The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. CXL

Who's ready to dance with a sword? Dance with a sword in the sand?

Album Title:  Christmas Island

Album Artist:  Jimmy Buffet

This one isn't any stranger to Yours Truly, I've been listening to this one for decades. 

Honestly, it's kinda bizarre I hadn't picked this album up yet, considering how far I lean into Christmas vinyl. 

Anyway, in case you were born a child of neglect and spent your formative years handcuffed at the ankle to a soiled mattress and rusty bed frame in your foster parents' basement, Jimmy Buffett is one of those polarizing artists that folks tend to either adore or despise. While I can see the criticism he often receives, namely that his music is gimmicky ('cause everything he made after he transitioned from his country roots in the '70s and leaned hard into his island phase is definitely gimmicky), I personally love it. Jimmy made a fortune mashing together his country roots with tropical escapism and calypso, creating a brand new genre that is tailor-made for boats, beaches, palm trees, and - arguably most of all - drinking. 

I'm not going to waste time reviewing Jimmy Buffet the artist, because most of us (except for those of us who spent most of our time trapped in a foster home basement, obviously) already know this guy's work inside and out. Instead, I want to focus on how this Holiday album differs from his other Holiday album that we reviewed on this blog eight years ago. 'Tis the Season was a much more polished affair that saw a decades-older Jimmy Buffet (2016), far past the point where he performed for the sheer joy of it, and certainly no longer needing the money, more or less phoning it in. It was a clean, overly-produced set of songs performed (I assume) by hired studio musicians without any heart going into it whatsoever, and I was incredibly let down upon giving it a spin for the first time.

Pretty sure I've only listened to it once or twice since reviewing it, and my opinion hasn't changed. Fight me.

On this earlier (1996) recording, Christmas Island, we have a Jimmy still in his 50s, still having fun with his Coral Reefer Band, and laying down some original tracks as well as his take of Holiday standards with the same sort of energy you would find on his famous 'greatest hits' album, Songs You Know By Heart. Before going forward, I should go ahead and state the obvious here: if you're one of those people who can't stand Jimmy Buffett's music, because you don't like how he's always singing about boat drinks and drifting away and the sea and all that stuff, you're probably not going to like this. And you should probably just go ahead and skip the rest of this review.

However, if you're like me and the millions of other people out there who do enjoy his music, you should know that this album is more or less in the same vein as Songs You Know By Heart. . . just with Christmas as the unifying theme. 'Cause, you know, it's a Holiday album. Try and keep up, guys.

Jimmy's original songs on this album are all great songs, and that's saying something because if we've learned anything here in this ol' blog of mine over the last ten years, it's that including one's original Christmas songs on a Holiday album is rarely a good thing. I've heard more comically bad Christmas originals that most, and rarely have I been impressed by them. Considering there's nearly a hundred of free, public domain Holiday music out there to choose from - dating back hundreds of years to Christian carols penned to traditional medieval tunes - it's not a risk a lot of artists choose to take (and rightfully so.) Still, just as many artists fall victim to hubris and believe that they alone are capable of adding their holiday originals to the Christmas Canon. 

And, well, they usually fall flat on their ass in the process.

The stand-out track on this album, in my opinion, is Jimmy's own, "Ho Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rhum," (a sly play on words from the traditional pirate "Yo Ho Ho") an original that sounds like it could have been included on Songs You Know By Heart. It features his natural story-telling lyricism, the arrangement is flawless, and you can hear just how much f***ing fun him and his band are having recording it. This is what makes Jimmy Buffet an amazing artist for me: every upbeat song of his is a party, and everyone's invited. And in this song's case, Santa is first on the guest list.

The lyric of "dance with a sword/dance with a sword in the sand" conjures up hilarious imagery of Santa Clause channeling his inner-pirate, and that might be the single best line on the entire album.

Originals aside, Jimmy and the Coral Reefers do a sound job on the seven or eight traditional numbers on this album. In order to pull off a successful recording or performance of a cover, you can either a.) perform it so well that it doesn't distract from the original, or b.) put a little spin on it and make the song your own. They go back and forth with this, with some songs - like Chuck Berry's "Run Run Rudolph" or Bing Crosby's "Mele Kalikimaka" - are straight-forward covers that are performed close to the originals. You can tell who's performing them, sure, but Jimmy opts to avoid using a lot of his island muscle in the instrumentation. They had the marimba and steel drums wheeled into storage for these recordings.

