Last Friday in my Terrell's Tune-Up column, I reviewed several wacky (and/or tacky) Christmas albums.
In that spirit, here are some random wacky Christmas songs. Some are tacky too.
Lat's start with the meeting of two super-groups of the '60s Canned Heat and The Chipmunks
This giant chicken could give the children nightmares
When I was growing up in Oklahoma City in the 1960s, my favorite radio station, WKY, used to play this Little Cindy smash. ... All the damned time every December!
Enjoy some Pantera Christmas lights ...
But nothing says "Merry Christmas" quite like a disturbing Captain Beefheart cover
As The Red Baron told Snoopy, "Merry Christmas, mein friend!"
Call me Scrooge. Call me Grinch. Call me Ishmael. But once again I just couldn't bring myself to produce another damned Christmas show. Sometime in the past couple of holiday seasons, I just burned out on Christmas songs. So, just like last year, once again I'm giving you an hour of crazed rock 'n' roll -- with just a sprinkling of songs from the season. (And if you really need some Christmas music right now, you can find all my Christmas specials HERE)
Sunday, Dec. 17, 2017 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
You're Humbuggin' Me by Rocket Morgan
Second House Now by The Fall
The Leader is Burning by Pocket FishRMen
Diddy Wah Diddy by Captain Beefheart
I Ain't Got No by Mary's Kids
Break a Guitar by Ty Segall
Red Grave by The Devils
Signal by Boss Hog
Danger by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Santa Claus Has Got the AIDS This Year by Tiny Tim
Happy Birthday Jesus by Little Cindy
Drowned Beast by Thee Oh Sees
Comet by Baronen & Satan
Moon by Travel in Space
There Ain't No Other Way by The Blasting Fondas
Church Mouse by Nobunny
Heavy is the Head That Wears the Crown by Count Vaseline
I Found a Peanut by Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds
Strange Days by The Darts
Egg Nog by The Rockin' Guys
Rock and Soul by Country Joe & The Fish
Kiss and Ride by King Soul
Man With Soul by Alex Maiorano & The Black Tales
King of the Jungle by King Khan & The Shrines
Wonderful Girl by Jack Mack & The Heart Attack
House Party II by The Soul Deacons
Galactic Zoo by Swamp Dog
Beginning to See the Light by The Velvet Underground
Usurpentine by Pussycat & The Dirty Johnsons
Demona by Dead Moon
Fish Out of Water by Jon Langford's Four Lost Souls
O Holy Night by Brian Wilson
Star of Wonder by The Roches CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, Dec. , 2017 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens
99 Problems by Hugo
Midnight Train to Memphis by Chris Stapleton
I'm Still Drunk by Chris Shiflett
LSD Made a Wreck Out of Me by T. Tex Edwards & Out on Patrol
My Last Ride by The Dad Horse Experience
Between the Ditches by The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band
Swingin' Cat by Felton Jarvis
White Trash by Southern Culture on the Skids
Mother's Chile by The War & Treaty
Somebody Stole My Santa Suit by Dan Hicks & The Christmas Jugband
I Buried Your Love Alive by Ashley Monroe
Nothing Rambling by Eilen Jewell
Do Right by Me by Margo Price
Alabama Wild Man by Jerry Reed
Garden of Delights by Legendary Shack Shakers
Old Town Drunk by Clark Bentley
Hop Old Rabbit by Elizabeth LaPrelle
Lonely Christmas Call by George Jones
A Week in a County Jail by Tom T. Hall
How I Got to Memphis by The V-Roys
One Toke Over the Line by Jeannie C. Riley
Harper Valley PTA by Syd Straw & The Skeletons
The Preacher and the Movie by Lawton Williams
I'm on Fire by Whitey Morgan & The 78s
The Sound of Laughter by Joecephus & The George Jonestown Massacre
Walking Backwards by Pork Chop Party
Out in the Smokehouse Takin' a Bath by Leroy Pullins
Christmas Eve Can Kill You by The Everly Brothers
He'll Have to Go by Ry Cooder
Please Don't Say Goodbye by Marty Stuart
Something Happens by Peter Case
Airplane by David Rawlings
Lady May by Tyler Childers CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
Want to keep this hoedown going after I sign off at midnight? Check out The Big Enchilada Podcast Hillbilly Episode Archive where there are hours of shows where I play music like you hear on the SF Opry.
