The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. XXXVII

Welcome back, America, to the Hough Family's Greatest Holiday Tradition.

The Great Christmas Record Odyssey.

If you're new to these parts (I doubt you are, but bear with me), allow me to briefly explain myself.

Every Holiday Season, Yours Truly pulls out of his storage his ever-expanding vinyl collection of Holiday Music.  I make it a point to listen to every, last Christmas record I own, and I take the time while doing so to analyze each offering on my own, personalized 1-to-10 Scale:

10 - . . . And Out Come the Wolves (a symbol of perfection, and arguably one of the greatest albums made in the last twenty five years)
9 - Cowabunga! (if it makes you want to shout like a Ninja Turtle, you know it's good.)
8 - Awesome
7 - Pretty Rad (generally, in order for an album of mine to stay in Holiday Season Rotation, it needs to be rated '7' and up.)
6 - Decent (once and awhile a '6' makes it into constant rotation, but only if it satisfies a previously-vacant Holiday music niche.)
5 - Meh  (Albums in the 6 - 4 range almost always get 'Shelved.'  I hold on to them - for the time being - but they lose turntable time for the duration of the Season.)
4 - Borophyll
3 - Seriously? (anything below this point is put into my annual 'Donate to Goodwill' pile)
2 - Reality TV (there's only one thing shittier than Reality TV in my opinion, and that is. . .)
1 - Ohio (the Ninth Circle of Hell)

Do I border on obsessive with this Holiday past time of mine?  You bet your ass I do, but this is my blog so you're just going to have to deal with it for the next two months or so.  This year I've got a crap-load of stuff to analyze.  Last year I didn't do very much, in comparison to the previous two years, so we're going to have to make up for lost time, here.

So throw on your Santa hats, fetch yourself a holiday cocktail, and let us do this.

Album Title:  Christmas: The Season of Music

Album Artist:  Various Artists

This first lil' gem we have here was acquired at a Salvation Army a week or so ago.  I got one look at the cheesy album artwork on this offering and thought to myself, "This is bound to be a pure shit show."  For a buck, I couldn't possibly pass up such a promising experience.

Upon placing it on the turntable, however, I became disappointed:  this album is much better than I expected.  That may sound like a ridiculous thing to bitch about, but I'm going to do so anyway.  In the past, in this Great Christmas Record Odyssey of mine, I've been pleasantly surprised before with thrift store Holiday finds.  Some albums that I think or going to be complete garbage end up being a 7 or 8 on my patent-pending Rating Scale.  These are true gems, and ones that will eventually be repurchased on Discogs or the like in order to get a nicer copy.

Then we have glistening turds like this one.

This album is far from terrible, but it's not necessarily great either.  I'd say it's probably a solid 5, at first listen.  Meh.  It sounds like every other 60s' crooner offering you've ever heard of.  A song by Elle Fitzgerald?  Yup.  The Lettermen?  Yup as well.  Tennessee Ernie Ford?  Yes, that son of a bitch is on here, too. . . more or less because he's literally on every Holiday music record ever made.

I guess what pisses me off so much about this record is the fact that I purchased it with the sole hope of being comically bad.  Like, to the point where I'd be laughing hysterically, drinking a beer, and shaking my head at its pure awfulness.  Christ knows I've done this countless times before while reviewing Christmas music.  Alas, it wasn't to be this time:  this album isn't bad, it's just 'meh.'  

Vanilla.  White bread.  Bland.

I mean, come on - look at these creepy-ass dolls.  How can an album with this artwork on the cover be not-horrifying?  A bunch of what appears to be traditionally-clothed German (maybe Swiss or Belgian, I don't know) children, dancing around in some kind of a seance circle with what seems to be an older child dressed up like Santa Claus?  This demands some kind of Level 1 or Level 2 shittiness.

Bring on the obligatory cheesy From-Our-House-to-Yours message. . .

The closest thing to 'comically bad' we have on this offering is a tune from - I shit you not - The Korean Orphan's Choir.  Holy crap.  Yes, they have thick accents.  No, I'm not going to make fun of that - that's like shooting fish in a barrel.  My jokes are a little wittier than that, give me some credit here, folks.

So yeah.  F*** you very much, The Season of Music.  You're really starting the year off right.

VERDICT:  4/10 - Borophyll (This would've been a '5' - as it's just bland and generic Christmas crooning - but it loses a point for pissing me off by being just 'boring' and not comically bad.)

- SHELVED -