"Lights, please"

1. Run-D.M.C., "Christmas in Hollis"
2. The Waitresses, "Christmas Wrapping"
3. Vince Guaraldi Trio, "Christmas Time is Here"
4. Big Star, "Jesus Christ"
5. Donny Hathaway, "This Christmas"
6. Eels, "Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas"
7. The Pogues, "Fairytale of New York"
8. Otis Redding, "Merry Christmas Baby"
9. Joni Mitchell, "River"
10. Harry Nilsson, "Remember (Christmas)"
11. Elvis Presley, "Blue Christmas"
12. John Prine, "Christmas in Prison"
13. The Pretenders, "2000 Miles"
14. The Tall Pines, "Christmas Morning Coming Down"
15. Local H, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"
16. The Kinks, "Father Christmas"
17. Jackson 5, "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town"
18. Wham!, "Last Christmas"
19. Bob Dylan, "Here Comes Santa Claus"
20. Tom Waits, "Christmas Card from a Hooker In Minneapolis"
21. Sinéad O'Connor, "Silent Night"
22. Ramones, "Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight)"
23. Morphine, "Sexy Christmas Baby Mine"
24. Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Deck the Halls"

For RAB.

Steel Panther, "The Stocking Song"

Metal is perhaps important during the holiday season, when the umpteenth Muzak version of "The Little Drummer Boy" sends you right to Goatwhore's Carving Out the Eyes of God, or whatever your preferred means of blocking out Christmas music may be. I'm also in favor of busting out some of metal's Christmas best, whether AC/DC's "Mistress for Christmas," King Diamond's "No Presents for Christmas" or Spinal Tap's "Christmas with the Devil." Yet for all of metal's perks, the genre has yet to provide a truly excellent Christmas song, something on par with Run–D.M.C.'s "Christmas in Hollis" (although maybe that's setting the bar too high.)



Steel Panther come close this year with "The Stocking Song," possibly the most ribald Christmas double entendre song since Clarence Carter's "Back Door Santa." The music is just as uproarious as the lyrics, nailing the wimp-rock slush of Tesla, Extreme (yes, there are congas) and pulling out a melody that could have come directly from the '80s if it didn't sound a little like Boyz II Men. God rest you merry, gentlemen.

Aerosmith, Pump

When did Aerosmith go bad? Even their most forgiving fans, the ones who lapped up "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", seem to have jumped ship. It's been 13 years since the band had a hit ("Jaded"), making this an even longer dry spell than the one that Run-D.M.C. infamously dragged them back from. Some will claim that Aerosmith jumped the shark when Steven Tyler joined American Idol, or when they brought in song doctors for Permanent Vacation, or at the peak of the drug years in the late 70s, or when a group of New England kids decided to form a band that sounded like a louder, dumber Rolling Stones. Whatever the case, at some point in history, Aerosmith decidedly started to suck.



I'm in the boat that claims Pump, which turns 25 this year, was Aerosmith's last great album. Get a Grip was more popular, and amazingly is still their highest-selling album, but by then they were already drowning in the pop-rock sound they had embraced on their comeback, shooting off McBallads like "Cryin'," "Crazy" and "Amazing" that could almost make you forget they were performed by the same five guys who wrote Rocks. It was also memorably the tour where they kicked openers Megadeth off the bill and replaced them with Jackyl. We should have known it would get worse from there.

But Pump is a different story. Yes, it's from their pop era, but it showcases Aerosmith changing pop rather than pop changing Aerosmith. It sounds more like classic rock than glam metal, with "Young Lust" and "F.I.N.E." roaring out like a pair of hidden toys in Aerosmith's attic. The Tylerisms were in their prime ("Love in an Elevator"), but he wasn't too self-conscious yet to let his heart get broken ("What it Takes") or give the world a chill over murder and sexual abuse ("Janie's Got a Gun"). Perhaps it was the need to distance themselves form an abundance of third-rate imitators, or maybe a need to compete with newcomers like Guns N' Roses who trumping Aerosmith at their own game. Whatever the case, Pump stands as one of Aerosmith's best albums, and a triumph for hard rock.

Rage Against the Machine, "People of the Sun"

Saying that Zack de la Rocha can't rap is kind of like saying that Lou Reed can't sing.



I didn't realize how simple Rage Against the Machine's music was until I heard Audioslave, the easy listening project that the Zackless band formed with Chris Cornell. Listening again to "People of the Sun," it's basically just an E scale bass line and one power chord hammer-on, but with de la Rocha's vocals in the mix, it sounds like jazz. His rhyme schemes are not particularly deft, and his lyrics, including muddled messages about the Zapatistas and Aztec history, are no more profound than anything by Monster Magnet. But two things here make de la Rocha the greatest rap-rock frontman in history, and the only one who deserves a spot among the all-time metal greats.

The first is his tone, a clear and articulate spit that sounds furious at any level. Next to the mumbling grungers on '90s FM radio, it was a shock to hear anybody this intelligible. The second is his rhythm, an unpredictable, off-kilter delivery that changes verse by verse but always fits in the song. There are many ways that a rapper could approach music this easy, decades of sub-Run-D.M.C. flow to cash in on. But Zack's method was to write his own idea of hip-hop vocals. I'd bet that his voice convinced more people to care about Zapatistas than his lyrics did.

For Richard in Chiapas.

Beastie Week: "No Sleep till Brooklyn"

One of the the best songs on Licensed to Ill takes its name from Motörhead, its riff from AC/DC and its solo from Kerry King. Who wants to tell me that the Beastie Boys aren't metal?



Maybe the Beasties themselves. Their 1986 "No Sleep till Brooklyn" video mocked the fashionable hair metal of bands like Whitesnake.

It's a funny song and video (wait for the guy in a gorilla suit,) but the Beasties are serious artists. Their greatest pop-metal mockery was in the music itself, a diamond-solid tribute to genuine hard rock and the greatest of all boroughs. Run-D.M.C. and Aerosmith's "Walk This Way," released the same year, gets all the credit for bridging rap and rock. But I prefer "No Sleep," which created an actual rap-rock song, rather than meeting the two halfway at pop.

"No Sleep Till Brooklyn" is harder to define than "Fight for Your Right" or "Brass Monkey," and it didn't hit as big. But it carved out a niche that a multi-platinum genre still hasn't caught up to.