Sleater-Kinney served up some top shelf holiday cheer to the crowd at Cleveland's House of Blues the other night when they covered Ramones' "Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight)" during a stop on their tour in support of this year's No Cities to Love. As AV Club reports, they kicked-off their encore with the song. Carrie Brownstein in particular looks like she's having a blast with the Joey Ramone-penned holiday cult classic. Watch the riot grrrls rock their way through the Ramones cover below.
As The Guardian noted in a 2011 feature on the song, "Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight)" first dropped as a B-side to the single "I Wanna Live" in 1987. The single and the holiday-themed B-side both failed to make it onto any charts at their release, but the Christmas song has gained popularity over the years.
The Ramones track again appeared on 1989's Brain Drain, which was the band's 11th full-length studio album that came out at a time in their decades-spanning career when things were especially stressed for the band in and out of the studio. Later, the song was also covered by Joey Ramone on one of several posthumous releases.
The video for the original cut is also an underappreciated gem. It features a young couple fighting -- on Christmas day nonetheless -- because the boyfriend decided to throw a holiday party for all of his friends rather than going with the girlfriend to her parents' house out on Long Island. They live together, so it's not like she's going to ditch her co-hosting duties to go to Mineola. Throughout the party we see some violent outbursts in which the man strangles the woman in an exaggerated almost-comical (but not quite) manner much like Homer Simpson always strangles Bart. The awesome spread of snacks winds up everywhere and the guests trickle out before the couple realizes they love each other very much until he gives her a gift that happens to be her least favorite color ("red makes me look bloated!" she screams) and everything falls apart again. Clips of the band playing are sprinkled throughout the narrative. Watch it below.
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