Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs: VIII. Christmas Wrapping & Christmas Rappin'

Hello, this is the Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs. Today, a double feature. I heard Stephen Metcalf on the Slate Culture Gabfest recommend this Christmas song Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses, a nice 1980s girly rap with satisfying brass arrangements.  Look, someone synchronized it to their Christmas decorations:

Here's the link on Spotify.
And when I was trying to find that song, I typed in "Christmas Rappin'," thinking it was spelled that way. Of course, tho, there is a Christmas Rappin' by Kurtis Blow from 1979! "Now I'm the guy named Kurtis Blow / And Christmas is one thing I know. / So every year just about this time / I celebrate it with a rhyme." Poetry!

Here's that song on Spotify. And here's our epic several-day-long Infinite Non-Overplayed Christmas Playlist (listen on random!)

In related news, HuffPost has a post called "15 Most Annoying Christmas Songs." There are some truly bad songs there I'd never heard of, like Simple Plan's "Christmas List," which has the lyrics "Santa is coming tonight / And I want a car & I want a life."

Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs: VII. Bluegrass White Snow

This song reminds me of Dolly Parton's great "The Grass Is Blue" as far as obvious twists on the genre name blue grass. "Bluegrass White Snow" from Patty Loveless' 2008 album Bluegrass & White Snow: A Mountain Christmas, is a bit bland, but the bluegrass harmonies are really beautiful, & doesn't that sound like Dolly singing back-up on the recording? Here's a live video:

Here's the song on spotify, & here's our Infinite Non-Overplayed Christmas Playlist (listen on random!) 

Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs: VI. My Fiancée Ran Off With A Christmas Elf

Welcome back to itwaslost.org's Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs. The last few days I've had a project of writing & posting one minute songs called The Blue Myself's One Minute Christmas Carols. This one is a parody of the one-joke novelty song genre, called "My Fiancée Ran Off With A Christmas Elf."

Here's The Blue Myself on Facebooks.
A funny story about this song. Within an hour of writing it & posting this on youtube, I was walking to work & I got a voice mail from my mother saying "I'm really worried about you, call me." I couldn't think why, & when I called she said, I don't know, recently Lauren hasn't been singing with you in your songs & you're calling yourself "Blue" & now you have a song about your girlfriend leaving you. I told her, don't worry, The Manna Tease is still together, The Blue Myself is just a side project for novelty songs, none of these songs are autobiographical. Then she said she didn't think the songs were funny: "I don't remember laughing."

Lyrics & chords:

My Fiancée Ran Off With a Christmas Elf 

E D A E
My Fiancée ran off with a Christmas Elf,
C#min G# A B7
I guess you could say she stooped to the lowest shelf.
C#min G# A E
She said was going to leave, and she was gone on Christmas Eve,
D A E
My Fiancée left me alone Christmas Day. 

I regret being a nerd, I regret being a slob.
Her new boyfriend might be indentured, but at least he’s got a job.
He might be small of stature, but at least he looks up to her.
I’ve no more Fiancée, Christ was born today. 

My Fiancée ran off with a Christmas Elf,
I guess I’ll sit here crying, drinking eggnog by myself.
All I want for Christmas is to punch his stupid little face.
All she wanted was an iPod, but she got a tripod.

©2011 The Manna Tease 

If E is a tricky key & you want to sing it in a lower Elvis-y voice, try these chords:
C  Bb  F  C
Amin  E  F  G7
Amin  E  F   C
Bb  F  C


More The Blue Myself's One Minute Christmas Carols.

Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs:V.

As everyone knows, "White Christmas" was written as a toss-off novelty vaudeville song by the Jewish Irving Berlin, and became the best-selling song in the history of music (according to Guinness, approx. 50 million copies). Fittingly oppositely, this heartfelt single by The Emotions called "Black Christmas" didn't even make the charts. But it's still soulful:

Here's the link on Spotify. & here's our Infinite Non-Overplayed Christmas Playlist (listen on random!)

Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs: IV. Christmas with Richard Nixon

Listening to hundreds of Christmas songs has poisoned my creative juices, & I started writing some short ones which I'll call "The Blue Myself's One Minute Christmas Carols." The first one, written & recorded quickly yesterday, is called "Christmas with Richard Nixon". (You can hear the common cold in my voice.)

It's fitting that my highly conceptual concept band The Blue Myself should put out a Christmas album as its first endeavor. 

Lyrics & chords:

Christmas with Richard Nixon 

D Emin A
My wassail cup is filled with gin & vermouth,
D Emin A
‘Tis the season to be jowly & uncouth.
F# Bmin
God bless the master of this house,
G A D
Was that a break-in or a mouse?
F# Bmin A
Red phones ring, & the children sing, 

D F# Bmin G
Christmas with Richard Nixon,
D F# Bmin G
Christmas with the jews & the gays, Ho ho hey,
D Bmin7
The snow would be grey if there weren’t no EPA.
Emin A
Christ bas born today,
A A7 D
But I saw Mommy kiss a commie. 

