The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. XLVII

Hi again, music lovers.

We can't get ourselves any frickin' snow it seems, but we can sure as hell nab ourselves some audio nerdery. . .

Album Title:  An Evening with Arthur Fiedler & The Boston Pops:  Great Songs for ALL SEASONS

Album Artist:  Arthur Fiedler & The Boston Pops

They went out of their way to convince you, right out of the gate, that this album could be played year-round.  Check out the All Caps work in the title.  I definitely overlooked this fact when purchasing it at Radio Wasteland last month (for $2, mind you), and assumed, since it was in their Christmas section, it was a Holiday album.

And it sort of is.

Upon placing this on my turntable, however, I soon realized why this was advertised as music for ALL SEASONS:  the entirety of Side A is NOT Christmas music.

What.  The.  Hell.

Instead, we have your usual pickings of '70s Easy Listening fan favorites.  "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," "What the World Needs Now is Love," etc. - Arthur Fiedler, like EVERYONE ELSE in the '70s, apparently can't get enough of Burt f***ing Bacharach.

Those two songs alone appear on probably 90% of every thrift store album one comes across, which leads me to believe that Mr. Bacharach was commonly believed back then to be the second coming of Christ.

His songs creep into every nook and cranny of mainstream music, forcing their way onto compilation LPs and demanding to be heard, like some drunk guy who shows up at a party uninvited.


I don't care for Burt Bacharach, and his presence here is not a welcome one.

So Side A, long story short, is a wash.  It sucks.  If you're a fan of listening to instrumental versions of 'classic' '70s Easy Listening, then you'll probably dig it, but that's not a genre I'm a fan of.

Side B, however, is Christmas music, and is done in Fiedler's typical 'pops' orchestral arrangements (listen to any orchestral offering that ends with '. . .Goes Pop' and you'll know what I'm talking about.)  It's not bad, but it sounds like department store background music.  Imagine you're walking through a J.C. Penney (remember those?) back in the '80s, during December, and you're picking out tacky gold jewelry for your mom.  This is the music that is playing over the sound system.  His take on Tchaikovsky is nice, as is his arrangements of other Holiday classical scores, but I have better versions on other LPs, and, ultimately, it's nowhere near enough to save this half-ass attempted offering from damnation.

I'm pissed I spent $2 on this.  While not horrible, per se - Fiedler is a talented artist in the 'Goes Pop' field, and if both sides were comprised of legit Christmas music we might be looking at a higher score, maybe a '6' or so  - I feel cheated that this is only half a Christmas album, and that an entire side of this LP is dedicated to Bacharach-ish shittiness.  

VERDICT:  3/10 - Seriously? (Burt Bacarach and Co's boring sleaze drags this album down considerably, and not even Fiedler's not-bad take on Christmas Classical music is enough to save it from being shelved. . . if not donated.)

- SHELVED -