Dr. Demento Presents: Greatest Christmas Novelty CD

Various Artists - Miscellaneous - Holiday, Dr. Demento

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 31, 1989)
• Original Release Date: 1989
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Rhino / Wea
• ASIN: B00000348G
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #31,435 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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  #5 in	Music > Miscellaneous > Compilations > Comedy
  #18 in	Music > Miscellaneous > Compilations > Holiday Music
  #24 in	Music > Miscellaneous > Holiday > Halloween

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
The title might be immodest, but it's accurate. Just about every holiday song parody and comedy sketch you can imagine is jimmied onto this hilarious, sprawling collection. While you'll find a smattering of well-known Christmas wackiness (including "Grandma Got Run over by a Reindeer" and the Singing Dogs' "Jingle Bells"), the Doctor's specialty is unearthing the obscure, such as Wild Man Fischer's weirder-than-weird "I Am a Christmas Tree." You'll never listen to "The 12 Days of Christmas" quite the same way after hearing the spins put on the tale by both Allan Sherman and Bob and Doug McKenzie, and you're likely to check your Christmas cookie for "special ingredients" after hearing Cheech & Chong's "Santa Claus and His Old Lady." --David Sprague

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars and a Japanese transistor radio, November 20, 2004

By	Johnny Heering "trivia buff" (Bethel, CT United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This one lives up to it's title. It is indeed "the greatest Christmas novelty CD of all time". You get practically every great Christmas novelty song ever recorded. Classics from the Chipmunks, Spike Jones, Stan Freberg and many others. It even includes that overplayed "Grandma" song. My personal favorite Christmas novelty, "Green Chri$tma$", is here. And chances are that your favorite Christmas novelty is here, too. This is one of my favorite CDs from my huge Christmas CD collection. Highly recommended.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dr. Demento Presents: Greatest Christmas Novelty CD, November 9, 2006

By	Linda Alana "Sew Terri" (Georgia, USA) - See all my reviews

I have searched and searched for the song "I want a Hippo... for Christmas" and found it! This CD contained several silly songs that are hard to find these days and rarely heard anymore. Thanks!

29 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars NOT your average Christmas collection, July 18, 2000

By	J. Collins "Paradise Bar & Grill" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Dr. Demento's collection of Holiday novelty songs is a weird and wonderful find. Just when it looked like the genre had been trampled to death with the success of "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer," the good Doctor shows us that there are richer (and funnier) X-mas musical parodies to enjoy.

Granted, some of these tracks are inevitable additions on Christmas discs that cover a specific era, or only include songs that were commercial successes: the tracks by the Chipmunks, Spike Jones and Elmo & Patsy are almost as tedious as a Kenny G Holiday collection. Fortunately, there are plenty of lesser-known gems here, like Gayla Peevey's bouncy "I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas" and Tom Lehrer's "Christmas Carol," a witty and sharp commentary on Holiday commercialism.

This collections spans about 40 years, but the selections generally complement each other, rather than sound out of place. The humor of the material here also spans a wide area, from goofy-voiced tunes for kids to sly, insinuating musical parody. Some of the choices are obvious, but others are wonderfully inexplicable, like "I'm A Christmas Tree" and "I Saw DADDY Kissing Santa Claus." Two of the more recent tracks (from Cheech & Chong and Weird Al Yankovic) are classics that appear (to my knowledge) in this collection only.

There are a few lame entries: "Christmas Dragnet" will only appeal to fans of the TV show, and Bob & Doug McKenzie's (of SCTV fame) "12 Days of Christmas" is similarly limited. The "Jingle Bells" cover here is simply annoying, though it's probably appealing to kids and drunks.

Christmas music, as a sub-genre of Pop music, is generally not an area that produces a lot of unique performances. The sentiments and well-wishings of classic songs like "Silent Night" or even "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" tend to be lost when people buy collections for the singer and not the material. Dr. Demento's addled and brilliant collection is a sure-bet for people who are tired of Diva-esque Christmas albums, or who simply refuse to be conventional.

-Mic