I thought that I'd do something a bit different today with my Christmas music recommendations. In fact, I'm not even really recommending all of the recordings I mention here. I just wanted to identify some of the odder Christmas music which we have.

When discussing odd Christmas music you can't get much odder than Jingle Cats. Snippets of meows and yowls by cats, edited together to "sing" Christmas songs. When we first played this it freaked our cats out as they alerted when they heard these other cats "saying" nonsense. What I didn't realize when I started this post is that there are multiple Jingle Cats products including toys, books, videos, and who knows what else. This is not something we ever listen to all the way through (maybe the first time we played it), but it is on the juke box. I get a chuckle to hear one of these songs pop up ever now and then (every RARE now and then).

Having started with Jingle Cats, I guess I'll mention Woody Phillips' Toolbox Christmas. Instead of cats this features the sounds of a wide varieties of tools. The sounds of saws, hammers, and all sorts of things are edited together to make Christmas music. Unlike the Jingle Cats recordings which use normal instruments (plus some dogs barking) in addition to their distinctive cat sounds, the toolbox songs are all from shop sounds. It is impressive to hear just because it is so unexpected. But I don't have this in the regular rotation. As musical as Phillips has managed to make these sounds, it is still the sound of tools, not musical instruments. I found a little of this went a long way.

Bob Rivers has released a few different recordings of Twisted Christmas recordings. I haven't listened to these in years, but I still have a fondess for "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem" sung to the tune of "House of the Rising Sun" from one of his other recordings.

Rita Ford has put together a recording of tunes played on music boxes. However, these are not your normal small music boxes. These are old boxes that use multiple different disks to play their music. They have a greater range of notes and a fuller tone than most music boxes you're likely to hear. This is a wonderful recording to have, but I find that after a few songs I'm ready to hear some singing or other instruments again. Unfortunately, Ford has concatonated multiple songs together so that the CD only has four tracks, each of which runs about 15 minutes. By the time I'm halfway through one track I'm sometimes ready for something else. Still, I would actually recommend this recording, unlike some of the others I've mentioned here.

Crash Test Dummies released a Christmas recording called Jingle All the Way. I enjoy this CD quite a bit, but I include it here because of some of the vocals. The lead singer of the group featured on their big hit "God Shuffled His Feet" has a very deep and almost mournful voice. When I hear him singing "Jingle Bells" the contrast is so striking between his voice and the usual tone of this song that I find myself laughing almost every time I hear it. For that reason alone I include it here among the oddities. Otherwise it is a very nice recording (I'm listening to it as I write this) and doesn't really fit with the oddities.

There was a limited edition release called Trojan Christmas Box Set. (Get your minds out of the gutter! Trojan is the name of the record label.) What I didn't realize when I bought it is that Trojan publishes primarily (exclusively?) reggae music. It was inexpensive and included 50 songs by artists I'd never heard of. I was hoping for some folk/blues/rock something. Instead I got reggae. I'm not sure that I've ever even listened to the whole thing. I think it is definitely odd. Amazon doesn't even seem to list it. That link is to BestPrices.com.

Clearly there are many more recordings of odd Christmas songs and songs about Christmas. I don't begin to claim that this list is comprehensive of either the market or even my own collection. However, I thought I'd share these few. What recordings do you have that you'd consider odd?