Category Archives: embalmed ones

Save Me a Krampus (For the Holiday)

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In the spirit of the season, The Viper presents a new music video for a song I wrote this same time last year, “Save Me a Krampus (For the Holiday).” Like to know what The Viper hopes he’ll find tucked into his shoes on the morn of December 5, St. Nicholas Day? Well listen up, my friends, and the tale will be told.

This was recorded/filmed on November 29 & 30, 2012 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My daughter, Irene, and I did the camerawork, with Irene Jerving starring as the eponymous Krampus. Play along, with chords & lyrics available here.

If you are unfamiliar with Krampus (and in the age of Wikipedia, that’s really unforgiveable, you know), you should know that Krampus is the troll-like creature who accompanies St. Nicholas in the holiday traditions of parts of Austria, Bavaria, and such, playing bad-cop-good-cop on their house-to-house rounds. Especially bad kids get stuffed in a sack and dragged away to the Krampus’s lair. Somewhat bad kids just get their oranges taken away. Happy holidays!

Let me clear my throat…

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More Beasties and now also some Davy Jones memorial material from The Viper, this one from 2008 when I was testing out Audacity sound editing software for the first time.

download here

The Monkees HeadquartersAs I wrote when I posted this the first time,

It’s the Monkees meets The Music Man meets “Revolution #9″ meets Licensed to Ill. Which, all told, just may be the Viper’s Rosetta Stone.

Linus and Lucy

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More from The Viper plays the Peanuts songbook, here’s Vince Guaraldi’s “Linus and Lucy” played on a very small thumb piano.

If you’re keeping score at home, the instrument is tuned to C, but I’ve flattened the 7th to a Bb. This is the only song I’m capable of playing on this instrument so far (and as you’ll see, my rhythm is pretty wobbly), though I’m also working on a rendition of “Our Lips Are Sealed.” Should be ready by Christmas 2013.

A Christmas Message from the Viper

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…And the message is: “Christmas Time Is Here,” as per the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s theme music from A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), which you can have Viperized in either stereo-chorus-y peppermint, or in pure unvarnished location sound vanilla.

“Christmas Time is Here” — all fancy

download the mp3 | download the wav file

“Christmas Time is Here” — nice and plain

Benny Lava

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By popular demand – and by popular, I mean Riley wants to hear it – here are The Viper and His Famous Orchestra, live at Mike ‘N’ Molly’s in Champaign, Illinois closing out their show of August 7, 2009 with “Benny Lava.” Newly home-mastered.

(right click to download)

The song proved controversial because it raised two questions: 1) whether or not in performing it we were really just doing someone else’s joke and 2) who the joke is on. We comport, you decide.

Ron Henn, Summer 2009 (not at Mike ‘N’ Molly’s), mulls over the
question of whether he can fully commit to singing “Benny Lava”