Macabre & Mysterious Music: Little Drummer Boy (Plus The Sing-Off.)

Ahoy to you folks up there, on the SS Holiday Madness! It’s me, Renae. I’m down here, following along behind you in my battered but sturdy dinghy. In a couple of minutes, I’m heading out to see if I can find a cheap little Christmas tree and a string of lights or two, but first I thought I’d babble for a bit.

I’ve slept for about four of the last thirty hours, and I’m flying pretty high. (Santa brought me a little mania for Christmas.) This is good. In these last couple of days, I’ve organized and cleaned the hell out of my life and home. There’s still some vacuuming and scrubbing to do but, by tomorrow evening, I think I’ll be able to relax with The Boy and Ogre for a few days.

QUICK BLOG UPDATES:

• I apologize for not getting to #NetNet this week – I’m just too far behind on my blog reading to do it justice. I’ll cover two weeks, come next Saturday.
• Once the Big Day is past, I’ll have a new chapter in the #ParanormalHotel saga for you: Langston and the Night of 14 Cops. It’s not a very seasonally appropriate story, and I’m not sure all the facts are in yet, so I’m going to hold off on that for now.
• I’m uncertain about the fate of Macabre & Mysterious Music in 2014. I might drop it; I might change it to be about all media (excluding books & movies, because they get their own treatments here.) Let me know what you think: should I continue to post a song every Monday, or should I mix things up a little?

Tonight, I want to share a not very macabe piece: The Little Drummer Boy.

The Pentatonix version of this song is showing up at least once in every 10 posts on my Facebook feed, so you’ve probably already heard it, but – if not – have a listen; it’s really lovely.

Speaking of Pentatonix, they will be appearing on tonight’s finale of The Sing-Off. We’ve been following the show enthusiastically around here. (Even The Boy, who hardly ever watches TV, is a fan.) In the following space, I have typed up our opinions and winner prediction in WHITE text. Highlight the area between the *s if you aren’t afraid of spoilers.

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We predict (perhaps “hope” is a better word choice there) that our hometown boys, Home Free, will take the title. At first we weren’t so sure about this country a cappella thing, but those harmonies are just so tight and resonant that we were won over. We don’t think the group’s musical selections have been all they could have been, but we think they might get it right tonight. If it’s not Home Free, then we’re pulling for the high school group, Vocal Rush. There’s an awful lot of maturity and power in those young bodies. For whatever reason, none of us really like Ten. Ogre says it’s because they aren’t really a group, and they don’t have the dynamics we really enjoy. (It was amazing, though, seeing them pull one amazing voice after another from their ranks in last episode’s sing-off.)

[EDIT] How cool is it that Ben Folds and Vocal Rush did the Crosby/Bowie version of the song? I didn’t know that was going to happen. Lucky post.

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THIS is the version of The Little Drummer Boy that will always bring tears to my eyes. When I saw it on television when I was a child, (yes, I am that old) I had no idea who that pretty young man with odd eyes was, but I thought he had the voice of an angel.

Merry Christmas, Everybody. I’ll be back soon.

NOTE: Because I’m a stickler for respecting copyright, anything posted here at the blog will be carefully vetted – I’ll only embed videos and sound clips posted to YouTube by the artist for sharing, or those being offered by the original artist from the artist’s home page. If you know of a cool, creepy, macabre or mysterious song, drop me a comment. I’m always looking for good stuff.