Yes, I do realize that Christmas ended two weeks ago today but I really couldn't let this one song go, especially I would have to wait another eleven months to activate this one.
To be honest, I only discovered this Xmas oddity a few days after December 25th. The late singer-songwriter Eiichi Ohtaki（大滝詠一）showed off his humourous side once more with "Christmas Ondo" (Christmas Folk Song). It was placed suitably as the penultimate track on his Xmas Day-release 1977 concept album "Niagara Calendar". Inspired by Julie London's 1956 "Calendar Girl", Ohtaki's tracks follow along the theme of a calendar from New Year's to New Year's.
"Christmas Ondo" is a fun mélange of Xmas music and Japanese festival melody that includes excerpts from "Silent Night", "White Christmas" and "Jingle Bells". It makes me wonder whether some enterprising folks in Japan ever came up with a Christmas matsuri somewhere in the years since. One bit of trivia that I got from the J-Wiki article on "Niagara Calendar" was that Ohtaki had begged Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）to include and arrange a string section. Tats wasn't too keen on the necessity but Ohtaki insisted and somehow the deed got done.
Interestingly enough, Ohtaki got together with vocal group Chanels (before they became known as Rats and Star) at a Christmas Day 1979 concert and did their version of "Christmas Ondo". Methinks the guys had generous helpings of spiked egg nog to get them through it.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to provide any comments (pro or con). Just be civil about it.