About Right for the High Holidays

All those songs about alcoholic drinks remind us that Christmastime is about celebrating full out, red solo cups tipped to the ceiling, regrets solidifying while inhibitions melt. And i wouldn’t spend so much time on the subject if there weren’t so many songs about it. Originally i figured about to offer you a month of half drunk Christmas songs and half stoned Christmas songs, but we can’t stop composing ourselves in re alcoholism. So let’s indulge in a fun bit of slang to denote each entry (alphabetical, natch from about right to zozzled) but we’ll be climbing the stages of toasting to tipsy to totaled to a friend of Bill’s to hungover to rehab, while also slipping in some drunk daddies, Santies, Jesuses, and maybe Rudolph or someone else. Damn son, i need as shower already and i hain’t even started.

One of the easiest targets, songsmiths–i’m talking to you, is parodying ‘I’ll be Home for Christmas.’ And while Harold Swords fulfills the comedy needs of the few with “I’ll be Drunk for Christmas,” we can do better–like smurfswacker’s entry which splashes in a dash of class. Or Hilary who throws her diva range all over her take off (warning: karaoke soundtrack/no picture).

Face it, most of this stuff is going to be low brow hollering fun: Zach Smith plays BLUE ALERT adolescent humor to a pretty folk echo in “I’ll be Drunk This Christmas.” Funny.

Peter and the Test tube Babies also scream “I’m Getting Pissed for Christmas” a la punk. But it’s just one more day of sucking it down.

But Curt Brash poses “I’ll be Drunk for Christmas” with jazzy scat and cool lackadaisicality. It’s barfly Tom Waits, or–you know–Tom Waits.

Then comes the garage gentleness from The Blood Moons, which turns their “I’ll be Drunk for Christmas” into a bar band anthem that sells this sad sentiment. It’s morose and hopeless but you can dance to it.