Prissteens Photo: Howard Thompson
Joe Vincent Photo: Matt Mulichak
To celebrate the Girlsville reissue of The Prissteens The Hound CD, we decided to ask Mighty Joe Vincent about their massive holiday tune, “Christmas Is A Time For Giving”. ENJOY!
50thirdand3rd: So it’s about that time of year again, so I wanted to ask you about how The Prissteens “Christmas is a time for Giving” came about, and what writing and recording that was like.
Joe Vincent: I was talking to Howie Pyro (D-Generation) and he told me that Coney Island High (now defunct music venue in the East Village) was going to put out a Christmas album, and did we have anything for it. So I lied and said “Yeah man! We have a great Christmas tune! You’ll love it!” So I had to come up with something. I went to Lori and told her “We have to write a Christmas song right now!” She said “Well, do you have anything?”
“I think I have an idea,” I said.
I swear, I don’t know where it came from, but I just sang the chorus to her right there, having given it no thought at all, just pure panic-driven inspiration. She was impressed and immediately picked up a guitar and found the chords to go with the melody, and we were on a roll. I think we finished the whole thing in about 15 minutes.
The Coney Christmas album never came to be, but when we went to do our album, we decided to recorded it then. Richard Gottherer wanted it to sound lush and thick, so we overdubbed loads of vocals and tambourines and bells and stuff to make it huge sounding. For the solo, Tina resourcefully came up with something on the xylophone in the studio. I think she was as surprised as everyone else that she could do that!
The Prissteens The Hound is available now on Girlsville LP/CD/DL
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