Year-round Yuletide oddities
Skip back with me to flying angels and gods… How high do they fly for Xmas?
Bud Martin brings the spoken word approach to that old country cornpone number “Santa, Does Your Reindeer Fly to Heaven?” See, Mama wants some presents, and I don’t wanna drop ’em off at the cemetery….
Whoa, look out. The Jiggi Verandah Band gets reverently iconoclastic with “Daddy Flies with Santa Claus.” This almost country psychedelia chants into your subconscious with machine gun fire. Seek therapy, gang!
It doesn’t feel like any other time of anticipation: not for taking your MCATs, not for getting pulled over, not for losing your virginity… waiting for Xmas is a uniquely great expectation. So let’s explore the underrepresented in music.
A Christmas musical so odd MST3K spoofed it, ‘Christmas That Almost Wasn’t’ ends with the song “Nothing to Do But Wait,” wherein shopkeeper Sam (Paul Tripp) with Santa hold their breaths hoping the children will save the holiday. Showtune anger. I guess. YOU describe it then.
Hard banging garage whispering “Can’t Hardly Wait” weirds me out. Soft or hard? Good or bad? BIG HIT, help me understand.
Proper sitar psychedlia from Dimentia 13 melts your apprehension into a world without time. “Christmas Comes to Those Who Wait” must be consumed in a neutral-colored place of comfort with friends near by.
Late addition recommended from Pete the Elf: the 1958 kookiest entry from Tommy Christy “All are Waiting for Christmas.” The skinny and fat ones. too. AKA ‘The Christmas “Name” Song,’ ‘cuz he calls the kids names… For kidsong that’s really yikes!
Electronic psychedelia volleys the oddity into your court. Brad & Barry make “I Can’t Wait for Christmas Time” feel like i can’t wait for the ketamine to kick in. Whoa.
So, i guess, kids music is crap. At best it’s an earworm of clapping and shouting, but it strikes me too often as condescending overexplanation. No wonder kids rebel younger every year. Like mini-Robespierres, they want their turn in the power chair telling even littler ones whassup.
So, the worst of kidsong sounds like… The Wiggles. This Australian ’90s sensation indoctrinated children to marshmallow versions of music genres, so they wouldn’t know jazz if it fell on them. Here “Wags, Stop Your Barking! It’s Almost Christmas Day!” (feat. Barry Williams) devalues rock below dadrock into Disney levels of showtune.
More traditionally pablumatic, Mr. Ray & The Little Sunshine Kids feature a sound Kim Jong Un would smile at: chorussed Christmas spirit with every voice fulfilling its joyful duty. “It’s Almost Christmas” is the formula, not that’s there anything right with that.
Retro fun comes with the exercise workout percussive workout from Hilary Henshaw “Christmas is Nearly Here.” Gather round all the ADHDs to drill. The unintentional irony helps.
Serious show tune gets me in the mood (except for how all the songs sound the same), so a moment for a well done Sesame Street melody from Elmo and Sheryl Crow “It’s Almost Christmas” (the title being basic the entire lyric for the singing).
What gets me up in the morning, though, is the rando existential playfulness of “Yell It Out! (It’s Almost Christmas).” The childishly affected mushmouthing, the jazzy improv tambourine, the wandering train of thought–that’s anticipation for the BIG Day! That’s what that is all right.
The question of the mall Santa sometimes becomes the canvas across which various artists paint, piss, posture, or otherwise pontificate. I don’t pretend to understand the themes you are about to encounter.
Starving Millions (blue alert) beat metal for their “Mall Santa.” Huh?
Divine Right warble garage with their “Mall Santa.” Pardon?
The ever rando Darlene Como ethereally stumbles up into “Santa’s Lap Cookies.” And for that we WTF you.
No gifts–how ’bout just NO CHRISTMAS?! Hell no, you say?
Imagine there’s no holidays; it’s easy if you sing….
Bassist for The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Noel Redding walks us through the hinter(wonder)land of naughts with “No More Christmas” It’s all the psychedelic folk you’d expect from this master blaster. Gives me the munchies.
A ’90s gang of Philly musicians joined warped minds to skewer Christmas music. They took a while to rise above door-to-door cassette sales, but i highly recommend you lay your hands on whatever Hot Buttered Elves released, regardless of roster.
“Coal” is their 11 minute opus (apparently in several parts) about the ins and outs of striking black rock for the holidays. At times instrumental (haunted symphonic) at others experimental club (haunting beat poetry). Grab a cup o’ joe and settle back for this one. It’ll take you places you never dreamt. See you on the other side.
What’s Santa Claus do in his down time? Break broncs? Soap his saddle? Stare out into the wilderness until guided to his bedstead by those who care?
A sinister image, the red rider bearing down on you with his sack. “Far from the North Pole” is odd madness from Death Tongue that collapses one mythology into another. Just my cup of Glühwein.
Even more ‘Something Awful’ “Santa and Them Ingin Mans.” This spoken word acid trip from Lifepuzzler (feat. Stalwart Betamax) delivers the greatest gift of all: absurdity. (Well, racial tolerance, actually.)
Are you ready to party? ARE. YOU. READY! TO. PARTY!? Crank IT!
Just kidding.
Some parties are just so middle class, so slow-paced, so–so OLD that, well, it’s not like a party at all.
Snoresville from Mick J Clark. “It’s Christmas Party Time” has more musical guest chatter than it has pop melody, and i LIKE tubular bells.
Sam Scola has a headache-inducing bit of pop puffery with “The Christmas Party.” Give that tambourine a rest, man.
Hypnotically, Desk Jockeys trundle out a “Christmas Party (Dance Mix)” like an alt-cocktail lounge pop slow dance number. Line up by height!
Millennially ironic merriment from Chloe Rabideau and David Vukovich. But “Christmas Party Song” is so alt-low key that the back-patting wide-grinning love fest gives a round of applause to the line ‘Share the love.’
Just as quietly boisterous, Dr. Dog has a “Christmas Party” with ’60s psychedelic influences that oohs and ahhs with liquid serenity. It’s more lay the carpet than raise the roof.
More meanings for War on Christmas inclue The Vietnam War. (Hang on, let me reread that.)
Dogless flashes back with “Nixon’s War on Chrimbus,” a psychedelic whirligig of tribute to the forgotten generation. What, me worship?
So he didn’t walk out on you, he passed on from you. Still a rough candy-cane strewn holiday road doing without.
[Momentary digression to mother-issues: Bud Davidge suffers to figure out “Christmas Without Mama.” Lilting country catastrophe.]
[And, oh holy yeah, “There’s No Christmas Without You” Kirk Franklin and The Family soul/gospel up the dead Jesus reason for the season.]
Everything But the Girl has an alt-folk soft lilt to their loneliness that smacks of mortal grief. But “25th December” is more than eulogy. It’s a poetic remembrance of loss that doesn’t belong in my categories of sadness or blues. This hurts so good.
Mark Arnett has a true eulogy over his love. But it’s SANTA mourning MRS. CLAUS. What the actual folklore? “I Miss You Most at Christmas (Now that You are Dead)” is a ’70s psychedelic ode that starts you scratching your head, then gets you bobbing, then swaying. Go with it.