Worst F@#king Christmas Songs Ever!!!

December 18, 2016December 18, 2016 / ds barrett / 2 Comments

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The fine line between sentimentality and musical masturbation is always balanced on the thinnest of margins during the holiday season. What’s emotional to one person can come across as crass and boorish to another. That said, some lines are quite clearly crossed as we pick the Top 10 Worst Christmas songs ever recorded by so-called artists.

10. Paul McCartney – Wonderful Christmastime (All The Best!)

Sitting at number ten, only because I feel “Wonderful Christmastime” could go down in the history books as the worst song ever. Not only does it lack sentiment or emotion, it honestly sounds like McCartney phoned it in… literally PHONED IT IN! The keyboard melody comes off like the cheap Casio that my children play with at their grandmothers’ house. You know the one, cheap drum machine and a bunch of sounds that try to imitate other instruments but more or less emit speaker vibrations that might resemble the varying sounds of a cat being tortured. Listening to this too many times over the holidays could turn even the kindest of us into homicidal maniacs.

9. John Goodman – Let There Be Snow

Every year, as TV stations try to fill their airtime with Christmas classics, a few stinkers make it back as well. The worst of these is Frosty Returns, which tries desperately to strike a chord between the holidays and environmentalism. It fails spectacularly at both. Despite the great cast of Jonathon Winters, Andrea Martin and John Goodman, it quickly falls apart leaving nothing but tired clichés and horrendous original songs to sit through as your kids wonder what the hell it is they’re watching.

“When does it get good daddy?”

The worst is the song “Let There Be Snow.” Gone is any of the pure enthusiasm that got Goodman through the Blues Brothers 2000, and left is something that is bland and… well, tone deaf. The only good thing I can say is that the song mercifully never received the soundtrack treatment, and hence you’ll never have to endure it mixed with your holiday favourites.

8. New Kids On The Block – Funky Funky Christmas

Whomever thought that this was a good idea should be shot. Having four guys jump around a stage with the only understood lyrics being funky and Christmas is as about as entertaining as banging your head repeatedly against a wall. I’m quite sure this is meant to be fun, but instead it is excruciating. Half dressed boy band dancing doesn’t say anything Christmas except… GIVE US YOUR MONEY! Thankfully Donnie Walberg is a decent actor and this disaster only gets pulled out for lists like this.

7. Destiny’s Child – 8 Days of Christmas

Nothing says holiday cheer like a bunch of materialistic characters listing off all the expensive sh%t they want for the holidays. At least Irving Berlin was trying to create a universal feeling of joy with “White Christmas.” “8 Days of Christmas” is a bunch of early twenty somethings trying to get you on the dance floor to hear about their boyfriends and bling. It leaves me with the empty feeling Charlie Brown must’ve had after he saw his own dog had given into commercialism. Except in this case, there is no happy ending, just an over-produced, unlistenable mess.

6. Bon Jovi – Back Door Santa

Originally done as a tongue in cheek ode to infidelity with holiday merriment, Bon Jovi take the opportunity to play it live as a hair throwing rocker. On paper that might sound pretty cool, but in practise the song becomes bereft of even libido, leaving nothing but guitar solos, synthesizers and fist pumping. Considering the audience was made up of 80% white dudes who thought Poison was high art… it is actually really depressing. I mean Tim Curry crossing wits with Kevin McAllister… laughably depressing.

5. Chris Young – Baby, Please Come Home

The original “Baby Please Come Home” is one of the greatest songs ever in terms of pure pop perfection. You take Phil Spector’s production and mix it with the all-out power of Darlene Love to put despair, longing, and yes even joy, into a single syllable and it becomes my all-time favourite holiday classic. Now, it’s 2016, and country music is mining R&B/pop to entertain their banal masses. Chris Young, who is the flavour of the moment, sounds like the last flavour… vanilla, in case you are wondering, and brings nothing to it but a country pose. This isn’t the Johnny Cash Christmas cool that country is capable of, it is a manufactured spectacle lacking soul.

4. Wham! – Last Christmas

Everything that was awful about the 1980’s contained in a single Christmas song. A horrible synthesized riff, hiding behind an over-indulgent vocal with background singing that just doesn’t equal the intensity of the lead, it can only equal Wham!. If the holidays were about white teeth and hair gel this would be an eternal classic, but there is no sentiment in either of those things. This version of “Last Christmas” is little more than the roadside slush left days after the white Christmas.

