Year-round Yuletide oddities
We’ve run into foreign songs about Christmas dinner. We should join hands around the world, except then we couldn’t tuck in civilized-like. So let’s sing about the international Xmas repast.
Menace lends a taste of Antigua to his “Christmas Dinner.” Calypso canapés, anyone?
Newfoundland Harve Bishop may sound redneck, but his “Christmas Dinner with Sam” celebrates the cuisine and landscape of the Great White Northeast.
Did i say folk music went with home cooked meals? Did I? And did i mention plain folks love a good larf? I didn’t?
Tony Blanchard of Karukuleles soothes our souls with his menacing tale of overeating in “Christmas Dinner Song.” Delightfully, amusingly monotone.
The New Planets Band also solemnizes a somnolent song, “Christmas Dinner“–that is, until GRAMPA HIT THE SLIDING DOOR! A rockin’ coda if ever there was one after such a festive fest. Play that again!
Knock off all that fooling around! Here’s a cut with somber reverence for the family food-time: Carrie Newcomer makes the gathering of old time family members quite the religious experience in “A Long Christmas Dinner.” Suffering, redemption, holy rolls. Call Garrison Keillor!
No really, one more joshing jollity of a folk song. “The Christmas Dinner Eating Contest Down in Yelvertoft” hearkens back to the Emerald Isles and Paddy Wex wends and weaves through a tall tale suitable for a foreign light comedy film by Bill Forsyth in the ’80s. I’d go see this grueling, dueling showdown, but i’d stand off to the side a ways.
Christmas is for Christians, not those pork eschewing other religion followers. So let’s cut a slab of the-other-white-meat for the holidays.
Parang scat-man Scrunter puts it simply: he wants “A Piece of Pork for Christmas.” Ham likin’ what he be cookin’!
Just as Carribean, Ricky T riddims “My Christmas Pork.” Raucous and Rastafarian, but you must put your careful listening ears on… he wants to know where to put his pork in (not the f-word). I am not kidding.
Much whiter are Lisa and Rich parodying ‘Silent Night’ with “Garlic Pork.” They spent some time on their in-joke lyrics, so chew thirty times before swallowing.
It’s better Latinated; so here is Creig Camacho with his “Garlic Pork.” I can taste the salsa (music)!
Back to the riddim! Crocadile fights the vegetarian girlfriend with a Christmas repast of “Pork and Rum.” The song be so ‘mazing, i recommend seconds.
For those of you easily bored, bread becomes a vehicle for meat and cheese delivery, a la the sandwich. Christmas sandwiches may not have much of a following… yet.
The Chris Gethard Show has celebrated ‘Sandwich Night’ for many years, and even goes so far as to compare it to the Yuletide. BLUE ALERT their “F*@k Christmas, I Wish It was Sandwich Night” is bellicose, but uses condiments. It’s a bit like ADHD filk singing.
Angry head banging from Metal Lunch celebrating in their own “Christmas Sandwich” way. It chokes me out.
A bit off topic, The Beacon Baptist Bahamanians mounted a holiday musical A Peanut Butter Christmas, featuring wishful Christmas targets like “A Peanut Butter Sandwich.” Kid fun–happy and in tune. Kudos.
Christopher Dennis is a bit more reverent with “The Christmas Sandwich Song,” a tale of the old world and this family’s labor of love. My, that’s tasty balladeering!
Time is nigh to study the most easily identified (or 2nd or so, next to milk and cookies) sweetie mcpetey for the holidays: FURITCAKE.
As early as Roman times, fruits were mixed into sweet dough and baked. But with the advent of cheaper sugar, a preservative of fruits, the ideas of plums and cherries in December became too confectious to pass up. I mean, apart from preserves, you didn’t used to get a good chewy mouth-fructing when the snow piled high. Your insulin missed the rush. It was exciting to get it during dark days.
Today we have world-wide shipping, and freeze drying, and of course tons of canning. When people born around 1900 later became grandmothers they were still churning sugared-fruit laden wheat treats out like they remembered their moms bestowing upon their greedy tongues in days of yore gone by. Then the comedians, like Johnny Carson, started sarcastically to point out that we don’t appreciate tradition, ’cause now: Twinkies and Fudgey Whale cakes and crap like that.
I’m not saying you have to try it or like it, i’m saying–when’s the last time you made one or ate a slice of actual home-made, lovingly crafted fruit cake?
So–a few days on the f. sugarbomb.
Let’s start with the idea of the old lady and her tradition.
“Mrs. O’Leary’s Fruitcake” is brought to you by Ruby Murray, a jewel of the Emerald Isle from the 1950s. It’s detailed, improbable, and quite Irish–an old cabaret tale. Pat Harrington does this more deadpan, less lilting.
