Author: douglove1225

United We Christmas Tree Stand: wars first

Most of the handful of carols dedicated to WWI are British about their dedication and sacrifice (and that one about the soccer game on the front lines).

But we’re being national here. So we’ll leave the patriotic history in the hands of the Royal Guardsmen with their capitalistic sequel to ‘Snoopy vs. the Red Baron’ song “Snoopy’s Christmas.” That beagle’s kinda Yank.

United We Christmas Tree Stand: revolting

Yankee Doodle is an insult, of course, but we know how to reappropriate tawdry phrases in this here land of the i-hear-what-i-want-to-hear, home of the  shut-your-immigrant-faces.

And no better starting point than K-4 in our public education. Plank Road Publishing offers several easy-to-learn musical numbers for kids for special events indoctrinating, educating, and amusing all at once.

Sitting through these free-for-alls in asbestos-ridden antique auditoria is not the same as listening to music. So let’s not worry about the sampler-sized parcels available from Teresa and Paul Jennings’s work. (These are the adverts for the musical directors at elementary schools–I am NOT going to attach the home movies of any performances.)

Suffice to say, “An All American Christmas,” and “Yankee Doodle Santa,” and “Yankee Doodle Christmas” all sound like someone has an unrequited love of music, a bureaucratic devotion to children, and a carefree sense of history.

United We Christmas Tree Stand: birthing

The Christmas songs of our founding fathers are too archaeological to consider (church hymns)–good Christmas carols don’t come around for another century after that.

But those second banana has-beens Paul Revere and the Raiders offer a light psychedelic commentary on Vietnam by singing about Revolutionary wartime conditions in “Valley Forge” (even Doonesbury saw that connection despite the jungle/snowbank dichotomy). Not much of a Yule tune, but it’s off their cool cool cool ’67 album: A Christmas Present… and Past. Good stuff, groovesters.

United We Christmas Tree Stand: before

By my Ziggy calendar it’s January… and no one gives a rat’s hat about the Yule after this date.

So let’s get weird.

This month we celebrate Americana (Norte-style). Not many novelty Christmas songs scream USA Xmas, but some significant ones do, so we’ll go slow and see where we get to (we’ll be mentioning the boys overseas quite a bit). This is NOT about the individual states (Ben Dare, Don Datt), or–if we can help it– about the regions or coasts. This is about bringing us all together as one people. like science fiction is supposed to do, like Teddy Roosevelt wanted, like YOU desire in your heart.

So let’s begin with the first peoples, the founders of our land.

Jana Sampson is our usual ambassador to traditional carols in aboriginal languages, but let’s give Laura Burnouf a shot in Cree with “Little Drummer Boy.” It’s artistically folky without the hint of a drum, deerskin or otherwise.

The band Northern Cree gets a bit more humorous and self serving with their unfortunate “NDN 12 Days of Christmas.” There isn’t much to listen to when i reference the reprehensible twelve.

Oldhands makes it all real with “Stuck in the Smoke Hole of Our Tipi.” Swing and sway with the chanting and the culture clash. (They pawn our gifts?) (Maybe they’re Pawnees? Larf!)

Chanukah List: items four & five (ukulele, hippopotamus)

Slightly confusing is Alison Faith Levy (helped by Karla Kane) strumming away as earnest as a rabbi on Larry King Live with “All I Want for Chanukah is a Ukulele.” Oy gevalt.

Mr Palindrome tweaks the old ‘Hippopotamus’ novelty just the slightest which only adds fuel to the fire over whose holiday is ripping off whose. Nice trombone touch on his “I Want a Hippopotamus for Hanukkah.” The Jimmies rock their version if you feel like some real music. (Sadly the want another one for Kwanzaa.)