3. Dr. Demento – Jingle Bells

The Chipmunks are what happens when you shoot for a novelty Christmas hit. Love them or hate them – “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late)” is the result. However, comedy and novelty went way past the line of sanity when Dr. Demento made this their gift for the holidays. As much as I love pets… there was no effin’ reason Rover should be doing Christmas songs. Funny the first time, revolting the second and absolutely suicidal on the third listen, … why the eff does this exist. If aliens descended on our planet in a post-apocalyptic age and found only this, their report would read – No intelligent signs of life found!

2. NewSong – Christmas Shoes

Everything I hate about modern country music shoved into the heaping pile of manure that is this song. Kid spends money to buy new shoes for his dying mother at Christmas. The sentimental clichés of bad Holiday specials mixed with the Terms Of Endearment storyline is meant to make you feel the joy of life. Instead you get the feeling that you’ve been taken on the worst kind of ride where everything is predictable and “Christmas Shoes” is nothing but bad ideas taken from a dozen sources and tossed in a ‘Disney-fied’ blender that assumes its audience has an IQ equal to their shoe size. There is no lesson here other than that some songwriters will create desperate sh%t to get an emotional response from their audience. RUN AWAY!!!

1. Engelbert Humperdinck – White Christmas

The most popular Christmas song of all time, the Irving Belin penned “White Christmas” has been done hundreds (perhaps thousands) of times in every conceivable style imaginable. To have created the worst version is a feat of apocalyptic proportions. What Humperdinck manages to create is a mass of commercialism so crass that it becomes ‘epic’ in its destruction of sentimentalism. Musical masturbation was Engelbert’s hallmark, and his voice soars to heights not required. The background singers hit notes so high that the angels might be chipmunks that have their nuts twisted. Just when you think it can’t get any worse, Humperdinck goes for the creepy factor and whispers the final line. He might want the audience to feel his longing, but completely contradicts the effect, giving us his equivalent of the scary clown. It’s horrifying and still played in those satellite radio holiday mixes.

City & Colour @ The Hayloft: 10/10/2015 – Beautiful Music on a Starry Night… Watch Out For The Cows

October 14, 2015 / ds barrett / Leave a comment

(The text is below, but if you want to see the review with all the pictures from the show… go here. http://www.edge.ca/2015/10/14/city-colour-the-hayloft/ )

Watching the splendour of fall colours on the drive into Prince Edward County, you can’t help but feel a certain sense of anticipation. Passing the wineries, farms, and cautionary deer signs, you realize that The Hayloft will be no ordinary concert venue, and… well, this isn’t going to be an ordinary night.

Pulling up to the site, that singular thought is proven correct; The Hayloft is quite literally an old, well-kept barn. A place so welcoming and intimate, the only thing separating City and Colour from the Edge’s 150 contest winners is a riser a mere 12 inches off the floor. Quite honestly, this is a band that can fill Massey Hall, so to see them playing in a venue that was once home to farm animals is a little on the surreal side.

The band passes through the crowd to get to the stage and starts into the sonic bliss of their opening track “Woman” from the newly released If I Should Go Before You. On their record it is a bluesy tune, but the inclusion of a pedal steel guitar, with sound waves bouncing off wooden barn planks, gives off a convivial vibe. When they break into the number two track “Northern Blues” the songs’ R &B feel seems more jovial than its theme suggests. Or, perhaps it is my own buoyancy projecting as everyone just seems so damned nice out here tonight.

The lighting is understated, provided by a few bulbs at the foot of the stage and strands of yellow and white Christmas bulbs surrounding it from above, giving off a warm glow that seems to have been embraced by the audience. This committed bunch, that either entered a contest online or kept phoning until they won tickets, is exuberant and incredibly friendly. After a long bus trip, they are now soaking in the music and atmosphere, clinging to their partners and swaying to the music. The fans, about to take ‘selfies’, get willing strangers offering to take photos for them. It seems more like a group of friends, out to see their mutual acquaintances’ band, than a concert being put on by a popular recording artist.

