TreeMenodus Holiday Fun: I Saw Trees

Tromp tromp tromp, whew! Hack hack hack, hooboy! The extraction of the right evergreen is almost as hard as giving virgin birth!

Take this word of warning to heart through Erik Darling’s “Revenge of the Christmas Tree.” Frolicsome bluegrass, yes; but beware, boyo! The tree might bite back.

With a little help, p’raps it could be jolly. Dick Gardiner offers the twanging country tale of a little boy who follows a stranger into the woods with “Santa Helped Me Cut a Christmas Tree.” (I’m not sure, but i think the little boy was institutionalized while his brothers moved on…).

For those who axe, Maple Leaf Learning teaches us counting and clear cutting with “Three Christmas Trees.” Xylophonically childish!

Jug band hee holiday fun from Max E Voltz who wants to go out and cut down “A Natural Christmas Tree.” Consider my knee slapped. (But watch out for the twist ending.)

Brassy jazz from Danish Big Band Radio (feat. Mads Mathias) might remind you of smokey joints without family values, but “Chop Chop (The Xmas Tree)” wails and nails it down home.

The blues pick up the pace for “Last Minute Chopping” from Dr. BLT. Bubbas with axes.

Peter Lerman swings up another classy slab of jazz with “Let’s Chop Down a Christmas Tree.” It’s the big band look at family fun–tree-doh, diddy-o, tree-oh!

TreeMendous Holiday Fun: Pining for the Woods

Where dey at? I want a tree, how do i find one?!

Aiko Tomi’s gentle tympanic pop guides us through the quest with “Christmas Tree.” She’s at home with her soaring range.

Tom Paxton’s got a plan for the family and explains how “We are Going to Get Our Christmas Tree.” It’s kiddie doggerel, but i can’t stop listening… and it seems to never end.

The Christmas Kids detail “The Christmas Tree Search” by some elves (sounds like ‘Jack and Jill’ to me), but dig that bass bridge.

Bluegrass sounds like family! Bud’s Collective downhomes “Daddy’s Christmas Tree” so you know what his childhood was really like. Watch out, they don’t always get their tree in the same way. The message muddles.

Eric and Paul, The Jacobsen Brothers weave a honky tonk hope of romantic aspirations with “I Want a Real Christmas Tree.” I want more songs like this.

Also garage pop fun is “Going to Get the Tree” from Maxwell, Miranda, Parsely. Classic Christmas carol done party-right.

Karin Hovey soothes with melodic folk. “Family Christmas Tree” is a Robert Frost-style reminiscence over the hills. It’s the fiddlin’ makes you cry.

No better instruction than the outsider telling you how he’s imitating your traditions… Jonathan Mann explains this better with “Jewish Family Gets Christmas Tree from the Woods.” Plunkety boogie woogie sells this cultural mashup WITHOUT guilt, if you can believe that.

The New Christy Minstrels, perhaps, circle the square with the most straight-laced, happening burst of vocal joy to get us in the tree-hunting mood: 1963’s “Christmas Trees.” Resist, ye hipster, and be of sorrow.

TreeMendous Holiday Fun: Whatcha Waitin’ Fir?

We’ll deal with Xmas personifications a bit later. But that deep-rooted desire to be taken home is systemic from limb to limb throughout the thicket…

Perhaps the songs should say it for them:

Certainly Stevie Wonder makes the case with “One Little Christmas Tree.” This ’67 R+B tear jerker involves a whole tree family and some extra angel granting wishes. Ooooh, aaaah. (Countrified by Jennifer Lind.)

Marty Merchant chortles out a kids’ song country pop weeper, “Lonely Christmas Tree.” Desperate, needy, dying little thing.

Parry Gripp goes imaginatively, juvenilely delusional with “Christmas Tree in the Lot.” Some kid sleeps with one eye on the window watching the tree for sale across the street. Is that tree lonely, just like him? No, it’s dead, but in a cool folk-song way.

Tremendous Holiday Fun: Whaddya Need-le?

The yearning for spruces leaning in to you come December!

Kid pleasing The Animal Band give in to arboreal lust with “I Want a Tree,” but their cajun-rock allows for religious motivation.

Lacey Roland also stirs the kids up with “I Love a Christmas Tree.” Blue grass middle of the road.

The Jamborees also need “The Christmas Tree.” A notch above usual kid stuff, this agitated pop haunts and earworms equally.

One more kidsong, p’raps a bit lowkey here… Pauline Burr (as The Little ‘Uns) plaintively wails out for that “Sweet Little Tree” as if all our hearts would break.

Music Hall maestro Roy Hudd from 1978 explains “(Everyone Needs a) Christmas Tree” at Christmas. Pretty, tinkly pop.

Tremendous Holiday Fun: Plant a Suggestion

People ask about trees. You better have answers ready.

‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ may be the most heavily footnoted James Bond entry, and it also gives us “Do You Know How Christmas Trees are Grown?” (Hint: with love.) The original comes from Nina van Pallandt, although ’60s UK charter, Jackie DeShannon, has a more lugubrious try also from 1969.

Harold Rippy asks “Baby, What Kind of Christmas Tree You Want?” with pop alt folk trippiness. It’s all in the name of love.

