Far Out There Christmas Soundtrack: Tax (Patreon)

If it felt weird to not have Tax come immediately after Stilez, trust me. This is ABSOLUTELY the one that had to come last. Even if I could imagine anything following this one up, I can’t imagine any of you would be willing to actually stick with me after this. Those who saw Tax’s regular Character Soundtrack know I went out of my way to fill it full of song that are hyperactive and shrill and annoying. Hey, guess what a lot of novelty Christmas songs sound like? Oh yeah, Tax’s playlist is deliberately designed to be as obnoxious as possible, either by sheer technical incompetence or bad creative choices or just by being way too much of an earworm and staying stuck in your head for hours after you got sick of it. I went pretty hard on this one, and probably went through the most drafts and revisions of ANY of the Christmas Playlists where I genuinely tried to make ‘em good. Tells you a lot about my priorities, doesn’t it? But seriously, the song selection here started out fairly obvious and conventional. Some Chipmunks, some Hippopotamuses, some Trampled Grandmas, that one decorating song from How The Grinch Stole Christmas where half the decorations sound like naughty words. You know, normie stuff. But oh, the final draft cuts soooooooo much deeper. Come with me. I have such sights to show you.

We start off with “Dingle Ling Dingle Ling” by Don Cornell, a rather forgotten little ditty from the mid-60s that I’ve recently latched on to pretty much entirely because it sounds somewhat like a holiday version of The Trololo Song. I mean, seriously, what other song COULD I use to kick off a playlist deliberately designed to annoy? And the thing is, it’s honestly not a bad little tune at all, compared to what else I’ve got stored up.  It's just a silly little holiday showtune. I just think it’s funny by association.

Funny for entirely different reasons is “Spacey, Santa’s Space Ship” by Doreen Allen, one of the surprisingly numerous attempts by 50s/60s America to update Santa Clause for the space age. Trust me, you’ll be hearing more on this subject as we go along, provided Doreen’s numerous voice cracks don’t pierce your eardrums first. Imagine if Jessie from Toy Story did a big rodeo musical number, and you’ve got an idea of the subtlety on display in this big dumb Country number. I mean, the best name they could come up with for Santa’s new spaceship was “Spacey?” Was the old sled named “Sledy?”

Next, we flash ahead MANY decades to “Fruitcake Song” by Mannheim Steamroller, one of several songs off their Christmasville album that were originally composed for a Universal Studios holiday event. And it sounds EXACTLY like what you’d expect a song written for a theme park would sound like. There’s plenty of recorded evidence of me bigging up Mannheim Steamroller, so understand what it means when I say that Christmasville is a pretty terrible Steamroller album, and “Fruitcake Song” is arguably the most annoying song it’s got. Not even the WORST song, just the one that most gets lodged in my brain to annoy me in the middle of the night. (For the record, “Humbugs” is my pick for worst, but it’s SO tuneless that I forget it I even heard it five seconds later) “Fruitcake Song” sounds like one of the throwaway numbers in an animated holiday special you’d see for sale in a Wal-Mart bargain bin in 2005. But the sad thing is, even with the Casio keyboard farting tuba sound, it’s still got some of the best production values on this playlist.

Next we have “Santa Caught A Cold On Christmas Eve” by Dick & Richard, who don’t seem to have existed beyond this one novelty single. I was a bit torn between including this song or its flipside, “Stinky, the Little Reindeer,” which is arguably even more unfunny. I wound up sticking with the A side, though, simply because of the lyrics, or lack thereof. As you might have inferred from the title, the vocalists spend about half the song shouting “ACHOO!” at the top of their lungs, punctuating nearly every line with it. It gets really old really fast, but is also too distracting to tune out. And it’s all topped off with a teasing little flute jingle that’s just bound to get stuck in your head until its dislodged by one of the OTHER songs on this list.

