And Now For Some Christmas Music

We've officially entered the Christmas season and for the next month Christmas music will be as ubiquitous as those garish inflatable/plastic lawn ornaments. Generally I enjoy the music, until I've heard so much of it that when Christmas morning rolls around I'm ready to punch the first person to make a move towards the radio. There are songs that I wished were played more, like the Drifters version of "White Christmas" and some songs I pray won't come on, like "Last Christmas" by whomever.

In the past couple years though, I made two discoveries that I though were pretty great. The first is this jazzed up version of The Night Before Christmas called "Be Bop Santa Claus." In this story, Santa is a cool cat who drives a red Cadillac and leaves Dizzy Gilespie albums under the tree. It was originally out in 1955 by Babs Gonzalez, but the better version is more recent by one Sweet Daddy Lowe. It's the very definition of "cool." Unfortunately iTunes only has the one from '55.

The other find is perhaps not as edgy, but: Attention Children of the 90s-- you might just like this. There's an a cappella group called the Blenders (clever ain't it?) who got started around 1992 and over the years got into releasing Christmas albums. They've made at least four. The one I have is Most Wonderful Time and it was sent free as some sort of promotion. I let that thing lay around for a while but when I played it, it was surprisingly fun to listen to-- a cappella with a dash of boy band. Normally I hate boy bands, but these guys actually have some ability to harmonize seamlessly. It's slick stuff and I play it often. A favorite of mine is "I Bought You a Plastic Star (for your aluminum tree)." All the rest are old familiars.

So, if you've had it with Burl Ives and the lot give these a try and to quote my dear Be Bop Santa, "have a crazy cool Christmas."