Hi, everyone. It’s been a great week! And now it all comes down to this:
It’s for the whole Magilla…
… the whole shooting match…
…the whole enchilada…
(Please: Somebody stop mt before he goes into metaphoric arrest…)
Anyway, you get the idea: From 32 contenders on Monday:
To today’s finalists. Will it be…
Michael Jackson’s epic 80’s horror rave-up, Thriller…
… or that 60 year-old, classic Halloween staple: Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s Monster Mash ?
Vote for the winner here:
https://www.polltab.com/bracket-poll/rMcyTEQxehL
(Note from mt58: If you have trouble voting, let me know in the comments below. We’ll cook up a work-around if necessary…)
We’ll have a special update, late Friday night to announce the winner.
Thanks for participating, and we’ll see you later tonight!
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At first I this one’s a nail biter, but no, I have my guess as to the winner. I won’t say it here so I don’t frighten off any voters.
Are we sure people aren’t voting for this Thriller?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IJ0swW8Vzk
Lambchop has a “Thriller” and they covered The Sisters of Mercy.
Pretty sure.
Although that would be sufficiently creepy to rate a mention in next year’s countdown.
1000 points to LTC for her confidence in our future.
It looks like one way traffic at the moment. Thriller has had enough plaudits, let the mash have this one!
Looks like I’m in the minority on this one but will gladly accept the winner as a “graveyard smash”!
Were it not for the video, “Monster Mash” may have been my final choice but I have to go with “Thriller”. The dancing ghouls and Vincent Price narration put it over the top.
In this lot, “Everything Counts” is their dancing icon.
Misery loves company. “Lullaby”, “Candlelight Song” and “Rawhead and Bloodybones” found a goth song-friendly bar and they all got drunk on “Monster Mash”.
First of all, that costume is clearly a taco, not an enchilada. Granted I’ve never seen an enchilada costume before, so maybe it was a horseshoes-and-hand-grenades scenario.
Secondly, nearly everything I’ve voted for has lost to date, and I have no doubt it will come to pass again today. Such is democracy. But I voted so I earned the right to complain that The Cramps or The Cure or The Time Warp aren’t here on this ultimate stage. Let the darkness come out for Halloween folks. It’s just us, we can choose not to be kid-friendly.
(The Monster Mash is fine. It’s just too obvious! If we finally started slowly letting go of Christmas hits from the 40’s and listening to Mariah and George Michael instead, can’t we move on with Halloween as well?)
Correct on the Mexican food. The found photos of an enchilada costume were just too disturbing to post. So we were forced to go full taco.
The George/ Mariah/ /Bobby Pickett /Bing Crosby / Brenda Lee conversation could potentially make for a good article:
Should nostalgia have an expiration date? And if so, exactly how do we know when to let go?
My answer: when the nostalgia is borrowed.
Very few people alive remember “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” or “White Christmas” as contemporary songs. We younger generations were handed the nostalgia of our grandparents. At some point it’s too far removed from our own experiences… we’d been living on borrowed Christmas nostalgia for too long. Time to make our own nostalgia.
I don’t care much for the Mariah or George Michael songs per se, but they are a sort of comfortable background music that reflects the sounds of my own youth, not my parents’ or grandparents’.
That’s why I voted for Thriller guey!
No, I’m not quite old enough to remember when “White Christmas” was new. But it is part of my childhood because it played in the background of every Christmas that I can remember. Come to that, what about Handel’s “Messiah”? Are we going to cut that loose, too, because it’s old? I say that some of these nostalgic songs have been around long enough to become classics. There is room for the old stuff, the newer stuff, and even for some very new stuff. Who knows what might come out this year that we will love for years to come? Let’s play all of it! (Except “The Christmas Shoes.” Nobody should ever play that one again. Yuk.)
Yeah, I agree. There’s a difference between a classic that may or may not be nostalgic, and something that survives merely on nostalgia-fueled charity.
When I worked at Tower, sometimes customers would be surprised when I complimented an album by Led Zeppelin or some older band. “You probably weren’t even alive when they were around!”
Well, I wasn’t alive to see Beethoven play either, but I sure dig his stuff anyhow!
I am probably into Christmas music more so than the average seasonal listener and can co-sign this perspective. It is very rare that a newer artists cover of a Dean Martin or Nat King Cole classic will ever supplant the older versions. There is however a ton of really great newer Christmas music that just never seems to find the room to break through and take hold. The season is too short and the amount of radio airtime too little for newer songs to get noticed and catch on with the nostalgia listeners.
So are we doing a Christmas song bracket, too? (hint, hint)
I’ll start working on my fruitcake.
Yes, I think we are. May have to divide into categories, may just put them all up against each other. I’ll run it through my Deep Thought machine. Then I’ll flip a coin.
Uh oh.It’s happening.
October 28, 2022 3:36 pm:
First 2022 sighting of The Christmas Shoes.
Run. Save yourselves.
Everyone knows that “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” was made in 1990, specifically for the Home Alone soundtrack.
So instead of Johnny Mathis’ “The Christmas Song”, we replace it with American Music Club’s “Johnny Mathis’ Feet”.
Just take heart knowing that you’re edgier than us normies!
Ouch!
https://youtu.be/mH4O3QPM6aQ
Just saw this while checking today’s weather:
And the results so far reflect what we found here at TNOCS: