Category: Caroldies (parodies of carols)

Most songs here are about how early is too early for thinking about Christmas. Halloween is the dividing point. Before Halloween is ludicrous. After is just way too early. So we’ll save most of those for Nov. (And no Tim Burton movie musicals here. No means no.)

Last 10/31 i made the appropriate fuss about Randy Brooks’s demarcation “It’s Halloween (A Christmas Song).” It bears repeating.

As does Todd Chapelle’s “October Night.” Come on, that’s genius (‘cuz he sings so good).

“The (Too Soon for) Christmas Song” features a penguin puppet (“Paulie Glacier”). Loungey-fun to the tune of ‘The Christmas song.’ The mention of Columbus Day puts this early early early early early.

The winner here is where ‘Christmas in Kilkenny’ gets the once over with acerbic wit, if not musical joy, by John Matt. “Christmas in October” is not just snotty, it’s nasal.

Starting out our second half of the month, full of mammalian mystery and merriment, come the Austrailian versions of live birthing, milk producers. Weird with a beard.

F’r’xample: “Six White Boomers” by Rolf Harris, tell the story of a lost joey and Santa’s help–aided by his kangaroo team pulling his sleigh. (Slightly more singable-alongable are The Wayfarers with this DownUnder diddy.)

Not strange enough? Try to enjoy “I Want a Duck Billed Platypus fop Christmas” posted by John Brydon. Most novelty songs are parodies of traditional carols. A few are oddball originals. Then there is the parody of the oddball original. Got a special place in my heart for this, despite its deadpan, very dry take on humor. I mean, egg-laying mammals!

Fish don’t figure much in the story of God born as man.

Despite Jesus being a fish, or feeding the multitudes, or something…

But there’s always Jaws.

Homemade Theater’s cash grab from 1975 “Santa Jaws.”

Welcome to 1956, where Kruschev denounces Stalin–but USSR tops the Melbourne Olympics; where Montgomery faces a bus boycott–but we re-like Ike; and Elvis begins his own Ascension.

Granted, it was a year where the biggest selling single (Doris Day’s ‘Que Sera, Sera’) was still more grownup thrown up than the runners up (Elvis and Fats Domino). So don’t let’s give up on middle of the road musical fool-de-rol.

Dave King sings “Christmas and You” like the second coming of Bing. The strings are weepy, the percussion tinkly, the backup mush mouthed. Eyes half closed, lips parted, heart unmoved.

I hate to say it, but Harry Lillis Crosby Jr. is STILL making Christmas classics like “I Heard the Bells.” It ain’t novelty, but it is history. You’re right, i should not have included that.

Harry Belafonte helps us escape the conservative crud for Christ music with his down-home/island plain-spoken canticle “Mary’s Boy Child.”

But let’s get back to our ’56 schmaltz, already in progress. Here’s an amazing record on a postcard from Ford Motors, featuring Rosemary Clooney sending up ‘Jingle Bells’ with a jingle that smells.

Not loads more zombie holiday music of any worth. (That i’ve found.)

A brief shout out to Emily Sofia Smith who blogs with goth-heart and seasonally lays down a parody melody of murderous merriment that’s worth a glance. Couple years ago it was for The Walking Dead. Last year it was for Hannibal and Bates Motel. Before all that it was fanning and fawning over Dexter. Cute and charnal. A good talent.

But to put a lid on death, let’s get real low budget. Gamer Meg got her (i’m guessing) high school buddies and made a video! “Let Them Come” is a fine parody of ‘Let It Snow’ and tells a story and–well, it only takes a minute.

The Smothers Brothers, like Ernie Kovaks and Sid Cesar, brought comedy to the Twentieth Century. They’re not dead yet, so attention should still be paid to these nearly octogenarians.

Let’s start with a short blast of musical fun from their TV show: “Santa Claus is NOT Coming to Town.”

Some living things are not meant to shuffle off this mortal coil at That time of year, but by virtue of their seasonal overexposure we understand–collision happens.

Back to good old Bob Rivers–AGAIN (he’s everywhere! He’s Everywhere!). His “I Came upon a Roadkill Deer” puts us in mind of the blessing of the holidays to be a kid: so Dad has to clean up the unexpected aftermath of driving in the dark over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house.

Goths just wanna have pun.

As an intro to the jokey macabre silliness, witness some of the least terrible of the album Tales from the Crypt: Have Yourself a Scary Little Christmas, wherein the Cryptkeeper (our favorite deadpan double entendrer) makes parodies of We Wish You a Merry Christmas and O Tannenbaum. It’s awful stuff, but keeping with our month’s motif.

The Addams Family up/down black/white whimsy of you-say-living I-say-dying is Jeff the Killer’s meat and potatoes (sorry: defeat and castratoes). I’m not sure if the matter here is slaughter, cannibalism, zombification, satanic death ritual, or just tortured rhymes… but he loves his holiday irony ohh so much!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UviXKm9Kcw

Slip a parody in here.

The H.P. Lovecraft Society is nerd candy for Goth kids. They sing fun filk about the Old Ones wiping us off the dimension of life.

Here is their “Death to the World” with a darling slide show of Lovecraftian horrors.