OK, so you don’t need me talking up The Who or The Who’s Tommy, right? Its reputation is enshrined not only in rock history, but in that of pop culture as a sum totality.
So I’ll leave The Who there. I love the band. They are legend entirely. OK Who’s Next and Quadrophenia are more my speed, but I ain’t knocking Tommy. Not even a bit. So nobody needs that word barf. The Who rule.
But I’ll talk for hours about The Smithereens. Days even. How much time do we have?
Power Pop is one my all-time favorite genres of rock. For real. It ain’t always prog and metal and jazz and bluegrass. The jangle melodies and guitar crunch of Big Star, The Raspberries, The Knack, The Flaming Groovies, Starz, Cheap Trick, Matthew Sweet… OK I could keep going but you get the knack. Pun intended.
But there was always something unique about The Smithereens. Singer/songwriter Pat Dinizio always seemed to easily distill 60s/70s melodic guitar rock, Turner Classic Movies, Technicolor TV shows, Jersey soul, and the Capitol Beatles LPs into a singular musical essence. Pure power pop, but also pure Smithereens.
No one else sounded like them. Because they couldn’t even possibly try.
On a personal level, I met Dinizio twice. Once in 1990, when the band played our university’s festival weekend. I gave a light to the guitarist during a cigarette break before the show. I met Pat briefly as well.
And then, while I saw the band a few times since, I met him again around 2015 when the band played a local casino. After the show I met up with Pat and commented that we met about 25 years prior. He looked me over and said “Brother you don’t even look 25, get outta here.”
I was 44. Man the dude was a charmer. RIP Pat.
And in a way, it’s partially why their buttkickin’ cover of The Who’s Christmas, a seminal track from the 1969 Tommy album, hits so hard. There’s a tangible jam band personality to their take, and man does it cook.
Christmas is already a strange, wonderful beast. It’s Pete Townshend in full early genius mode, stitching together spiritual anxiety, power chords, sleigh-bell sparkle, and that unmistakable rolling Tommy momentum. It swings between uplift and unease, between major-key brightness and lyrical darkness. It is joyous and it is haunted. It is Christmas by way of a nervous breakdown at a holiday pageant.
Which is exactly why The Smithereens were born to play it.
Their 2007 version on Christmas With The Smithereens doesn’t try to reinvent the song. Not even a wee bit. Instead it pushes Christmas fully into that muscular jangle-pop territory they owned so effortlessly. Pat takes a backseat this time, with guitarist Jim Babjak handling lead vocals, bringing a higher register to the forefront.
The guitars chime and crunch in that perfect Smithereens way: half Beatles, half Jersey, all heart. The rhythm section keeps everything driving forward with that classic Smithereens locomotive swing.This is a band steeped in the British Invasion, the power-pop tradition, the rock-opera mystique, and pure musical reverence.
The result is a joyful-sounding (if lyrically disturbing), crunchy, unexpected holiday rocker that manages to feel both rock epic and fully Smithereens at the same time. 60s rock mythology filtered through Jersey bar-band warmth.
Christmas is the natural result of a band you love reciting the language of a band you worship. Right by the Christmas tree.
Mills
A South Florida native and part-time iguana, Mills has slaved in the mine-pits of Information Technology since 1995, finding solace in writing about the things he loves like music, fitness, movies, theme parks, gaming, and Norwegian Hammer Prancing. He has written and published hundreds (thousands?) of reviews since 2000, because Geeking Out over your obsessions is the Cosmic Order Of Things. He is, at heart, a 6'3 freewheeling Aquarius forever constrained by delusions of adequacy.