Even the banter between band and audience plays this out. Between songs, bassist Jack Lawrence is chatting with people at the front of house and, during another such break, an over-enthusiastic ‘yeller’ gets an exchange with Dallas Green himself. Green steps away from the microphone and speaks to illustrate to the fan that he doesn’t need to yell to be heard. “We’re just a few feet from each other.” Everyone gets a good laugh from the ‘little chat’ as Green runs through a set that includes a large number of tracks from the new record and highlights from The Hurry And The Harm and Little Hell.

Illustrating the mood, “Lover Come Back” came off as an uplifting and joyous song despite its natural, broken-hearted nod towards 60’s soul music. Matt Kelly, flipping between pedal steel guitar and keyboard, had the organ sounding like the second coming of MG’s frontman, Booker T. Jones. It’s a moment which seems to emphasize that City & Colour is equally compelling live as on their albums. In this setting, there is a ‘deeper’ and more pronounced immediacy that allows Green & Co. to both embellish songs and gain a better connection to the fans, many of whom are openly singing along without need of encouragement.

The evening passes so quickly that the audience just doesn’t want to leave when the music ends. The bouncers are now outside cooking up hot dogs for patrons, groups of people are sharing favorite moments, and a few are even stargazing on this perfectly clear night. If bus drivers weren’t waiting to return people home, I’m quite sure they would have made a whole night of it.

Driving home, only a minute from the Hayloft, I round a corner and hit the brakes. There are three cows and a bull standing in the middle of the road only a few feet from the yellow deer crossing sign. The bull looks at me as if to say “great night, eh!” And honestly, who the hell am I to argue with a bull.

Metric @ Danforth Music Hall (25/09/2015): Fun, Epic and Righteously Weird

September 25, 2015 / ds barrett / Leave a comment

Concerts, at their very best, are far more than musicians on a stage giving energy to an audience. They convey electricity that moves beyond the music and allows an audience to return energy back to the artists themselves. It becomes a communal experience shared by the guy in the antlers, the girl with the giraffe mask on her head, the elderly gentlemen in the clown costume, the kid with the tin foil alien hat, the 16 year old first concert goer and the band themselves. Last night while playing the Danforth, Metric seemed acutely aware of this.

With animal masks of their own, Metric took the stage and quickly broke into “Lie Lie Lie” from their barely one week old album Pagans In Vegas. Out of the mask, Emily Haines bounced across the stage now adorned in Christmas-lit peacock feathers and had the floor singing along. It was spectacle of the highest order, including a trippy lightshow to boot, and one embraced by the audience as a whole.

Leaning heavily on their new record, Metric left no room for popular numbers like “Stadium Love”, “Monster Hospital”, or “Gimme Sympathy” and honestly, they weren’t needed. The band had come prepared and used a mix of charisma, well rehearsed tunes and a light show that would put many arena acts to shame.

Hell, the only technical glitch of the night came when so much fog was released; the whole stage all but disappeared from view. The thing is, everyone was having so much fun it all seemed to be just another added highlight in the festivities.

By the time the encore ended, washed in bubbles, paper cannon explosions and Haines singing “Celebrate”, the meaning of the night’s events became clear. Concerts, at their core, are more than a mere performance… they are a shared celebration of life shared by everyone wanting to escape mediocrity and, if only for a moment, join the weirdness of an epic event. Fun, epic and righteously weird – I call that a pretty good night.

The Sky Is Crying or George Thorogood & The Delaware Destroyers risk life and limb for a good time.

April 20, 2015 / ds barrett / Leave a comment

It’s August 1985 and the news in Toronto is all about the possibility of it raining on Bruce Springsteen who is touring the biggest album on the planet – Born In The USA. Thing is, the rain arrives a day early, and the CNE Grandstand has a totally different show going on that night. George Thorogood and the Destroyers with Johnny Winter opening are set to perform.

Drew and I left from the pool I lifeguarded at in total sunshine and headed down to the Canadian National Exhibition grounds with tickets that put us only seven rows from the stage. With some sense of over geeky enthusiasm I remarked how it looked like the rain would hold off. Drew, always the master of understated sarcasm raised an eyebrow glanced at the sky and shook his head in that “you don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground” way.

Johnny Winter hits the stage and the wind picks up. His set is phenomenal as his hands fly all over the neck of his guitar. I had known he was good, but WOW! This was damn impressive. He left the stage as the sun dipped out of site in the west and some dark clouds started to roll in quickly from the south.