This is a safe play, sure, but I definitely still prefer the originals in both cases (it's hard to top Chuck Berry, folks.) Other covers get more of the Key West bar band approach, as if you were stumbling into Sloppy Joe's (my favorite Key West Bar - highly recommend going if you ever get the chance, Hemmingway drank there), and saw an island-themed cover band performing Christmas songs on the rum-soaked stage. The steel drums and marimba are wheeled back out, there's a few ukuleles on hand, plenty of harmonica (obviously), and a slew of background vocalists and percussionists fighting for a spot to stand on the crowded stage.  "Jingle Bells" and "Up on the Housetop" are both rollicking numbers that play to Jimmy's strengths, namely that he's a fun artist that makes fun music.

It should come as no surprise that there aren't any religious carols to be found anywhere on this album (thank God, that'd be jarring as hell.)

That's not to say that this album is one, giant party-monster, though - his country roots are on full display here, too. Jimmy's no stranger to slowing down songs and relying on his guitar and knack for world-weary story-telling to deliver a solid song. "I'll Be Home for Christmas" and "Merry Christmas, Alabama (Never Far From Home)" are more akin to "Son of a Sailor" or "He Went to Paris" than "Fins" or "Cheeseburger in Paradise." This duality to his songwriting is what makes him such a prolific artist, and on this Holiday album we see more of the old Jimmy Buffet that we grew up with in the '80s than the multi-millionaire Jimmy that ended up endorsing presidential candidates and opening up restaurant chains throughout Florida later in life.

If I have any issues with this album, it's that it plays to its audience too much - always playing it safe with its arrangements and instrumentation. "Let's record "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," but we'll add lots of slide guitar and steel drums and include lyrics about rum and getting sunburned." While this approach appeals to just about any Parrothead or casual Buffett fan out there, it isn't going to win over any new fans, especially from those who already have a dislike for his existing catalog. As such I'm going to have to knock them a point for not branching out a bit and trying new things, as well as an additional point for being, well, too damn short (only eleven songs on this track list, and I could have used twenty.)

VERDICT:  8/10 - Awesome  (Jimmy Buffet records a Christmas album, and it sounds exactly like Jimmy Buffet recording a Christmas album.)

- REMAINS IN CIRCULATION -

- Brian

The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. CXXXIX

Today we crawl back down into the nether regions of all things vinyl, down to the moldy, bottom shelves of your local Goodwill, in order to dust off another cast-aside relic from yesteryear. . . . . .

Album Title:  Christmas Wishes

Album Artist:  Anne Murray

Anne Murray isn't someone I've ever listened to before, but I've been aware of her since childhood - she was one of those artists 'adults who don't really listen to music' listen to. Like people who shy away from amplifiers because they feel making guitars loud is 'too much.' You know those people? The weird people from your parents' church that you only interact with at uncomfortable potlucks in the church basement, where during forced conversation they breathe too loud out of their nose and their breath smells like cough drops and cats.

God those people are the absolute worst.

This chick sold a shit-load of albums back in the day, and so there's clearly a whole swath of horrible people out there who snatched up her music off a K-Mart shelf whenever she came out with another bright, shiny collection of turds. And while this music definitely isn't something that I would listen to, I can see the appeal; a non-offensive blend of easy listening with a country twang, personified by an older white woman with the 80's equivalent of a Karen haircut. There is certainly nothing controversial about Anne or her music, she's a very vanilla singer. Maybe that's the Canadian in her, who knows.

This genre of music was consumed and discarded at a rate I haven't seen with any other. The easy listening, quasi- faith-based music was gobbled up by the elderly back in the day, and as those folks died off and their estates were liquidated, all of their shitty music was donated to local thrift stores. Truly, we find Anne's offering here in the same vein as some of the other Goodwill-tier Holiday albums I've reviewed in the past (The Lettermen, Roger Whitaker, etc.) Listening to Anne Murray's music gives one the same feeling one gets when starting to nod off while behind the wheel. As she crone-croons you into a false sense of peaceful slumber, you're half-aware of the fact that disaster awaits you the second you close your eyes and let down your guard.

The biggest problem with records like these is consistency. Not a lack thereof, mind you, but the opposite: a firm dedication to keeping every, last song sounding the exact same, from start to finish. No variation in tempo, no variation in vocal range, no variation in musical instrumentation or arrangement, etc. I imagine the sound engineer and the album producer came into the studio one evening and put masking tape over half the sliders in the recording booth and wrote 'DO NOT TOUCH' on half the mixing board.

The metronome should have been listed in the back cover credits, for sure. It's doing all the heavy lifting here.

