Christmas/Winter music

[vakkotaur]

Some places are already playing Christmas music and nothing but Christmas music. This is rather early, I think, for that. The inclusion of the occasional winter tune might be acceptable, but full-on Christmas music shouldn't happen until after Thanksgiving if it happens at all. My problem with Christmas music isn't that I don't like it. It's not even necessarily the repetition, though by now there ought to be enough tunes that repeats shouldn't need to happen frequently, and that's counting by title rather than by performance. It's the poor quality of every b-list,c-list, d-list... z-list quasi-celebrity cover of tunes that have been better by better. While White Christmas might not require Bing Crosby and Here Comes Santa Claus might not require Gene Autry, they are destroyed by various wannabes and also-rans putting their undesired mark on them. One thing I will agree with the bletcherous Beavis and Butthead on: "Michael Bolton can make anything suck."

I know there are some radio stations with an all-Christmas format, but the places where one encounters this most are stores that have Muzak or such (no commercials save what the store adds) and those seem to be sanitized of the more interesting Christmas and Winter tunes, such as Christmas At Ground Zero.

Now I'm pondering the interesting not-so-standard Christmas and Winter tunes. I know of a few:

Christmas At Ground Zero - Weird Al Yankovic
Happy Hairy Hippie Santa Claus ("You bet your sweet bippy Santa Claus is a hippie...")
Rusty Chevrolet - Da Yoopers
My Car Won't Go - Da Yoopers
I Yust Go Nuts At Christmas - Yogi Yorgesson
A Christmas Carol - Tom Lehrer
I'm Spending Hanukkah In Santa Monica - Tom Lehrer

Any others that wouldn't be all that likely to played in a store, but might provide some welcome relief if they were?

Comments

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

Christmas With The Devil - Spinal Tap

[luke-jaywalker.livejournal.com]

Aside from the fact that Christmas isn't a holiday I celebrate and the music is therefore irrelevant to me... what annoys me *is* basically the repetition. There are about ten songs that we hear over and over and over and over again.

Of course, the stores that behave this way, normally default to that easy-listening station (there seems to be one in every city) that plays the same twenty pop songs over and over and over and over again anyway.

So it's not much of a difference, and those aren't the sort of places I hang around in anyway.

[jmthane.livejournal.com]

The Christians and the Pagans - Dar Williams
I Believe in Father Christmas - Greg Lake/Emerson Lake & Palmer

The former you pretty much won't hear, the latter doesn't get too much play because it's not a traditional-type Christmas song. In fact, Greg Lake and Pete Sinfield wrote it as a protest about the commercialization of Christmas. Me, I like it enough that at the one Christmas gig Minstrosity did, that was one of the songs we worked up.

First Christmas Away From Home - Stan Rogers

Another one you pretty much won't hear. It's one of Wendy's favorites (in fact, I expect her to chime in with it herself). Alas, I don't remember if she did this one or The Christians and the Pagans at the gig. I *think* it was First Christmas. (For the record, John sang Tom Paxton's The Marvelous Toy, while Wendy played kazoo and I played slide whistle.)

[jcw-da-dmg.livejournal.com]

We in fact ended up not doing either First Christmas or The Christians and the Pagans at that gig. In fact I think WZ's feature # was Time After Time.

[jmthane.livejournal.com]

That may be entirely so - as I said, I don't remember.

[woody-whistler.livejournal.com]

Here are a few of my Christmas favorites, mostly done by period instrument groups, that aren't likely to be heard at your local mall:

Down in Yon Forest (a variation of the wounded knight/grail motif)
Dadme Albricias Hijos d'Eva
Riu Riu Chiu (two Spanish Villancicos)
The Wren Song (a St. Stephen's Day song)
The Bellman's Carol (a song about mortality, a nice change of pace from saccharine sweetness)
Hey for Christmas (set to "Dargason" and describing a Christmas party that gets a bit out of hand)

BTW, at out home the holiday music doesn't get pulled off our shelves until after Thanksgiving, except for a few that we enjoy listening to all year round (like Pint and Dale's "When I See Winter Return").

[nefaria.livejournal.com]

Christmas at Ground Zero is my favorite Christmas song, the fact that it's Just Plain Wrong knifes through all the bad stuff about holiday music and makes it awesome.

I loved Christmas season much more when I was a kid, when it started cleanly the day after Thanksgiving and ended abruptly on December 26. One month of Christmasy fun was just perfect, dragging it on longer than that makes it tiresome.

Oh, this is a good way to get that annoying Mexican Christmas song out of your head: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoXBiyll6zw&feature=PlayList&p=4593DBD46F1818A6&index=12

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

Dear boy, the Salvation Army is already bell-ringing for donations in the Suburban Station train station in Philadelphia. The more paranoid people are about money, the sooner the holidays are likely to start, in my opinion.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

And I imagine they're getting a few special $3 non-bills for their efforts, too. Fortunately I have yet to encounter any bell-ringers here.

