The Christmas Gig: Two Thousand Ten, Pt. 2
Today we’re continuing our exploration of The Christmas Gig by looking at the television advertisements that featured these songs, my favorite tracks from the digital album and where you can still listen to it in its entirety. This is Target’s The Christmas Gig: Two Thousand Ten, part two.
As I mentioned in Part 1, of the 14 tracks that comprised the digital album, only 8 were featured in Target’s holiday ads. Of those 8, 6 were produced by Dayton/Faris under the “All Things Merry” campaign title.
Dayton/Faris is the husband/wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. The same Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris who have directed a mountain of music videos for bands including Red Hot Chili Peppers, R.E.M and Smashing Pumpkins. The same Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris who made their film directorial debut in 2006 with a little movie named Little Miss Sunshine.
I was able to track down 5 of their six commercials, mostly from the blogs and YouTube channels of the creatives, agencies and artists involved in the project. They are:
Mrs. Claus Ain’t Got Nothing On Me
This commercial features the song Mrs. Claus by Little Jackie and shows multiple superimposed copies of a woman performing an array of holiday activities like cooking, decorating the house, cleaning and wrapping gifts, all while her partner slowly untangles a strand of lights and strings them on the tree.
Toy Jackpot
This commercial features the song Toy Jackpot by Blackalicious and depicts a pair of children coming down the stairs and tearing into their gifts, played in reverse. You see gifts re-wrap themselves, stocking refill and it ends with the children rewinding up the stairs.
Electronic Santa
This commercial features a robot constructed out of tech gadgets of the day and two kids in gold tracksuits that look like they could be right out of a ’90s Puff Daddy video, all dancing to the song Electronic Santa by Blazer Force.
Tiny Tree
This commercial features a woman who purchases a small Christmas tree. Not Charlie Brown tiny, but definitely a table-topper. The commercial progresses with her getting her home ready for a Christmas party and ends with her guests hanging ornaments on her tiny tree. This ad uses the song Tiny Tree Christmas by Guster.
Power Cord Christmas
This commercial is the only one whose working title does not closely (or entirely) match the song. It features a montage of outdoor lighting displays being switched on. Houses, trucks, basketball hoops, barn doors, stuff like that. All being lit up with an amount of lights that would make Clark Griswold proud. The ad is set to 10,000 Watts by Crystal Antlers.
You’ll Never Find My Christmas
The final commercial and the one I was completely unsuccessful in locating is titled “You’ll Never Find My Christmas” and uses the Bishop Allen song of the same name.
This ad is referenced on an archive of Target’s site from December 2010 and in a Little Black Book article about Brickyard VFX, the digital studio that provided special effects for some of the commercials. But, other than the title, I have no idea what this commercial was about, nor can I find it anywhere. If anyone remembers seeing it or has any information, please let me know.
‘Tis the Soundtrack Top 5
Next, in a segment that may appear at first blush similar to the Five Golden Things segment on the Can’t Wait For Christmas Podcast, but is in no way, shape or form an attempt to infringe on any trademarks or intellectual properties of Sweet Timmy B, we are going to look at my five favorite tracks from this album.
5. Coconut Records - It’s Christmas
It’s Christmas is the work of Jason Schwartzman’s one-man solo act, Coconut Records.
You may be more familiar with Jason from his acting career when he portrayed one of the Sherman Brothers in Saving Mr. Banks, the final antagonist Gideon in Scott Pilgrim and has appeared in just about every Wes Anderson movie. He was also the drummer and songwriter for Phantom Planet whose song California was used as the theme song to the show the O.C..
It’s Christmas is quite similar to other Coconut Records works, including Nighttiming, an album that came out a few years earlier and produced the hit song West Coast…which also appeared on the O.C..
It’s Christmas is a slowed-down, melodic, melancholy-soaked, 2000’s California indie tune. Nothing wrong with that.
4. Little Jackie - Mrs. Claus Ain’t Got Nothin’ On Me
Little Jackie is a project of artist Imani Coppola and producer Adam Pallin. Coppola has described Little Jackie as the commercial vehicle that allows her the freedom to create more experimental music under her own name, develop other artists and still pay the bills.
Mrs. Claus sounds not too dissimilar to the soul music that was being put out by Adele, Duffy and Amy Winehouse around the same time. In fact, the first time I heard the song, I assumed it was Amy Winehouse.