©2011 The Manna Tease

Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs: III. Gower Wassail

There's a couple good versions of the Welsh carol, the Gower Wassail, on spotify. I was glad that Wikipedia had this handy helpful chart for the choruses:

That's right, haters, the default font in my browsers is Comic Sans. Eat it.

Here's my favorite version of Gower Wassail, by John Langstaff and the Christmas Revels. It's satisfyingly krummhorny.

Here's a version by Kerfuffle from their excellent "Midwinter" album Lighten the Dark, more on that later.

And, this one by Steeleye Span is also pretty good & has some crunchy harmonies, & someone put it on youtube:

Now master and mistress let your company forbear
To fill up our wassail with you cider and beer
We want none of your pale beer, nor none of your small
But a drop of your kilderkin, that's next to the wall 

More lyrics from Wikipedia.

Infinite Non-Overplayed Christmas Playlist (listen on random.)

Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs: II. A Counting Song

On the second advent day before Christmas, I bring you "A Counting Song," also known as "Come And I Will Sing You." Move out of the way "12 Days of Christmas" with your strange Lords a-leapin'. "A Counting Song" has some more abstract counties, like eight filly-white, & "six are the six that never did mix."

I knew a version from Nowell Sing We Clear (with John Roberts & Tony Barrand) that I had on a mix years ago, but that version seems hard to locate. However, there's a great album on Spotify by Shira Kammen called The Castle of the Holly King. It contains this exciting version:

	Shira Kammen - A Counting Song .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Come and I will sing you,
What shall I sing you?
I will sing you one alone,
What shall be the one alone?
One is one and one alone.
Come to my dilly, come dally, come dilly
Alone, and ever shall remain so. 

Repeat and add two, three, etc., increasing to 

Come and I will sing you,
What shall I sing you?
I will sing you twelve of them,
What shall be the twelve of them?
Twelve are the followers all in a row,
'Leven, eleven all gone to heaven,
Ten are the ten command-i-ments,
Nine of them's Aunt Mary Ann,
Eight of them are the filly-shine white,
Seven are the shiners up in the sky,
Six are the six that never did mix,
Five are the oxen standing by,
Four, the carollers at the door,
Three are the three that's in Bethlea,
Two are the Chris-si-mas babes in green,
One is one and one alone.
Come to my dilly, come dally, come dilly
Alone, and ever shall remain so.

Apologies: & Re-Spearheading a Re-Initiative of an All-New Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs

Hello, & welcome back to itwaslost.org. & Apologies for the five week radio silence, so much has happened. Actually, nothing has happened, but there is also a Manna Tease tumblr blog - themannatease.tumblr.com - which exists. 

Furthermore, Mr Jason Islas is spearheading an initiative called Advent Bloggifying. This reminds me that in the year of our lord Twenty-Ten, I advent blogged all 24 days leading up to Christmas with a Special Department called the Special Department of Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs. So I hearby [sic] now re-spearhead a new re-initiative of an all-new 2011 Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs.

This is an issue very important to me, & of which I spend 11 months of the year not thinking at all about, & the remaining month thinking of nothing else. My love-hate relationship with Christmas music borders on manic-depression. It is often manic, but it is proceeded by the mid-November chill of death upon hearing the first Carol of the Bells in some Nissan TV advertisement. I realize this relationship to Christmas music isn't unique, but perhaps mine is personally intense. (I propose a six week boycott of any company that uses any Christmas song in an ad before Thanksgiving.) 

So to save the ubiquitous Christmas songs from themselves, I have a project of collecting the best & worst of non-overplayed Christmas songs. My personal collection is already many hours long, but this year is the year of Spotify. If you do not have Spotify right now, you are a fool, because it could be a short-lived Golden Age if record labels are going to pull all of the music from it. My spotified playlist of non-Overplayed Christmas songs, ranging from the worst to the best, is now at least 30 hours long & is still being expanded, pruned, & improved. (Please listen to it on random.)

For the Advent, I'll post a song a day until Christmas. Day 1 of my Advent Calendar I am going to go with a new recording, from Carole King's 2011 album A Holiday Carole (get it?) This album isn't amazing, in fact it's lame, but for a washed-up '70s pop star - "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" - it's better than one of Kenny Rogers' 47 Christmas albums. It contains a bunch of sucky new songs written by her daughter Louise Goffin - but by my calculation, the album is only 25% overplayed Christmas songs, so that's commendable. I think this song "Everyday Will Be Like A Holiday" is strangely satisfying, especially on repeated listening. It's a cover of a song by soul singer William Bell, but I like her singing & production better. Now, come back here every day for a NEW Non-Overplayed Christmas Song. & listen to the spotify mix if you wish.