The offhand comment in my last post about the book-worthiness of that list of videos added to MTV in February 1984 may have been closer to truth than I realized.
A half-dozen of the songs listed there were completely unfamiliar, and I've been slowly checking them out this week. My interest has been piqued in particular by Cristina's "Ticket to the Tropics" (her name is misspelled, with a spurious 'h', in Billboard). It's bouncy synth-pop with vocals that are maybe so-so at best. Nonetheless, I like it, perhaps more than I should--I'm thinking that getting to see a lo-fi version of the video, on YouTube direct from someone's VHS recording off MTV, increases the appeal.
It was in the comments to that video that I learned Cristina Monet-Palaci Zihlka passed away in the early spring of 2020, apparently among the early victims of Covid-19. This in turn led me to an obituary published shortly thereafter in the Guardian, where I discovered that Sleep It Off, the album on which "Ticket to the Tropics" appears, had been a bit of a critical darling in its brief moment (I've since found a glowing review by Ira A. Robbins in my copy of the Revised Edition of the New Trouser Press Record Guide). It turns out that she typically sing-speaks to good effect; as result, Sleep It Off has been officially placed on my Christmas wish list.
The Guardian obit also included an embed of her unique take on the Leiber/Stoller classic, "Is That All There Is?" and prominently noted she had recorded an offbeat Christmas tune in the early 80s. Well, I had to seek that out, given the time of year, and I'm certainly glad I did.
"Things Fall Apart" came out on a compilation originally released in late 1981 by ZE Records, a no wave label in New York City co-founded by Cristina's boyfriend/future husband. (A Christmas Record was also the disk on which the Waitresses' "Christmas Wrapping" first appeared.) Produced by Don Was, the song features three bleak, elliptical 30-second holiday stories that introduce to us in turn a miserable parent, a doomed romance, and a gaggle of drunken friends who cut down a nearly century-old tree to decorate it. They're all bound together by a relentless guitar lick/synth line combo, along with this not exactly cheer-filled chorus: Things fall apart but they never leave my heart/Good morning, good night/It's Christmas.
It's unlike just about any other holiday song I've ever heard. And I love it.
Cristina had both an eye and an ear for compact storytelling. No, the center doesn't hold in her narrator's world, but there's no rough beast, either. Does "they never leave my heart" signal resignation? Resilience? Or is it a simple acknowledgment of the reality that most of us experience as life goes on? Today, I'll choose the hopeful explanation of perseverance: it's Christmas.
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