day 4 - thin white angel of death vs. bing

Bing Crosby - Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy

Posted Nov 07, 2006

first of all, it's obvious that david bowie knows exactly who he's talking to when he mentions he "even has a go at white christmas." wink nudge. of course, this was all a planned number, but it completely loses the pretense of sponteneity when he says that. but, at the same time, i doubt the audience would particularly give a damn. i would really not be surprised if bing had no idea who he was talking to, though even that's unlikely - this was when bowie was particularly huge, both in the UK and the US. to assume that he wouldn't know bowie at all...

when bing asks bowie if he likes any of the old stuff, bowie replies he likes john lennon and harry nilsson. ha! wacky way to show the generational difference!

the song itself is my next point of contention. seriously, if "little drummer boy" is david bowie's son's "favorite," why does he end up singing an entirely different song? according to the washington post:

"The original plan had been for Bowie and Crosby to sing just "Little Drummer Boy." But "David came in and said: 'I hate this song. Is there something else I could sing?' " Fraser said. "We didn't know quite what to do."

Fraser, Kohan and Grossman left the set and found a piano in the studios' basement. In about 75 minutes, they wrote "Peace on Earth," an original tune, and worked out an arrangement that weaved together the two songs. Bowie and Crosby nailed the performance with less than an hour of rehearsal."
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/19/AR2006121901260.html)

not that the "peace on earth" song is BAD. it just, again, makes no sense in the setup. (hell, the setup that "white christmas" is one of the "traditional" things is sort of silly too...)

i guess there's not much more to say about this. bing crosby died not too much later, giving a sort of creepy "angel of death" vibe to david bowie (they also aired a performanc/video of heroes on the special, as they had done for marc bolan. both crosby and bolan died before their respective specials aired).

years later, bob mould and craig kilbourne did a note for note, word for word, remake of this for the daily show before john stewart made it the awesomeness it is today (sadly, i can't find a video of this). thankfully, neither of them died before it aired...