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The Twelve Days of Christmas, Straight No Chaser

Humor seems scarce in most music. Humor depends on the unexpected, on incongruity, and music is literally based on harmony.  Somehow Straight No Chaser twists our musical expectations and familiarity to create this hilarious mashup of some of our favorite Christmas carols. Recently Weezer has released a cover of Africa that is climbing the charts and my first reaction on hearing it is to think of Straight No Chaser. One of the disc jockeys on WMMX noted the same.

Straight No Chaser was an a capella group at a Big 10 college (Michigan?) and someone put this performance which I believe united current and alumni members on YouTube. Ultimately this proved so popular that the group came together professionally and tours the country. So they are perhaps on of the early music internet success stories.  I happened to get free tickets (coincidentally from the same disc jockey mentioned above) to see them in Baltimore. No Twelve Days since it was summer time, but they really are an amazing talent.

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