Coursing Through The Wires #15 -- Holiday Edition
Carnival of Shame -- Happy Alcoholidays EP (Burnin' Records 1993).
- God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
- The Grinch
- Snoopy's Christmas ("Christmas Bells")
I am still amazed by this record each year ... from the EP title to the lovely photo of the band to the song selections. Carnival of Shame is a Philadelphia band (still playing as of a couple years ago) who work mostly in that sludgy space between bar-rock and metal. I've spared you the Eddie Van Halen / Joe Satriani histrionics on "Auld Lang Syne," opting instead for one perennial favorite and two slightly stranger offerings.
"God Rest Ye Gentlemen" honestly sounds like Glenn Danzig fronting the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. The over-compressed and processed guitar is perfectly matched to the bellowing vocals. I believe Aimee Mann is the most recent performer to tackle The Grinch, but this version is much closer to the Boris Karloff rendition, without the breathing room created in the original orchestration.
Since I rarely visited the B-side of this single, the real surprise for me this year was rediscovering "Snoopy's Christmas," originally recorded by the Royal Guardsmen. This band of high school classmates found their novelty niche in the late 60s with "Snoopy vs The Red Baron" and have apparently reformed in recent years to resume mining that rich vein (now updated to "Snoopy vs Osama").
Best wishes to all... and remember that if you're in the vicinity of a computer between 6pm (EST) on December 24 and 6pm on December 25, you need to tune in WPRB.com and catch some portion of Jon Solomon's 19th christmas extravaganza.
I've been doing this thing on this college station (5 times out of 7 years: 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2007... 2003 and 2004 we had a station manager who claimed it was focused too much on Christian celebration(!), or something preposterous like that, and he absolutely forbade it from taking place--I shit you not); this thing, I like to call the XMASsacre.
The first two years I was able to include the most awesome Alcoholidays 7", as the "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" is one of the greatest holiday tunes of all time.
I am so sad that someone in our station apparently *stole* this 7", so I haven't been able to play it since the 2002 XMASsacre. Honestly, I suspect it was "lost" by the station manager who banned the masascre for 2 years.
Anyways--I was absolutely rocked to find your blog, and I wish I'd found it before the XMASsacre this year, b/c I coulda at least *mentioned* it during the show, even if the 7" seems to have been obliterated from our library by someone who claimed the XMASsacre offended his Jewish faith.
Sleigh the Nazarene!