Last year, Roach passed on to me, the greatness of Patton Oswalt, comedian extra-unordinary. On his CD, “Feeling Kinda Patton”, one track in particular struck my funny bone; “My Christmas Memory”.
The jist of the joke is, Patton used to take his LP of Alvin and the Chipmunks singing “Christmas Time is Here”, and slow down the record until the chipmunks’ voices where normal human frequencies. As a result, Dave, their manager/dad would become almost demonic in pitch.
I’ve always wanted to do this. So i did.
But I didn’t stop there. 2005 was big on mashup culture. Mind you, not remixing, but mashup; intentionally combining two or more existing songs that just coincidently work together and in key. It doesn’t take a lot of musical talent (go on, flame me on this one), but what it does take is time and a decent ear to dig thru many songs to find a good fit. They can range from bad, cheesy, and fun to grand, groundbreaking, and controversial.
So I contributed to the culture, just for fun. Chipmunks “Christmas time is Here” slowed down, vs Royksopp’s “Triumphant”. I even tossed in a dash of Charles Webster, Human League, and Queen just for good measure. It’s not a great Mashup. It’s simply fun and melodramatic.
I sent it to Roache, Roache sent it to Patton Oswalt, Patton posted it on his website.
One year later, I have since lost my own copy of the song (shame on me). A quick google of “Chipmunk Mashup”, gave me a copy back from, get this, Denmark, along with the original mp3 ID3 tags. The distribution wasn’t incredible, but it’s still amazing that anyone’s unsolicited creation would end up sporadically around the world. If there ever was a personal illustration of a global community, I’ve demonstrated it to myself, with the help of a few friends.
This holiday season, I thought I’d personally share it with you, rather than you randomly finding it. Here ya go:
Written by Mauricio Balvanera
Topics: projects