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Yeah, I mentioned Jill earlier this month, but I just found this video of her version of Robert Earl Keen's funny Christmas song. A lot of folks insist Keen's version is better, but I prefer Jill's because it's, well, less country, not to mention that it benefits from Jill's winsome style of delivery as well. No offense to Keen; I like his version fine. He got a parody children's book out of the song, while Jill got this video, which she apparently didn't know was still out there, according to her blog. This video, by the way, is almost a forerunner of the "literal video" craze, to my eyes anyway. UPDATE: Sorry, couldn't embed it. You can still see it here, however.

However you may have felt about the 1996 holiday movie featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad (?), the producers made a fairly good stab at providing listenable incidental music, although it skews a bit toward lounge music and away from rock 'n roll. Still, there are some bonafide classics like Chuck Berry's "Run Rudolph Run," Charles Brown's "Merry Christmas Baby," Clarence Carter's "Back Door Santa," Bobby Helms' "Jingle Bell Rock," along with pop standards like Nat King Cole's "The Christmas Song" and Johnny Mathis' "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year." To round out the show, they brought in the Brian Setzer Orchestra and guest vocalists Darlene Love and Lou Rawls. Lou croons Setzer's own "So They Say It's Christmas," while Darlene rocks "Sleigh Ride" in a different arrangement than on the Phil Spector album and shows an affinity for jazz-pop on Sammy Hagar's "Deep in the Heart of Xmas." Setzer kicks off the album singing "Jingle Bells" and the rest of the album features non-holiday music from the soundtrack's composer, David Newman. It's not a bad album overall, but if you already have the classic tunes here it's up to you whether to buy it for the Setzer Orchestra's performances.

Before Danny Elfman became a soundtrack music maven, he was involved with Oingo Boingo, a new wave outfit that sounded like Devo crossed with the Glenn Miller Orchestra. This 1993 outing, written and produced as the soul of Tim Burton's stop-animation extravaganza, puts a nice twist on the holiday -- and isn't bad as Halloween music, either. Danny and fellow cast members Catherine O'Hara and Paul Reubens (SCTV and Pee Wee, respectively) do a knockout job on "Kidnap the Sandy Claws" and "Oogie Boogie's Song" with Ken Page and Ed Ivory is a bluesy romp. However, soundtracks do suffer from songs that don't travel well away from the movie or play, and this one's no exception. But the two songs above are almost worth the whole album. UPDATE: For 2007, in conjunction with the re-release of the film in IMAX 3D, there's a "Special Edition" of this album with a second disc of bonus cuts featuring versions of the soundtrack's songs from Marilyn Manson, Panic at the Disco, Fiona Apple, Fall Out Boy and She Wants Revenge, plus some of Danny Elfman's demos of those songs.

I've had this little number since its 1993 release and completely forgot about it until I saw a mention of it on the Power Pop blog the other day. The poet and author is also a power popper, and this sweet little bopper is from his first solo album, The Greatest Living Englishman, produced by Andy Partridge, who knows a thing or two about Christmas singles himself. Points for mentioning "saturnalia" in a song otherwise about a too-conventional holiday just outside the city.

The early rock-era star whose big hit was "Quarter to Three" still pops up from time to time, last being heard on a solo album produced by Bruce Springsteen with "This Little Girl." Over at his website you can pull down these two songs, the latter being a "Quarter to Three"-styled takeoff from the original carol that appeared in a TV show and the former, "Call Me," is a soulful ballad from an album released in 1995, Take Me Home to New Orleans, but it sounds like it was from back in the day. Both tunes sound like they could be off the Huey "Piano" Smith and the Clowns Christmas album.

Last year this Cincinnati band released its second Christmas album, Snow Angels, which we reviewed favorably. Curiosity piqued, and also because we're completists here to the extent possible, we went into the Wayback Machine (OK, it was actually iTunes) to scope out their first effort from 1996. You can hear the continuity between the two discs in terms of the folk-pop-jazz style of the music. The title is pretty much on the nose, as this is quiet and intense, again much like Low, as we said in the Snow Angels piece. Unlike the later album, there's a larger number of familiar carols in the playlist, including two versions of "Silent Night," one a midtempo poppy version, the other slower and done as a "duet" with dual voices, both of which are the same singer. The band did pen a few tunes for this effort. "Thank You My Angel" doesn't have much of a holiday theme, nor does "Amelia's Last," though thematically they serve the album title. "Mary's Waltz" uses Christmas more as a motif for the story of a blind girl who escapes her bedroom to dance. There's also a fair number of instrumentals here, including "The First Noel," "Greensleeves," "O Little Town of Bethlehem," and the originals "Coal Train," "Up North Here Where the Stars..." and "A Little Lower Than the Angels."