Anne mostly sticks to familiar standards on this album (thank the f***ing Lord), but she still managed to squeeze in one, God-awful original onto this track list, the title track 'Christmas Wishes.' This song sounds identical to everything else on this album, except that it adds in a quiet, electric guitar soloing in the background. Nothing impressive or even remotely cool, though; this guitarist sounds like he's the sort of guy who sports a ponytail and only one earring. Maybe a leather vest over a tucked-in shirt, too. The kind of guy who roller-blades and knows how to do four or five magic tricks.

Listening to Anne's voice is weird, because you can almost hear her scowl as she sings. She's no soprano, to be sure, and it's a little bit of that mixed with the restraint she exhibits while singing that gives this impression. Like she doesn't have a lot of range, she never raises her voice and gets those high notes, and maybe it's her acknowledgement of her own limitations that give off the vibe that she's angry at the microphone. Hell, maybe she knows she's not Canada's greatest singer (they only have something like six singers, so that's gotta sting a little), and is all salty about it.

In closing, I think her outfit choice for the album artwork is a brave move on her part. I wouldn't have wanted to draw the Star Wars comparison, but hell - what does she have to lose at this point?

VERDICT:  4/10 - Borophyll (Another titan of Goodwill delivers another boring-as-watching-paint-dry Holiday album.)

- SHELVED -

- Brian

The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. CXXXVIII

Welcome back, music-lovers. Hope you guys are ready to be creeped out by a bunch of little kids. . . 

Album Title:  Kidz Bop Christmas

Album Artist:  Various Artists

If you haven't raised kids in the last 20 years, you may have never heard of Kidz Bop. 

I had caught wind of it while working at Meijer in my 20s (it started when I was in college) but it wasn't until I had kids of my own and they started listening to it that I really became acquainted with the concept. As little kids grow out of the 'princess phase' and transition into their elementary school years, where they're not yet tweens and haven't started wearing makeup yet (at least how normal chicks wear makeup), they start to become aware of pop culture. Seeing how most pop music isn't necessarily appropriate for the 6-10 year-old demographic, the geniuses behind Kidz Bop realized that they could take the same popular music that dominates the radio, clean up the lyrics, and have kids sing the songs instead.

Whoever thought of this was a genius, because the shit sells like hot cakes.

My girls were obsessed with Kidz Bop for a couple years, when we first moved back to Michigan, before they were old enough to listen to real artists on the radio. The Kidz Bop producers recorded plenty of YouTube videos of the kid performers singing and dancing along to the major chart hits, and my girls wasted hours in front of their computers being hypnotized by this craze.

Kidz Bop was, and I assume still is, straight-up crack for little girls. And my kids devoured it.

There's a creepy air to all this Kidz Bop stuff, though, and I feel the need to touch on this before we continue. Now, while albums such as this one are geared towards little kids, the performers still adhere to sleazy music industry standards. All the kids performing on this album are good-looking kids - there's no fat kids, no kids with weird faces, or disabilities, etc. These guys look like they just walked off the set of an after-school, Disney sitcom, and that is intentional. The music execs churning out these Kidz Bop albums know that sex sells, and even if the target audience isn't aware of that sort of thing yet, they know that if they can have eight-year-old girls watch some 12-year-old boy sing a child-appropriate version of a boy band number, they've got her hooked. 

Lots of inserts - like this Advent Calendar - with this one. 

It's super gross, but it doesn't shock me in the slightest.

Another thing that's a little disturbing, but understandable, about the last twenty years or so of this craze, is that the child performers tend to age out of this child-only music business. Since the early 2000s, there have been multiple Kidz Bop 'groups' (usually five or six of singers at any given time, a mix of boys and girls), and once they get too old - probably like 15 or so - they're replaced by younger kids and those older kids go on and. . . who knows. 

Never found a cookie recipe in an album before. That's odd.

I'm sure there's a stable full of ex-Kidz Bop performers who have developed severe mental health issues after serving on a few albums. They're pushed into this business at a young age by their parents and, once puberty hits and they're no longer suited for the role, they're shown the door. I doubt most of these kids found success in the music industry later in life, and I'm sure substance abuse runs rampant in this community.

My Holiday Checklist look WAY different. 

Anyway, on to the album. I came across this on Amazon a few years ago while browsing for Christmas records. I didn't have any desire to purchase this double-LP, of course, but for a super-low $6 for brand new, colored vinyl, I figured this might be something worth picking up. Maybe to hold on to for a decade or two until I start getting grandkids of my own and they want to listen to G-rated Christmas music performed by fellow children, I don't know. I mean, this isn't the sort of album that any adult in their right mind would throw on the turntable during the Holiday season, and God knows my kids have zero interest in this past obsession of theirs, but for this blog's sake, I figured 'what the hell.'

