For Your Holiday Listening Pleasure

A holiday music sampler, in no particular order.

Father Christmas - The Kinks
Outside of the "Heat Miser" song, my first "favorite" Christmas song as a kid. "Father Christmas, give us some money — we got no time for your silly toys..." Still classic.

Backdoor Santa - Clarence Carter
"The call me backdoor Santa. I make my runs about the break of day. I make all the little girls happy, while the boys are out to play." Nuff said. His "ho ho ho" may make you blush. Additional reason to love it: Its horn line supplies the hook for Run DMC's inimitable "Christmas in Hollis."

Fairytale of New York - The Pogues
God love the Pogues. Shane McGowan and Kirsty MacColl go toe to toe in brilliant hungover reverie. "Happy Christmas, your arse, I pray God it's our last...."

Christmas Wrapping - The Waitresses
Memo to self: If you're gonna be a one-hit-wonder, try not to make it a holiday song. Classic '80s trash pop.

Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth - Bing Crosby & David Bowie
In his final TV special, Bing Crosby teamed up with the Thin White Duke for this unlikely duet. Until the advent of iTunes, this one could cause me to leave on VH1 on Christmas day in the hopes I'd catch the video.

Feliz Navidad - Jose Feliciano
Maybe the best of the bunch. Jose knows how to work it, taking things up a notch with the switch to English for the choruses.

Mamacita - Guster
A much newer Spanglish entry by local Boston boys. Very cool tune.

Santa Claus is Back in Town - Elvis
Great opening, great execution. No one could sing about nothing the way Elvis could.

Sleigh Ride - The Ronnettes
Solid production from the Wall of Sound man off the excellent A Christmas Gift for You... album. My second favorite Ronnie Spector tune, after her cover of Johnny Thunders' You Can't Throw Your Arms around a Memory.

Run Run Rudolph - Chuck Berry
Worst lyrics of the bunch ("Run Run Rudolph... Randolph's not too far behind"???), and Chuck Berry may have played it while sleeping. Still, it manages to rock.

Adeste Fidelis (Oh Come, All Ye Faithful) - Choir of King's College
Almost any choir worth their pillar of salt can sing this one and it'll sound good. I worked for a small publisher many moons ago, and one year we put together some locally-produced Christmas songs for a Rudolph book. The recording of this song kicked ass. And half our staff was Jewish, I might add.

Which leads me to...

The Chanukah Song - Adam Sandler
Despite the fact that my Jewish brethren have written many of the quintessential Christmas songs (White Christmas, Rudolph..., O Holy Night, etc.), as yet, we have been able to come up with only one commercial Chanukah song, thanks to Adam Sandler's simple brilliance. "You don't need Deck the Halls or Jingle Bell Rock, 'cause you can spin a dreidel with Captain Kirk and Mister Spock (both Jewish)."

Lagniappe: Get your baker's dozen bonus track straight from the source. The Gurgling Cod has magnanimously posted Shonen Knife's excellent Space Christmas for you fans of Osaka bubblegum pop.

Comments

[Robin]

Here's a few more tracks (with only one repeat!)
http://academics.skidmore.edu/weblogs/staff/radams/2007/11/its_the_holiday_season_1.html