Year-round Yuletide oddities
Are cowboys looking forward to the holidays?
“Cowboy Christmas Eve” by Bri Bagwell & Kip Calahan Young has all the pickin’ and fiddlin’ them boys need to work up the nerve to sashay up to the barn dance. Them ladies are a-waitin’. R.W. Hampton plays this as a duet.
Bobby Boyles downplays this idea as a meditation of the silence of the season. “Cowboy Christmas Eve” here is somber and religious. The wide open spaces’ll do that to you. Bary Ward takes this out of the front room into the studio.
Something gets all mixed up while hearing the Nativity story with the animals we tolerated and then 19th C wild west taming the frontier with the meat products we walked across the plains. I guess Christmas is an appropriation off the cradle of civilization and cowboys are an Americanization from Mexican vaqueros. Since we’re a country of borrowers, wrangler holiday seems red white and blue to me, too. ‘Course it might only be white suburban boys (‘A Christmas Story’) wantin’ to grow up to be froze to death. So strap on the chaps and saddle up pronto, the prairie awaits.
[But NO spoken poetry! Sorry, Baxter Black.]
Brad Stubbs honors the concept with his “Cowboy Christmas Song,” a pokey country ambler with charm and a whiff of manure.
But we’d best get ironical for a moment lest we lose sight of this site. Pokin’ fun is better than reverence any day. Any one can fall on their knees, but i prefer to pull down the pants of some officiate whilst doing so. So James H. Carter II, Mark Vignoli serenade you with “Crazy Cowboy Christmas,” an experimental cacophony of chimes and growls which might express the true spirit of the open range.
Let’s leave this topic confused and perplexed. Christmas is Christmas, not some birthday. That’s different!
Jimmy Eat World rock meekly with “If You Were Born Today” a recrimination of how we’ve messed up. But in the sweetest harmony.
Kids’ country joke up the Christmas Story in Animal Band’s “Birthday Party on Manger Street.” Make animal noises all together now!
Notsoape gets Goony and Awful with “happybirthday,” a slight offering or awkward praise. Huh?
The irony of the big mix-up of JC’s birthday celebrated with gifts for everyone else in the world might miss the point of his martyrdom, but it’s sung with soul by Grace in Christmas as “A Gift on Your Birthday.” Think about that while you’re cussing out the mall parking lot.
I am trying to avoid seriously gospel sentiment here wherein songs about Christ’s birth are roof-raisers for our own spirits. You know, like “Christmas is a Birthday” bested with Spanish guitar and folk by Burl Ives. Or Judy Garland crooning/narrating “The Birthday of a King” to the big band.
On the other stigmata, Danni-Shannon works in the R+B so that “A Birthday Party for Jesus” is just that, an actual party. Thank you.
Dance off! Beedays are excellent excuses to party hearty. How could you not–for Jesus.
“Christmas Party!” is just what i’m talkin’ ’bout. Orange Kids’ Music rock the Christian message with repetitive empty words (make the loudest noise you’ve ever made). But the X-kids have a raucous anthem, at least.
2014’s Evil Wiener’s Christmas Album drops a number to trip the light fantastico with “All Around the World (Happy Birthday Jesus)” in which a certain godhead gets a special shout out from Santa Claus flying by. ‘Billy pop.
A birthday song can just be Hey. Even for the Messiah. I mean, hosannah.
You may have caught Nassiri earlier here with his opulent routine “Happy Birthday Jesus.” Raga just opens up more possibilities.
Kurtis Parks and friends folk around with happiness and the whole nativity story in “A Christmas Birthday.” Kids all sing along ‘cuz it’s fun.
The birthday traditions include making a wish. What would Jesus wish for?
Since January 2009 Jonathan Mann has contributed to his Youtube channel ‘Song a Day,’ so there’s a lot to chew on there. Let’s focus on (no, not his rock opera based on Super Mario Brothers) his “Happy Birthday Jesus” Song #3988 which he has retooled once or twice and then dropped on his 2019 album Jewish Family Christmas Tree. Lessons to be learned, li’l ones, pay attention.
In praising the All-in-One we need some kind of theme, so paste a date to it and raise the streamers for the birth of God, the Sequel.
Setting the party mood, Mojo Nixon celebrates (incl. warm up) (and name-calling) “Happy Birthday” with his own earthy smarm.
Bah & The Humbugs gets more kid friendly with “Birthday Boy,” an offkey meandering ragtime/pop explosion of joy. Blow out the camels!
Since this is such a half-baked idea (others born on Xmas), we’ll spin out a week on Mr. Christ’s own observance. Many make hay with the Happy Birthday wishes for the Messiah. It’s the humorous concept of the banal contrasted against the divine. Har-de-har, God’s got armpits… like that.
We’ve already tasted Bob Rivers’s “Jesus’ Birthday.” As a postscript to “Wonderful Christmastime” Barenaked Ladies hail the King of Ks. With comical timing Wendell Ferguson bemoans “Jesus Christ It’s Your Birthday Again.”
New to the blog: Do You Heat What I hear (feat. Joseph Cimino) sings “Jesus It’s Your Birthday” with electronic pop fervor. Or folk experimental temper. Or just doowop weirdness. Check it.