Let’s continue through New England to find specially state-dependent Christmas songs of a novel nature.
FIFTY STATES OF ‘MERICA-MAS
The Green Mountain State is no Ho Ho Holiday for seasonal spirituals, but rather a stingy Scrooge of unimaginative traditional carols sung in small private poorly lit areas.
Okay I did find a song called “Christmas in Vermont.” Just what i was looking for! But it’s one you’ve heard already. This is a bastardization of “Moonlight in Vermont” with some Christmas words subbed in. That’s just what you’d expect from Prairie Home Companion. Despite the predictability, Heather Masse lays it down smokey and jazzy, though. Like a welcome fireplace out of the cold….
So let’s find a weird one. On the Guiseppi Joe label, Dave Hall has dropped an odd album of old folk and slave carols (you read that right) including this one he wrote himself. Sweet–at times too sweet–“Christmas in Vermont” recalls the rural melancholy i keep in my heart from my own time in VT. Hard-wintered but hardly complaining, self-suficient though racked with poverty, fiercely loyal if not out-going, these are peoples who chainsaw a living off the land despite the leaf-peepers, fast-driving on-their-way-through Canadians, and looking-for-a-bit-of-relaxation-transplanted Lowlanders. Dave Hall is in fact one of those New Yorkers, but he’s so indie folk rock that you forgive him. He’s kinda low key, having only a couple children’s musicals published and performed. Still I’m a sucker for a love song, even a sad one (wait, is the wife in this song dead?).
Let’s continue on our adventure to find amusing Adent-tunes which celebrate specific locales throughout the USA, or what i like to call
Fifty States of ‘Merica-mas
State Two.
New Hampshire has that small state problem of just being another part of New England, too. No great Christmas songs that make you wanna hang out despite taxless living free and dying. So, like Maine, NH breeds tough, caustic men who complain comically about that time of year (to harmonica music).
Except today’s special, Red Gallagher, is out of the Midwest and only married into the Granite State. Red is the kind of guy I find while ferreting out great novelty Christmas music: the troubador/bard/jester, that clever, witty guy who (fighting tooth and nail) lives off his ability to make you smile. Despite never getting national attention. Red (solo or with the missus as Redbird Duo) plays parody song sets for malls and retirement homes (‘Not For Kids’) and has a small handful of albums and following throughout the Twin Cities and beyond. His website sells his few albums.
I wish his talented tuchas all the best. You a funny guy!
Here is his “New Hampshire Winter.”
Okay, here’s my latest project: While riffin’ through my yule tunes i paused on some totally local Oregon (my neck o’ the woods) Christmas cataloging: Christina Eastman’s “Merry Christmas from Oregon.” I have loco-centric celebrations from Baltimore (David Deboy) and Louisiana (Benny Grunch) and i treasure the in-jokes, the in-the-know references. These are not easy to find for far away places, even on line. So I had to wonder… does every state in the good ol’ USA stand up and say (along the lines of) “Nebraskan Christmases are the best!” and “Don’t you wish you were spending 12/25 in Florida?”? So, i began ‘tubin’ to find 50 songs that named the state, celebrated the winter holidays, and perhaps showed a little local flavor. Couldn’t do it. I been wrasslin’ with this for weeks now and the best i got is: cool/odd/funny song; title has a state/city; it’s Christmas-themed, or Chanukah-ish, or Kwanzaa-able, or at least Winter; and it might serve the Chamber of Commerce for tourist trade or maybe run under nightly news show credits right around the Solstice. Now I have to admit something: this is not a new idea and some people have been making $$ by recycling music with DIFFERENT NAMES subbed in. This crass cashmercialization will not serve my purposes, even when there’s little else of state pride to pick from. For those curious to see how low such sunken depths of grinchy depravity fall i will at times ID these corrupt copycat carolers. For now, let me ask you to please NOT look up Personalisongs. Or Say It Messages. The same song for every state, major city, foreign nation, and niece and nephew…. erraghouy! On the other hand Dan Schafer and a stable of talented country singers have cobbled together Christmas Across America in four volumes. While bluegrass for Oregon is odd, and most of the songs work Christmas in circuitously, I will be relying on a few of these great works when homegrown don’t help. I call my collection FIFTY STATES OF ‘MERICA-MAS (which is a sad tortured play on words that i won’t further elaborate on) Now I do include D.C. And I’m looking for Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, Virgin Islands, and maybe the Navajo Nation. Those will be postscripts. So, more than fifty…. I’m not going to map you out a road trip, but we’ll start upper right and end up upper left (me), swooping N-S-N-etc. So, State One: Maine. New England Winters are in a class of their own, but Maine is not a strong contender in our Best of — competition here. Nobody’s holly jolly-ing lobsters and Stephen King. There is a Chamber of Commerce pick that creates a saccharine crust in mine ears: “The Maine Christmas Song.” But I can’t tell who perpetrated this. My eventual pick for weirdest Maine Holiday Song is a beat poem hip hop harmonica stand up routine by Bob Marley. No, Not THAT Bob Marley. (He claims his dad did not know there was a famous person with that name.) He’s a local comic made good, been on Letterman, Conan, etc. And he holds the world’s record for longest standup. (I thought that was called filibustering.) (It was 40 hours.) His comic occupation has been going strong 20 years and he’s dropped more than a couple dozen albums. This holiday homage to home does what many natives do: complain, with love in the heart about their darned old home.
Colorblind James Experience saluted ‘weird America’ with their polka/swing/rockabilly/etc. fusion. They bobbled with fame in the UK through the ’90s until headman Chuck Cuminale passed away suddenly 2001.
I love the compilation album The Tarquin Records All Star Holiday Extravaganza from which i found this gem (more off their stable later). These indie characters are a comforting quilt of kookiness that begins with real music and ends… you may never know.
Also, this may be JC’s birthday (3 October). We don’t know. I mean shepherds don’t lay down with their flocks Mideasternly late Dec. (too rainy). Calendars have been messed up for too many years, then started over. Scholars debate Mar. Aug. Sept. Oct. for that singular point in time. I guess I side with most that 12/25 is a time of rebirth and spiritual hoo-hah ’cause we need something to look forward to in the lingering dark and the ceaseless cold. So please take “A Night Like This” by Colorblind James Experience in the spirit in which it is given: DANCETIME!
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.
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 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….)
