Oktoberfest Christmas

Oktoberfest is winding up here (it’s mostly in September, ja?) but while celebrating the hop harvesting let’s prepare for the wassailing to come.

Since Christmas is so big, it incorporates if not all holidays all modes methods and means of celebrating… including POLKA! Most polka umpahs for yule logs are straight out of Scandihoovia, Middlevest and affect no more than That’s What Music Sounds Like, ya? Other scallywags mean to poke fun at old world trads as well as the overused universality of xmas = love all humankind party.

Chuck Picklesimer does both and neither. This country gentleman (bonus: looks like Santa!) growls out psychedelic situations to sensible sounds. You can dance to it, but if you listen carefully you’ll go mad, mad i tells ya. So doff your foam, toast the barley, and listen to “Christmas Polka Cha Cha” from the A-plus album Dead Ninja Christmas.

More It’s Too Early for Decoratin’

One way to channel your irritation with inappropes iterations of Christmas collages is to go garage rock. Root Boy Slim and the Sex Change Band rasp and wrangle their way through rude rollickin’ reminders that KMart provokes people toward their dark side in his antic anthem “Christmas at KMart.” The 1980s were full of such brutal truths.

Hey, don’t believe me: this Root Boy Slim guy, Foster MacKenzie, was a Yale grad who had a psychotic break after LSD and helmed his own band. Is that not a recipe for insightful novelty nuance? Smarter people than we had tried to explain the Yuletides, yet have we listened? It’s time. Give RBS a chance to connect you with early shopping syndrome and falala fatigue.

P.S. Big ups for including the name of the album in the lyrics as a purchase suggestion. Keeping the spirit of the message alive.

It’s Too Early for Novelty Christmas Songs

It’s October, and holiday displays are creeping in past the Halloween trash and Star Wars presumption. I know, I know, it’s all about merchandising and Capi Capi Greed. But haven’t you heard enough songs about Christmas every day of the year? When should you get in the spirit? There’s no time like the present, and there’s no present like the timing.

Now, Paul and Storm have a fine funny song out there “The Way-Too-Early Christmas Song.” But it’s about November being too early. I’m talking about the tenth month (named “octo-” for the eighth).

So, my salute to premature immaculation goes to TryHardNinja, an indie musician of considerable humor (at least after he got over Minecraft songs) who has lampooned Justin Bieber’s “Mistletoe,” deservedly not only ’cause it is syrupy as hard candy in a mud puddle, but also ’cause it was released 2011 in mid-October. (I do have my eye on even better “Mtoe” parodies for the future….)