I was Ubering home yesterday when I heard it. The vanguard of the invasion. The ever-encroaching start to The Season. Yes, it was a Christmas song, shoving aside Thanksgiving and stepping over its prone body, the beginning of the month-long Jingle Hell.
As I cringed and covered my ears, I thought about the other things I hate having to listen to. To wit, annoying commercials, and “All hail Trump” political circle-jerks. (The latter is the one I spend the most time running from; I have a great many loud family members who believe everything on Fox). I started playing a little would-you-rather game with myself: if I had to choose, and sticking an icepick in my eardrums wasn’t an option, would I rather have the jingles, the commercials, or the politics?
That lead to the following horrifying thought: what if all three were combined?
Imagine, if you will, a jingle marathon sponsored by the RNC. Imagine a radio that you can’t turn off, playing “Donald the Orange-Wigged Genius”, “White Christians”, “We Three Amigos”, etc. All the vocals are done by Mitch McConnell and/or Devin Nune’s cow.
And after every jingle, a commercial wherein a twee brat (secretly Mitch on helium) sings about how you should call 1-877-R’S-FOR-KIDS. Nah, some things are too evil even for Mitch McYertle.
Due to the fact that I successfully avoided Pumpkin Spice Anything this fall! And have steered clear of any big stores (the worst purveyors of “Christmas Music That Would Make Jesus Cranky”). And we’ve declared our big holiday meals a Politics-Free Venue*.
*In-laws are all left of Liz ‘n’ Bern, my family’s just a bit to the right of Goebbels.
I collect old Seeburg Background Music System records, a weird 9" format that has 20 songs per side and plays only on Seeburg machines.
In the 60s and 70s, this was a service for background music in stores. Seeburg would send out a new set of records every month to swap out some from your current stack of 25 that you had running in your machine.
And I am overcome with joy because I just received my Christmas Records!
…a rather grungy set from the 1960s procured on eBay. There were 9 records in the set. At 20 songs per side, that’s a substantial dose of old-fashioned Christmas background music.
As soon as they came in, I loaded up the freshly refurbished Seeburg 1000 machine and filled the house with old-school renditions of Silver Bells, Frosty the Snowman, Winter Wonderland, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and whatever else we heard in stores back then.
(Hijack) Seeburg system — interesting! I love how one of the original three musical genres was “industrial” (uptempo music, to get workers to produce stuff more quickly, not Skinny Puppy), and how another genre, “mood,” was renamed “penthouse” in the 70s.