What Can Do?
On The Coming Of Christmas & The Joys Of Music Merch
Many years ago, we shared a backyard with a gorgeous older Greek lady, Rachil, who - at the beginning of every December – would set to work cleaning every surface, weeding the garden, washing and shaking out all the bed clothes and house linens for hours on end, and generally working herself to the bone in socks and sandals with a fag in her mouth, sometimes hooked up to oxygen at the same time, while moaning ‘Christmas is coming!’ over and over like he was an evil inspector who was going to grade her on cleanliness.
Her other famous mantra, still repeated often in our inner circles around here, is ‘What can do?’ to be said with a shrug of the shoulders and a raise of the eyebrows and a shake of the head for full effect.
I’m quite the Christmas grinch. Number one, I hate to be told what to do. I love finding presents for people I love, but I really resent being told I have to do it by a certain date. I despise the waste of it, the emotional stress of it, the cynical exploitation of it and the ache you can feel in the air from the pressure on everyone to be full of love and light and Christmas joy. Not everyone has family they can get together with, not everyone’s family is pleasant to be around, not everyone has pockets exploding with cash for buying junk and wrapping it in pretty paper.  Anyway, every year, like Rachil, I pull it together and get on with it best I can because, what can do?
The only thing I really love about Christmas is that I get to blast A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector, a truly great and joyful album by a truly toxic person. Last year I felt sad that by choosing not to play his music, the voices of Ronnie Spector and Darlene Love and The Crystals get silenced, so I sent Ronnie Spector a little message and asked her how she felt it about. Much to my surprise, she replied and said it didn’t bother her it all, and to play it.
What I do love, is when people come together to support each other’s artistic and creative efforts. I also really love clever artist merch. It occurred to me a couple of months ago that buying artist merch as Christmas gifts would help support musicians that have had such a tumultuous and rough time this pandemic, so I suggested a feature to the Sydney Morning Herald and they loved it – you can read it here:
The link for Rroma band Lolo Lovina’s Chai tea was wrong online so I will just put the right one here - check out their amazing range of handmade merch items including earrings and cunningly named ARromaTherapy items:
https://www.lololovina.com/merchandise/
I was disappointed to discover that nepotism isn’t allowed in newspapers and so I wasn’t allowed to put Holiday Sidewinder’s magnificent handmade Happy Holiday Bauble in there – she has lovingly filled it with the white feathers of an angel, poker chips and mini poker card, a mini jingle bell, a pink satin bow and gold dust. It really is a collectible work of Holiday art, and having spent weeks trawling through the world of merch, I can assure you it is like nothing else out there.  https://www.holidaysidewinder.com/shop/happy-holiday-bauble
While I’m spruiking, subscribe to her fabulously entertaining A Hot Mess Substack here:
Subscribe to mine (bottom of this page)! Pre-order my book! https://www.readings.com.au/products/34262736/lovers-dreamers-fighters
Subscribe to Louis Tillet’s Go Fund Me to support him as he deals with a worsening kidney diagnosis: https://www.gofundme.com/f/louis-tillett-treatment-and-recovery
Buy a ticket to his upcoming Camelot show!
https://www.stickytickets.com.au/8b8sc/louis_tillett/buy-tickets
Buy an exquisite Mick Turner artwork to brighten up the world of anybody you love:
https://mickturner.bigcartel.com/category/prints
Subscribe to ALL the newsletters/mailing lists of all the artists you love, it really does help. Go search for their merch offerings online.
Other notable items I discovered in my journeys around the world of merch that I have to share but couldn’t be included in my article due to non Australian- ness are:
Robyn Hitchcock Polka Dot HitchSocks – how cool are these?
https://tiny-ghost-records.myshopify.com/products/polka-dot-hitchsocks
The King Khan Black Power Tarot Deck – this is truly powerful and magnificent, I bought a set a gig years ago and can’t recommend it enough:
https://www.hellomerch.com/collections/king-khan/products/black-power-tarot
I love this beautiful Kacey Musgraves Tarot Deck:
https://shop.kaceymusgraves.com/products/tarot-card-deck
Not exactly artist merch, but while we’re being witchy, I do also love this Goddess Tarot Deck featuring Amy Winehouse and Greta Thunberg: https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/774452373/goddess-tarot-deck-v2
And this matching set of hand poured scented candles from David Rawlings and Gillian Welch (Cumberland Gap & One More Dollar) is pretty special too:
Lastly, just cos I can be as nepostistic as I want on my own newsletter, check out the truly divine creations hand slaved over by my mama Mouse, she just wakes up every day and has to sew something beautiful:
https://www.mousemadeart.com/product-page/white-gum-cushion
https://www.mousemadeart.com/product-page/the-tina-blouse
Let’s all celebrate the gifts that keep on giving, like music, and things that have been made with love. Go crazy. Play music loud.
Bah humbug,
Lo xxx
PS If you come across any great and unusual merch you think we should know about, please share in the comments below.
Great piece. I'm grinching with you Lo. I always struggle round Xmas time...