TreeMendous Holiday Fun: Run Forest Run

Evergreens don’t lose their leaves, so they don’t really ‘die,’ so they’re just like my immortal bra Christ. Or maybe it’s Druidic and celebrates the animus of dendritic growth. Anywho, someres after Protestantism began, firs in the shape of wreaths and room-fitting saplings were brought inside to help elaborate, expand, and freshen up the smell of the celebration of God’s gift to man.

And we’re not just stuck on parodies of ‘Tannenbaum’ here (a nod to the Germanic origins). There’s a dumpload of songs about the greenery of the party. Many I’ve already linked (and may link again).

So let’s go down to the woods today and be sure of a big surprise. From The Magic of Christmas come The Magic of Christmas Singers with “Christmas in the Forest.” This Killarney come-on somnolently celebrates gnomes worshipping Christ. Right.

Just as mystically Welsh Coleggwent Musical Theatre presents a riverdance glee club “Proudly in the (Christmas) Forest.” Their precision and harmony are dumbfounding, but it’s like watching computer programming for the joy it brings.

More family friendly is the traditional Russian “The Forest Raised a Christmas Tree.” Oddly i can’t find this in English. So try a swinging jazz rendition from The Children’s Studio.

Finally let’s light up the Renaissance folk song popularized slightly by Joan Baez. “Down in Yon Forest” reveres JC’s aborning, but it’s so swaddled in symbology (not a real forest after all) this dirge riddles more than celebrates. Enjoy.

Anthropomorphic Snow Sculpture: funny 7

Some humor may be beyond us.

Amy Sedaris is so droll, so ironic it’s hard to laugh in her face. She seems like she’d break. You tell me, is her “Snowman Song” from her TV series At Home with Amy Sedaris funny–or die? Do you see me cracking up?

Is it a snowman or a man of the snows? “Santa the Snowman” calls all of it into question and shakes my paradigms like superhero snowglobes (Marvel universe references throughout). Thanks for that, Jacobsen Brothers!

And then there’s the song i cant’ tell if it’s legit kidstuff, or if the gangster references twist it toward the Adult Swim crowd. Try on “Joey the Giant Snowman” and tell me what Keven Boyle’s dealio is, a’ight?

Just as confusing is the 1993 Troma Studios Try Parker movie ‘Cannibal! The Musical’ based on a tragic 1883 Rocky Mt. journey (not over Donner Pass, though). Our entry “Let’s Build a Snowman!” has John Hegel trying to lighten the mood of the desperate men. It’s over quickly enough, but if you can hang on… reprise!

Anthropomorphic Snow Sculpture: funny 6

Yellow snow is an old joke. Yellow snowman is the obvious evolution. These joke songs are fitter to survive!

Bryant Oden warns us with hyperkinetic children’s music “Don’t Make a Snowman with Yellow Snow.” Breathe, dude.

“Travis the Yellow Snowman” shines a spotlight on Travis Creep’s redneck hardworking putupon larborer and his travails. Twinkling trailer folk rock.

2B Recording (or not 2B?) have an elaborate production of “Yellow Snowman.” Pop ballad/hip hop/dance.

Anthropomorphic Snow Sculpture: funny 5

Is a magical snowman a manifesttion of insanity?

The analogy of troubled waters is “Like a Snowman with Arthritis.” No snowmen are considered, only literary figures. Suffer along with Joe Soko’s folk lament (and his bird’s huge afro).

It probably didn’t happen. You just imagine it. You were drunk. “Man V. Snowman” is the country ballad of Marc Schaefgen snowball fighting an imaginary enemy. He loses.

Time to get down and get frosty. Plastic Snow imagines a whole band fronted by “Rock ‘n’ Rolling Snowman.” Rock, yes… but pretty pedestrian.

Alt rock worries Ratboy Jr. who can’t get rid of their “Never Melting Snowman.” Is there juicing? (Be advised of funny voices [incl. Bob Dylan bit].)

“Me & The Snowman” may be another imaginary friend (with John Wilkes Boothe), but this pop jingle from Logan Whitehurst & The Junior Science Club rocks the family folk ’70s demographic.

Unfortunate humor from Rankin/Bass. Their 1979 ‘Jack Frost’ stop motion Xmas special didn’t recapture lightning in a bottle (again)–even with the intro song from Buddy Hackett.

“I’m Your Baby (You’re a Snowman)” by Sequelcast parodies ‘Call Me Maybe’ and all other taste in the world by making the execrable Michael Keaton ‘Jack Frost’ horror/family/comedy into a musical. You’ll never be ready for this non-professional entry, so here goes

Shark Uppercut has an even better tale of the man into snow with “Alan Alda the Snowman.” This electronic soft pop even refers to itself as a novelty song. Love that meta!

Anthropomorphic Snow Sculpture: funny 4

Not all Xmas parodies hit the mark.

Norman Grey and Heidi Davis take on Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ with “Enter Snowman.” All the ingredients, but the cake didn’t rise.

Chris Everett has more fun if not more success with “Livin’ la Vida Snowman” for Seattle’s KUBE comedy Christmas song contest.

Unfortunate is what we call the Beach Boys take for Mariah Carey’s “Lil Snowman.” Shiboobee, indeed.

The talented Joel Koptische hits ’90s nascent rap slightly more funnily with his parodic “I’m Your Snowman, Baby.” Ice ice.