PST sleighs me

December 23, 2008 10:23 PM

"I like to sing Jingle Bell Rock, but using only the words "bell", "rock", and "jingle": bell rock jingle rock Bell jingle rock Rock jingle rock Bell jingle bell Rock bell Jingle Rock rock bell Jingle rock, jingle rock Bell bell bell Drives my wife nuts. I'd record an MP3 of me doing it if someone could find me a karaoke track. posted by PinkStainlessTail at 12:25 PM on December 22, 2004 [8 favorites +] [!]"...

"May I present you with PinkStainlessTail's Jingle Rock Bell, backed by organist Lenny Dee. (My favorite part is when he says "Ringle Jock Bell." He knows how to keep you on your toes.)
posted by quasistoic at 1:33 PM on December 24, 2004 [28 favorites +] [!]"

posted by vapidave to MetaFilter Music at 10:23 PM (60 comments total)

Shouldn't this go in MefiMusic?
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:33 PM on December 23, 2008

A classic well worth revisiting, but watch out, earworm alert!
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 11:15 PM on December 23, 2008

mefites, your challenge is to cover Jingle Rock Bell.
You have *checks watch* 24 hours.
posted by boo_radley at 11:59 PM on December 23, 2008

I can tell already, needs more jingle rock bell.
posted by iamkimiam at 12:00 AM on December 24, 2008

Shouldn't this go in MefiMusic?

Probably, but it's awesome anyway.
posted by Caduceus at 12:08 AM on December 24, 2008

OH FUCK NO NO PLEASE NO OH FUCK NOT THIS AGAIN MAKE IT STOP

*begins screaming incoherently and stabbing himself in the head with an icepick*

GET IT OUT GET IT OUT GETITOUT GETITOUTGETITOUTGETITOUTGETITOUT
posted by loquacious at 12:17 AM on December 24, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

God, I love this track. I was talking to some newer MeFites and they had never heard of it, let alone heard it.
posted by Kattullus at 1:06 AM on December 24, 2008

U.N Owen claimed to be the grandchild of someone who helped write that song!
posted by Astro Zombie at 2:05 AM on December 24, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

You can do this with O Tannenbaum/Oh Christmas Tree too.

Oh Christmas tree oh Christmas tree
Oh Christmas tree oh Christmas tree
Oh Christmas tree oh Christmas tree
Oh Christmas tree oh Christmas tree
Oh Christmas TREEEE oh Christmas tree
Oh Christmas TREEEE oh Christmas tree
Oh Christmas tree oh Christmas tree
Oh Christmas tree oh Christmas treeeeee
posted by DU at 3:00 AM on December 24, 2008 [8 favorites has favorites]

I love this so much I have it in my Christmas music playlist in iTunes. I get some strange looks when it comes up from people.
posted by ShawnString at 3:42 AM on December 24, 2008

Gabba hey click..
posted by milquetoast at 4:37 AM on December 24, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

How much did the former Mrs. PST get in the divorce settlement anyway?
posted by Pollomacho at 4:50 AM on December 24, 2008

Needs more coldchef.
posted by adamvasco at 4:55 AM on December 24, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I like to do this with the track from Charlie Brown Christmas... the one with the high-pitched squealing "Chriiisssmasss Tiimmmeee is heeeeerrreee"

...only using those four words countinuously for the rest of the melody.
posted by odinsdream at 5:53 AM on December 24, 2008

Shouldn't this go in MefiMusic?

Actually... it probably should be posted there for posterity, just because the current link is to a random mp3 and it would be TRAGIC if it was lost.
posted by smackfu at 5:54 AM on December 24, 2008

Just listened - this is awesome. Definitely going on the christmas CDs. Please add it to Mefi Music!
posted by odinsdream at 6:04 AM on December 24, 2008

Man, Ask.mefi back in the day was a place of wanton posting muck-a-mucks with no moderation....it's like the wild wild Ask.mefi!
posted by Grither at 6:38 AM on December 24, 2008

mefites, your challenge is to cover Jingle Rock Bell.
You have *checks watch* 24 hours.

DAMN IT!!!
posted by milarepa at 6:46 AM on December 24, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

YES! I totally forgot about this! Thx for the repost.
posted by JoanArkham at 6:51 AM on December 24, 2008

PST hasn't been the same since his wife threw a cat at him a couple of Christmases ago, so I've taken it upon myself to post the song to Mefi Music.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 7:11 AM on December 24, 2008

Good job guys, you ruined Christmas.