And that song could very well be the next in our collection of “Oh crap, we gotta cash in on Sputnik!” Christmas songs: “Outer Space Santa.” The credited artists are The Lennon Sisters, but the real creative overlord here is Lawrence Welk, and the song is every bit as hip and edgy as you’d expect from a bandleader that even the 1950s considered lame. It’s also insidiously catchy in a way that even the worst Disney jingles could only aspire to be. Interestingly, while the chorus claims the Santa in question is of “Outer Space,” the verses establish that he’s the Santa of Mars, and thanks to him, Earth’s children need not worry about Mars coming to get OUR Santa. This would, of course, be proven tragically wrong during the infamous Santa Claus Conquers The Martians incident. LAWRENCE WELK IS FAKE NEWS!

Still, not as fake as Sonny Bloch, who brought us the song “Louie The Elf” with his group The Coralairs in the late 50s, before going on to spend much of the 80s and early 90s running million-dollar scams. Gosh, I expected better from a guy trying to launch a new Christmas character by ripping off The Chipmunks’ squeaky voice gimmick. There’s actually a BUNCH of Chipmunk knock-offs I could have thrown on this list (heck, I could make a whole blog post of nothing BUT Chipmunk rip-offs), but something about “Louie The Elf” hit me in just the wrong way like none of those others did. Maybe it’s because this song can’t even be bothered to commit to the gimmick, with much of the singing being done at normal speed. Maybe it’s because the titular Louie is one of the lamer attempts to get a non-generic elf character over. His whole character arc is… he’s shorter than average and the workshop isn’t accessible to the disabled. But then Santa starts bringing him along to go town chimneys he’s too small to fit in… despite ONE OF THE KEY TENETS OF HIS MYTHOS being that he doesn’t need to worry about that. Louie is totally pointless to this operation, and his hiring is emblematic of the widespread waste and mismanagement within Santa’s organization! Figures this song would be sung by a con man.

Moving on, we have ANOTHER SciFi Santa song, though this one came out significantly later than the others: 1981’s “Zoot Zoot Zoot Here Comes Santa In His New Space Suit” by Tiny Tim.  You’d think a guy named after a character in A Christmas Carol would know his way around a Christmas tune, but “Zoot Zoot Zoot” is pretty dire. Right off the bat, it doesn't help that Tim was NOT in a good place by this point in his career. I've never really liked his whole falsetto gimmick even when his voice was in good shape, and he’s NOT in good shape here. But even setting aside how worn out the vocalist sounds, it’s nowhere near as worn out as the bargain basement Disco backing track. 1981 wasn’t exactly a great time to try and have the next great Disco novelty, and this isn’t the next great anything. It sounds more like the jingle to a used car dealership, and of COURSE it’s going to get stuck in your head afterwards.

Next up, we have “Prancer’s Got Some Red Spots” by The Shades, who I actually feel a bit bad about including here, because they were a pretty interesting little 60s band (And not just because of the rarity of being an all-girl group, either. “Tell Me Not To Hurt” is a pretty cool bit of moody Garage Rock.) But the fact remains, this tale of Prancer having to social distance on Christmas Eve due to measles is pretty obnoxious. The whole melody sounds like a mocking “na-na, na-na, boo-boo” sort of taunt, which would be annoying even if WASN’T totally at odds with the lyrics, which want to come across a sympathetic rather than taunting. That’s the kind of cognitive dissonance that is just bound to get on my nerves. Also, the song sounds like it was bashed out in a single take, which also doesn't help it be more listenable.

Out next entry is an oddity on several levels. The song is “Santa Claus Meets The Purple People Eater” …which deserves mockery just for that title alone. That’s not even the half of it, though, because this isn’t just a cash-in on the popularity of “One-Eyed, One-Horned, Flying Purple People Eater,” it’s ALSO another space age novelty! The reason Santa and the Purple People Eater cross paths in the first place is because the latter swoops in to save the former from getting hit by Sputnik! Because remember, kids, THE COMMIES WILL EVEN DESTROY SANTA IF THEY GET THEIR WAY. No, but seriously, this song has all the annoyance factor of the original “Purple People Eater,” but none of the catchiness, despite a gaggle of backup singers trying waaaaay to hard to convince us otherwise. The saddest thing, though, is this wasn’t some rando’s unauthorized rip-off. This song was by Sheb Wooley, the same guy who had the original hit. Well, Wooley was also the man who performed The Wilhelm Scream, so I guess he knew a thing or two about recycling.

