There Is No Cat

That Christmas magic brought this tale to a very happy ending

One of the few lasting additions to the canon of holiday songs to come out of the punk and new wave revolution of the late 1970s and early 1980s was "Christmas Wrapping" by The Waitresses. It’s probably the only song of theirs that gets played on the radio any more (not that "I Know What Boys Like" and "No Guilt" got much play on the radio even back then from anyone other than college radio DJs like myself, but no matter), the song that keeps The Waitresses from being something other than a footnote. Which is useful, because they were a damned good band.

Anyway, Chris Butler, the leader and songwriter of the band (but not the singer; the late Patty Donohue sang everything) used a baby blue Vox teardrop guitar on "Christmas Wrapping", a guitar he hocked in 1987 when he was fed up with music. It was a special guitar. Now, on the dawn of the 25th anniversary of the original release of the song, Chris has tracked down the guitar and bought it back. Maybe. He brought along a tape recorder (or maybe an MP3 recorder, or whatever) on his trip to Belgium to do so, and edited together a nice audio telling of the story that wouldn’t sound out of place on This American Life. Go listen. Good stuff.

Posted at 5:06 PM