I have managed to banish some winter-blues and general post-wild-goose-chase-malaise by finally putting up Xmas tree and about 400 fairy lights. Then I slapped on the Official Wadsworth Xmas CD*. As we all know, Xmas music is basically awful, but it's so bad that it's good. Anybody who has followed my "Humour" links may have stumbled across the toe curlingly awful musical device known as The (Truck Driver's) Gear Change.
Put two and two together, and what do you get as the non-plus-ultra in true awfulness? Counting down from 6 to 1 ...
6. "Rockin' around the Christmas" by Mel Smith & Kim Wilde (text-book gratuitous and pointless gear changes to try and keep a desperately boring song alive)
5. "Mary's boy child" by Boney M (in your face!)
4. "Never had a dream come true" by S Club 7 (rather poetically, it's a semi-tone gear change, right after the "No no no no..."
3. "Mull of Kintyre" by Wings (difficult to spot, but it's there)
2. "Christmas time" by The Darkness (gear change during solo, but it's there)
... and, because it's so well done ...
1. "Sleigh ride" by Andy Williams. This song eschews the traditional verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure - it's basically the same couple of lines over and over again with a gear change after every few repetitions, about half-a-dozen in total - but he doesn't even break a sweat. Truly masterful.
* You can fit up to 200 songs in MP3 format on one CD, if you get a special player, they're only £10 or £20 more expensive than yer usual all-in-one CD player/radio. The Official Wadsworth Xmas CD has 65 Xmas-themed hits on it.
Male Talkers
46 minutes ago
4 comments:
The 'Mull of Kintyre' change is only difficult to spot because bagpipes are always in the wrong key.
Aha, thanks for that! I will check this out properly using my trusty bass guitar.
Shakin' Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone
N, that'd be number 7, there are loads of them. In fact, a Xmas song isn't a proper Xmas sing without a gear-change e.g. "Hooray Hooray It's a Hol-Holiday".
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