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The Story of Christmas
I think it all started because people were worried about my mental
health.
I used to harmonically assault a Christmas carol every year when I was in college, and I
would write it out for my sister to play during the midnight Christmas Eve service, for
which, amazingly, we were never called on the carpet. The year I made my first Curtis
Mystery Christmas Tape, my sister was no longer playing the midnight service, so I decided
to include a mangled Christmas tune (We Wish You a Merry Christmas, I believe), and a
couple selections from the then unfinished Furniture project.
(Okay, bear with me.) I felt like I needed one more tune with a holiday flavor to round
out the set. I made a little sound collage depicting a small child seeing Santa at the
mall for the first time, which I thought would be FUNNY because small children, of course,
are usually TERRIFIED of mall Santas. I synthesized as best I could maniacal kid laughter
and mall burble (on a Roland D110, no less) with "O, Holy Night" playing on
bells in the background, all washed with a CREEPING SOUND OF FEAR sort of
Shostokovich-inspired string overlay. Children. Mall. Santa. Terror. Quelle blague, non?
Since one of the Furniture songs included was "Gonzoles Gets Twisted", I thought
it would unify the gag if I titled the sound collage "Gonzoles Sees Santa at the
Mall".
In hindsight, I suppose that I should have recognized that the overall
effect of the Mall piece was really pretty creepy. But I sent out all the tapes anyway.
Besides my mother waiting hopefully through the piece, asking "Doesn't he ever get to
see Santa?", I also had friends walking up and taking me by the shoulder, looking me
square in the eye and asking "Are you okay, John?"
It was only practical that the following year, to dispel any notions that I was wallowing
hopelessly in the abyss, I constructed a Carl
Stalling-inspired little ditty "Gonzoles Pretends to be Santa", which was
unmistakably cheery, to say nothing of much more well received, and sent me down the path
of creating a Gonzoles adventure for the following years.
That's what started it.
Here, in a world-wide exclusive, is the song that
started it all in Windows Media format:
Gonzoles
Sees Santa at the Mall |