Recently in 1960s Category

Rummaging through my tall pile of Christmas music on my desk, I stumbled across this, quickly realizing I had no idea how I'd come by it. It's clearly a rip from an old vinyl record, as the surface noise will betray itself. Fortunately, our friends at Goldmine are on the case, having made this record the subject of a Q&A column. Apparently this song was made to go with a toy from the early 60s called the Jingle Jump, a jingling ball on a string that attached to your shoe. The object was to jump it in the way you would jump rope. And of course, there are copies of the record where the band is called the Apollos instead of the Tigers. Goldmine goes on to explain that the song is often confused for a Christmas record when it's not. So why's it here? Well, "Jingle Bells" doesn't mention Christmas either, but you could play this back to back with that and nobody would be the wiser.

This is a 1966 B-side to the single "Gotta Stop This Dreaming," and it's been made available in the modern day by the fine folks at Sundazed. The band is best remembered for its one top 10 hit, "Lies," a great 60s rocker on its own but which was propelled by a performance strongly reminiscent of the Beatles -- indeed, a lot of kids thought it was the Fab Four. This tune borrows a few readymades from Merseyside as well as the Beach Boys, but the resemblance in this case isn't quite the "live or Memorex" conundrum that "Lies" was. Still, a decent tune for the time.

We get a lot of songs that recreate favorite 60s genres from surf to Merseybeat, but this is probably the first time I've been directed to MySpace to listen to a song that was cut in the early 1960s. It's your basic British Invasion love song with a Christmas twist, very Gerry and the Pacemakers/Herman's Hermits in style. It's apparently not available for sale, but the band's MySpace page promises a new version by the original lead singer is in the works. Update: Martin Johns said the song did make it to CD on a 1995 import compilation, Ready Steady Go & Win, now out of print. "If you can find a copy that would cost you from $80-$600," he adds.

This trademark 1963 Beach Boys Christmas song gets a good bit of radio play at Christmas, but it hasn't traveled well over the years, since the car culture it was based on hasn't maintained its place in the popular consciousness. Nevertheless, it was inspired for its time and is still fun to hear; I imagine Little Saint Nick drag-racing the sleighs in "Jingle Bells" and "Sleigh Bells," not to mention chasing after Chuck Berry's Rudolph. A full album followed a year later.

The first surf-oriented Christmas song, beating the Beach Boys to the racks by a year (1963). It uses the time-tested "tell Santa what you want" method of writing Christmas songs, but their way was influential enough to inspire the Turtles' update "Santa and the Sidewalk Surfer," more of a spoken-word novelty, and the spoken bridge to The Ravers' "Punk Rock Xmas." UPDATE: Thanks to Radio Rumpus Room (KFAI-FM Minneapolis St. Paul) for telling us the B-side of the original vinyl single was "Santa's Speed Shop."