the runt" was Lenny and I know that was his band on the flip side." Personally, I stand by my reading of "runt" as Rundgren; he actually recorded a couple of albums as Runt and he was the producer of Patti's Wave album. Which makes me skeptical that Kaye would adopt it for himself. Update: Robin Heath has heard that "r.e.f.m." may mean "radio ethiopia field marshal" (Radio Ethiopia being the title of her second album). "No Jestering" by Link Cromwell, aka Lenny Kaye, is the flip side.