Category: pop music

BLUE ALERT: number one (7)

These Vancouver (B.C.) partiers know how to entertain. And even better, how to connect Christmas, for J.C.’s sake, to yellow snow. I can’t find much about them apart from their Youtube channel, so good luck tracking down their albums.

But please shake it twice, zip it carefully, and listen up to The Ded Beats’ “Peesing in the Snow.”

A Month of Love: Austin and Ally

The Disney Channel spews out fun/funny kids shows like a St. Bernard does his slobber. One wackadilly from 2011 (and going strong) concerns the music career ups and downs of teen best bandies Austin (Ross Lynch) and Ally (Laura Marano).

If you deign to study the video note the presence of audience members… without the context of their eight-year-old adulation this is harmonious horseplay. Ridickio.

So: Austin and Ally with “I Love Christmas.”

A Month of Love: Tommy James

Tommy James was plucked from obscurity when DJs started playing his ‘Hanky Panky.’ He went on to produce, like the Shondells (‘I Think We’re Alone Now’).

But he couldn’t stop. In the ’70s he tried country (didn’t everyone?). In 2008 he tried a comeback with the surviving members of the Shondells. The album was I Love Christmas. And our less than listenable tune here is “I Love Christmas.” Sometimes the love of the season is amor qua amor.

Chanukah to the Seventh

It’s time to bridge that gap between Jews and Gentiles. (Christ was killed by Jews!?? Christ was a Jew!) Y’know a fair understanding of Chanukah is how second-class it feels in a Jesus-driven world (Judeo-Christian, my Advent!) That big fat Santa everywhere you go probably doesn’t seem so jolly when you’ve got your own family celebration in your own language waiting in the warmth of home and hearth and holiness. Allow for a tiny bit of resentment, then.
BLUE ALERT South Park has “A Lonely Jew on Christmas” to vent these same sad arias.
The seminal Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert “Can I Interest You in a Hanukkah?”is no longer on Youtube. But its gentility helps the goyim understand.
That reminds me of The LeeVees “Goyim Friends.” It’s some rockin’ racism, whitey!
Perhaps also check out Brandon Harris Walker’s rocker “Chinese Food on Christmas.” I actually couldn’t find one of those open on 12/25 last year. I tired. Oh, great song, by the way.
It may be hardest on the kids, or at least the Yid Kids. Their “Santa Doesn’t Come to Little Jewish Children’s Houses” from the magical album Santa’s Got a GTO: Rodney on the ROQ’s Christmas allows for the angst and the anger of the passed-over.
Actually, let’s let activist/comic Sarah Silverman express the schism of Happy Holidays with “Give the Jew Girl Toys.”

State Forty-One: Nevada

FIFTY DAYS OF ‘MERICA-MAS
I lived in the Silver State for a bit. Never regretted it, ’cause i was in my twenties. Never again though.
“Meet Me in Nevada” by Gary Oleyar comes from that pretty great album Christmas Across America. This musician violinist (currently on tour with Loggins and Messina) treats us to travelogue with sleeze. The bubblegummy retro ragtime flounce its way through the state at Christmas time, but leaves me a bit lost.
The Willard Grant Conspirancy’s alt country “Christmas in Nevada” tells it like it isn’t the holidays. Christmastime is a mark on the calendar while traveling through the blasted alt-countryside. (Nice electric keyboarding–puts me in a Dire Straits kinda mood.)
Hey–guess what’s funny? The sincerity and purity of the Christmas spirit contrasted with the excess and depravity of Las Vegas! Get it? Ho ho, ho? –okay, not that funny.
Some songs are just about that irony: no Jesu Christo, no St. Nicholas, no hall-decking. Just–damn, stuck in The Gambling Capitol of the World at this joyous time: isn’t this ridickio!
Odd Limey Marc Almond complains about needing love and time fleeting and ‘The City of Steel’ in his “Christmas in Vegas.” But I don’t get anything seasonal or Nevadan here. Synth when are we expected to get this music?
Heavy metal guitarist Paul Gilbert bangs annoyingly on a piano and wails about the pointless glam of Vegas during a time of love in “Las Vegas Christmas.” He comes across as having something to say here, almost Elvis Costello-ish. I give it a thumbs mostly up.
Since Vegas is an international play land, you might also consider the Persian version, “Xmas in Las Vegas” by Tara. Apart from a couple of Strip backgrounds, i’m not sure why this is Vegasibly Holly Jolly.
On the other hand, LV XMas is all inappropriately contradictorally comic, so the chuckling choisters just gotta give it the old double down do-it-to-it standup sing-a-wrong.
King of the Fa la la lounge singers would have to be Richard Cheese (& The Lounge Against the Machine). His “Christmas in Las Vegas” deals out all the double entendres you’d expect, and a couple more. His whole album Silent Nightclub is worth the trip.
Rick Poppe and others celeb impersonate the Rat Pack (& der Bingle) doing Nancy Hawthorne’s “Christmas Strip.” It’s four the hard way.
Also talented, but barely Vegas; nearly Christmas, is “A Vegas Lounge Christmas” by the Five Card Studs. I likes me some parody, and this take on ‘My Favorite Things’ (how is that a Xmas song?!) a la “My Favorite Drinks” swings hard. (Don’t stay for the morning show chitchat after the song.)
More modern carols redone: Hope Spin rewarms ‘Christmas in Hollis’ as “Christmas in Las Vegas.” It’s not as clever, and her repetitive dance move makes me a little sea sick.
Rocky Zharp’s “Christmas in Las Vegas” is appropriately full of yearning bluesy harmonica and screechy violins and wheezing vocals. He’s a funny guy more than a musical guy.
You can’t win if you don’t play. And Daniel Po-in-yea does play–or at least bust(le) a rhyme–his way through a strange, addled (tambourine afflicted) soul song: “Merry Christmas to You, Las Vegas.” Jesus saves… so he can gamble on your soul, sinners!
An actual plea to outoftowners (who own Lost Wages) going for it would be Sin City Sinners staging a UK Invasion-style rock anthem to Merry Vegas: “Christmas in Vegas.” It’s awful fun and makes me miss the (naive part of the) ’70s. Starting out as tentatively as a tourist, this earnest euphony rocks the spirit in which Vegas is given… just don’t forget the sarcastic Scrooge sermon, son!

State Thirty-Seven: North Dakota

FIFTY DAYS OF ‘MERICA-MAS
State Thirty-Six: North Dakota
Peace Garden State out!
If ND begins and ends with family for you, please consider the following: “North Dakota Christmas (Remembering Larry Gaudreau)” is a song in which Rosie Gaudreau, looking not-quite-five-years-old, sings (her own song) solemnly about God and Love and Christmas and Grampa Larry (who it seems has recently passed) AND North Dakota (it’s there at the end). Now you can get all snarky and sneer at these middle-class values, but you wish you had a video album/home movie like this for the holidays. Wow. Wait, i got something in my eye.
Less well done is the home movie/music video by Randi Perkins “If Its Christmas, It Must Be Home In Dakota.” This schmaltzena-tor actually hails from, loves, and writes about N. Dakota. (Fun fact: John Denver knew his first producer.) He teaches music in Colorado now. If you’re not familiar with big family get-togethers crammed into front rooms for pictures, food, picking up wrapping, tending to the wee ones… this cherished dance is a an overwarm reminder of what the holidays really mean: people (for good and bad). And don’t miss the footage of… all… that… snow. (But don’t tell Brad Millison this guy used his melody from “Christmas in Kansas City.” Please. No one needs that sort of unpleasantness.)