Listening to this album as an adult, without little kids on hand to justify it, is super weird. The production value is insane - there's a lot of money behind this franchise and it shows. The backing music and mix is  professional and on par with any contemporary Holiday album you'd pick up from a well-known, popular-selling artist. The only thing different with this one, of course, is that there's no adults to be found anywhere across the two records - this is a strictly kids-only affair, so all the vocals are done by upper-elementary and middle-school aged performers. 

And yes, the child performers can all sing very well - they're probably hand-selected by recruiters at one of those open-auditions that pop up around the country and attract thousands of kids (and their parents) who are chomping at the bit to break into stardom.

So, having kids singing on a children's album is fine - nothing wrong with that whatsoever, it's expected - provided they're singing kiddie Christmas jams. There's tons to choose from, too -  'Up on the Housetop' or 'Jingle Bells' or 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.' Stuff along those lines. What we get into on this release, however, is young children performing songs like 'All I Want for Christmas is You,' by Mariah Carey, or risque songs like 'Mistletoe.' 

Nobody wants to hear a group of 4th graders singing about kissing people under the mistletoe. That's super gross, and I feel like I may end up on some kinda registry just for listening to this in my own house without little kids present to justify it.

Questionable song choices aside, there's nothing horrible, per se, to be found on this Holiday album. And while hearing little kids singing about kissing people and missing lovers during the Holidays is gross, it's got enough 'standard' Holiday music across the two records that make it a solid album for upper-elementary school aged kids who feel too old for Disney cartoons but aren't yet to that pre-pubescent, tween phase. 

If I were a seven-year-old girl, I imagine this album would f***ing slap. Alas, I'm a 45-year-old dad raised on punk rock and consequently this album does nothing for me.

. . . . and that's a good thing, folks, because if I did enjoy this you'd probably have to report me to the authorities.

VERDICT:  5/10 - Meh (Probably a flawless children's Holiday album, but I wouldn't know because I'm not an eight-year-old girl crushing on twelve-year-old boys. I'm giving this a '5' because it's well-produced and the track list, for the most part, is solid. I imagine in twenty years my grandkids will eat this shit up, but until then it's going into storage and won't see turntable time until then.)

- SHELVED -

- Brian

The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. CXXXVII

Hey, we got any organ fans in the house this evening? If so, prepare yourself for a special treat. . . .

Album Title:  Silent Night: Organ and Chimes Favorites

Album Artist:  William Daly

Ah, another 'chimes' Christmas album. We've had a lot of these over the years, and they vary in the intensity and absurdity of their chimey-ness - sometimes sounding like a boring church service, sometimes sounding like some kinda demonic, carnival sideshow attraction. I spotted this at Radio Wasteland years ago and snatched it up on a whim from their Dollar Bin with zero expectations; based on the album artwork, the fact that this was marked down to the 'discount price' of $1.79 in 1983 (or $5.82 nowadays, which is cheap for a new LP), and the fact its a chimes record, I didn't have high hopes for this one.

Dropping the needle on Side A is pretty much akin to walking into your Grandma's church. Not the one you usually go to, where you kinda know some familiar faces and the lay of the land - you know what kinda music they're gonna play, you know the order of the service, etc. - but your Grandma's church. The kinda church you go to and everything's off and things feel weird. Like, you know Jesus is probably still a big deal and everything, but there's a weird smell in the air from the combination of moldy pew cushions and the 75-and-older crowd (who make up 80% of the thirty-four people in attendance), and you find yourself overcome with a sense of unease. 

The organ work on this album screams 'old people slowly dying in church' more than any other album I've ever reviewed over the course of the last decade or so. And that's saying something, guys. It's not a swirling, circus-esque freakshow organ (we've had that around these parts before), channeling the very fissures of Hell, but instead a slow, warble-y progression to the grave. The arrangements on this piece wouldn't be out of place at a funeral, which might sound weird considering these are Christmas songs and that would usually deter one's mind from going straight there, but. . . here we are. 

It's hard to make up-beat carols sound the exact same as a somber, more religious Christmas song, but William Daly somehow makes it happen. Lots of whole notes to be found here, those are definitely his favorite. Everything comes across in the same time signature, the same level of intensity, and the same volume, as if Will realizes that to take one, musical step out of the norm here would certainly kill (smite?) any or all of the elderly patrons in attendance. It's like some kind of church-y fever dream that you can't escape from.

