December 21–28, 2000
music
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Solomon night (and day): Marathon man Jon Solomon photo: Dexter Wuest |
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Jon Solomon will not be home for Christmas. Nor will he roast chestnuts over an open fire, sip eggnog or take part in any other sort of family-related Yuletide cheer. Instead, as he has for most of the last 12 years, Solomon will be putting in some serious overtime.
But don’t shed a big, drippy It’s a Wonderful Life tear for Jon. Since Solomon’s Jewish, Christmas is just another day before or after Chanukah, so he’ll be burning the midnight oil by choice.
Every year save one since 1988, Solomon, a Princeton native and head of indie label My Pal God Records, has hosted a marathon holiday radio show which he loosely describes as "a Christmas show for people who really don’t like Christmas music" on Princeton’s WPRB (103.3 FM). What started as a one-off 12-hour shift quickly evolved into an annual 24-hour extravaganza that, arguably, its fans look forward to as much as Christmas itself.
"When I was 15 I started working at WPRB… and they didn’t have anyone signed up to do a show on Christmas Eve," explains Solomon on the phone from his Princeton home while glued to week five of MSNBC’s post-election coverage. "And being Jewish and all, I’d probably be going to a movie or going out to eat with my family. So I signed up for it and decided that I would just stay on all night until I got real tired and had to sign off the station."
The next year he dove in for the all-day long haul, attempting the double challenge of filling an entire calendar day with winter holiday- and Jesus-related music while remaining lucid. "I’ve gotten better at it. The first time I did it for 24 hours, I was 16 and had never stayed up for 30 hours in a row and I was crazy," recalls Solomon of the ordeal. "I had all this caffeine and you’re 16 and you’re out of your mind. Now it’s tempered to the point where I get kind of good-naturedly slap-happy, but it doesn’t careen out of control."
During this year’s day-long affair, he will not play much of the Christmas pap that regularly clutters the airwaves this time of year. No grandmas will be run over by reindeer, and it’s a good bet that Frosty won’t do much thumpety-thump-thumping. Rather, Solomon, 27, will draw on the vast knowledge of holiday songs he’s accumulated while broadcasting this show for nearly half his life. He’ll play obscurities, rarities, forgotten classics and songs that fall into the "so bad they’re good" category.
Some of his favorites include the out-of-print Merry Christmas album by ’60s Pacific Northwest garage bands the Sonics, the Wailers and the Galaxies. He’s also fond of solo guitarist John Fahey’s Christmas albums, Beck’s "Little Drum Machine Boy," Sonic Youth’s "Santa Doesn’t Cop Out on Dope" and, of course, Run DMC’s classic "Christmas in Hollis." His staple "head-shakingly awful" stuff includes H-Town’s "Knockin’ Da Boots For Christmas" and Death Row Records’ 1996 Christmas on Death Row album, featuring Snoop Doggy Dogg and Nate Dogg’s cover of James Brown’s "Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto."
"Being synonymous with holiday music is not something I had ever really planned on," Solomon explains. But synonymous he has become. One reason the task has become a labor of love (all WPRB DJs are volunteers) is the ragtag following he’s accumulated. Though he’s also hosted a weekly show since ’88 (with breaks for college at Northwestern and a gig booking Chicago’s Empty Bottle), Solomon’s Christmas broadcast has taken on a life of its own. Not only do listeners look forward to hearing Solomon’s annual show, but some record the entire thing. "They tape them on video [tape]," he marvels, "because you can tape six to eight hours straight."
The response to the show has cemented the concept of radio as community, and brings out the idealist in Solomon. "People I will not hear from for 365 days — people who I am out of touch with who aren’t necessarily friends, just voices that I recognize as callers over the years — will go out of their way to call every year. Just to kind of hear from everyone every year and know that everyone’s doing all right is totally sappy but completely worthwhile and legitimate."
The one year he skipped — 1995, when he spent Christmas driving cross-country to attend the Rose Bowl — convinced him to do everything in his power to be around for the show henceforth. "The next year, people were calling wondering where I had been… every year is just somewhat astonishing."
He recalls one year when a couple listening in their car stopped by to bring him coffee; former DJs stopping by to say hello; people calling up and continuing conversations from the year prior.
As an outgrowth of the show (and in the interest of making this holiday task a little simpler), Solomon, who runs My Pal God from his home, has just released volume two of The My Pal God Holiday Record. The 13-song compilation, available at www.mypalgodrecords.com and finer record stores, culls covers and original holiday songs solicited by Solomon and features tracks by indie rock stalwarts like The French Kicks ("Alabaster City"), Drums and Tuba ("Auld Lang Syne") and Emperor Penguin ("Erotic Xmas [Home for the Holograms]").
Volume one, released last year and nearly out of print, was inspired by the never-released song, "What Did Santa Claus Bring You For Christmas," recorded by garage punks The Law in 1981 at Boston’s Rathskellar. Since the song, taken off a tape by one of the band members, was only available in WPRB’s library, Solomon felt it deserved a larger audience. Starting there, he stacked up 20 tracks — including Atom & His Package’s "What WE Do On Christmas," Sean Na Na’s "Please, Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas)," Crucial Youth’s "X-Mastime for the Skins" and The Goblins’ "Ha-Ha Hannukah" — for the first edition.
With plans for a volume three, plus a tentative reissue of volumes one and two as a double-CD with bonus tracks, Solomon is quickly filling the void as far as indie rock holiday anthems are concerned. "The more volumes of this [I put out], eventually if, say, there were 24 hours of music, then I could just put a bunch of CDs on shuffle and read a book," jokes Solomon.
The 13th annual 24-hour holiday radio show, Sun., Dec. 24, 7 p.m. to Mon., Dec. 25, 7 p.m. on WPRB, 103.3 FM, or on the web www.wprb.com.