December Music: Day Fifteen

Common wisdom usually says that you're either a Beatles fan or a Rolling Stones fan, a Led Zeppelin fan or a Who fan, but I've found that it's more often the case that you're either a Beatles/Stones fan or a Zeppelin/Who fan -- at any rate, my allegiance is with the latter two bands. The Who was the first band I really got into in high school, thanks in large part to their epic performance at the Concert for NYC following 9/11, and in the past few years I've come to appreciate Led Zeppelin, especially their folkier stuff and the way they were able to blend American blues with traditional English music and their own specific brand of rock and roll.

To my knowledge, Led Zeppelin never put out a holiday song during their career -- they were popular long before the ironic holiday song became a staple of any hip band's music catalog -- and I suppose you could argue that The Who never did, either, but The Who do have one Christmas-themed moment in their 1969 rock opera Tommy, in a song aptly titled "Christmas." Most people know the premise of Tommy without realizing that they do, thanks to the song "Pinball Wizard" -- "that deaf, dumb, and blind kid (sure plays a mean pinball)," and the purpose of "Christmas" is to question whether a kid who can't see, hear or speak can expect to go to heaven, when he doesn't even know what a holiday like Christmas is supposed to mean. The song wasn't a radio hit, but it was an important part of The Who's touring of Tommy in the early seventies, and also featured in the film adaptation of the album that came out in 1975, directed by Ken Russell.

The only band I know of that's released a cover of "Christmas" is Rogue Wave, and I think they do it justice. Covering a Who song (or a Led Zeppelin song, for that matter) is usually a bad idea, because there's no way a singer can approach the power of Roger Daltrey's or Robert Plant's vocals without seeming like a pale imitation, but "Christmas" is more about Daltrey embodying Tommy's character than showing off his vocal acrobatics, and Rogue Wave manage to imbue the song with an extra sense of holiday spirit to make it more accessible to people unfamiliar with Tommy while also honoring the original version lyrically and stylistically.