Category: show tune

The opportunity to squeeze treasure out of dirt ought to occur to more musicians taking on the ol’ coal for Christmas routine… but it’s just more metaphor.

Sampling old Xmas shows Jon Pablo’s “If I Get Coal for Christmas I’m Making Diamonds” is just an experimental stroll down musical possibilities. Certainly it’s fun, but not novelty.

LA’s drag Cavern Club Theater put on a little mucial revue around ’09 (entitled ‘JESUS CHRIST! It’s Christmas!’). The number here “Coal in Your Stocking” gets ugly, but Tammie Brown fronts The Boofant Sisters with vim and vigor to (attempt to) bring down the house with this show slower.

Not too many tunes perpetuate the stereotype of cowboys as killers–especially at Christmas.

Kids love it, though. Plank Road Publishing offers a show for the wee ones to put on: ‘Christmas at the OK Corral,’ but instead of squaring off with lethal weapons mean old Bart intends to cover the old West town in “Bubble Gum Goo.” Ew, Teresa Jennings, gross.

Then the completely unnecessary musical adaptation of ‘A Christmas Story’ includes the fantasia “Red Ryder Action BB Gun,” which of course is more showtune than western. Owned by Clarke Hallum (listen to that last note!). If you need me to expand the context here… count yourself lucky and move on.

‘It’s much worse than dying alone,’ bewail Fortress of Attitude in “It Sucks to be Born on Christmas.” This ponderous elegiac is both blues and slo-mo pop ballad, but really reads (for me) as showtune. Enjoy.

‘Another Fucking Christmas Play: A Fucking Musical’ gets not so much mean or real as real mean about the holidays. “Another Bastard is Born” is not about JC, but some low rent unplanned family and the misery of overpopulation, again. Churchy flavored, so somber as hell.

If you were to string every cinematic/televised crime scene together, you’d be dead (there’re too many). Surely these happen on Christmas Day.

Kerry Pastine and The Crime Scene holler out a swampbilly “Crime Scene Christmas” as if they were getting away with it. I’m taking a step back, myself.

Next up, radio signals into print!

Not too much Morse code or telegram songs for Christmas.

From a couple years ago, a cartoon special that was never made became a stage play, ‘A Tigglemeister’s Christmas.’ To wit: Santa’s best toymaker, Sniggle Tigglemeister, left the North Pole long ago, though no one seems to know why. With Christmas fast approaching, Santa’s toy supply is coming up short, so he sends a telegram to Sniggle begging him to return. But someone at the North Pole doesn’t want Sniggle back. As the entire quirky Tigglemeister clan makes its way north, head toymaker Hans Grumpleheimer will stop at nothing to lead them astray. Here’s the “One Loathsome Telegram,” the crux to the plot!

As mammoth a cultural pillar as Christmas be, all our advancing technology serves it from the printing press to AI. No, i’m not going to include Alexa singing (yawn). But i will fill your month with novelty tunes that reference the overtaking crawl of advancement and progress machine-wise to our happy times from past to present (there is NO future).

Writing has been with us longer than Christ, so i’ve already offered some cards and letters in Christmas songs before now.

Brentwood Kids Company spell it out with “Love Letters of Christmas.” Whoa, not the steamy ones from a long distance relationship. Though X does figure in.

For the adult stuff, let’s tune in R. Kelly’s “Love Letter.” Brought to you by the letters R+B.

Keith Whitley’s “Christmas Letter” is a last testament by a dying old man. It’ll stand up in a court of law. And jerk some country tears.

Let’s work in more wit: Jerry Becker has a clever English lit showtune “The Man Who Writes the Cards” about the penman behind the Christmas greetings for you (and, well, you–i don’t buy those; prefer to make my own).

Clearly the best novelty Christmas song about Mrs. Santa Claus is the German Expressionistic tour-de-force from Soshana Bean. “Surabaya – Santa” is a journey of origin, romance, jealousy, abandonment, resentment, payback, manic-depression, humiliation, and evolution. Jason Robert Brown’s Off-Broadway 1995 musical ‘Songs for a New World’ offers a revue of mad masterpieces including this rando operetta. Holy mother.