{"id":17454,"date":"2025-12-12T07:54:27","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T12:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mkultramagazine.com\/?p=17454"},"modified":"2025-12-12T09:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T14:47:09","slug":"laptop-re-envisions-tom-waits-holiday-anthem-christmas-card-from-a-hooker-in-minneapolis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mkultramagazine.com\/?p=17454","title":{"rendered":"LAPTOP re-envisions TOM WAITS’ holiday anthem Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NYC artist Laptop<\/a><\/strong> <\/strong>presents their first holiday release: a winter transmission that sits oddly and perfectly within the band\u2019s catalog. Tom Waits<\/strong>\u2019 1978 classic <\/strong>\u201cChristmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis\u201d<\/strong><\/a>is recreated as a deadpan jazz-robotic confession, equal parts heartbreak and smirk, performed as if a soul adrift at 2 AM in search of a payphone that still works. This feels like a postcard from every December that ever went wrong\u2014and the small, stubborn hope that things might just go right anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the early 2000s, Laptop released three cult classic albums on Island Records<\/strong>, with frontman Jesse Hartman having got his start as a teenage Voidoid<\/strong> with Richard Hell<\/strong> before co-founding the indie rock band Sammy<\/strong> and releasing albums via Fire Records <\/strong>and Geffen Records<\/strong>. Hartman recently revived the band, driven by a dual-frontman dynamic with his son Charlie, this track reveals the intimate, lonely, late-night side of this project, sitting with you after the party ends and winter blows in under the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Jesse Hartman, this song is personal. He has been playing this song since he was 13 years old at the family piano, long before Laptop existed, long before forming Sammy<\/strong> and long before joining Island Records<\/strong>. Hartman shares, \u201cThis was the first song that showed me you could mix sadness and humor in the same line. It basically formed me. This song is the blueprint for Laptop whether I knew it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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