Year-round Yuletide oddities
Party music for Christmas? I thought you’d never ask.
Funky R+B dance music doesn’t have to be all disco, but it CAN. Eraserheads play their “Christmas Party” like the beat is all there is. (Listen for the alt solo!)
Largely instrumental “Christmas Party” is an invitation for you and me from Kompulsor. Great background beats for the 18 and unders.
Who’s that card for? (Why you reading someone else’s card?)
“Katey’s Christmas Card” by (young, really young, i mean Dukes young) John Schneider is pop country about some kid and daddy and coming home and crying.
Ah, youth… wasted on the young, who make a holy mess of it.
RERUN: Seventh graders who hit big with their new app still have to grow up, but they can celebrate Xmas with their rapper friend Double G (Kel Mitchell) who sings for the show “Reggae Christmas Potato.” [Nickolodeon]
Over at Disney, corporate scrutiny results in perfectly formulated entertainment like a middle child (of 7) whose genius is overlooked by all except writers, audience, and the actors themselves. “Have a Happy Holiday” is such an overwrought piece of montage music you will forget it immediately.
Henry Winkler’s book series about a dyslexic teen suffering in a bureaucratic school comes to life in London with frantic antics and heart crushes just like the kids tune in for. The holiday love song “Home for Christmas” by cast member pop star Hayden Chase is poppin’ fresh (okay it sounds like everything else charting hot for preteens, but it’s the best of this lot).
Big star-spangled finish. American Christmas songs should be enormo, splashy, slightly overdone casseroles.
Bettina Bush sings big about family and love and “An American Christmas.” It’s pretty, she’s pretty… i feel pretty!
James Brown shouts it out with “Hey America!” This is a sermon to uplift us with Christmas spirit. Feel it! FEEL IT!
Wayne Newton’s idea of “Christmas in the USA” is to call long distance. C’mon it’s Wayne Newton, it’s not what he says (what IS he saying?), it’s how he’s selling it. It’s building, building, building… and there’s that last note!
No excuses.
Someone found a bit of DJ humor from the Brad and Britt show that used to air on WZTK 101.1 in Greensboro NC.
So, “Sammy the Christmas Snake.”
FIFTY STATES OF ‘MERICA-MAS
Pennsylvania does not boast much proud local Noel, novelty or otherwise. Double Shot A capella has a heavily Pittsburgh accented Santa song on the ‘tube with a pronunciation gazetteer and a glossary.
(And , sigh, oh yes, the Steelers sing carols badly. But, take it from me, all sports stunts songs are the briefest of curiosities. If you need some hard to understand poorly punned Twelve Days of Christmas, just ask me. I’ll find you better… Oh, okay, and the Flyers.)
Some children’s group sings an original holiday paean to Philadelphia sweetly. Like little angels, although unlike most elementary assemblages that i survived i can understand them. Joyeaux.
And here’s an odd tangent: Jim O’Connor sings “Christmas in Pittsburgh, 1943” as a tribute to his WWII sailor dad. It’s mournfully memorable Irish folk with sailing vocals. Beautiful. Not Christmas. Not really.
But, for me… I gotta go Bobby Rydell. Robert Louis Ridarelli was a wunderkind of the ’60s with hits like “Volare” and “Wild One.” He starred in the stage show “Bye, Bye Birdie” as a teen idol, wink wink. In the show “Grease,” the high school is named for him. “A Philadelphia Christmas” is a cry for help from ’03 signalling his past due date. It says nothing but cliche about Christmas or Philadelphia loudly with much lounge cheese (the personal pronoun ‘I’ is tortured to five or six syllables). At the present he is no longer recording, but he is still touring casinos closing his eyes and leaning back rather than hitting the high notes. Please visit his fan sites and let him know his hits will live forever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmRtv44u1t8