And Now, A Musical Interlude....

A few weeks ago, I got a phone call from my pal Andy, inviting me to a concert that had, in fact, already begun when he called me. "It's Paul and Storm! You should come!" he said. Now, Paul and Storm are one half of a now-defunct acapella band who I deeply love, and my feelings about them were a little mixed--they're not DaVinci's Notebook, after all, and while they've got a lot of good comedy material going, as a two-man band they're a little more limited musically than DVN. But still, I felt an urge to be supportive, and I went to the show, enjoyed it a lot, and bought their new album, Opening Band. On that album (among several other gems and one extensive running joke) is a song called "The Ballad of Eddie Praeger." It's a song about the death of a urinal cake; imagine Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," only with a urinal cake instead of a boat. (And if you'd like to hear it, go here and scroll down.) I found this song utterly hilarious--mainly because I am convinced that "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is one of the primary selections in Hell's Jukebox. I hate that song. It just goes on, and on, and fucking on. So this brought to mind the question of what other songs are on the jukebox in Hell. "Sherri Baby," by the Four Seasons, I'm pretty sure. Possibly "Dust in the Wind." There must be more.

At any rate, since it's Christmas Eve, I got to thinking about the Christmas selection on Hell's Jukebox. Everyone has Christmas songs that they utterly hate, and those of us who've worked years in mall retail have more than most people just because we heard them on infinite loop during stressful moments of our lives. My special nemesis is "The Little Drummer Boy." There is NO version of this song that is anything other than plain awful to me. It strives to be a religious carol, and fails utterly. (My favorite carol is We Three Kings, so it's not that I prefer the secular ones. It's just that I hate the Drummer Boy.) So that's on Hell's Christmas PA System. I can think of a few others, but rather than descend even further into holiday cynicism, let me tell you instead that Grinchy ol' me made a Holiday Mix CD of GOOD stuff, with the help of iTunes and the spirit of the season:
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Barenaked Ladies
Christmas Wrapping - The Waitresses
Jingle Bells (banjo instrumental) - Earl Scruggs
I Saw Three Ships - Sting
Father Christmas - The Kinks
Backdoor Santa - BB King and John Popper
Carol of the Bells - Mannheim Steamroller
Winter Wonderland - The Eurythmics
We Three Kings - The Roches, who mess up the fourth verse but I forgive them
Baby Please Come Home - Joey Ramone
The Dreidel Song - DaVinci's Notebook
Wizards in Winter - Trans-Siberian Orchestra
So, are any of my faves on YOUR personal Christmas Hell list? What's in your mix instead?