"Christmas Wrapping" special to me

[Undertoad]

It was 1982 and I was in school... my friends introduced me to The Waitresses, pre "Christmas Wrapping"...

At the time, young me was only interested in the most complex music I could find. I was a prog rock lover and would only listen to bands like Genesis, Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer,... British bands that were pop bred out of classical music traditions.

What a dick I was! And how charitable were my friends, who remained my friends anyway, and introduced me to more *immediate* stuff.

The Waitresses proved to be the bridge between all that prog-rock stuff and the punkish world. The Waitresses were New Wave. See, the punk acts turned pop music on its ear. But by the eighties, punk musicians had learned to play their instruments and write music that was a little more sophisticated. That was New Wave.

The Waitresses put out "Christmas Wrapping" between their first and second albums. Their first record "Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?" was the record my friends introduced me to. It was glorious post-punk New Wave early 80s gold. I couldn't ignore it. It moved me. I loved it.

"Christmas Wrapping" introduced bassist Tracy Wormworth to the group's catalog, and she really added something to it. "Christmas Wrapping" has a wonderful bass part, and you know that is part of why I love it so much.

But the second Waitresses album didn't catch on with our fickle public, and for whatever reason, there wasn't a third record out of them. Too bad. They were awesome!

When you hear "Christmas Wrapping", listen to the bass part which is fine; remember how bandleader Chris Butler created all this from a post-punk scene in Ohio; and remember lead singer Patty Donahue, who sadly died of lung cancer in 1996.