Saturday 4 December 2010

Not always touched by your presents, dear

Right, well, it's December the 4th so high time to crack open the Christmas songs I reckon. Thanks once again are due to Spike, this time for putting me onto today's funny folkers Garfunkel & Oates - a sort of cynical, clued-up female American version of Flight of the Conchords. The best compliment I can pay G&O is that their songs don't suffer one bit in comparison with their more famous folking comedy forebears. Have a listen to the Christmas-present-woe-inspired Present Face and the wonderfully sardonic Year End Letter and see what you think.

Garfunkel & Oates - Year End Letter mp3 (right click)

Garfunkel & Oates - Present Face mp3 (right click)

On a non-seasonal but equally hilarious note, have a look at the vid for Pregnant Women Are Smug, quite possibly the greatest song title ever!



Mildly Interesting Pop Fact (not had one of these for a while): The duo's name was inspired by the Garfunkel's Restaurant chain and Robert Falcon Scott's stoical sidekick Captain Oates. This is a lie, obviously. The name comes, as you may well have deduced, from the perenially-in-the-shade-of-their-more-illustrious-partners Art Garfunkel and John Oates (of Hall & Oates fame).

Garfunkel & Oates's website

4 comments:

Mick said...

One of my many blog posts that never got past the idea stage was going to be about 'the other guy' that deserved more credit: Colin Moulding, John Oates and, er, ran out of names which is why it never happened.

Just watched Pregnant Women Are Smug with Mrs M and we both had a little titter.

Kippers said...

That would make for an excellent blog post. I'm sure you could think of some more unheralded popsters! How about the grumpy one that's not Neil Tennant from Pet Shop Boys? Or mr moustache from Soft Cell?

dickvandyke said...

Very good indeed. I like these girls. Cynicism and reality - my favourite duo.

Year End letters - don't ya just love em? (A bit like School Re-unions). Just for a change, from the smug self-congratalatory drivel, I'd like to get a non-boasting round robin; perhaps with news of misfortune and redundancy and failed MOTs and shit exam results and can't sell my house, and leaking roofs and septic ingrowing hair follicles and ...

Kippers said...

Sounds good to me. I'll get writing.