There’s a whole breed of record collector that’s out there looking for these difficult to find oddball one-of-a-kind records, but thankfully after Bar/None Records put out a pretty great anthology of some of the best examples of the genre, the label turned to the holiday season as a source of inspiration for their follow-up, subtitled "Daddy, Is Santa Really Six Foot Four?" If you’re tired of hearing the same songs over and over again piped into whatever department store where you’re getting your last-minute shopping on, then an hour of titles like “Santa Came On A Nuclear Missile,” “Maury,” “The Christmas Mouse,” “How Do They Spend Christmas In Heaven,” “Randy,” “The Li'l Elf,” and “The Rocking Disco Santa Claus,” as written by people in various states of mental stability should be more than enough to pique your interest in this disc. For the uninitiated, “song-poems” were the result of normal folks like you and me sending lyrics they had written to semi-scrupulous companies that would then turn those words into songs that were then pressed on wax.
If you’re looking to get even farther out than John Waters comp, you should dig into the downright charming American Song-Poem Christmas album. With tree-topping heat like the sweet-soul of “Fat Daddy,” Tiny Tim’s legendarily high pitched take on “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” the delightful doo-wop of “Christmas Time Is Coming (A Street Carol),” the proto-kwanzaa vibing “Santa Claus Is A Black Man,” and the positively evergreen funk of Big Dee & Little Irwin’s “I Wish You Merry Christmas,” A John Waters Christmas is an easy must-have for sipping psychedelic-spiked hot chocolates around the hearth.
Water’s Christmas parties in Baltimore are a legitimate hot ticket (his Christmas cards are nothing to sneeze at either), so you’re in good hands form the word go. Sure, there are the handful of albums that everyone can agree on, namely Vince Guaraldi’s bittersweet A Charlie Brown Christmas and Phil Spector’s A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector, but where do you turn when those have burned a hole in your music listening soul after decades of over-play? We've got you.įor the freaky folks there’s A John Waters Christmas, a half hour of tinsel-tossing oddities curated by cult film director John Waters from his personal collection of yuletide novelties. If you know where to look, there are a bunch of excellent holiday-related albums that can put the jingle in your stocking and even liven up a Christmas in July party. It’s just filler for mid-level acts to snag an end-of-the-season financial buzz that, they hope, pairs well with itchy green and red knit sweaters that are always one size too small.īut. At worst, it’s muzak that’s meant to be point-of-sale impulse purchased along with the gingerbread latte that will fuel your last minute gift shopping. Holiday music, by and large, is an empty extension of some of the most crassly commercial aspects of the season.
Maybe you even get inspired to search around the floorboards of your car for that battered copy of The O.C. If you’ve been keeping count, and why wouldn’t you have been, there are now seven(!) different variations of the Now That’s What I Call Christmas! collection to be had. Dollar bins overflowing with Firestone Christmas albums, themselves stuffed wall to white-wall with festive schmaltz from Bing Crosby, Leonard Bernstein, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. An entire section of your local record store has been taken over by crates of backstock Christmas albums visibly dusty from the 11 months they spent stashed away in the basement. It’s happening sooner and sooner every year.
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