That's the Rub (Jack Frost, 1979) ... played on the accordion!

There are a couple of cliches in my parents' house: if you ask my dad a joke, he will say "What did the baby porcupine way when he backed into a cactus?" (A: (squeaky voice) "Is that you, mommy?"), and if you ask him to put on a kids movie, he will instinctively pull the Rankin/Bass "Jack Frost" off the shelf. Just what is it exactly about that particular holiday special (the holiday in question being Groundhog Day, of all things) that holds its grip on this man so tenaciously? It's not a beloved childhood memory for him, as it came out the year I was born. Anyhow. I enjoyed the opportunity of viewing this pinnacle of the stop-motion animated art throughout my childhood probably with greater frequency than most of my peers. As with many animated films, it contains a number of songs, and this one kept being quoted the entire time I was growing up there, even though there really isn't all that much meat on that bone. It's silly, even dare I say a little bit stupid, and if memory serves correct yielded the first accordion song chart I ever arranged, circa 2003 on LiveJournal. Nonetheless I don't believe I have ever performed it live on stage, as the Rankin/Bass fandom is a subtle one and, as I say, the song is rather stupid. But the canon of Groundhog Day musical repertoire is slender, and the story I can share of my childhood is one that I am uniquely suited to tell, and it is easy enough to play so why not? The song is sung in the voice of the evil Kubla Kraus, a stern Russian warlord at the head of an army of mechanical men, menacing the denizens of January Junction who, despite their very Whitebread American town name, speak in Old Country accents that my dad may have associated with the community of Central European immigrants in which he was raised. There are a lot of nice steampunk details for viewers to enjoy in the movie, all of which are absent from this rendition of its song, wherein he bemoans his failure to be different flavours of authoritarian rulers from different contexts throughout history. We've all been there! Probably I will be serving up nothing but love songs for the rest of February, so if nothing else this should serve as an effective palate cleanser!