TSO's Carol of the Bells

Carol of the Bells is either a great song or the worst thing you have ever heard.  There is no middle ground on this one.  Either people are singing it in such a way that it makes you want to stab your ears with sharp objects or it makes you want to go buy a new car.  Because apparently, nothing sells new cars faster than an ad that uses "Carol of the Bells" as the jingle (bells, jingle bells, jing...that's different post).  On second thought, with socialized car manufacturing now firmly entrenched in our country, stabbing your ears with sharp stuff and buying a new car might actually be two forms of torture.  Three, if you add in the taxes you're going to have to pay on that new car.

But, I digress. 

Then there's Trans-Siberian Orchestra's version of it, which defies any explanation at all and is in a class all by itself.  It is the Cadillac (come on, you know me, yes I meant the pun), the carol of the bellsiest of all "Carol of the Bells" recordings and may in fact be the most awesome version of this song ever recorded.  You probably need to somehow like a classic song mixed with synthesized and heavy guitar music to appreciate this recording though.  Listen, if my Mom likes this song, you can like it too.  Mom is a music purist (whatever that means) and it's kind of cute to see her bonding with the grandkids over heavy metal music. 

On the other hand, if you truly can't stand it, then please try to refrain from poking the aforementioned sharp objects into your ears because you can damage your hearing that way.  Not to mention, we are about to be subjected to socialized medicine and you might as well just amputate your ears now as to try and get someone to fix them after your hissy fit over bad music.  And don't forget the old adage from that movie, "The Christmas Coincidence on 40th Street":  Teacher said, "Every time someone pokes stuff in their ears an angel loses it's wings."  This movie was the sequel to the one with the suicidal guy.  And even though I have never actually seen "Miracle on...whatever the address was Street" and the other one I just fabricated about 45 seconds ago, you can see how that doesn't stop me from talking about either one of them as if I am an expert.

I get coal in my stocking and I have never seen "Miracle on Somethingoranother Street" and I go to a support group for this.

"Hi T, welcome.  We don't know the address of that suicidal guy either."

Moving along...  

Back to "Carol of the Bells"...Lyrically, it's not that hard of a song to sing or at least fake.  That's because no one really knows the words to it.  If you can sing four "merry's" in a row at breakneck speed and then a Christmas as well as a "ding" and a "dong" every now and then, congratulations, you may pick up your choir card in the office.  Actually, you might only need to be able to do one or the other since I think the ding dongs are in the bass section.  No offense to any basses who might be reading this. 

Moving along...again...

There might be some other words, but no one can understand them because the tempo is somewhere around quarter note=240.  All of you music majors reading this (Mom) (Um, Mom you are reading this right?!) know what that means.  The rest of you don't worry about it.  It just means sing as fast as humanly possible.  If you can't keep up then just mouth the word "watermelon", don't make any sound at all and smile like you know what you are doing.  That's what someone told me they did when they didn't know the words to the songs and it worked for them.  Maybe it will work for you too, like huked on fonix wurked wen u gotcher lurnin frum soshilized ehjewcashun. 

Too bad Val didn't subscribe to the Watermelon Method when we were kids.  It could have saved us a LOT of embarrassment when we were younger and had to do "Special Music" at church.  We could have used a song book but that was "dumb" so instead she hid the book behind her back so we could make up our own lyrics when we couldn't remember them.  Either that or we would break into bouts of uncontrollable laughter when someone messed up much to the chagrin of our poor Mother.  Because evidently, neither of those scenarios were "dumb".  Sorry Mom.

If Mike and I were going to put Christmas lights on our house, this is EXACTLY how we would do it because we subscribe to the theory that anything worth doing, is worth doing to the extreme.  Also, it would be interesting to count the number of auto accidents the lasers would cause since we live in town on a busy street. 




Just to prove you have to sing this song fast, here's Straight No Chaser doing in 1.5 minutes, what it took TSO three minutes to do.