Christmas music

Posted by Ric on 24.12.04

I finished work for Christmas today, Christmas Eve. This does not give me a lot of time to relax into a holiday mood, so aids are required to assist to this end. Fortunately, there between my office and the train station there are plentiful hit-and-run seasonal shops, packed with chreap and cheerful stolen goods. In this way, I procured The Chipmunks: 'Greatest Christmas hits', Kenny G: 'Miracles (The holiday album)', and last but not least, David Hasselhoff: 'The night before Christmas'.

Sadly I cannot provide these for download, as the Grinch stole my bandwidth.

The Chipmunks: 'Greatest Christmas hits'

There is no better way that I can think of to herald the coming festive season than with a rendition of The Chipmunks: 'It's beginning to look like Christmas'. It is however slightly puzzling why it is only "beginning to look like Christmas" by track seven.

This is followed by 'Jolly old Saint Nicholas'. It is my experience that, contrary to popular belief, fat people are not jolly, but infact bitter and vindictive. Saint Nicholas must therefore have some other reason for his cheer. At first, as the shrill voices cut through the peace, I could not tell why this was, though got the impression that the Chipmunks were, in their unique way, trying to tell me just this. By the wonders of modern technology, I transposed the song down an octage to a more understandable pitch. I was disturbed to discover that the Chipmunks' voices have sinister Stephen Hawking undertones, and sound not unlike a choppy re-edit. Perhaps this is how the high-pitch cover-up came about; regardless, I do not like it.

The Chipmunks: 'Jolly old Saint Nicholas' (lowered one octave) (.mp3, 430kb)

As a special bonus worthy of being singled-out as special by the emboldened (bonus track), the purchaser of The Chipmunks' 'Greatest Christmas hits' gets to listen to the first track again for a second time without even having to press any buttons to achieve this!

David Hasselhoff: 'The night before Christmas'

It is the night before Christmas, and what better way to spend it than with David Hassellhoff? He seems to have signed the cover "Paul Adams", which is confusing.

The album begins with small children, who transpire to be David's children, discussing whether Father Christmas is going to visit them. They conclude that he will come, but only if they sing 'Twinkle twinkle little star'. Badly. (They all begin signing the song in unison, without any previous discussion of what song to sing. One can only presume this is a regular occurance in the Hasselhoff household.) This alerts David that they are still awake, and he quite rightly chastises them. They ask him to sing for them. He agrees, then, again confusingly, he proceeds to recite verse. He does this for six minutes. After three minutes, stilted musical accompaniment begins. After four minutes, David gets the names of the reindeer wrong.

David's children: 'Twinkle twinkle little star' (.mp3, 357kb)
David Hasselhoff: reindeer mistake (.mp3, 357kb)

Kenny G: 'Miracles, the holiday album':

Kenny G is appauling. He is so bland that I cannot find anything of sufficient note in his music to write about. However, it is the season of goodwill so I will persevere to say something nice: he gets suprisingly close to playing a tune in 'Silver bells'. Near to the end of the song, as one suspects that it is going to end, he professionally and excitingly reprises the hook for a final time. The out of place honky tonk piano accompaniment raises if from the realm of the hotel lift, and into that of the hotel lounge bar, where it is the perfect soundtrack to unmarried businessmen drunkenly questioning of their whisky what happenned to their life.

I rate this musical advocat 3 out of 5 tasteless sets of baubles: