Year-round Yuletide oddities
Since love loss leads so easily to commit seppuku, we need an anthem for suicide watch for the Nativity.
Please consider this Up With People version by Private Instigators: “Please Don’t Kill Yourself this Christmas.” Complete with a PA hotline phone number at the end.
I want to live–to open presents!
I know… you were hoping for some metal… some death metal…
Almost there (i’m a little old for headbanging regularly).
And I KNOW Weird Al Yankevic has a comedy classic “The Night That Santa Went Crazy” but despite the hints of elficide, it’s mostly about torture-killing the reindeer and we’ll deal with roadkill in another week or two.
So to start you out of the grisly world of grinchy life-taking (check out my Halloween week from last year as well), here’s cute little Londoner Silver Darter, singing about luring you to his cabin and relieving you of your burden of breathing for the holidays: “The Face of Death.”
The pressure to be relentlessly merry for the second half of December does not prohibit calamity, mishap, and bad breakups. It makes the pathos so much worse, in fact.
Landon Tewers, a mopey rocker, really delivers on this message of bedroom betrayal and cutting faces out of pictures.
Careful, “I Hope You Have a Shitty Christmas” contains many more oaths than the s one. But it does rock out that list of what i wish would happen to you (including a shark attack).
The exclamation OH SHIT is merely gasp of astonishment, quite appropriate for The Advent.
“Oh Shit, It’s Christmas!” by the Tim Tations is a bouncy garage howler. Almost reverent in its anarchic call for revolutionary antimaterialism, really.
“Oh Sh*t, It’s Christmastime” by The Mad Tea is also mad rockin’ fun with a twist of Limey. Party music.
Musically mediocre, the video for The Zissou Society’s “Oh Shit! It’s Christmas” is a compelling climb through the TV time tunnel to the holiday hokum of 1970s commercials. Wow what video fun.
Deer Tick’s “Holy Sh*t, It’s Christmas” really digs down into the underground of experimental rock. A rock bottom gravelly voiced angry celebration.
Red Peters as usual gets dirty and nasty with his standard: “Holy Shit, It’s Christmas!” I guess it’s jolly.
It’s The Hot Dogs who get the rock-out-with-their-shit-together nod with a hot hammerin’ “Holy Shit, It’s Christmas!”
Significant anger is directed at the abuses of the holiday spirit of giving and not caring. So here is some almost swearing from the people at Dot Photo who have cobbled together an impressive slide show buffet of presents you only give to those you want to know are beneath your good graces: “Stop Giving Me Crap for Christmas” by Bobby Gaylor.
Big ups to Bobby for including novelty christmas albums by cats or dogs; more ups on the video for including choco-pooping toys.
While feces and feliz navidad have a ho-ho factor of 7.35 built in, the awkward inappropriateness a merry dump next to the chimney raises the horror of the humorless. Enter Andy Dick, the off-putting offspring of Eww and Ick. His seasonal poop tale dabbles in rape panic, pedophlia, and of course shit and run. All euphemistically sung with an impish grin. This is about as bad as it gets, folks.
“Santa’s Yule Log” from Keven and Bean’s Santa’s Swingin’ Sack.
American original Frank Zappa created his own form of jazz rock fusion after experimenting with form (Mothers of Invention) in the ’60s. By the ’70s he was no longer ahead of his time, but recognized to the point that he became nauseatingly popular (‘Valley Girl’). This is another of those moments, the song “Yellow Snow” from the album Apostrophe. You can dance to it, but out of respect don’t.
“Christmas is the Time to Say I Love You” may be the big Kahuna of Holiday heartfelt howlings. It was the B-side to Billy Squier’s 1981 single ‘My Kinda Lover.’ And it has it’s share of covers.
Alexa Vega tries to Disney it up a bit. Darlene Love torches it up. Katharine McPhee certainly orchestrates it up. SR-71 and The Cute Lepers try to and metal and sass. Hurts my throat to hear ’em
But it’s Billy’s song. Here he is on crappy videotape lip syncing with his hair on MTV. Hey, is that You in the audience?!
Bobby Helms could be the godfather of rock ‘n’ roll Christmas novelty songs with his 1957 ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ and his early contribution to all things rockabilly.
But, the late ’50s is afire with the space race, so let’s not overlook the B-side to that Xmas hit: “Captain Santa Claus and His Reindeer Space Patrol.” We know not to be afraid with our man in red in space.
Not as popular as the rubber-suited freakazoids are the accouterments of Dr. Who.
James Mullins eventually sings part of “(I’ve Been) Dreaming of a Blue Tardis” and an opening for “I Want a Sonic Screwdriver for Christmas” for a bit entitled “If Christmas Songs were Written by Dr. Who Fans.” It has the beginning of promise.
The same and more of these TARDIS filk songs from fanzines (with lyricists credited this time) are sung by a shirty old bird and his ancient mum in “Doctor Who Christmas Filk Songs.”
A Blue Galaxy Project slogs through “TARDIS The Blue Police Box” making parody without making humorous sense.
Barely Christmas is “Do You Want to Steal a Tardis?” mostly by North Rory. It’s a riff on that “Frozen” song. Some masterly fun.
“I Want a Tardis for Christmas” by Legendary Noobs is a love song of regret and man-chanting. But us savvy movie-goers know that having a time travel device never helps lost love, ya doomed-to-repeat-history head bangers. Still, rock on.