Year-round Yuletide oddities
Let’s get mean. At this point Christmas is over, and we don’t know why we were so gung ho. I mean, what did we expect, really?
Punk pop from The Earps pees all over the traditions in “I Can’t Wait for Christmas (To be Over).” Slight BLUE ALERT. You know.
Heather Henderson gets ironic big band chanteuse about cat poop and parental insecurity with the luminous “I can’t Wait for Christmas… to be Over.” Give the little lady a hand sanitizer.
Wait, don’t wait–what’s a child to do with Christmas in the neighborhood?
“Don’t Wait ’til the Night Before Christmas” to be good, so went the big band standard from pre-WWII. I enjoy Miss Rose & Her Rhythm Percolators wagging a trumpeted finger atcha. Rosemary Clooney and Nick Clooney have a fun rehearsal tape of this. For good measure, here’s Dick Robertson and His Orchestra setting you straight:
Another oopsie missed date. Did someone hack me?
Keaton Simons seems to like his song “Eyes Light Up at Christmas,” a peppy pop romp that encourages good feelings.
Marlene Dietrich croons “Christmas Lights” on the trees, but they’re candles. Oh, that was a thing. Symphonic mit sotto voce.
Bells might ring all through the holidays. They certainly do the week after Christmas for the new year.
Dave Para and friends gets in the folk community spirit with “Ring in the New Year.” Unplugged revelry.
Garage celebration from Motion City Soundtrack. “Together We’ll Ring in the New Year” is churlish and sarcastic. But, that’s good for the genre.
Let him die, intone the a cappella Crofts Family with a dirge for the old. Not sure i’d sing this “Ring Out Wild Bells” on Dec. 31. Folk sorrow from the Alfred Lord Tennyson poem ‘In Memoriam.’
Vintage crooner Johnny Cole chimes in on “Ring Out Wild Bells.” The new is coo’, daddio.
Did I say cool? Billy Ward & His Dominoes is gonna take us on a trip to Mars “Ringing in a Brand New Year.” Doo wop done right.
No Xmas presents because you forgot?! Is that the weakest excuse ever?!
Sonny James plays it cute despite the steel guitar country twang of “I Forgot to Remember Santa Claus” while buying presents. It’s 1954-ful of innocence.
Tony and Da Guys brandish the cool guy big band swing of “I Forgot That It was Christmas” like that ain’t no thang. You might get away with those bad manners, ya so charmin’!+
Ratchet up the wretchedness with these willful whiners. Grr, they coat coal in their stockings for Xmas! Cry havoc!
Why? folk smashes Jake McDonald in “Coal for Christmas.” Well, there’s a moral lesson to learn in here, i guess. But it rocks.
Mighty Magic Pants power rocks their ballad of woe “Lump of Coal” featuring a naughty nancy who shows no remorse. Cold!
Big band swing eases the pain of The Ohio City Singers hollering about dirt done them in “Coal Miser.” Powerful fun from smothering misery.
Who’s the biggest cowboy of them all? Santa Claus! Because he herds deer. Or something.
“Santa is a Cowboy” raps Isaac Stancill, with a mandolin backbeat. You heard me.
Did you know that “Santa is a Texas Cowboy“? sings Red Sovine. Hey, allow some privacy for the guy. Or at least a dignified song, not this kids’ pap.
Tex Ritter identifies with “Ole Tex Kringle.” Bass announcing to the kids seems scary to me. Big band high falutin’ fun.
The whole cause célèbre for Xmas is the birthday. Apart from three wise men, no one much noticed the day Mr. Christ was born. But celebrating that calendrical point becomes more and more special as the millennia turn.
And yet… don’t other people have the same birthday? Is that a thing?
(Not much of a one as it turns out, few songs make this case. And according to a senior lecturer at Boston University 1/3 less babies are born right on 12/25 than say on a day in the middle of September–in the USA.)
The big number here (“My Birthday Comes on Christmas”) was made famous by Spike Jones and his City Slickers. As is usual, it was a cover of someone else the year before. Dallas Frazier and Joe “Fingers” Carr perform a schtick-y low rent version complaining about only ‘getting half of what I oughter.’ Trout Fishing in America gets home-styled folksy for 2015 in theirs. Adam Brand swills sweet country tea in his 2018 entry. Overblown orchestral production arrives fully formed from the cracked redhead of Lindley Armstrong Jones 1956 (vocals by George Rock, the ‘Gettin’ Nuttin’ for Christmas’ guy).
Unwanted and intimidating attention has been criminalized since 1990 in the ol’ USA (seeming to lead the globe in deranged surveillance). And during such a romantic time of year (i blame Hallmark), up your Xmas creep on the famous, prior intimates, or even strangers.
Light touch from The Fatty Acids who are in the first bloom of “Christmas Stalking” with some lovely retro ’70s rock and balladeering.
My absolute favorite weirdness i will repeat is Rocket Summer’s “Elf Creep.” It’s alt-tastic.
Lis Mata has a swirling pop number for “Christmas Stalking” which mashes up Taylor Swift and Mariah Carey (in the worst possible ways). The song, however, is disturbingly darling (‘Fatal Attraction’ for millennials).
The guy version from Matt Roach seems much more sinister despite the pop elements to his “Christmas Stalkings.” Domestic abuse call!
‘Let me be’ complains Dr. BLT of your “Christmas Stalking,” an experimental folk acid trip. He can’t have any Xmas fun without you being THERE.
Mary Cobham of The Maughams is “Christmas Stalking” Jay Ferguson (of the Canadian rock band Sloan) with slipshop pop (as verisimilitude for her unbalanced state) (i guess).
Surely it can’t happen to little old you…. But, “Santa Claus is Stalking You” warns Ella Rue with some graphic imagery you should steel yourself for. Jolly uke folk.
Tinhorn symphonia from Linnzi Zaorski is better at the playfulness (well, less torture) with “Christmas Stalking.” I can see a 1930s ‘Merrie Melodies’ cartoon rolling out over it.
Blasting into the Nineteenth Century the latest whadjamajiggit will allow us to communicate Christmas better.
Why the ‘phone might even replace the postals for catalog ordering! “555-Ho! Ho!” from Hal Willis is the country comedy that gets some to knee slapping. It’s sad, it’s funny, it’s uplifting, AND it’s pretty stupid, too.
Many moons later the idea of a telephone connection is taken pretty much for present. When separated “Christmas on the Telephone” may be the only exchange possible. Thus, saggy smeary pop tunes like Brian Gari’s.
And if you won’t even call… “Christmas by the Phone,” a rock driving country womper of heartbreak from Good Charlotte.
Somewheres over a century ago was recorded “I’ll Telephone to Santa Claus” as sung by Stanley Kirkby on Edison Blue Amberol cylinder 23315, 1914. Get a quiet corner to hearken, children, to the tinny timpani of antique jazz band.