Elmo and Patsy - Grandma got run over by a reindeer
The festive season can be a somewhat hazardous time of year, what with drunk drivers, black ice and internecine family arguments descending into murderous violence at the drop of a hat. We should pay special attention to our loved ones at times like these and make sure that they come to no harm, a point well made by old school comedy singer Elmo Shropshire on his splendidly dark festive anthem 'Grandma got run over a reindeer' in the early 1980s. The track recounts an unfortunate Yuletide incident at the family home where Grandma forgets to take her medication, gets ripped to the tits on eggnog and blunders off into the snow to meet an untimely death - it later emerges that her late husband may have been involved in her passing and he settles back into a soothing lifestyle of drinking, gambling and trying to boff some younger relative. This is some pretty scalding black humour, don't let the jovial festive accompaniment fool you. Elmo apparently made himself millions off the success of this one track that has remained a bit of a longstanding favourite amongst country fans - those folks certainly know how to do cruel humour like nobody else. But it's good to have someone to balance things out against saccharine crap like 'There's no-one quite like Grandma' so hats off to old Elmo for giving us a bit of a giggle to smooth our passage through the festive season.
No comments:
Post a Comment