KENNETH HART: There is no escaping ‘Grandma’ 120609

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December 3, 2009

Anonymous The Daily Independent Thu Dec 03, 2009, 10:45 PM EST

So there I was the other day, in the lobby of the Ashland City Building, plowing my way through several days’ worth of police reports and jotting down pertinent info for one of the newspaper’s twice-weekly “Police Beat” articles.

The ladies at the cashier’s windows — you know, the ones where you go to pay your water bill — had their radio tuned to the all-Christmas-music station.

As I sat there doing my work, the station played several blandly inoffensive holiday numbers. Then it played a very good one — Elvis’ “Blue Christmas,” which I don’t mind hearing at any time of the year.

Then it all went straight to hell. In a handbasket.

“Grandma got run over by a reindeer, walking home from our house Christmas Eve ...”

I felt like dry-heaving. It was all I could do to keep from picking up my notepad and bolting.

And I wished for perhaps the millionth time that there was some way I could take that execrable song out behind the woodshed and give it the Ole Yeller treatment it so richly deserves.

Being subjected to repeated playings of that heap of musical dung is one of the reasons I tend to dread the approach of the holiday season.

I’ve heard some folks say they dislike “Grandma” because their grandparents died during the holidays and the song stirs up painful memories for them.

Certainly, that’s as valid a reason as any for hating it.

My objections, though, are purely musical.

It’s just a horrid song. Period.

It’s as dumb as a stump. Its humor is grade-school level at best. Its melody is annoying. The voice of the guy who sings it (Lexington native Elmo Shropshire, who first recorded the song in 1979 with his then-wife, Patsy) is unbelievably grating.

It’s also one of those “hell songs,” like I wrote about a couple of months ago, that involuntarily burrow their way into your brain and remain lodged there for no good reason.

In short, it has no redeeming musical qualities whatsoever.

Yet it’s a holiday staple, one that seemingly gets as many, if not more, plays than “White Christmas.”

And, in all likelihood, it has made a guy named Elmo fabulously wealthy.

Go figure.

Obviously, “Grandma” is a novelty record. I can’t recall, but I may have actually found it mildly amusing the first couple of times I heard it.

However, like most songs of its ilk, it wears thinner and thinner with each listen.

With me, it long ago passed the point where there are other things I’d rather listen to — like, say, a clothes dryer tumbling a load of driveway gravel.

Put it this way — hearing “Grandma” repeatedly is sort of like being cornered by an obnoxious drunk at a party and having him tell you a joke that wasn’t all that funny to begin with over and over and over again.

It’s also sort of like recording a sophomoric and painfully lame bit of attempted humor on a tape loop and locking yourself in a closet with it.

My wish for the holidays is that I won’t have to hear “Grandma” again — preferably not ever, but at least not until next Christmas season.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any illusions whatsoever that that wish is going to come true.

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