Son: Um, I haven't been into these guys since I was in middle school, but thanks for the drink coaster.
Cat Power: Dark End of the Street EP (Matador)
Sensitive Boyfriend: Since this is our first Christmas together, meeting your family and all, I'm giving you this record to show that I have a deep affection for eccentric chicks. Also, Cat Power, a/k/a Chan Marshall, does unrecognizable covers of the Pogues, Otis Redding, and Creedence, among others.
Girlfriend-until-after-the-Holidays: First, who are you calling crazy? And second, thanks for springing for the between-major-albums low-budge covers EP. Once we're out of eggnog land, you're history.
Kanye West: 808s & Heartbreaks (Roc-A-Fella/Island/Def Jam)
Long-suffering Husband of Artificial-Intelligence Scientist: Perhaps if I get her the new Kanye, the album's unusual juxtaposition of doomed romantic love and an almost irrational fascination with auto-tuned vocals will remind her of the husband back home that she never sees. Perhaps the album's 808 drum-machine orthodoxy will make her pine for the beat of another human heart next to hers. Ultimately, Mr. West's strange treatise on the merging of man and machine and their shared heartbreak over the fleeting nature of love will cause her to flee her studies and return to the one thing that is a constant in this crazy world: me!
Scientist Wife: Ugh, as if I don't hear enough vocoder'd voices at work — when will this trend end?
Guns N' Roses: Chinese Democracy (Geffen)
Rip Van Winkle: My, I certainly do feel relaxed and rested after having been asleep these past 17 years! And look, here I am, amid a throng of Christmas shoppers in front of some store called Best Buy, whatever that is, where they are apparently exclusively selling a new Guns N' Roses album — crazy, didn't those guys just put out a new album? Oh well, I think I will purchase a copy of Slash & Co.'s new masterpiece for my wife and children, wherever they are!
Wife and children: Didn't we download most of these tracks on a torrent two years ago?
Nickelback: Dark Horse (Roadrunner)
Music Snob One: I think my friend, Music Snob Two, will be happy to receive this platter in his stocking. Either he'll love it ironically for its jarringly predatory sexual overtones that are as uncomfortable as your uncle hitting on your girlfriend at a holiday party, or he'll love it genuinely because he can appreciate how the band, on their sixth album, have finally broken with their typical cookie-cutter overmelodramatic grunge-lite to create a work of quizzically dancey-yet-anthemic shit-kicking hard rock that isn't that far from, say, Eliminator-era ZZ Top.
Music Snob Two: Good fucking lord, and to think I got you that awesome IOU for those My Bloody Valentine import CDs — our friendship is over.
Daniel Brockman promises to be grateful for anything he gets, even a best-of–Norman Greenbaum re-issue. He can be reached at brockman.daniel@gmail.com.
