Ah, the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday madness. Lethargic food comas.
And the start of Christmas music.
The month-long flood of songs that are supposed to turn on your inner holiday glow. OK, sure.
For many of us, "Jingle Bells," "White Christmas," "Little Drummer Boy" et al. are OK for a couple of days, but four weeks of them makes you feel like you're trapped in a prison with candy-cane bars, a ho-ho-ho-ing warden and mean-spirited elves carrying cattle prods.
Admittedly, I have a soft spot in my heart for certain Christmas songs; I blame my parents, who thought Christmas wasn't Christmas unless they were told so by Andy Williams or Nat "King" Cole or The Carpenters. But over the years, I developed my own list of Christmas songs that I enjoy hearing - sparingly - over the holidays. Some are a bit off the beaten path.
Shawn Ryan» "The Nut Rocker" by Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Prog-rock take on "March of the Toy Soldiers" from Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker." Greg Lake's "I Believe in Father Christmas" isn't bad either, even though he says he wrote it to protest the commercialization of the holiday.
» "Good King Wenceslas" by Blackmore's Night. Former Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore has a second career playing medieval-style music. Here he gives the familiar Christmas carol the 16th-century treatment.
» "Merry Xmas Everybody" by Slade. A perennial holiday hit in England, this is a happy, hand-clapping sing-along performed by a band that was the biggest thing in England in the early 1970s but couldn't get arrested in the States.
» "White Christmas" by Bad Religion. Doesn't everyone need a 4/4 punk-rock version of this song?
» "Jingle Bells" by the Brian Setzer Orchestra. The holiday standard swings with some boogie-woogie jump blues.
» "Santa Got a DWI" by Sherwin Linton, "Santa Came Home Drunk" by Clyde Lasley and the Cadillac Baby Specials, "Christmas in Prison" by Doug Legacy and the Legends of the West. Tired of holiday cheer? Need a little holiday hopelessness? "Bummed Out Christmas" is the CD for you; 12 songs guaranteed to turn you to the booze-spiked eggnog.
» "Christmas Time in Hell" from "Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics." Not exactly kosher, so to speak, but the collection of songs performed by the characters in "South Park" does lend a different take on holiday cheer, including this surprisingly chipper number.
Contact Shawn Ryan at msryan@gmail.com.