Category Archives: Cheesey Pop Rock

As Seen on TV: Game Shakers/Stuck in the Middle/Hank Zipzer

Ah, youth… wasted on the young, who make a holy mess of it.

RERUN: Seventh graders who hit big with their new app still have to grow up, but they can celebrate Xmas with their rapper friend Double G (Kel Mitchell) who sings for the show “Reggae Christmas Potato.” [Nickolodeon]

Over at Disney, corporate scrutiny results in perfectly formulated entertainment like a middle child (of 7) whose genius is overlooked by all except writers, audience, and the actors themselves. “Have a Happy Holiday” is such an overwrought piece of montage music you will forget it immediately.

Henry Winkler’s book series about a dyslexic teen suffering in a bureaucratic school comes to life in London with frantic antics and heart crushes just like the kids tune in for. The holiday love song “Home for Christmas” by cast member pop star Hayden Chase is poppin’ fresh (okay it sounds like everything else charting hot for preteens, but it’s the best of this lot).

United We Christmas Tree Stand: the demographic

Big star-spangled finish. American Christmas songs should be enormo, splashy, slightly overdone casseroles.

Bettina Bush sings big about family and love and “An American Christmas.” It’s pretty, she’s pretty… i feel pretty!

James Brown shouts it out with “Hey America!” This is a sermon to uplift us with Christmas spirit. Feel it! FEEL IT!

Wayne Newton’s idea of “Christmas in the USA” is to call long distance. C’mon it’s Wayne Newton, it’s not what he says (what IS he saying?), it’s how he’s selling it. It’s building, building, building… and there’s that last note!

Manger Management: repto

No excuses.

Someone found a bit of DJ humor from the Brad and Britt show that used to air on WZTK 101.1 in Greensboro NC.

So, “Sammy the Christmas Snake.”

Scary Christmas Part Boo

Well, there’s more than one way to horrify Christmas. You know, like a skinned cat hung by the chimney with care.
Horror movies are desperate for new wrinkles (wait, I’m the ghost?) and love to bring down a good thing (youth hostels in faraway countries!), but most often horror Christmas slips and pratfalls into its own eggnog. (‘Silent Night, Bloody Night’ [1974]; ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’ [1984]; ‘Silent Night, Zombie Night’ [2009].) (‘Krampus’ for 2015: are you going?)
The song business, also, has been trying to get us to drop a yule log in our pants–mostly with an eyeless wink and a jagged grin. “I Found the Brains of Santa Claus” by Jason and the Strap-Tones is a Dr. Demento classic. It’s silly and jolly.
MxPx punks up the place with “Christmas Night of the Zombies” on the must-have A Santa Cause compilation album. It’s over the top and blastastic.
These are Big Deals in the novelty Xmas game, so i gloss over them. Sometime we’ll get morbid and macabre for the Mass with true oddities (some deeply disturbed songs celebrate death over birth for the Advent. …people… am i right?).
 For now let me share a grim, grisly, gruesome, gut-soaked jingle by Jon Lajoie a Canadian rapper known for his funny songs on Youtube. (If you like funny songs, you should subscribe.)

State Ten Point Five: Washington, D.C.

FIFTY STATES OF ‘MERICA-MAS
State Ten: Part Two D.C.
Washington D.C. gets loads more attention than anything around it, but still has taxation without representation. (Once again, Brit John Oliver exposes our federal faults!)
Most of the caroling around this neck of the woods assassinates characters and has a shelf life of four years. Blah and yawn. But in tracking down a celebration of our Capitol i came across one of those Paul Harvey gems:
Maura Sullivan wrote songs with Jim London for WMZQ based on listener call-ins. It was some fun competitive maestro thing. In 1982 they wanted to get serious and reeled off “Christmas Eve in Washington” in 20 minutes. I wouldn’t call it soft rock (a castigation more than a category), and i wouldn’t call it pop (skews a couple decades past that), in fact i wouldn’t call it if i could find something else. But it fulfills that need people have for catchy chauvanistic radio jingles, mall opening galas, and evening news playouts. For Washingtonians this was an instahit! –and you can continue to buy it via this site (it’s for charity, yo!)

State Eight: Pennsylvania

FIFTY STATES OF ‘MERICA-MAS

Pennsylvania does not boast much proud local Noel, novelty or otherwise. Double Shot A capella has a heavily Pittsburgh accented Santa song on the ‘tube with a pronunciation gazetteer and a glossary.

(And , sigh, oh yes, the Steelers sing carols badly. But, take it from me, all sports stunts songs are the briefest of curiosities. If you need some hard to understand poorly punned Twelve Days of Christmas, just ask me. I’ll find you better… Oh, okay, and the Flyers.)

Some children’s group sings an original holiday paean to Philadelphia sweetly. Like little angels, although unlike most elementary assemblages that i survived i can understand them. Joyeaux.

And here’s an odd tangent: Jim O’Connor sings “Christmas in Pittsburgh, 1943” as a tribute to his WWII sailor dad. It’s mournfully memorable Irish folk with sailing vocals. Beautiful. Not Christmas. Not really.

But, for me… I gotta go Bobby Rydell. Robert Louis Ridarelli was a wunderkind of the ’60s with hits like “Volare” and “Wild One.” He starred in the stage show “Bye, Bye Birdie” as a teen idol, wink wink. In the show “Grease,” the high school is named for him. “A Philadelphia Christmas” is a cry for help from ’03 signalling his past due date. It says nothing but cliche about Christmas or Philadelphia loudly with much lounge cheese (the personal pronoun ‘I’ is tortured to five or six syllables). At the present he is no longer recording, but he is still touring casinos closing his eyes and leaning back rather than hitting the high notes. Please visit his fan sites and let him know his hits will live forever.

Then listen to this crooning catastrophe and remember the moral of Ozymandius.