Parodies’ Paradise: 1964 “Hello Dolly”

Louis Armstrong’s massive number reached number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, ending The Beatles’ streak of three number-one hits in a row over 14 consecutive weeks (in addition to holding the second and third chart positions)…the most successful single of Armstrong’s career… spent nine weeks atop the adult contemporary chart… made Armstrong the oldest artist ever to reach #1 on the Hot 100 since its introduction in 1958… the No. 3 song of 1964 as ranked by Billboard… won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1965… and Armstrong received a Grammy for Best Vocal Performance, Male.

Just about my fave-o Bob Rivers novelty Christmas song is “He’s So Jolly.” After dozens of listens, it still gets a grin.

Tripping Bells: Meth

Despite the product placement success from Breaking Bad, meth gives little comic relief to Christmas music.

Dan Robertson tries, however, with “Meth Carols.” (Then it gets racist.)

You know there’s slim pickings when I include a ’12’ homage. Let’s Talk Figures go downtown with “The 12 Days of Methmas.” There’s a recipe in there, guys.

So let’s get in our salute to Breaking Bad finally. Animeme has “Do you Want to Build a Meth Lab?” Cartoon pathos! “What’s Meth?” from Callison Slater. In jokes!

Tripping Bells: Blow

Don’t forget the lighter side of cocaine for Christmas! What was it? Oh, here!

Stage Door Guy deadpans a cowboy ballad: “Cocaine for Christmas.” He’s suffering for his art, but it barely shows.

Aleksei Archer reframes “White Christmas” OF COURSE about cocaine. Subtle, unless actually you listen to it. (‘Schnife’?!)

Christ Sampson pokes the hip hop bear with “White Christmas (Cocaine).” It’s not exactly comedy, but it’s not street. More like lane.

Just as unfortunate a rap number is “Ho! Ho! Ho! (It Looks Like Snow)” from White Lightning, P’Zilla and Chinchilla. They can keep a beat. But the moral of the story is: are we famous yet?

Parody hit and misses for cocaine here. “Frosty the Cokehead” by CC Streetz is a near-miss. It’s so sweet. Isn’t it a sweet one? Bob Gautreau does the Jimmy Durante impression for his “Frosty the Blowman.” Look, Mommy, the old man is singing about young peoples’ problems! sibbaldk in a similar vein tries “Frosty the Dope Man.” Tries. Friday the 25th drops a ghetto beat on theirs. Lickety fun. By this point The Funny Hat of America sound old hat.

Bree Essrig & Brett Erlich go to some trouble to ruin ‘Frozen’ with “Do You Want to Do Some Blow, Man?” I say yeah. To the ruination, that is. (Yeah, this is obvious: Doctor Panglos does this, too. And The Tokyo Fever. And some big half naked tatted up guy named Roccy.) (And lounge hagstress Loretta Jenkins killing “Let’s Do Blow” should be overlooked.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur43PZ2jYMo

Off the Wagon for the High Holidays

That unhappy refractory period after Christmas drinking is a badge of honor for the young. Jack hurt me, they boast. I can’t function as a human being since I awoke, they quip.

John French Bray soft rocks his “Christmas Hangover” every year to new video making sfx, though he can’t quite figure the lip syncing–which makes me nauseated and headachy. It’s just another season, he seems to say. Routine.

Sounding like the ’60s Gentlemen Jesse and His Men also pledge their morning after pain to the Christ birth in “Christmas Hangover.” It was an honor to be over served.

Announcing that they have the inside of their mouths like an Arab’s underpants (as one might say), Arrogant Worms delivers us unto “Christmas Hangover,” a show tune worthy of church choir-ing. The scenario is horrifying, but the musification merry. It’s irony for the kids ‘cuz–see–they think hangovers are funny.

Crocked for the High Holidays

Toasting is peer pressure for alcoholism. Can you say no, sneak a ginger ale, toss it in the potted plant?

Michelle Unkle just wants to talk about it. After a couple minutes she pokes fun at ‘Jingle Bells’ with “Let’s Get Drunk on Christmas!” It’s a sad processional that leads one more towards temperance. Wah.

Marco & Jannik invoke ’70s party rock with their “Let’s Get Drunk on Christmas.” The driving percussion, the rasping vocals, the incoherent beat–it’s like getting drunk. Whee.

Backyard cowboy Arnold Connelly tries to marry honky tonk with dixieland in his “Gonna Get Drunk This Christmas.” With some tweaking, he may have a hit, but this is cry for help. Wha–?

