Category: other holiday

Scary Christmas Part Foreboding

There’s no better Christmas Ghost story than Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Terrifying the stuffing outta your contrarian soul in order to learn ya the lessons of the Baby J!
Boss Martians have a great rocker called “3 Ghosts.” I dance to it (but not a Halloween dance). (It’s currently blocked on Youtube.)
Animaniacs have a Christmas Carol episode with songs. They’re fun, but 10 minutes later i’m starved for music again.
Which i guess means i oughta mention the Mr. Magoo Christmas Carol and its big hit “Alone in the World.” It’s sweetly sad, not ghosty enow.
Superplushybros’s “Christmas Carol Rap” is clever but clumsy and coulda used a bit more jingle in the backbeat.
Chris Blackwood’s musical adaptation includes the song “Link by Link” which is noisy and cutesy at the same unfortunate time.
But my favorite ghost song springing from this source has gotta be “Marley and Marley” from A Muppet Christmas Carol by the inimitable Paul Williams. Love ya, PW!

Scary Christmas Part Treat

The easiest spoof on Christmas carols would be playing off “Do You Hear What I hear” with “Do You Fear What I Fear?”
The Dagon Tabernacle Choir from the album A Very Scary Solstice have Lovecrafted the song with various unprounceably spelled demonghouls.
My Newfoundland favorite, Snook, has developed an odd epic of failed life dreams to this tune. It’s pretty Freudian/scary. His is “Do You Fear What I Hear?” (Not on the ‘tube. Yet.)
So the winner of festivalisophobia is Dave Rudolf. Dave’s a novelty musician from way back, the kind of guy you saw at some show somewhere and couldn’t believe how funny he was. Unless you travel in the 21st Century Vaudeville circuit you may not have heard of him. Check out his website.

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.)

Scary Christmas

It’s Halloween week and–wait, are you sure you don’t want a Xmas song??
All other holidays bow down to The Big Holy Day, sure. Take All Hallowed Evening, the night before Michaelmas (first day of Winter on the Old Calendar). Here kids learn to earn their gifties. Yeah i know, you gotta be good for Kris Kringle to present you with the goods. But on 10/31, you’ve worked on your etiquette at least: asking before receiving. (Threatening some may say; but i maintain it’s social custom to follow these rules, ergo: policy/politeness.)
So let’s scare up some Halloween/Christmas hybrids.
First off, there’s that Time Burton movie which has already done that. Granted. No need to sing those as carolers; as a parent i’ve heard ’em to death. (Although big props to Cas van de Pol for the delightful parody “Who’s This?” to the tune of Game of Thrones. Ho Boo Ho.)
Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett made a splash with “The Monster Mash” back in 1962. It received so much airplay, he produced a Christmas sequel “Monsters’ Holiday” within a few months. (Not to be confused with the very Halloween Hoedown “Monster’s Holiday” by Buck Owens which mixes werewolves and hillbillies and bluegrass.) Lon Chaney has recorded the Pickett piece as well. But don’t follow up on Pickett… his “Monster Swim” and “Werewolf Watusi” did not reach the zeitgeist. (I am partial to his Much Later “Star Drek,” but overall let him rest. He passed ’07.)

State Twelve: West Virginia

FIFTY DAYS OF ‘MERICA-MAS
A state of musical heritage! Now we’ve got some choices! Okay mostly bluegrass…
Chuck Picklesimer is so cool. His rambling country elf routine never wears thin. Remember that bit about the cartoon show host who tells you dumb kids what’s really going on grownup style? (It’s abit older than time… not just Kentucky Fried Movie, you know like the overdone crusty old joke a la The Simpsons.) Chuck’s your guy. His “West Virginia Credit Card” will get its own entry later from me. It’s WV enough in tone and tenor, but it’s just not holidaisical enough.
The Weber Brothers whisper out the haunting “Christmas Time in West Virginia.” The percussive jingling and chiming, the high harmonies, it sounds like angels singing over a snow covered valley.
Brrr, we’ve got to spice up the mix; so we’re finally going cross-culturally to the Festival of Lights.
Scott Simons is another struggler. After he got credit for writing the music theme for his weatherman dad on local tv, he ran around the country minstrel-style finally starting TeamMate with his gay-ex. Maybe you saw him piano-ing on XFactor or America’s Got Talent. He champions rights for all, and he’s funny. Check out one of his favorite topics, growing up Jewish in the Very White West Virginia. I love the nostalgic canned audience responses paired with the intimate small-lounge vibe.

State Annex: Virgin Islands

As a special Columbus Day insert to FIFTY DAYS OF ‘MERICA-MAS, let us reflect on the beaches where Columbus’s footprints were the only ones. You see, at least one conquest of good old Christian Christopher is ‘Merican (since 1927).

Now you can pretend you don’t know about the taxation without representation of our territories and commonwealths beyond the fifty tried and true, but i refer you to the wonderful wisdom of outrage John Oliver to learn more about this American heritage.

While some of the Virgin Islands are British and they do get a pretty good Xmas spiritual by William Perrins and James Haywood, don’t be fooled with all the tinkley piano morose ‘miss-you’ mishegas… “Christmas on the British Virgin Islands” is warmed over Beatles love song with the lovelorn whining about being stuck in paradise. Put the lime in the coconut, dude.

Now The Great John L. knows how to swing Caribbean style. His “Christmas in St. Croix” jazzes up the joint all brassy and sassy. He’s rather be dead than miss Christmas in Fredriksted, ya know, mon. This is festive and fun stuff, like opening presents from behind the tree that you didn’t even count in your tally of booty.

While in a polka mood…

Colorblind James Experience saluted “weird America” with their polka/swing/rockabilly/etc. fusion. They bobbled with fame in the UK through the ’90s until headman Chuck Cuminale passed away suddenly 2001.

I love the compilation album The Tarquin Records All Star Holiday Extravaganza from which i found this gem (more off their stable later). These indie characters are a comforting quilt of kookiness that begins with real music and ends… you may never know.

Also, this may be JC’s birthday (3 October). We don’t know. I mean shepherds don’t lay down with their flocks Mideasternly late Dec. (too rainy). Calendars have been messed up for too many years, then started over. Scholars debate Mar. Aug. Sept. Oct. for that singular point in time. I guess I side with most that 12/25 is a time of rebirth and spiritual hoo-hah ’cause we need something to look forward to in the lingering dark and the ceaseless cold. So please take “A Night Like This” by Colorblind James Experience in the spirit in which it is given: DANCETIME!

Oktoberfest Christmas

Oktoberfest is winding up here (it’s mostly in September, ja?) but while celebrating the hop harvesting let’s prepare for the wassailing to come.

Since Christmas is so big, it incorporates if not all holidays all modes methods and means of celebrating… including POLKA! Most polka umpahs for yule logs are straight out of Scandihoovia, Middlevest and affect no more than That’s What Music Sounds Like, ya? Other scallywags mean to poke fun at old world trads as well as the overused universality of xmas = love all humankind party.

Chuck Picklesimer does both and neither. This country gentleman (bonus: looks like Santa!) growls out psychedelic situations to sensible sounds. You can dance to it, but if you listen carefully you’ll go mad, mad i tells ya. So doff your foam, toast the barley, and listen to “Christmas Polka Cha Cha” from the A-plus album Dead Ninja Christmas.