“Mrs. Hooligan’s Christmas Cake” becomes a crowd-pleasing folk happening for The Spinners. Not quite the same song–more threat of death by cake here. And more sibilant sound effects (spitting). The incomprehensibly accented version is from Clinton Ford. The Charles Peake music hall overly serious version claims provenance from Finnegan’s Wake.
Actually it’s a variant of the original “Miss Fogarty’s Christmas Cake,” which inspired James Joyce sommat. Willy Brady relates this without smirk. Tommy Mulvihill quicksteps this business like he wants to jig away the calories. Mick Moloney slows this down as if chewing his way through an entire slice. Steel Clover snarks it up making me wonder if this is what Irish sounds like with a Bronx accent. Stan Ransom swallows the lyrics in favor of featuring a fine mandolin backing. Seamus Kennedy returns us to standard basso monotone. Brass Farthing‘s is flat yet lively, Golden Bough‘s is tinny yet earnest, Danaher Cloud‘s is spastic, yet authentic, and The Poxy Boggards‘ is multimedia overdone. Altogether inedible, nae? Surely you will not listen to all these. So, settle for the brand you know: The Irish Rovers party through this high disrespect with brave militaristic merriment. They make Irish sound musical. And their instrumental outro is just madness.
Before we fade out on the Galilean, the Nazarene’s big day, let’s consider the nativity as a place in time. The setting is so much a part of the story, we’ll thumb through a couple Bethlehem songs.
There are so many in the hymn book….
Making a pop album out of world weary traditionals may tax an artist. So palm branches to Chicago for an original song “Bethlehem” that beat boxes the limited band instruments into a holy moly melee.
Third Day pokes the folk bear with strumming and humming throughout “Born in Bethlehem.” This monotonous metronome of music rocks just a wee bit.
But if you’re holding out for a foreign language travelogue, this Hungarian version of “Betlehem, Betlehem” haunts and daunts the human spirit. Eerie. [Although i prefer the studio version from the album Xmas Marks the Spot. Cool kick beat.]
By my Ziggy calendar it’s January… and no one gives a rat’s hat about the Yule after this date.
So let’s get weird.
This month we celebrate Americana (Norte-style). Not many novelty Christmas songs scream USA Xmas, but some significant ones do, so we’ll go slow and see where we get to (we’ll be mentioning the boys overseas quite a bit). This is NOT about the individual states (Ben Dare, Don Datt), or–if we can help it– about the regions or coasts. This is about bringing us all together as one people. like science fiction is supposed to do, like Teddy Roosevelt wanted, like YOU desire in your heart.
So let’s begin with the first peoples, the founders of our land.
Jana Sampson is our usual ambassador to traditional carols in aboriginal languages, but let’s give Laura Burnouf a shot in Cree with “Little Drummer Boy.” It’s artistically folky without the hint of a drum, deerskin or otherwise.
The band Northern Cree gets a bit more humorous and self serving with their unfortunate “NDN 12 Days of Christmas.” There isn’t much to listen to when i reference the reprehensible twelve.
Oldhands makes it all real with “Stuck in the Smoke Hole of Our Tipi.” Swing and sway with the chanting and the culture clash. (They pawn our gifts?) (Maybe they’re Pawnees? Larf!)
According to my calendar, Hanukkah started a couple days ago and goes to the 1st. What’s a celebrant to do? Well, if you don’t have your wishes documented by now you may be out of latkes!
Your Hanukkah list should exceed your Christmas list eight-fold, we are told. So let’s get the dolla-dolla-dolla outta the way with Emily Zisman singing “Whoring for Hanukkah” –uh oh, this could be naughty. (It’s not! mischievous at worst!)
The tango is not just Argentinian. It’s also Uruguayan. It’s hot for a Christmas dance, but, you know, down south… it’s hot for Christmas.
Okay, it’s a bit of an ethnic joke. The Berenstein Bears (from their musical: The Berenstein Bears Save Christmas) sing the “Christmas Tango.” Not kidding. Not bad.
For a down home country try, Don Eves also treats his “Crazy Christmas Tango” as his struggle with Xmas chores. But this time, it’s not about romance. Come on!
The blues take comes from Maria Volonte. “Tango Me for Christmas” has smart guitar, but a rather intrusive harmonica, It’s on point, but hard to really tango to.
Joe Jackson kicks the appropriate tempo up a whip crack slap or so with his “Tango Atlantico.” There’s Christmas in the lyrics somewhere, but he’s going Cold War, guys.
“A Christmas Tango (with Santa)” is just what we needed. L.M. Azpiazu is funny, sexy, and good.
Now The Limbo isn’t so old. We even know the creator of the dance, Julia Edwards. But it was the ’50s and tribalism was tres chic… it was racist guys. It just was.
Dave Rudolf lovingly leans back into “Christmas Limbo.”