The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. CIII

  Welcome back to the Holliest, Jolliest, Musically-Snobbiest corner of Cyberspace. . .

Album Title:  Hi-Fi Organ and Chimes at Christmastime: Familiar Favorites

Album Artist:  Norman Roye

This is the sleepiest Holiday album I've listened to in quite some time. 

If you're a big fan of church organ, you'd probably love this one.  It seriously sounds like they just had an elderly guy - by the name of Norman Roye - walk in to a church, sit down at a church organ (and not just any church organ, mind you, but an Electronic Wurlizter) with a stack of Christmas sheet music, and start playing.  The sound engineer hit the 'record' button, the reels started spinning, and he stepped outside to have a cigarette (you know, because they frown at smoking inside a church.)  At one point, an old lady that works at the church decided to 'help out' and hit a chime a few times with a mallet.  Because the Spirit of Christmas.

"How long do you guys want me to keep playing this stuff?" the old man asks, wiping sweat off his liver-spotted, bald head.

"Until the reels stop, Norm," the sound engineer says, coming back in from his smoke break, "Just keep playing."

And so the old man, Norm, shrugs and continues playing what is quite possibly the most boring arrangements of these Christmas songs in existence.  The old man approaches this with mathematical efficiency:  he plays the sheet music as if he's doing chores, so technically it sounds like Christmas music, but in the way that a Christmas song sounds in an elevator.  

After reading through the back liner notes - who doesn't love liner notes - I've discovered that Norm is actually a 'young Canadian born American organist,' and not an old man.  I think this makes this worse, actually - someone young should have put more fire behind their playing, because this seriously sounds like someone dying in Wurlitzer-form.  Maybe that's the Canadian in him, I don't know.

VERDICT:  2/10 - Reality TV (Quite possibly the most boring album ever recorded by a 'young Canadian born American.'  I've been more enthralled watching my wife's under-watered plants slowly die on our kitchen window sill.)

- SHELVED-

- Brian