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican Dec. 15, 2017
Christmas is coming, and America’s annual explosion of holiday blitz of glitz and other stuff is in full gear. And music, from the sublime to the syrupy, plays no small part in it. There is no escaping all the seasonal songs about Baby Jesus, Santa Claus, snow, and sleigh bells. From sappy sentimentality to cringe-worthy novelty tunes to songs professing hardcore religious zealotry — hark the herald hucksters sing!
And you can’t complain about it, you communist Grinch, you malcontent Scrooge. It’s for the children. It’s for the health of the economy! So get with the program. It’s best for everyone if you just embrace the Christmas craziness and join in the cheer.
Here are a few insane Christmas albums to keep you sane through it all.
*Tiny Tim’s Christmas Album. Just about everyone my age remembers Tiny Tim. But it occurred to me that younger folk probably don’t know Tiny Tim from Fibber McGee and Molly.
A quick Tiny Tim primer: Back in 1968, a war-weary nation shared a collective laugh at a strange, slightly creepy crooner who plucked a ukulele and warbled in an unsettling falsetto — Herbert Khaury, aka Tiny Tim. At first Tiny might have thought we were laughing with him, as he crooned “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In and revived “On the Good Ship Lollipop” while the nation’s youth sang “Street Fighting Man.” But no, we were actually laughing at him. Tiny’s career pinnacled when he got married on The Tonight Show. It was obvious that he was a carnival freak and we, the public, were the rubes cramming into the sideshow tent to gawk.
The most puzzling thing about his Christmas album is that Tiny didn’t get around to making a full-press effort to cash in on the holiday until the 1990s. This was released in 1996, the same year he died.
This collection includes several Christmas chestnuts like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (sung in his trademark falsetto) and White Christmas” (showing off his warbling baritone). And for some reason, there are a handful of tunes that have nothing to do with Christmas. The most surprisingly relevant song here is his take on “Silent Night,” during which he launches into an angry sermon against Christians who don’t act very Christian. “Hypocrites!” he snarls. “Professing His name! Fornicating with children! Fornicating with young girls!”
Roy Moore, the ghost of Tiny Tim is on to you!
Sadly, this record doesn’t include Tiny’s best, and most tasteless, Yuletide classic, “Santa Claus Has Got the AIDS This Year.” I've embedded it below.
* Bummed Out Christmas by various artists. Back in the late ’80s, when Rhino Records was one of the coolest labels around, they used to release some wonderful, irreverent compilations, such as this one. It’s full of songs about people having a hard time finding any Christmas cheer.
There is a weeper by The Everly Brothers called “Christmas Eve Can Kill You,” as well as one of George Jones’ saddest songs, “Lonely Christmas Call.” There is the heart-stopping lonesome soldier lament, “Christmas in Viet Nam” by the soul duo Johnny & Jon.
Some of my favorites are a couple of fine old ’50s R&B songs about holiday drunkenness — “Santa Came Home Drunk” by Clyde Lasley & The Cadillac Baby Specials and “Christmas in Jail” by The Youngsters (a tune that many local folks may associate with the cover by The Soul Deacons about a decade back).
With her kittenish voice and a dominant electric organ that sounds as if it were stolen from a roller rink, Martin purrs through suggestive holiday numbers like “Santa’s Doing the Horizontal Twist” and “Santa’s Going to Be Late Tonight.”
*A Twismas Story by Conway Twitty With Twitty Bird & Their Little Friends. Here is a little Christmas recycling. I wrote about this bizarre holiday album 10 years ago in this very publication. First released in 1983, it was reissued in 2007 to shock a new generation. A decade later, this album is just as frightening now as it was then.
A Twismas Story goes well beyond normal Christmas albums by country stars you find in bargain bins at supermarkets, drugstores, and truck stops this time of year — at humiliatingly low prices. Your average Nashville holiday clunker features disturbingly similar overproduced, underinspired, twangy takes on the same 20 or so holiday standards. But the late Twitty and his imaginary friends went above and beyond. This is so tacky, so cheesy, so over-the-top, and so overstuffed with Christmas corn that it’s a perverse classic.
Twitty Bird — who was Conway’s Tweety-like cartoon mascot (how did he not get sued by Warner Bros.?) — is portrayed here by the singer’s granddaughter. The “Little Friends” are sped-up “chipmunk” voices. They all chatter insanely and sing about Santa, Frosty, Rudolph, etc.
I stand by my advice from 2007: Friends don’t let friends take hallucinogenic drugs and listen to A Twismas Story at the same time.
Proceed at you own risk! Wacky, tacky Xmas songs below:
Here is Tiny Tim's playful spoof about a virus that would kill millions.
This song, from Bummed Out Christmas actually is pretty bitchen
Kay Martin seduces Santa
Yes, the great Conway stooped to this. For the children.