Chris Ilett finds more and more reason to indulge as he sings a British raging music hall style ballad to booze “Let’s Get Drunk This Christmas.” It’s an epic journey through the liquor cabinet of misery. If you don’t believe me, read the reviews included in the opening of the video. Whoa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcgrX9UdmFg

Drink N.B. Merry: nog6

The strangest spiking of the ‘nog is a popular, though underground song entitled “The Eggnog Song.” It’s not alcohol this time. And everyones faces seem to melt. There are club versions by Jacob Alexander (masterful), Richard White (earnest), Shawn Ryan (loungey), and Emily Clarke (shrill). But let’s give it up for (i believe) the originator: Chris Critelli. (It’s the oldest posting i can find.) Buckle up this one’s a doozy.

Consume-mas Quantities: din din

Kids eat Christmas dinner at the small table, but they get a couple songs to go with it.

Neurotic Films Oficial has posted a marvy pop song about “The Christmas Dinner for Kids” (without crediting the young wailers) which invites kids to party in their mouths with edible presents.

Disney has a princess album for Christmas with original songs, so let’s try to guess which dwarf is singing which line for Snow White’s “Christmas Eve Dinner.” It’s a course stopper!

Sweet Christmas! cookies 4

Musicals need shorthand to describe an idea. Christmas cookies fill the bill as a little detail with a big tradition to unpack.

Henry Noodle is a small time musical franchise by Tim McCanna. He’s pursued musical theater through the Cosmic Calamities of his SciFi hero. One such adventure saw our hero teaching silly girl aliens in skimpy costumes about Christmas. “Christmas Cookies” takes a minute to start, but becomes crispy and crunchy in its own special echelon.

Tina deVaron spreads her own show stopping message (and jazz hands) with “When is a Cookie?” Trust me, it’s a holiday song. And it’s got close up mugging, sashaying, and the drama of a torn family. Oh, and a recipe.

Sweet Christmas! cookies 2

Not that cookies are more kid-friendly than candy canes, but the pedantic Christmas chants for little brains add too much sugar and not enough spice. So here are our nominees for most over-enunciated, staccato syncopated, simply loud songs about cookies for Christmas.

Spelling the word cookies (with a mean Spanish guitar) Allie Jo Thomas  folk-teaches the rug rats with “Christmas Cookies.” Short and sweet.

Kids like recipes and following rules, so mix that up with an Island beat as Maple Leaf Learning suggests “Let’s Make Cookies for Santa Claus.” Okay.

Slinging an agenda to the ankle-biters Cherry, the Resurrection Rabbit (unironically) sings “Christmas Cookies” in an undecipherable falsetto about cookies, Christ, and Easter. Huh?

More funny speech impediments from Patrick Roberage Productions, Inc. swinging the kids with the whiny complaints of crappy cookie making in “Christmas Cookie Jam.” Slap that grandma.

Playing the Goofy card Brent Holmes sings “The Christmoose Cookie Song” like a moose, though not a religious one. Moose are stupid and make kids laugh at them, in case you weren’t sure.

Silly hillbilly music makes kids kid like, i guess. Crime and dogs, banjos and harmonicas, John R Erickson romps and rollocks through “Christmas Cookies.” And if you learn about the history of American music in the mix, well fine.

Nothing like a military march to rouse the tots into cookie singing formations! This one seems like Plank Road Publishing (a hothouse of school assembly song production), but i  don’t have a source. “Christmas Cookies” here features a fast and a slow side with a point counter point round for the finale. All i really hear are exhausted first grade teachers.

Perhaps a psychedelic sidebar? Todd McHatton uses cookies as a potent symbol for childish mythology. Yeah, that’s about right.

What kid songs can do is cough up a big production show tune like the renaissance of Disney musicals did back in the ’90s. Veggie Tales wants kids proselytized to Christianity with singing produce and a dash of wit, a dollop of talent, and I must say some delirium. “Oh Santa” features an anxious boy cucumber with a plate of Christmas cookies, three wisemen (asparagus burglar, pea viking with an odd trace of Hebrew, squash IRS auditor), cheap sets, samaritan examples, slapstick, and a bellicose tomato Santa. Take a peek:

Sweet Christmas! fruitcake 6

The sticky crumbs here… angry, mean songs about fruitcake with some redeeming graces.

Some old schoolhouse rock ripoff about fruitcake rounded the web a while back and at least one troller posted half of this nice calypso number (without any laffs in it) as “The Fruit Cake Song.” It had possibility….

Another “Fruitcake Song” of uncertain origin backs prepubescent pajama wearing ballerina-wannabes in some outdoor park festival. It kinds pops, what you can hear of it.

The Wissman Family and The Von Trapp Children (grandkids of the original Austrian Kurt) kid around with “Please Don’t Send Me Fruitcake.” Oldsters sneer at the sentiment but approve of the youthful exuberance. Adorable!

Local holiday revue with neighbor talent only embellishes “Holiday Lament (Nobody Likes a Fruitcake)” from That Time of Year. This time it’s from the point of view of the maligned mealy loaf, at least that side of the table. Great harmonies, girls!