BING DEFENDED: Finally, at least for today, we have a beef regarding our rapidly constructed Worst Christmas Songs for 2006. A caller just one year our senior wailed that it was a "bad decision" to include Bing Crosby's "Little Drummer Boy" on our list. Here's how we feel: Any song with the lyric "pa-rum-pa-pum-pum" in it is going to sooner or later wind up on one of our worst-song lists.
Still, because we're nothing if not accommodating, you may feel free to substitute in the Crosby spot versions of "Little Drummer Boy" by Rosemary Clooney, the Vienna Boys Choir, Gladys Knight the Pips, RuPaul, the Trapp Family Singers or David Bowie's ill-advised duet with Crosby. Next year, we shall deal with the "Twelve Days of Christmas" problem and explore the issue of whether it was written by the same person who penned "99 Bottles of Beer." CHRISTMAS CADS: For at least the second consecutive year, tucked amid the tremendous outpouring of love that takes the form of holiday cards swarming and skidding like drunken elves across our desk, comes the one featuring a drawing of the Little Drummer Boy himself.
Our anonymous semi-well-wisher takes umbrage not only with our drummer-boy disrespectin',
Especially if that helps stops the Little Drummer Boy cards. THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING: We just heard the new Christmas offering by Mike Love of Beach Boys fame, and as a result, we are installing that song, "Santa's Goin' to Kokomo," as the perpetual Hall of Fame Worst Christmas Song Ever. Whoever thought it was a good idea to drag a song as bad as "Kokomo" out of the mothballs to be given a Christmas makeover deserves to be known hereafter as the Person Who Killed Christmas.
The Person Who Actually Walked Right Up to Christmas and Strangled It In Front of a Crowd of Horrified Shoppers. You can, in theory, download the song for 99 cents at iTunes, but it will only make you sad or angry. CAROLING AT THE PIKE: Enough of sitting around idly spinning CDs in the comfort of your gaudily decorated house.
Pull yourself together Friday night (surely by then you will have taken care of all your Christmas chores) and take in the yule air with a ride to the Pike Bar Grill, 1836 E. Fourth St., Long Beach, where you will be entertained with a barrage of new, standard and traditional Christmas carolery at the hands of Jeffrey Scott His Amazing Band.
The Long Beach-based trio will be blasting out sounds from its new CD, "Merry Christmas Melodies," a nicely performed collection of six classic and four new original tunes. As everyone knows, we're much too busy to learn any new Christmas songs at this time of year, but the band does a great job of covering, rather faithfully, the Beach Boys' "Little Saint Nick," and the Phil Spector/Darlene Love favorite "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home," which is handled remarkably well by versatile vocalist (and pianist and guitarist) Scott, with backing by bassist/vocalist Brian Netzley and drummist/vocaler Dave Coulter. The band starts at 9 p.
m. If you want to stick to the play-at-home version, you can pick up "Merry Christmas Melodies" at Fingerprints in the Shore, or online at www.CDBaby.
com. Tim Grobaty can be reached at or (562) 499-1256.
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