*begins drinking*
posted by felix betachat at 7:43 AM on December 24, 2008

Thank you. I needed this. Merry Christmas, PinkStainlessTail, and you, too, Lentrohamsain.
posted by theora55 at 7:46 AM on December 24, 2008

Why do I associate PinkStainlessTail's Jingle Rock Bell with great tragedy?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 7:55 AM on December 24, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

My fiancee is putting together a xmas itunes list, and so I gave her the link to this song, and her response was: "haha fortunately this annoying, annoying song is not on itunes." I relay this here as a compliment to the creator, since she apparently thought it sounded professional enough to be a real xmas song! Nice work! (I haven't heard it yet, still at work)
posted by Grither at 8:21 AM on December 24, 2008

That is greatness. Although I'm sure I heard "ringle jock bell" a few times.
posted by YoBananaBoy at 8:34 AM on December 24, 2008

Jingle ROOOOOOCK bell
Jingle ROOOOOOOOOCK beelllll
posted by cortex at 8:52 AM on December 24, 2008

(I haven't heard it yet, still at work)

FWIW, plays well on Blackberries.
posted by odinsdream at 8:54 AM on December 24, 2008

This morning I'll play the stereotypical role of obligatory Christmas curmudgeon. My vehicle is a 1977 Ford F-250, without posi, and I don't have chains or snow tires. Sadly, I'm simply too lazy to load the bed with hundreds of pounds of junk from my basement to augment traction. Hell, I could throw in the transmission from a 65 F-100, and a differential from a 79 T-Bird; it's a 9", I think.

Instead, I sulk alone at home, typing at a keyboard, decrying both Seattle's unwillingness to salt the roads, and a local populace that doesn't shovel their sidewalks. I am emasculated knowing that 12 inches of snow adjacent to the curb flummoxes my attempt to depart vehicularly, and am thus sentenced to another round of cabin fever.

I'm an atheist too.

When I was in elementary school, a Christmas pageant was held on the afternoon just before the long Christmas break began. The first, second, and third graders were required to learn a number of "traditional" Christmas carols during the weeks preceding the event. During the performance, the children were segregated by grade. I assume parents were allowed to attend, but my memory is not clear on this, as my parents never attended.

The school district's music teacher was a real asshole. By the time I got to "music class" in the 7th or 8th grade, he was solely in charge. He would often confront individual students with "questions" that ended with the admonition "now don't lie"...

But during the Christmas pageant, he and the principal would co-direct the proceedings. The principal was a kindly, calm old man, and so offered a good balance for the authoritarian tendencies of the music director.

This was all happening in the late 1960's. Even though my parents didn't have a stereo system, and hated rock music, I knew deep down that there was such a thing as "cool music" in the world. Noted Western artist Ron Jenkins and his family lived on the corner of my block, and the older boys listened to Jefferson Airplane.

So as a child, I developed this notion that "old people" like music that sucked, like Lawrence Welk, Bert Kaempfert, and traditional American Christmas music. I believed deep down, and couldn't wait for, the day when my generation would shuck all the music that so obviously sucked, and would abandon the asinine annual repetition of songs about anachronistic things like "sleigh bells", and stilted lyrical convolutions like "yon Virgin".

But I must confess, standing en masse on the gymnasium floor, singing "Jingle Bells" was the high point of the performance. Not only was it an upbeat song, both the principal and music director put on RED RUDOLPH NOSES. OMG, the facade of adult propriety was cracked, and for this one special moment, the adults have become like us, like children.

But this good feeling was too good to last. Because deep down, and this is what makes Christmas the worst of all American holidays, is the cloying, saccharine, reverence for The Birth of Our Saviour. No other holiday packages itself this way, certainly not fun ones, like Independence Day or Halloween. OK, Easter comes close, but it's sucrose compared with the high fructose corn syrup of Christmas...

So the fun moment of singing "Jingle Bells" had to end, and the somber, gravely intoned reason for the season was invoked, probably by the music teacher asshole.

Yes, we had to end the a cappella performance with the great downer, song number one on the Top Ten list of maudlin, cloying, saccharine, faux-reverential, Birth-of-Baby-Jesus songs, Silent Night.

It's like we were being made to atone for sin; the sin of anticipating being let out of school for an extended break. Because for children, Christmas is really all about free time and avarice; the receipt of consumer goods.

It's been 40 years now, and my generation failed to extinguish this annual pathology. In the meantime, we have created a computer that defeated the world's greatest chess player, we have sequenced the human genome, we eradicated smallpox from the face of the earth. Hell, we even proved Fermat's "last theorem". Enormous strides have been made socially; sodomy laws abolished, significant advances in women's rights, and of course the biggie here, America elected an African American president.

But there are certain deeply ingrained human pathologies, ones that we must first recognize before we can remedy. I'm writing this to "raise your consciousness" that Christmas music sucks.
posted by Tube at 8:59 AM on December 24, 2008 [9 favorites has favorites]

Ms PST may have PTSD
posted by Pants! at 9:00 AM on December 24, 2008

GOYZONE
posted by electroboy at 9:38 AM on December 24, 2008 [7 favorites has favorites]

Tube, I'm right there with you, buddy, except that I have traction control.
posted by desjardins at 9:39 AM on December 24, 2008

I'm writing this to "raise your consciousness" that Christmas music sucks.

