The current, omnipresent soundtrack in America....

[tzikeh]

[Poll #1313130]

Comments

[falzalot.livejournal.com]

y'know, sometimes xmas stuff does get to me, but I've hardly walked into a store all season, so I haven't noticed anything. :->

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

They joys of online shopping.

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

The late, great Odetta's Christmas Spirituals.

Otherwise, it's *urge to kill ... rising ....*

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

dangit, forgot spirituals.

[lapillus]

I'm actually deeply fond of winter holiday music and am particularly unfussy as to what tradition, if any it belongs. Left completely to my own devices I tend toward the medieval/hammered dulcimer/folk/traditional hymns end of things with a sprinkling of others.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my tastes fall pretty much along your lines.

Though I do wish I could walk into a bookstore or supermarket without hearing REALLY LOUD CHRISTMAS MUSIC AND POORLY-CHOSEN CHRISTMAS MUSIC AT THAT.

[loreleif.livejournal.com]

Chanukah music! :D

I have a mix of the lesser-played, cool stuff (lots of medieval, traditional carols, and some modern stuff) for Christmas, and some Chanukah and Solstice music, too. :)

But if I walk into one more store playing sixteen different lousy versions of the same damn songs in a row, I will in fact turn homicidal.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

:D I thought about Chanukah music and then thought, yes, but, it's pretty much *not* part of the "omg it's everywhere" music dealio right now.

(I, personally, love Klezmer.)

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

In which case, why not call it a Christmas music poll?

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Because it doesn't bother me that much. While Chanukah and Christmas happen around the same time (the American "holiday season"), the music on the radio and in the stores is Christmas music. So, to me, "holiday" music is Christmas music. I know you disagree, but that's how I see it.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Okay.

Fair enough.

[starwatcher]

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"Snoopy's Christmas" probably fits in one of those groups, but I don't know which one. I like it, though.

I like a lot of Christmas music, when it's played occasionally on the radio. (Though I want to retroactively kill the person who wrote "Santa Baby" and wipe it from our collective consciousness. Also, "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer". Grrr...) BUT, I don't appreciate the overly-loud, non-stop noise in the stores.
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[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Oh - the Royal Guardsman thing - the sequel to Snoopy vs. Red Baron? Probably bizarre, rare, and unique. Too bad I don't have a Doctor Demento option. :D

[starwatcher]

.
Yes, although it's the second sequel -- there was also 'Return of the Red Baron'. But, <g>, I never considered it 'bizarre' -- the lyrics actually have a hopeful message. The Red Baron refuses to shoot Snoopy down, even offers him a 'holiday toast' because it's Christmas. (I'll restrain myself from typing the lyrics.)
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[katrimae.livejournal.com]

This is the time of the year that I tell everyone, from dear friends to total strangers, that the all-time greatest Christmas song is "Merry Christmas From the Family" by Robert Earl Keen (http://tinyurl.com/5nf8qe). Any holiday song that contains the line "Make bloody marys 'cause WE ALL WANT ONE" is tops in my book.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

OMG *grabby hands downloads yay*

[katrimae.livejournal.com]

You should look for Keen's "That Buckin' Song" while you're at it - it's about a boy and his horse. "I put my mama on her, she threw her in the air / My mama said, Son, that's a mother buckin' mare."

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

I'm fond of "Santa Lost a Ho", myself.

[katrimae.livejournal.com]

Or Tom Waits' "Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis" or "Christmas Sucks"!

[sunqist.livejournal.com]

Modern classics! Original songs by rock bands that sound like regular rock songs but are Christmas themed. Fairytale Of New York, Father Christmas, Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight), I Will Be Hating You For Christmas, Christmas In Hollis, the entire Vandals Christmas album, that kind of thing.

[bethcarielle.livejournal.com]

I love Trans-Siberian Orchestra's take on Christmas carols. Yay for electric guitar in my Carol of the Bells (which also happens to be my favorite a cappella piece ever).

[umbo.livejournal.com]

Actually not a fan of medieval music, whatever the season, but the Boston Camerata Renaissance Christmas is one of my all-time faves--and I can't believe you didn't mention the Messiah (in my own head, choral classical is separate from non-choral, so I don't put that with Nutcracker, because it's completely different).

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

I pretty much draw a line at the Reformation. I can't stand most Protestant carols*, and the German Lutheran ones make me want to vomit-- if I never hear "Stile Nacht" or "Away In a Manger" again, it will be too soon. The carols I like are generally not only Catholic but pretty aggressively medieval: "In Dulce Jubilo," "I Saw Three Ships," the Cherry Tree carol, the Coventry Carol, the Wexford Carol, the Gloucester Wassail...

*With one exception for "We Three Kings," which is gloomy and minor enough to be interesting.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

Also, period instruments are love. Modern arrangements are Deeply Suspect.

I think this springs from the same impulse that led me to ban electric Christmas lights from my parents' house when I was about nine, followed in short order by tinsel and then by any ornaments made from synthetic materials. Basically, if you start updating Christmas traditions, then you're just following the spirit of the holiday, which is Religious Observance and therefore Evil And Wrong. But if you stick to accurate Early Mod.Eng. and ecclesiastical Latin and historically-accurate wassail recipes, that's just historical reenactment, which is an entirely virtuous enterprise.

[the-star-fish.livejournal.com]

Which reminds me, I need to hear "God Rest Ye, Unitarians" again ...

[bethbethbeth.livejournal.com]

5,674 versions of Carol of the Bells FTW!!!

[xenacryst.livejournal.com]

A Very Scary Solstice

[vass]

What Xen said. I've been listening to this on repeat all week.

[redangel618.livejournal.com]

i have worked retail for a very long time. christmas music makes me want to kill people. a lot.

[amy_vic.livejournal.com]

I really love Pauley Perrette's song 'I Hate the Holidays'. (It's very true, and funny, and it's even funny in, like, July. I'll upload it for you as soon as I can.) And my holiday season has not begun until I hear the 12 Days of Christmas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2oPio60mK4) by Bob and Doug Mackenzie, and at least one part of The Hanukkah Song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrd9p47MPHg) on the radio. But if I need work-appropriate music, I have a cd of Celtic Christmas carols that are really pretty, and I have one of those charity cd's that, incidentally, I only bought because it has that Barenaked Ladies/Sarah Mclachlan 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen' on it.

Most holiday songs on the radio get overplayed (forty-six times a day), and that kind of bugs me. And if I have to listen to that effing Jingle Dogs/Cats/Hamster stuff any longer...well, anyways. You don't really want to know.

[theodosia.livejournal.com]

Google 'Santastic' for a series of Xmas mashup albums that have some incredible winners in there. I need to do a best of Santastic mix.

[phoenix64.livejournal.com]

I'm actually still quite fond of Christmas music. Besides the Charlie Brown stuff I also have a CD that has music from all the usual TV specials like Rudolph and Frosty. Also, I'm old enough so that the first A Very Special Christmas album came out when I was a teen and I still have a lot of fondness for that.

But when it comes to The Nutcracker I tend to go a bit nuts. I worked as a backstage tech for a holiday production of that several years running, so the sound of the music tends to make me go all glowy red-eyed and growly.