Smokie was one of those British pop bands from the early 70s that came along on the tailwind of the glam-rock era, associated with the production and songwriting team of Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman. The pair had also worked with such bands as Sweet, Mud, Suzi Quatro and Hot Chocolate. Smokie's celebrity was mostly confined to the European sphere, with such hits as "Don't Play Your Rock 'n Roll To Me," "If You Think You Know How to Love Me," and "Living Next Door To Alice." Lead singer Chris Norman also duetted with Quatro on the worldwide hit "Stumblin' In." Unlike most of the Chinnichap acts, Smokie persevered onward into the present day, pausing to record this Christmas CD in 1996. It's your basic 20-years-on rock band that's done everything else adding a Christmas record to the repertoire. They long ago left Chinnichap behind, so what we have here is adult contemporary pop-rock layered under synthesized orchestration applied to 14 songs, of which "It Won't Be Christmas," "When a Child is Born," the title song, and "Christmas Isn't Just For Children," all fairly conventional Christmas sentiments. Considering the band once cut an album in Nashville, the countrified take on "Away In a Manger" isn't unexpected, but it is a different arrangement. They also do David Essex's "A Winter's Tale," Chris DeBurgh's "A Spaceman Came Travelling," and an almost folkish "Mary's Boy Child." The rest are traditional carols like "O Christmas Tree," "O Holy Night," "Silent Night" and pop standards like "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "White Christmas." This is OK for Smokie fans and those who like their bands to be from the 1970s, assuming you don't pay import prices for it.

Rhino has always been known for impeccable theme compilations, but it started out specializing in novelty records. One of its most enduring novelties, "(It's Gonna Be a) Punk Rock Christmas" by The Ravers, is the linchpin of this 1995 collection of 18 snot-nosed holiday classics, some of which originated in the original punk rock explosion of the late 70s while others are of later vintage. Besides the title classic by the Ravers, artists like Stiff Little Fingers, the Ramones, the Damned (and their Marx Brothers cop, "There Ain't No Sanity Clause"), Mojo Nixon, The Dickies and more are represented here. Some folks paid good money for the import 45s of at least a few of these items when they were new, but they're likely to be all new to a fair number of listeners. One warning: the album is missing the "Parental Advisory" sticker, and it needs one badly. (At the time this was reposted, the link from the album cover to Amazon showed one copy available for $88, but you can at least use the page to listen to samples.)

This independent band band put this song on its album Knock Yer Block Off, but the eponymously titled 5-song EP from 1992 includes a Christmas bonus: a cover of "Hooray for Santa Claus," the theme from the cult classic film "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians." (Featuring Pia Zadora's first film role.) You just have to admire people with such good taste in bad movies. Both tunes are streamlined 90's punk performed well and worth a space on your holiday mix tapes.

This still-existing band's 1996 album is as punk as punk rock Christmases get: fast, loud and profane (Parental Advisory sticker needed here). Nevertheless, there's plenty of dark humor in the lyrics; tunes like "Thanx For Nothing," "A Gun For Christmas" and "Grandpa's Last X-mas" more than live up to their titles, as do a couple of tunes whose titles I won't include here in deference to the younger folks who might stumble across this site. They give a high-energy shredding to "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" and even cover The Yobs' "C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S." The Damned's Rat Scabies guests on drums. Definitely not for the sentimental, not to mention the easily offended. UPDATE: It's been reissued as Oi To the World, with an additional track, an orchestrated overture featuring a medley of the album's songs.

These guys won't be having any trouble with the Federal Trade Commission with an album title like this one. Here we have a cool dozen classic Christmas carols rendered as surf instrumentals, except for vocals on "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," which lapses into a bit of "Small World" with different verses in different languages. The rest is straight 60's surf guitar soloing over good old-fashioned drums. The band even credits their source for vintage instruments in the liner notes, too. From 1996. UPDATE: Biographical information for this group is hard to come by, but the folks at Fat City Cigar Lounge seem to think they're a bunch of studio musicians from Amsterdam.

More surf music for Christmas, but with a twist; a lot of these tunes are apparently originals, unless I somehow overlooked the Percy Faith Orchestra's version of "Santa Drives a Super Stock Dodge:" "And I heard him exclaim as he headed down Vine/Merry Christmas to all, now hear my Hemi whine!" These guys apparently are trying to channel the Beach Boys and come pretty close on many of these songs. This album is a reissue of A Malibu Kind of Christmas, circa 1992; they changed the title but very little else to tie in with another album of theirs, Malibooz Rule. The group is John Zambetti and Walter Egan, the latter the author of a solo album produced by Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, and they have a website. "It's Just Not Christmas" evokes middle-period Brian Wilson after the breakdown but before "Smile," and many others, like "When Santa Comes to Santa Cruz," "And a Happy New Year" and "Santa Man" definitely touch on several Beach Boys hits. Non-originals include "Little Surfin' Drummer Boy," something that's been done before but the Malibooz throw in a little "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow" vocalizing, and "Carol of the Swells" surfs up the carol about the bells. Then there's "Rudy, the Hodad Surf Dude," based on Rudolph's song, in which a stranded Santa gets a loan of a surfboard to salvage the holiday. And the album ends with "Christmas Wrap," another surf adaption, in this case "A Visit From St. Nicholas," who was, wait for it, surfing. Fourteen tunes was a little too many for a one-joke album, but there's plenty of good stuff here. UPDATE: Malibooz Rule has one more holiday tune, "Santa's Gone Surfin'."

A little South Pacific surf, a little boogie and lots of steel guitar and you have The Blue Hawaiians. And what could be more natural for a band like this one than to do a Christmas album? Lots of things. Nevertheless, this short (10 songs) but energetic album from 1995 has plenty to recommend it. Most of the tunes are instrumentals, except for "Jingle Jangle," "Blue Christmas," the title song and "Mele Kalikimaka," the official Hawaiian Christmas song. The band manages to maintain a tension between their trademark sound and the material, which also includes "Christmas Time is Here," "White Christmas," "Have Yourself a Quiet (Merry) Little Christmas" and a medley of "We Four Kings (The Little Drummer Boy)" in which the little drummer played on the Surfaris' "Wipe Out" in a former life.