On this day in 1819, Alabama was admitted to the United States of America as the 22nd state.
And just a couple of days ago, Alabama apparently decided it was time to rejoin the U.S.
Yesterday I noticed on Facebook that a lot of my friends were posting the words "Sweet Home Alabama" to celebrate Democrat Doug Jones' victory over Republican Roy Moore, a former state Supreme Court judge and a formercreepy guy at mall.
I support the sentiment, but "Sweet Home Alabama"? Really? There is a rich history of great American songs about Alabama that goes way beyond Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Here are a few of them. Let's start with "Alabama Bound" by Lead Belly
The Delmore Brothers sang this one, "Alabama Lullabye."
Cowboy Copas did this hillbilly classic simply called "Alabama."
But the greatest of all Alabama songs has no words at all. This of course was John Coltrane's song "Alabama" which the great sax man wrote in response to the Sept. 15, 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, which killed four little girls -- Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley.
Here's a live version of Coltrane performing "Alabama" in December, 1963 on a public television show called Jazz Casual. He's playing with my favorite Coltrane band -- McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. The entire episode can be seen HERE.
By the way, the good people of Alabama just elected to the U.S. Senate a man who successfully prosecuted two of the Birmingham church bombers.
America's sweetheart, Tonya Harding, is back in the national consciousness once again thanks to an upcoming biopic I, Tonya, starring Margot Robbie that looks back on the life of the champion figure skater from the wrong side of the tracks.
In 1991 Tonya Harding won her first national skating title and became the first woman to complete a triple axel in competition. In January 1994, Harding earned notoriety when her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, hired a hitman to assault fellow U.S. figure skater Nancy Kerrigan. The attack seriously bruised Kerrigan's kneecap and quadriceps tendon, and prevented her from participating in the U.S. Championships. Harding pleaded guilty to hindering the investigation into Kerrigan's attack, which allowed her to avoid jail time. Under the plea bargain, Harding was stripped of her '94 national title and banned from competing in the U.S. for life. Despite her knee injury, Kerrigan went on to win the silver medal at the 1994 Olympic Games.
You confronted your sorrow
Like was no tomorrow
Kerrigan was clearly the victim in this story. But while there is still dispute about whether Harding was responsible for the attack, Harding became a national villain, hated and reviled.
But guess which one the nation's songwriters preferred. As one of my favorite college professor posed to a literature class, "Who do we love, Pat Garrett or Billy the Kid? Jesse James or the dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard?"
In short, I'm not aware of any songs about Nancy Kerrigan. But here are three about Tonya.
I’ve been trying to write a Tonya Harding song since I first saw her skate at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in 1991. She’s a complicated subject for a song partly because the hard facts of her life are so strange, disputable, heroic, unprecedented, and indelibly American. ...
Tonya Harding’s dramatic rise and fall was fiercely followed by the media, and she very quickly became the brunt of jokes, the subject of tabloid headlines and public outcry. She was a reality TV star before such a thing even existed. But she was also simply un-categorical: America’s sweetheart with a dark twist. But I believe this is what made her so interesting, and a true American hero. In the face of outrage and defeat, Tonya bolstered shameless resolve and succeeded again and again with all manners of re-invention and self-determination.
He reportedly submitted the song for I, Tonya, but it wasn't used in the film.
Here's my favorite of Stevens' Tonya songs
But I don't like Stevens' lonesome ode a fraction as much as I love Loudon Wainwright's "Tonya's Twirls." I first saw him perform it at a Santa Fe concert about a year and a half after the Kerrigan attack.
It's truly a subversive little ditty, that starts off with a quick yuk at the expense of Hardin's "body guard" Shawn Eckardt, and includes a little bit of the " puns, punch lines and light-hearted jabs" Sufjan Stevens says he tried to avoid.
But once you're drawn into the song Wainwright hits you with the sad tale of class struggle -- the lower-class girl in that world of prissy little ice princesses.
... she was your parents' worst nightmare: the slut who moved next door
From the wrong side of the track, she liked the boys more than the girls
With their gliding and their sliding and their girlish dainty twirls-
And then Wainwright pulls back and uses the story to decry the corruption of a fun little activity for "giddy, slipping, sliding, laughing, happy little girls" that grew to be more about corporate sponsorship deals and American nationalism.
And I just learned that the immortal Tiny Tim wrote a little song for Tonya not long after the knee-capping incident. Dedicated to "Miss Tonya Harding," Tiny's song has some invaluable advice here:
Though you are sighing, though you are crying and everything has gone wrong
