Michael Hall echoes the mid-’60s Fab 4 with “Fab 4 Christmas.”
Cover band The Rubber Band makes a living being The Beatles. They have a Christmas album Xmas! The Beatmas!
Their “Last Christmas” isn’t too bad, opening as it does with the ‘Mr. Postman’ intro. (Probably got the idea from The Ventures’ Christmas album from 1965 featuring “Sleigh Ride” with one of their own numbers morphing into a rocking interp of the moldy traditional. Moderne!)
Let’s feature “A Bairn is Born in Beatlehome” as an epic (minute and a half) tribute to the boys. It’s not terribly Christmassy, but hope you enjoyed the audition.
While delving into my fave-aroo phylum of novelty carol (the straight up parody of pop music into holiday humor) ANOTHER extra-nerdy subgenre presented itself: the traditional carol ‘in the style of’ someone famous. Please don’t misunderstand, i know nearly anyone can sing an old Xmas song in the strangled vocal impressions of Arnold, or Gollum, or Yoko Ono et al. But that’s not terribly funny. In fact it’s schtick best consumed impaired. What i’m getting at here is the masterful homage to an iconic style of music, a real treat that blends and bends, fuses and abuses the senses into an elevated state of yule-ocity.
(Honestly, this is a super weird sub-sub-genre and i’m not gonna find much… i’m going to pad out this month with actual parodies, cuz: LUVVUM! So enjoy these few and tip me to more, pls.)
Try this on:
A couple forward-thinking chamber orchestras (at least) have performed What If Baroque Masters composed those seasonal standards we hear annually.
Nicolaus Esterhazy Sinfonia play the Caribbean spiritual “The Virign Mary Had a Baby Boy” like Handel (or something… i don’t get the nuances of the 17th – 18th Centuries). Points for oddness.
The Northern Lights Orchestra have a nice album with entitled What if Mozart wrote “White Christmas“? with “Let it Snow,” and–wait for it–“The Chipmunk Song.” This might be better than you think it is.
The mashup dearest to my heart (had it for twenty years) is The Hampton String Quartet’s “Frosty the Snowman” if Mozart had written it. Although, “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth” ain’t too bad.
