Year-round Yuletide oddities
Key of Awesome is so cool they get a mention with “12 Days of Miley.” It’s not funny. It’s mean. If you can’t stand her, here.
Venetian Princess gets fanny funny with “A Miley Cyrus Christmas.” It’s only a silly minute.
The “Miley Christmas/Parody of ‘The Christmas Song'” from our friends at FuMP: Robert Lund and Spaff.com. It replays over the credits if you don’t get it the first minute and a half.
Albums by less than Christian artists ironically covering Xmas are 1$ a dozen. It’s them playing bourgeoise. (Ha!) Many do that. (For $$$) Which makes it hard to find guitartists willing to put the musical stamp of some one greater on their own little holiday project. But, Youtube is endless…
So here’s “What If… Metallica Played Christmas Songs!” cobbled together by Creble Star with no little talent.
vito106 has posted some foolishness that sparked a wee bit o’ controversy. “Back Door Santa” has no provenance, but it has some melty fun to it.
Mark Pitta has an exercise in imitation that pits Doors music to J Bells so let’s call it “Jim Morrison Jingle Bells Imitation.”
Since it’s fun i have to share Mr. Mojo’s “Lost Doors Christmas Song?” It’s out and out parody, but nom nom nom.
Masterful comic actor you’ve seen in something somewhere Mario Cantone has the bit we’re looking for. “Jim Morrison Christmas Special” makes merry with melody. The jokes don’t always land, but the effort is consciousness raising.
Mojochronic has posted a medley of carols done funky electronic (as a sequel?): “Yuletide Zeppelin II.”
Oh, yeah, this mashup master also has a “Yuletide Zeppelin” from a previous year. Found it through Peter the Elf. (It’s better.)
Rooster Slayer noodles on his guitar with “Fa La La Floyd Christmas Song.” Mesmerizing, if a bit show offy.
Moneyshot Cosmonauts (od FuMP fame) melt it in a minute with “The North Side of the Pole, Part 4: Red and Green.” Top o’ the charts, baby! (Don’t forget “Parts 5 and 6“–cool, cool, cool.) (These are parodies, gang, but I couldn’t reisist, hee hee hee.)
“What if Eminem Did Jingle Bells” by Bob Rivers. Yeah, this is what it’s all about.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyLDI31BBTw
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.
Kjell Magne Robak kills it with”What If Bach Wrote ‘Last Christmas’?” (with a little help from Mozart). Points for acting it out.
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.
Perhaps the greatest icons in our culture take their cue from Christianity. You get how Superman is Christlike and all, right. Perfect for a Merry Christmas song, no?
Michelle Osorio has it boiled down to Ted Talk precision with her “Jor-El: Superman Christmas Carol.” Listen and learn, culture-philes. This is educational, amusing, and pretty.
The debate over who’s more popular–the character you play or the actor you are–has become passe. Richard Dean Anderson is McGyver to some and Col. Jack O’Neill to others, but who cares who cares who this soap opera star is at home? Come on! (Not that I have Xmas wishes sung to either of those characters… next year, Santa, please?!)
So some stars are fictive, like Sherlock Holmes or Ronald McDonald or Garfield the cat. They occupy a massive swath of the constellations in our culture and we need to recognize the Christmas tributes in music just for them.
The obvi kickoff here is the TV universe of Star Trek and the movie universe of Star Wars. Yes, i know they are multimedia, but let’s face it: the big difference between them and their fans is the down home box in the front room vs. going out into the dark world with strangers. Since i don’t take sides they appear together today.
Sasha sings Tai Shindehai’s “Santa Vader” in pretty good English, but this is the French take on the whole Star Wars mythos. Anywho, Vader is compared to a workaday Santa and seems somehow sexier because, i guess, he might kill Jar Jar for that little girl for Christmas.
The 800 pound gorilla in this cateogory is the Bon Jovi “R2D2, We Wish You a Merry Christmas” from the unsanctioned 1980 album Christmas in the Stars. Both of these have been posted earlier by me.
Internet/cable host Richard William Wheaton III is famous for playing the ingenue on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He has never grown out of his smug pinched expression, however, so now resides comfortably as an expletive on The Big Bang Theory. Chelsea P Manders has an electronic girlish fantasy dedicated to him in her “Will Wheaton’s Christmas Dance Mix.” So there’s that.
Zoe Yadira Saldaña Nazario has been in several Billions of Dollars of movies (Pirates franchise, Star Trek franchise, Marvel universe, ‘Avatar’–others). Not bad for a ballet dancer from New Jersey (whose looks could kill). Her fan base is not balanced: “All I Want for Christmas is Zoe Saldana” is a rap adulation from Gerald Walker (mostly appearing here as a teaser to get you to download his work). I’m not sure if he’s smitten as a kitten or just riding the coattails of name recognition to get you to notice his song.
But now I’d like to mention (again) the odd Christmas album from Christian Rick Moyer: Merry Trekmas. This guy pulled out all the stops tricking up carols for the Federation. Please enjoy “Benji the Spaceman” in which our fave black Cap. Benjamin Sisko competes against STTNG with DS9 running what seem to be Middle Eastern jihadists against each other with peacekeeping metaphors.
Since STTNG ran longer and harder, let’s leave on “Jean Luc, the Bald Head Captain” also by Moyer but featuring the suavest, classiest, most classically trained Cap. of all who showed us how to lead without punching so much. Dreamy….