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

Do you mean the Salvation Army doesn't do that in your part of the US? Or just that they haven't started up in your area for the season?

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

They simply have yet to start, as far as I can tell.

[bjbuttons.livejournal.com]

There are 3 Songs that I know that, with the exception of Dr Demento, you will never hear on the radio or on a muzak system

1st is an older "song"
Green Chri$ma$ by Stan Freeburg
http://www.whitings-writings.com/green_christmas.mp3
recorded in the 50's and still rings true today

and 2 new songs that just came out and I would guess are unreleased at this point

The Most Commercial Time Of The Year by Max DeGroot
http://thefump.com/side.php?id=601

and one that related to what is being talked about here

Please.......Not Again.... again by Max DeGroot
http://thefump.com/side.php?id=603

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I think that "Please....Not Again" would actually work better without the ranting voice-over. The point is implicit, and the rant just makes it grate in a different way.

[thecanuckguy.livejournal.com]

There is "Christmas" by Cledus T. Judd (seems like the Weird Al of country music from what I know of him).

[jcw-da-dmg.livejournal.com]

Personally I don't get the appeal of Da Yoopers, but I don't get the appeal of ice fishing or deer camp either.

Anyway, I think you might like "Chickens in the Chimes" (the only version of 12 Days I can stand) by Sascha Burland & the Skipjack Choir. I like "Christmas Boogie" by Canned Heat & the Chipmunks, but I'm weird. "Green Christmas" by the great Stan Freberg. Stan also has a Christmas variant on his "Little Blue Riding Hood" bit.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Da Yoopers can be hit and miss (and the more recent, the more likely to miss). I suspect they are more popular the closer one gets to the U.P. and has encountered folks that seem like they might fit into those tunes a little too easily. Rusty Chevrolet is hyperbole, but considering some of the cars I grew up with (which were indeed rusty Chevrolets) it does not seem like all that much of a stretch in places. I know of one person who upon hearing the tune for the first time exclaimed, "I drove that car!"

[yakko.livejournal.com]

It's the poor quality of every b-list,c-list, d-list... z-list quasi-celebrity cover of tunes that have been better by better.

This is the reason "Christmas music" gives me such heartburn. When I was a kid and still actually looked forward to Christmas, the music had a magical quality about it. Today's not-quite-the-same stuff is like a rusty cheese grater to the face. I no longer think it is "just me getting old."

Although not even the old stuff is exempt. When I was in Sam's Club and I heard The Chipmunks's Christmas song, I ended up replacing their lyrics with those of Bob Rivers's version. And since this thing was on repeat, I'd hear them singing and think, "You could hardly stand us then, now here we come again..." in sync.

For that brief moment, everything was right with the retail world.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I eagerly await (NOT!) the covering of Christmas At Ground Zero by some alleged pop star I've never heard of.

[dumbbum-comics.livejournal.com]

"The Night Santa Went Crazy" by Weird Al is very sweet! It brings out so many emotions. Eric Adams of Manowar singing "Silent Night" or "Stille Nacht" (the German version) is something... although he's an impeccable vocalist I'm one of those 'old-schoolers' who believes Christmas and Metal shouldn't date, but still it's probably not 'mall music' stuff which is good..

Talking about non-mall-music material: anything by Paris Hilton... at least I HOPE SO. If they play her anywhere please tell me so I can avoid that state.

Anything from The Muppets Christmas Carol is uplifting, it reminds me of roasted pig. And frog legs.

And last but not least: try anything with cow bells. In my experience that's why Christmas Songs are so annoying: they have those small tingly bells. I'm into BIG COW BELLS. In fact you can buy one and carry it around at the mall and cover their annoying music with it. If they sell one at your mall, pick one up, play it while shopping and when you're at the cash register, say: I don't want it. It's free, environmental friendly and effective!

Seriously, mall music is the reason I avoid shopping this time of year and cow bells is why I'm banned from many stores. My relatives never get Christmas gifts because of that, so I never overspend. It's win/win.

[dumbbum-comics.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it, Christmas Songs also lack bagpipes.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Is that a bug or feature?

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Stille Nacht would be good. It would be nice to hear it in the original Deutsche.

Regarding Paris Hilton and such, I was hoping for things that would be better, not worse, than mall-"music." Things that increase homicidal tendencies are best avoided. Thus are shopping malls best avoided to start with, especially from the last Friday in November to early January - post Christmas sales, closeouts, exchanges, and such still adding to the crowd and associated nuisance.