Silent Night, Annoying Night: Songs People Love to Hate

Forget jolly. For many, this is the season to be annoying, and nothing--not contentious family dinners, straggling party guests or Big Mouth Billy Bass--beats annoying holiday music. We’re not talking such minor irritations as Adam Sandler’s “Hanukkah Song” or those darn “Jingle Bells” barking dogs. We’re talking music that would curdle a fruitcake. We’re talking Tiny Tim’s ghastly rendition of “Oh Holy Night,” or Dan Blocker, late of the Ponderosa, crooning “Deck the Halls.”

These and other priceless gems have been unearthed for your incredulous listening displeasure for “The Annoying Music Show’s Annoying Music Show Holiday CD.” The immortal words of Colonel Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now” come to mind when scanning the 29 tracks: “The horror, the horror.” Or as host Jim Nayder is wont to exclaim after a particularly soul-tormenting piece of music, “Sweet Lord.”

Airing less than five minutes each week, “The Annoying Music Show” is perhaps National Public Radio’s oddest success story. Like all earth-shattering, life-changing ideas, it began with Slim Whitman. One fateful afternoon, Nayder, an on-air host on Chicago National Public Radio station WBEZ (also home to “This American Life” and Nayder’s own “Magnificent Obsession,” featuring actual stories of substance abuse recovery), was asked to fill two minutes of air time between his program and the next.

“I don’t know why, but I happened to have in my stack of albums Slim Whitman yodeling ‘It’s a Small World,’” he recalled in a phone interview. “I threw it on and blurted out, ‘It’s time for “The Annoying Music Show.”’ The phones in the studio lit up one after another. One caller asked what I was going to play the next week. Another asked why I was wasting precious NPR time. And another called to say he had Ethel Merman’s disco album. I’m a simpleton, but I figured if this could cause such a reaction, there was something there.”

Five-and-a-half years later, “The Annoying Music Show” is heard on 203 stations across the country, including KVCR-FM (91.9) in San Bernardino and KPBS-FM (89.5) in San Diego. Saturday, Nayder will make his bimonthly appearance on “Weekend Edition Saturday” with host Scott Simon, which airs locally on KPCC-FM (89.3) from 5 to 10 a.m. and on KCRW-FM (89.9) from 6 to 10 a.m.

Simon, a Chicago native, was an early champion of “The Annoying Music Show.” Nayder plans to make him regret this by playing a tape of Simon performing the blues at a recent “Annoying Music Show” holiday concert in Chicago.

Nayder’s recent appearance on the “Today” show catapulted the “Holiday” CD to No. 5 on Amazon.com’s pop music sales list. It was No. 1 among “new emerging artists.”

And why not? This is music you can’t readily find anywhere else, unless, like Nayder, you scrounge in Salvation Army basements, haunt garage sales or sift through 50-cent bins at used record stores. Nothing brings home the true meaning of Christmas like “Santa Doesn’t Smoke Anymore” by John Nestor, a fabulously tin-eared “Do You Hear What I Hear” by one John “Bowtie” Barstow or “Rubber Band Christmas,” a rendition of “Jingle Bells” performed solely on rubber bands.

Christmas especially lends itself to annoying music, Nayder explained, because “there are only a select number of popular Christmas songs, so you get different artists doing the same songs, many of them horribly.”

Lest Jewish celebrants think they have been spared, Nayder has included on the CD “Hanukkah Rocks” by Gefilte Joe and the Fish. An album for all seasons, the CD also honors Elvis Presley’s birthday (Barry Tiffan’s spoken-word “A Candy Bar for Elvis”), Columbus Day (Jamie Glaser’s “Disco Columbus”) and Valentine’s Day (Anthony Quinn’s “What Is Love?”).

Louis Armstrong once said that if you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never get it. The same applies to annoying music. There is a fine line between music that is annoying and just plain bad. Nayder precariously walks this tightrope each week.

“The Annoying Music Show” is not a showcase for novelty records. Dr. Demento, whose show Nayder loves, remains the master of that domain. The best annoying music comes from what Nayder calls “sincere and honest efforts in the recording studio.” And it doesn’t get more sincere, honest or annoying than, say, Tammy Faye Bakker’s “Disco Jesus,” George Burns’ cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The 59th St. Bridge Song” or “An Evening With Hugh Downs,” a long-sought recording that Nayder recently found and immediately added to his playlist. “It’s mostly spirituals,” he rhapsodized, “but in the middle, he does a pirate song. It’s gold.”

How do the artists featured on “The Annoying Music Show” react to their newfound infamy? Mostly with good humor, Nayder said. After a picture of Nayder holding a Lawrence Welk album appeared in People magazine, the Lennon Sisters sent him a copy of their new album (“hereby donated for your use”).

Ever since the show went national, Nayder has been sent all manner of recordings from enthusiasts, ranging from elderly classical music buffs, baby boomer jazz aficionados and teenage rockers, each with an annoying song they wish to foist upon the world. This is the joy of annoying music, Nayder contends. It brings people together when by all rights they should run screaming from the room. “I don’t know when that would happen except maybe at a John Tesh stoning,” Nayder said.

Even for those who have no ear or stomach for annoying music, Nayder was quick to point out that the “Holiday” CD is a practical gift. “Everybody has holiday parties,” he offered. “It gets late; people won’t leave. If you pop this on, I’d say within about 10 minutes, everybody will be out of the house.”

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“The Annoying Music Show’s Annoying Music Show Holiday CD” and “The Annoying Music Show CD” retail for $15. To order, log on to Amazon.com or CDNOW.com.