Recently, this song has received a bit of a revival. It was featured in the 2022 Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special.
3. Bishop Allen - You’ll Never Find My Christmas
Bishop Allen is the band I was most familiar with before doing research for this episode. I first saw them when they appeared on the movie Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, where they also lent their song “Middle Management” to the soundtrack.
Incidentally, that film’s soundtrack also featured a song by one of my then-and-still favorite bands, Vampire Weekend. I’ll pause for a moment for you to judge me.
I mention this because there are a lot of similarities between the two bands and the music they were creating at the time. They both had that East Coast, Ivy League, indie/art rock aesthetic.
But, even being a fan of Bishop Allen, I along with the rest of the internet still have no recollection of the Target commercial featuring their song. It seems to have been completely scrubbed from the shared consciousness.
I do remember this song being aggressively blasted out the front of our local Hollister a year or two later. I assume it was also playing inside the store, but as someone who was already 30 at the time, stores where over-enthusiastic associates spray down the clothes with perfume while attempting to scream their current deals over the thumping bass absolutely terrified me.
There is a music video for this song available on YouTube, a stop-motion video featuring three blind mice ornaments, attempting to navigate a Christmas tree. I came across the video years ago and just assumed it was the official video released for the song.
While doing research for this episode I learned it was not only an amateur video, but also someone’s first ever attempt at stop-motion. So great job Riley Noelle, on both the video and having a perfectly appropriate last name!
2. Crystal Antlers - 10,000 Watts
I really like this song. It’s a bit of a departure from the other tracks on this album. Instead of being soft or delicate, 10,000 Watts is pumped up. It’s strained vocals over driving guitars and percussion.
Crystal Antlers was going through some personnel changes around the time this track was recorded and their sound was changing. If you like 10,000 Watts, it most closely resembled the works on their Two-Way Mirror album released the following year
Honorable Mention. Blazer Force - Electronic Santa
Electronic Santa receives the honorable mention not because it’s one of my favorites, but because it seems to be the song most remembered from this campaign. There are tons of YouTube videos featuring it, some where people have gone through the effort of editing the commercial clips into a full music video.
Blazer Force is the name used by Bret McKenzie, or one half of the musical duo Flight of the Conchords to record this track. Side note: During the summer of 2010, around the same time Bret would have been recording this track, he was in LA, acting as music supervisor for The Muppets movie and creating the timeless classic Man or Muppet.
1. Little Isidore - Party Hard
Little Isidore is the odd artist out on this record. He started as a child star in the 1950s, with a long stint on the show “Talent Scout” decades before the other artists on this album were born.
He recorded several records with his band, the Inquisitors in the 1960’s, before disappearing for nearly three decades. He resurfaced in the ’90s, reassembled a band and recorded a couple more records in his signature ’50s rock and doo-wop sound.
Party Hard is squarely in that vein, a full, lively track with a nostalgic sound that would be just as at home in the 1950s as the 2010s. And nothing against the indie darlings on this record, but Party Hard is just a step above the rest and my pick for best track.
Little Isidore also has another Christmas hit, the song “Christmas of Love” from the soundtrack of the 2000s version of How The Grinch Stole Christmas
Lastly, let’s take a look at how you can obtain a copy of The Christmas Gig: Two Thousand Ten. As we covered in part one, the record was never released commercially, outside of the promotional LPs. And Target quickly removed the digital download from their website after the 2010 holiday season.
But, because the internets were much simpler in 2010, the album was being hosted directly on Target’s web servers. Why is that important you might ask? It’s important because it means that the album was preserved in the backups on Archive.org.
If you go to Archive.org, point the Wayback Machine at Target.com and select a date in December 2010, you see a preserved copy of the website, with functional download link and all.
Now, I want to pause for a minute here. I have absolutely no idea what the legality is of downloading a digital album from a 14 year old backup of a corporate website and I don’t want to instruct anyone to do anything illegal. That aside, if you enjoy the songs on this album, you should find a way to obtain them that financially supports the artists. We all know how under-compensated musicians are in this era of streaming.
And with that, we’ll wrap up this episode. I hope you enjoyed our two-part look at Target’s The Christmas Gig: Two Thousand Ten.
Cheers and Merry Christmas!