Deck the Halls - Too Many Zooz (link)

Welcome back to our annual xmas countdown! Let’s start with a sweaty, busy, trumpet-heavy rendition of Deck the Halls by a band that got their start as subway buskers. It’s easy to imagine hearing this song as you descend into a station in December, feeling the cold flush fade from your cheeks as you fumble for your transit card, gradually becoming aware that your coat is going to be way too warm once you’ve crammed yourself onto the train.

I think Too Many Zooz are now too popular to play subway stations; in early 2014, a few months after I did my first set of xmas countdown emails, a video of them playing in Union Square station went viral. Good thing, too; they had started subway busking in part because their drummer’s apartment exploded in a gas leak and “going down and having to play every day” was (per this article) how he could pay for his move to a new place.

This song is joyful in a frantic way that reminds me of New York. I lived there from May to August of this year, because my boyfriend could do his summer internship from a midtown office, and we’d heard that NYC is one of the great cities, and it seemed we might not have another chance to live there. My days of deciding to up and thrust myself into a new place for a few months must surely be numbered, but I haven’t fully exited that phase of life.

Three months is very little time to live in such a lively and famous place. I maintained the habits of a tourist, both more curious and more transactional about the place. I perused the calendars of reddit-recommended event spaces, started conversations with intriguing people, and then never asked for their contact information, knowing I would move away again in less than twelve weeks. One of my favourite memories is of cycling through Prospect Park around 9:00pm. At the gate, a three-man rock band was playing covers, guitar jangling out of a massive amp sitting in a cart. A little further into the park, thousands of people were sitting on blankets at a much louder city-run concert, signage and stanchions, stage lights attracting moths. Around the bend, right before we left the park, mariachi brass carried over from a wedding party on the lawn. How full the warm world felt, that I could pedal through three such different joyful soundscapes in the span of a few minutes. I love being in a place dense with strangers, especially happy ones. 

‘Tis the season to be jolly (whether in a frantic or relaxed fashion),
Tessa