The thought occurs that some of you might think I’m over-selling the annoying nature of Tax’s playlist. To you, I present “Jingle Belch (disgusting disco version)” by Dan Allen Hughes. No, the title is not a lie, this is a rendition of “Jingle Bells” performed entirely by burping. Because Tax is nothing if not refined in her sense of humor. However, the parenthetical portion of the title actually IS a bit of a lie. See, this is the flip side of plain-old regular “Jingle Belch,” which just a generic Christmas carol arrangement topped with eructation (It’s a fancy word for burping. I looked it up!) But that alone clearly wasn’t hip enough, so we also have the “disgusting disco version” …which isn’t actually Disco in the slightest. Rather, it’s more like early Hip-Hop. If Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F” and the Seinfeld bass line got a bad case of gas together on Christmas, this is what it would sound like. That’s a sentence I just wrote.

We return to 50s novelty songs with a SciFi bent on our next tune: “Zoomah, The Santa Claus From Mars.” Because what does that Lawrence Welk guy know about Martian Christmas customs, anyway? Ask the guy who voiced both the Nestle Quik Rabbit and Donatello from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, THERE’S your expert! You’d think a guy who’d go on to a career in voice acting would do be a better job on the lead vocals here, but the kid was also only 8 at the time, and BOY does he sound it. Admittedly, it’s still not the worse bratty kid vocals I’ve encountered in the dark, stinky pits of holiday novelty songs (seriously, there’s some regional Country singles out there that make Doreen Allen sound like an opera diva), but it’s still very obviously a tiny child who still hasn’t fully nailed talking yet, let alone singing on a professional level. And yes, I realize I’m saying this about the same kid who sang the most popular version of “Nothing for Christmas” when even younger, but you know what? I hate that song. And I’d hate this song too if it didn’t have the cheesy spaceman voice effects in between the regular verses. Anyone who doesn’t share my love for cheesy SciFi will probably hate those bits too, though.

And as long as I’m clowning on successful voice actors, let’s talk about the great Mel Blanc! He actually did a BUNCH of novelty records at the peak of his Looney Tunes fame, and not always as Warner Brothers characters, either. Case in point, “Yah, Das Ist Ein Christmas Tree,” a holiday rewrite of the traditional German tune “Schnitzelbank.” And in case you couldn’t guess from the spelling of the title, Blac does the whole song in an EXTREMELY over-the-top German accent, which is… a lot to take in. And given the structure of the song, it SOUNDS like it’s about to end several times, only to then fake you out with yet another verse, all as Blanc’s German caricature gets more and more frantic. I’d be tempted to make a disingenuous crack about ol’ Mel’s schtick being insensitive, but brother, you should hear the ones I DIDN’T pick for this list. “Yah, Das Ist Ein Christmas Tree” gets the Tax seal of approval thanks to its manic energy, but if I was just looking to be an edgelord, I could easily have hit you with some Mel Blanc vocals that are genuinely offensive. Merry Christmas.

And now things get odd in a more meta way. Those who lived through Tax’s regular Character Soundtrack know it takes a turn from noisy and stupid to noisy and ARTSY in the final stretch, in honor of her habit of inexplicably knowing more than the should. I tried to replicate that weird arc here, though the songs I wound up picking are simultaneously less and MORE weird than the Garage Prog that appeared on the non-Christmas playlist. Like, say, an adaptation of “Sleigh Ride” by… R2-D2 and C-3PO? No, for real. This isn’t some parody or bootleg, the actual Anthony Daniels and Ben Burtt’s official R2 sound effects are performing an officially authorized Christmas song. And it’s NOT from The Holiday Special. Somehow, even after that went so very well, George Lucas allowed an official Christmas album to be released in 1980. And it was produced by Meco, the guy who did that big novelty Disco version of the Star Wars theme, so you just KNOW it’s gonna be good. Actually, I joke, but “Sleigh Ride” really IS the best produced song here by a wide margin, easily matching the lush slickness of a Carpenters album. And yet, it’s also got Anthony Daniels awkwardly sing-talking to R2 about how music works, a spectacle even MORE goofy than you’d imagine. Christmas in the Stars doesn’t seem to have hit the same cult infamy as The Holiday Special, but it really deserves to.