Demonstrably false.
posted by electroboy at 9:41 AM on December 24, 2008

this is still the greatest thing to ever come out of this site.
posted by shmegegge at 9:55 AM on December 24, 2008

I was just humming "Jingle Rock Bell" while dog-walking the other day; it's one of the few things that make me hate this entire month infinitesimally less.
posted by FelliniBlank at 10:02 AM on December 24, 2008

I have never heard this before just a moment ago and it's fantastic. I also like to sing along to songs using only the words I can remember, reordered in various permutations, so this is very close to my heart. Something else that's annoying is to sing Christmas Carols with no rhythm (i.e. straight quarters for each note and no pause at the end of the line) as well as my particular favourite which is to sing straight-up rock (say ACDC) in a very upperclass English accent, modifying the words as I go to make proper grammatical sense.
posted by ob at 10:12 AM on December 24, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

This sounded so silly I had to listen.

This is the most hilarious thing I have heard. I am so glad people other than me do things like this.

RINGLE JOCK BELL JOCK BELL
posted by winna at 10:20 AM on December 24, 2008

but watch out, earworm alert!

That reminds me, have your heard?

About the bird?

Because, as I understand it, everyone's talking about the bird.

I guess it's the word.
posted by quin at 10:20 AM on December 24, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Excellent. I shall certainly surreptitiously slip this into the family's sacred annual rotation of orthodox chants, Handel, Taize, and minimalist handbell British carol renditions.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 11:00 AM on December 24, 2008

This has changed my life.
posted by Kloryne at 11:10 AM on December 24, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Sometimes, post-Christmas, a few Christmas songs mysteriously don't get deleted from my iPod. I'm pretty diligent, but my music collection is also woefully disorganized.

Anyhow, this is one song that I don't skip even if it starts playing in July.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 11:20 AM on December 24, 2008

This is seriously the only holiday song I can even consider listening to cheerfully.

Jingle ROOOOOOCK bell
Jingle ROOOOOOOOOCK beellll!!!!!
posted by Space Kitty at 11:22 AM on December 24, 2008

I was listening to some classical music on the drive home, and it occurred to me how many Metafilter memes could be fit into the Hallelujah Chorus.

Just let your mind wander over it a bit, and see if you don't start laughing.
posted by pjern at 12:30 PM on December 24, 2008

it occurred to me how many Metafilter memes could be fit into the Hallelujah Chorus.

If it'll get those damned freecreditreport.com jingles out of my brainpan, I'm willing to give it a try.
posted by FelliniBlank at 2:09 PM on December 24, 2008

Here's a christmas tune I mixed up last year:

The Chipmunks Christmas Song (pitch-corrected)
posted by jtron at 2:47 PM on December 24, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

Aw. This...this is what finally got me into a happy, Christmas-y mood. Thanks guys!
posted by kalimac at 5:57 PM on December 24, 2008

Ever since I came across this track I've kept it in my profile to listen to whenever the mood strikes me. It's a lovely track.

Merry Christmas all!
posted by flatluigi at 7:36 PM on December 24, 2008

jtron, that was -- unsettling. When you push The Chipmunks through puberty with autotune, they end up sounding like Cher's chorus boys. A little piece of my childhood is forever gone now. And no, I will not be replacing it with Silent Night. HATE.
posted by maudlin at 7:40 PM on December 24, 2008

...only using those four words countinuously for the rest of the melody.

That was the ring tone I had for my wife when we first started dating.
posted by drezdn at 8:01 PM on December 24, 2008

Best rewritten christmas song evar, eh?
posted by CKmtl at 9:17 PM on December 24, 2008

In case there are people that still haven't seen it, this is one of the best christmas reworkings ever.
posted by Big_B at 9:49 PM on December 24, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

My niece and nephew ask for Jingle Rock Bell every time I'm home for Christmas. They're obsessed with it. Mr. F cringes every time, and I laugh and laugh.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 5:01 PM on December 25, 2008

Jell Bingle Rock Jingle Rock Bingle Jell. Jingle Rock Rell Bock Jell. Love.
posted by unknowncommand at 5:22 PM on December 25, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

awesome
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:35 AM on December 26, 2008

This makes me sad because I miss PinkStainlessTail.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:53 AM on December 26, 2008

He's still with us in spirit, Secret Life of Gravy.
posted by Kattullus at 8:03 AM on December 26, 2008

jingle bell rock a all time christmas fave.
posted by LostOne757 at 10:54 AM on December 26, 2008

I know I'm late to this, but I've had this on my ipod and on my christmas mixes since he recorded it. It's awesome.

The crazy thing is, I've found by now I'm actually able to sing along with surprising accuracy in most parts. It's kind of scary.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 11:36 AM on December 26, 2008

Metafilter I LOVE YOU
posted by mimi at 12:06 PM on December 27, 2008

I love this song.
posted by graventy at 1:28 PM on December 27, 2008

I've been listening to this every Christmastime since PinkStainlessTail coughed it up. I love it so much. Especially "Bell ROOOCK jingle, Bell ROOOCK jingle." Goddamn.
posted by Coatlicue at 9:43 PM on December 27, 2008