Kidnykid's Full Review: White Trash Christmas * by Bob Rivers
Bah Humbug! As the official Peters family Scrooge, I do hereby welcome all readers to Mike Stone's Spawn Of Scrooge writeoff, celebrating the spirit of Christmas-taking-a-royal-beating. Fellow writeoff participants include: artbyjude, BeastieGirl, beckytcy, BigJack, darkofnight, dedemw, d_fienberg, ingysdayoff, JackSommersby, Kidnykid (that's me!), lemon_lime, lisaffire, mfunk75 (our host Mike Stone), millinocket, panguich, pmills1210, Simply_Crispy, skbreese, st_patrick, Vormancian, weirdo_87, and Wokelstein. Most of us are reviewing movies, but I decided to stick out like a sore thumb amongst my Scroogian colleagues and review this CD. Have fun sending up Christmas, and enjoy the ride!
Bob Rivers is perhaps most famous for his Christmas sendups; he has done at least one other Christmas parody album, Chipmunks Roasting on an Open Fire.
WHITE TRASH CHRISTMAS is more of the same from Rivers, and like any parody album, some cuts work and some don't. I'll go over each cut briefly, paying particular attention to the topic of the cut and what I thought of it.
The first cut is Aquaclaus. It's a parody of the Jethro Tull tune Aqualung, and frankly, I missed the rock flute somewhere. However, both the premise - the perils of being a department-store Santa during Advent - and the lyrics themselves are absolutely hilarious, well worth listening to (especially if you remember Jethro Tull at all).
Next up comes What if Eminem Did Jingle Bells? It's meant more as a style parody than a parody of a particular song, intended to sound like something Eminem might actually do. This particular song worked better for me than it did for my husband; I actually enjoyed listening to this urban-rap sendup of Jingle Bells (but then, I dislike most treacly holiday music anyway).
Third in the lineup is Osama Got Run Over By A Reindeer, a note-for-note sendup of Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer. In this tune, America's favorite enemy, the man we all love to hate, Osama Bin Laden, is attacked and killed off by the same reindeer that got Grandma in the end. Now, even the Taliban believe. It's hard for most Americans to dislike reindeer like this, even those of us who consider ourselves the resident Scrooge.
Batting cleanup, one-third of the way through the album, is the title cut, White Trash Christmas. Intended to parody the Willie Nelson cover version of I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas, the lyrics to White Trash Christmas bring up every white-trash stereotype known to humankind, right down to the two-zillion-rack reindeer joke at the end. Generally, sendups like this don't work for me, because I'm not that fond of the use of stereotypes for any ethnic group (including my own). White Trash Christmas is no exception. I found myself thinking that this cut was rather bland, not worthy of special note.
Our next parody is The Little Hooters Girls, done to the tune of The Little Drummer Boy. In this song, Rivers provides a guy-friendly (and I mean very guy-friendly) description of a trip to the local Hooters restaurant. Hooters waitresses are described in PG-rated spicy detail. But I have to admit that the phrase "rubber tight buns" sounded like "bump-a tight buns" to me, reminding me of one of those songs described in 'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy (a book about misheard lyrics in popular music).
Melody Number 6, Be Claus I Got High, is actually a parody of an Afroman song making fun of the behavior of those who get high on various kinds of dope. Liberal mention is made of the propensity of certain recreational drugs to make the user unusually hungry (commonly known in some circles as the "marijuana munchies"). Although some might not like the mention of irreverent uses of gastrointestinal distress during Midnight Mass, the point is well taken, and the song generally works in a way Rivers might not have intended. I ended up laughing at the image of a buffoon doing the recreational-drug equivalent of wearing a lampshade on his head while drunk.
Not So Silent Night is a very loud rendition of the traditional Christmas hymn Silent Night. The instrumentation is supposed to parody that of the original hymn - all guitars, only those using amplifiers rather than acoustic ones, and jacked up to the point of pain rather than played softly and reverently. This is one of the least-funny parodies that I've heard, precisely because it actually came so close to the spirit of the original song without intending to do so. In fact, I could hear this song being done within the context of a "guitar Mass" for youth in the 1960s.
Me And Mrs. Claus is a parody of Me and Mrs. Jones (originally sung by Billy Paul), describing an extramarital affair the singer is having with Mrs. Claus. Like the original, the lyrics to the parody contain many references to the belief that extramarital affairs are wrong, but there is at least an acknowledgment in the parody that "a bit on the side" is tempting because it's fun if it's engaged in at all. The jazzy instrumentation and pacing are transferred from the original song. Believe it or not, I found myself thinking that this song humanized Santa and Mrs. Claus, rather than making them even more of a pair of cardboard cutouts than they were originally.
Have Yourself an Ozzy Little Christmas, done to the tune of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, does to Ozzy Osbourne what White Trash Christmas did to - well - white trash. Every possible Ozzy Osbourne stereotype is hauled out of the closet and made the object of laughter - the potential safety of bats in the same room as Osbourne, his propensity for getting "high" or drunk or both, and so forth. Those familiar with Osbourne during that era might get a chuckle out of this song, while those familiar with the Osbournes from their television show might or might not get the jokes in this song.
Merry Christmas Allah is meant to be a sendup of Merry Christmas Darling, right down to the woman selected to sing the song (a woman who sounds enough like Karen Carpenter to make the song work). Rivers admits that this was harder to write than some of the other material on WHITE TRASH CHRISTMAS, largely because he shares the American tendency not to be familiar with other cultures, especially ones as radically different as those in the Muslim world. In reading the lyrics to this song, I can see the problems he had writing this song; they came across, to this reviewer at least, as little more than an American attempt to try to be politically correct. I suspect that even though he tried hard not to offend people, there will be some who are offended by the lyrics to Merry Christmas Allah, and the attempt to relate Islam to Christians' celebration of the birth of the Savior. However, it's still a dead-on note-for-note parody of Merry Christmas Darling, and I liked the idea of hiring someone to sing Merry Christmas Allah who sounded so much like Karen Carpenter.
Shoppin' Around For A Christmas Tree, a parody of Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree, is a funny description of the hazards of purchasing a live tree during Advent. The singer who did Shoppin' Around For A Christmas Tree sounds as much like Brenda Lee as the woman who sang Merry Christmas Allah sounded like Karen Carpenter. If there is one song on this album which exemplifies the spirit of Mike Stone's writeoff, Shoppin' Around For A Christmas Tree is it. Purchasing a live tree every year isn't fun, especially when one is forced to deal with back-lot Christmas tree dealers whose morals are about as upright as those of the average used-car salesman.
I'll Be Stoned For Christmas is a parody of I'll Be Home For Christmas. The singer reminded me of Dean Martin, and the parody lyrics sent up Martin's propensity for portraying himself as something of a "loveable lush" back when that was still socially acceptable. You won't find this on Rivers' website, but at the end of this song, there is a funny routine in which the singer is forced to look for car keys which have (by implication) been hidden by a host concerned about his guest's driving home in a drunken state.
This album has been approved by the Grinch Committee for all potential Scrooges with a sense of humor and a knowledge of many different types of music.
Unless you ve spent the last few years hiding out in some cave in Tora Bora, you certainly know Bob Rivers as America s funniest song parodist. With s...More at Buy.com
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