And now, a song that NOBODY’S heard of. Heck, I only stumbled onto this one a few weeks ago, and still haven’t really found out anything about what it actually is: “Remember Suite Christmas” by Deanna Lee. I found this thing on the flipside of “I Want A Snake For Christmas,” a mid-70s attempt to recapture the novelty of “I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas” delivered by a singer with the same unpolished kid delivery. That same squeaky kid vocal is on “Remember Suite Christmas,” but instead of being another cheesy novelty tune, this is… I’m not even sure how to explain. Would “a holiday version of MacArthur Park” make any sense to anyone? Over the course of around 3 minutes, “Remember Suite Christmas” recklessly swerved between bouncy Sunshine Pop verses and a Baroque Pop waltz of a chorus, all punctuated with ponderous Jazz chord changes at unexpected moments that make the whole thing sound almost Prog Rock, if the production didn’t sound so much like Barry Manilow. Seriously, I nearly included this on Ichabod’s playlist instead of Tax’s, it’s that odd. I only settled on Tax because of Deanna Lee’s sloppy kid vocals, and I’m still genuinely not sure if she’s really a kid or an adult doing a kid voice. I’m also not sure what a kid would be doing singing a song that’s all about nostalgic memories of childhood. But hey, there’s a lot we still don’t understand about Tax, so it kind of works.

But of course, we can’t have all that intricate musical quality and impressive craftsmanship around here for too long, Tax still demands dumb jokes to laugh at! And they don’t come much dumber than “Blue Christmas” by Seymour Swine & The Squeelers. If you’ve ever listened to ANY morning radio show around Christmastime, I can pretty much guarantee you’ve heard this song/bit at least once: comedian Denny Brownlee doing a fairly good Porky Pig impression while stammering his way through “Blue Christmas” over the simpliest of acoustic guitar accompaniment, while somebody else tries and fails to not laugh in the background, and it’s all capped off with a kazoo solo. I’m legitimately shocked that we made it this far into Tax’s Christmas playlist before a kazoo got involved.

And after all that, we end on “Ducky Christmas” by Red Coffee: a corny little kid’s singalong waltz led by one of the absolute WORST Donald Duck impersonations I’ve ever heard. It’d say it’s painful to listen to, but that’d be disrespectful to the obvious pain of the poor sap trying to PERFORM this voice. Seriously, it sounds like the man’s choking to death right there in the recording booth. It’s so bad that a second “narrator” vocalist has to read out the lyrics AS the first guy is singing them. I’m pretty sure this was all part of the joke, but still. I genuinely can’t sit through this recording without experiencing physical pain, and I’m saying this about a song written by the legendary Sherman Brothers (of, like, a million Disney songs fame). Red Coffee (or Coffey) was apparently an accomplished voice actor who worked with Hanna-Barbara a lot, and I do vaguely recall some duck voices like this, but… MAN it’s a lot to sit through. So I couldn’t possibly end on anything else, could I?

Tax's YouTube Christmas Playlist 

And there you have it! A surprisingly large amount of Far Out There Christmas Playlists! I know this is an odd thing to say after the goofiness I just unleashed on you all here, but I really do hope you all encountered at least one or two new Christmas tunes you didn’t know about before. Will I be doing more of these next year? Almost certainly not. This was, like, four times the amount of blog writing I normally need to get done for December, and I don’t think I need to be committing myself to all this again on top of everything else. So, sorry to anybody who was really hoping to find out what Christmas music Megaweapon listens to. Still, for now at least, I had fun doing this, and isn’t that what Christmas is really all about? Me and my own personal gratification?