Thorogood and the destroyers took the stage and started rocking out right away. I wish I could remember the setlist, but it was thirty years ago. What I do remember is that about 30 minutes into the set, the sky opened up and the rain drops were the size of quarters. The wind was blowing the water right into stage.

A drenched Thorogood looked out into the crowd as his band tried to step further towards the back of the stage and hollered “Does anyone want to hear some blue?” and the crowd replied with cheers. He broke into “The Sky Is Crying” and he just didn’t stop. Between songs a guitar tech would hand him a dry guitar and into another song he would go. The crowd was having a fantastic time and no one was leaving. The band that had initially tried to find shelter further down stage came forward and challenged Mother Nature to a duel. Over 90 minutes in the rain and they just kept playing until the damn sky cleared… and then, they did encores.

By all rights, Thorogood could have stopped the show and probably should have. Electric guitars and rain don’t mix, but this “nut job” musician was committed to putting on a great rock ‘n’ roll show, and he succeeded beyond the crowds wildest dreams.

In later years my taste in music changed and George got less and less of my time on the stereo, but when people would talk about the best concerts they ever went to, this still sits as the #1.

On Record Store Day Thorogood re-released his debut album, except in a way never before heard. It was originally recorded without a bass guitar. Initially the destroyers billed themselves as “the original five-piece trio” and this record reflects that. It is a trip to hear “One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer”, “Madison Blues” and “Ride On Josephine” as they were done in those first recordings back in the mid-seventies.

Anyway, I haven’t found an amount issued, but it is limited and on blue vinyl. I still saw copies kicking around on Sunday, but I wouldn’t wait if you’re interested.

Just because I feel like it… an out of place live review! – Cracker & Camper Van Beethoven @ Lee’s Palace

January 17, 2015 / ds barrett / Leave a comment

The great thing about blogging is that you make up your own damn rules about how to write whatever it is you decide you’re going to write about. So while I should talk more about the bands, I prefer to write a bit about the experience, and, well… sorry I digress.

The core of both CVB and Cracker have more than 20 years each in experience playing with one another; the odds of them playing a dud show sits on the right side of zero. Proof is that while both bands played the so-called “hits” (or fan favorites) early and leaned on material from their new records, it bothered no one. The audience, such as it was, seemed appreciative and responded in kind. CVB band members were having fun with each other and bringing it to the crowd who were of course shouting out requests that were in turn rightfully ignored, and cheers that were appreciated.

Cracker seems to have a new line up behind the Lowery/Hickman combo which showed at times with false starts and a keyboard blast at the end of “Teen Angst (What The World Needs Now)” that was just a wash over the rest of the band. However, the overall performance was fun and the fans seemed happy… in a weird kinda way.

Maybe it’s audience age (on the thinning hair side of 40), or maybe the stars were in some screwed up alignment, but things got strange in the pit of Lee’s Palace. First the audience was twisted in some reverse thought process where the periphery of the pit was packed shoulder to shoulder with fans while the stage area had plenty of breathing room. Then, someone best described as looking like a Ford brother (yes those Toronto Ford guys) started putting his “had ten beers too many” arms around people asking them why they weren’t willing to dance with him. My mind popped out the phrase “perhaps the beer stench and sweat are a factor… or maybe it’s the knowledge that large drunken men can be a bit on the intimidating side dude.” Fortunately, my mouth remained in check this time, and everyone avoiding eye contact with him sent his sorry dejected ass in another direction after only two or three songs.

Of course, this could have all just been theatre. Seeing the twisted images of broken people strewn throughout the music of both bands may have just presented the chance for someone to see it as performance art. An interpretive rendering of CVB’s “Lassie Goes To The Moon” with a twist of Cracker’s “Can I Take My Gun To Heaven.” Oddly, neither of these songs was played, so I might just be looking for excuses.

Regardless, it was an enjoyable night out with friends with two bands playing that I absolutely frickin’ love, so, I hit the ‘merch’ booth, bought the new Camper and Cracker CD’s (because they ain’t (yeah I know “ain’t” isn’t a word) on vinyl) and made my way home for an ear ringing night of sleep. Wish more of you people were there.

http://www.crackersoul.com/store

http://www.campervanbeethoven.com/store

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Vinyl and Collectibles reviewed and geeked about!

Just because I feel like it… an out of place live review!