Bill Engvall has been rehashing the same anti-stupid-people "here's your sign" bit for more than a decade now, coupled with a rash of unfunny, reactionary "seems to me that times have changed" material that goes down well with the Cracker Barrel bunch. His newly reissued 1999 disc Here's Your Christmas Album (Warner Bros.) may be the nadir of his career: a set of lame joke songs like "I'm Getting Sued By Santa Claus" and "Rudolph Got A DUI," set to generic big-beat "new country" and flanked by intros and outros where Engvall chuckles to himself before adding a sobering, "You know what's sad? You and I both know that could really happen these days." Ho-ho-huh?…
Much funnier and more warmly inclusive: A John Waters Christmas (New Line), first released last year, and now back again for people who prefer their holidays a little bent. The songs run the gamut from R&B novelties like Fat Daddy's "Fat Daddy" to Christmas classics given ear-piercing re-dos by Tiny Tim and Alvin & The Chipmunks. But the disc's real wonderments are ultra-sincere high-kitsch finds like Little Cindy's spoken-word "Happy Birthday Jesus" and Akim & The Teddy Vann Production Company's radical "Santa Claus Is A Black Man." If there's a volume two someday, expect to find Bill Engvall's self-congratulatory, pro-Bible "The Christmas Sign" on it…
Even twangy novelty bands whose members dress like Mexican wrestlers have to get into the holiday spirit once in a while. Los Straitjackets do so with style on their all-instrumental 2002 album 'Tis The Season For Los Straitjackets (Yep Roc). It adds rock 'n' roll flair to "A Marshmallow World," "Sleigh Ride," and others, and it goes down easy while still rocking pretty hard…
Finally, for when the Christmas party has lingered on a little too long, there's Pull My Finger's 2004 album Jingle Smells (Oglio). Song titles like "Oh Gassy Tree," "Silent Butt Deadly Night," and "Sugarplum Farties" pretty much tell the whole story, and the cover boasts that it features "100% Gastrointestinal Emissions." The variety of fart noises featured here sound a little too in-tune for that claim, but who really wants to find out?