Christmas Music #2
I have mixed thoughts about Christmas music. There are countless examples out there of what you might call 'great Christmas songs', but in the end, there is one irrefutable fact about Christmas music - Christmas music is, for the most part, completely and utterly uncool. Not necessarily bad, but not exactly fashionable either, even when it is in season. There are the classics of course - "Snoopy's Christmas", "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" and so forth, but if you are a bloke, heaven help you should be ever caught listening to them. People will for the most part think you're odd. They'll give you a wide berth if you openly admit to them being on your Spotify Christmas playlist. Out of season, however, they'll hold a plebiscite and have you exiled to some leper colony in the deepest depths of the old world with nothing but a stack of gossip magazines from 1989. Or they'll simply throw rocks at you.
And then there's the mainstream rockin' and a-rollin', rockin' and a-reelin' pop and rock classics. The main problem with them is that despite restricting their airtime to just one month a year, they're well and truly overdone. We're all still waiting for that last Christmas for Wham's "Last Christmas", and Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" (sic) is now about as wonderful as an impacted kidney stone. John Lennon's "Merry Xmas (War is Over)" has likewise been done to death, and whilst it is thankfully devoid of the petty silliness that plagues many pop Christmas ditties, its pacifist message is about as likely to prevent thermonuclear war as a canker epidemic. The one Christmas song that I do appreciate though is Chris Rea's "Driving Home For Christmas", although it too suffers from being too cliche. It's an excellent song - one of the better Christmas ballads I've heard, however my biggest gripe with it is the fact that a lot of people who do know who Chris Rea is will tell you he's the guy who wrote "Driving Home For Christmas", which in turn drives me up the wall, because there is much more to him than just that one song. It's exactly like Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt" - powerful, brilliant and awe-inspiring, but it overlooks an even bigger and just as brilliant body of work that is the career of Johnny Cash. Great artists should NEVER be known by just one song.
Traditionally, my idea of putting on a Christmas album was to crank up Kevin Bloody Wilson's Kev's Kristmas, with its predilection for profanity and its no-nonsense spin on the tradition of Christmas. It's fun, blunt, and it revels in its ability to take the mickey out of the festive season. In some ways it does for the tradition of Christmas what South Park does for social commentary. It's the "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" for grown-ups. F words, C words and the like will no doubt cause some to take umbrage and denounce it as juvenile schoolyard banter pretending to be Christmas music, but that antithetical quality of flying in the face of social conformity and moral pretentiousness is where the humor emerges. Freud once said that humor relied on the expression of subject matter that society normally forbade, and it seems he was spot on. "Hey Santa Claus", it seems, encompasses the spirit of Christmas in a way most Christmas pop songs never will. And at least you can listen to it all year and not feel like a berk, and the only people who'll pass judgment upon you are uptight puritan types who want to ban everything from licking fairy bread to going to the bathroom.
In any case, we can all agree on one thing - "I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas" by Gayla Peevey should never be played in any shape or form. Cheesier than a vagrant's perineal sweat, it's supposed to be a children's song, but in no way is it suitable for them, or anybody for that matter. Exposing kids to that cacophony is about as appropriate as giving them 180 proof absinthe, and just as unpalatable. Avoid it like you'd avoid snorting laundry powder. Hell, social services are far more likely to forgive you if you played them Kevin Bloody Wilson. And by no means should you expose your kids to Kevin Bloody Wilson's music. That's for the grown ups!
And then there's the mainstream rockin' and a-rollin', rockin' and a-reelin' pop and rock classics. The main problem with them is that despite restricting their airtime to just one month a year, they're well and truly overdone. We're all still waiting for that last Christmas for Wham's "Last Christmas", and Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" (sic) is now about as wonderful as an impacted kidney stone. John Lennon's "Merry Xmas (War is Over)" has likewise been done to death, and whilst it is thankfully devoid of the petty silliness that plagues many pop Christmas ditties, its pacifist message is about as likely to prevent thermonuclear war as a canker epidemic. The one Christmas song that I do appreciate though is Chris Rea's "Driving Home For Christmas", although it too suffers from being too cliche. It's an excellent song - one of the better Christmas ballads I've heard, however my biggest gripe with it is the fact that a lot of people who do know who Chris Rea is will tell you he's the guy who wrote "Driving Home For Christmas", which in turn drives me up the wall, because there is much more to him than just that one song. It's exactly like Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt" - powerful, brilliant and awe-inspiring, but it overlooks an even bigger and just as brilliant body of work that is the career of Johnny Cash. Great artists should NEVER be known by just one song.
Traditionally, my idea of putting on a Christmas album was to crank up Kevin Bloody Wilson's Kev's Kristmas, with its predilection for profanity and its no-nonsense spin on the tradition of Christmas. It's fun, blunt, and it revels in its ability to take the mickey out of the festive season. In some ways it does for the tradition of Christmas what South Park does for social commentary. It's the "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" for grown-ups. F words, C words and the like will no doubt cause some to take umbrage and denounce it as juvenile schoolyard banter pretending to be Christmas music, but that antithetical quality of flying in the face of social conformity and moral pretentiousness is where the humor emerges. Freud once said that humor relied on the expression of subject matter that society normally forbade, and it seems he was spot on. "Hey Santa Claus", it seems, encompasses the spirit of Christmas in a way most Christmas pop songs never will. And at least you can listen to it all year and not feel like a berk, and the only people who'll pass judgment upon you are uptight puritan types who want to ban everything from licking fairy bread to going to the bathroom.
In any case, we can all agree on one thing - "I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas" by Gayla Peevey should never be played in any shape or form. Cheesier than a vagrant's perineal sweat, it's supposed to be a children's song, but in no way is it suitable for them, or anybody for that matter. Exposing kids to that cacophony is about as appropriate as giving them 180 proof absinthe, and just as unpalatable. Avoid it like you'd avoid snorting laundry powder. Hell, social services are far more likely to forgive you if you played them Kevin Bloody Wilson. And by no means should you expose your kids to Kevin Bloody Wilson's music. That's for the grown ups!
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