I never thought in my entire life that I'd ever welcome the sound of chimes in a Christmas song (or any song for that matter), but man - when the occasional chimes do come in to the songs, they're a f***ing blessing. 'Organ and Chimes' is a bit of a stretch for an album title, folks - this should be called 'Organ, feat. Chimes.' They're an accent accompaniment here, not the main attraction, and while I'd usually be the first to stand up and shout, "CHIMES ARE NOT A LEAD INSTRUMENT," I'm so beaten down from the funeral organ on this album that when the chimes do come in here and there it's like a bucket of ice-cold water right in the face. You remember you're alive, and not sitting in attendance for your own funeral.

With a bunch of old church-goers who, for whatever reason, are the only people that bothered to show up to your funeral. 

At that point it's time to re-evaluate your life, folks.

 

VERDICT:  3/10 - Seriously?  (Christmas music for a funeral. If that's your thing.)

- SHELVED -

- Brian

The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. CXXXVI

Do you guys love your family?  If so, how much?

Album Title:  Fanny Farmer presents The King Family Christmas Album

Album Artist:  The King Family

Another dusty relic pried from the Radio Wasteland Dollar Bin, this one stood out to Yours Truly a year or so ago (or whenever it was that I last scooped up a pile of old, Holiday vinyl for reviewing) thanks to the sheer number of people on the album cover. At first glance, you'd assume it's some kinda choir, right? Some kind of Mormon Tabernacle thing going on here, one would think. That or it's the most crowded, insane wedding cake topper I've ever seen.

But then you catch the album title - "The King Family" - and you think to yourself, "No wait, this can't be - this can't all be one, single family, right? RIGHT?' How many kids did the mom and dad have? Are cousins and siblings involved in this undertaking, or is one branch of the family and as kids have kids of their own they're just automatically drafted into active, Holiday service?

Seriously. Who has a family that big in the first place, let alone cramming all these sons of bitches into a studio somewhere in order to cut what is, I'm sure, a great piece of Holiday music.

I had to know more.

So not being at all familiar with the 'King Family,' I figured this one would be worth a spin around the ol' yuletide turntable. I can speak as someone who has a moderately-sized family - five siblings, each of which has three kids (-ish, we're the exception with two) - that putting all of us together in some 1960s recording booth and having anything remotely close to being 'music' come out would be an insurmountable task. A few of us play instruments, sure, but getting us all to work together without killing each other (or staying sober) would be a staggering undertaking, and I don't know if we'd be able to pull it off.

With that in mind, I was willing to give the King Family - who, according to the album cover's back text box, number over 50 - the benefit of the doubt. Who knows, maybe they have their shit together.

Nope.

It clearly becomes evident that, for the most part, they don't have the entire family on here crooning at all times. As crazy as it sounds when the whole clan is crammed into the studio at the same time, shouting over one another like train going off the rails, I'm almost let down they didn't lean full-tilt into this the entire time. God knows this album would have gone from 'boring' to 'terrifying,' and then perhaps this one would be worth of remembrance somewhat. But no, for the most part the family seems to play it safe and take turns with each song: a small collection of ladies sing a lot, and I assume those are the daughters (going by the jacket's backside photos), then there are dudes singing in baritone (dramatically of course, 'cause it's the 1960s), and those guys gotta either be the sons or else husbands of aforementioned daughters. 

Are these all siblings you think, or husbands and wives?

I like to think that for those poor sons of bitches who married into the King Family, this was something that was party of the marital agreement. "Yes Clark, I'll marry you, but you have to sign here on this contract agreeing to participate in any and all future Christmas albums we as Kings will be undertaking until Papa says we can be done." If the guys didn't run for the hills at the first site of that wedding clause, well hell - that's on them. They knew what they were getting themselves into.

You'll be happy to know that later on in the album, on Side B, they even release the young children from their cells and let them growl and sputter on some of the more upbeat carols. It's as unbridled and chaotic as you might expect from a dozen or so kids hopped up on sugar and finally able to stretch their legs a little. None of these little urchins can sing, obviously, but everyone knows that this is a FAMILY affair: everyone's gonna participate in this great, family fun whether they like it or not.

Anyway, this album is mixed pretty well, but the engineer tends to let the vocal soloists dominate at a higher volume than they probably should have. When there's a chorus going, the mix is pretty decent (by 1960s variety show standards, that is), but when it's only one or a handful of singers on display (for lack of better term), the engineer dials it up to assumedly let 'the stars shine.' How much of this is at the bequest of the King matriarch and her legion of mom-aged daughters, I have no idea - I'm guessing they had a say in the creative process here. 

As far as song selections go, for the most part the good people at Fanny Farmer - whoever or whatever the hell that is - had the good sense to stick to the classics. God knows the folks over at The Mike Douglas Show or The Ed Sullivan Show probably wouldn't tolerate too much of that 'original' Christmas music. According to the back jacket cover, this King Family was a well-known act back in the day that had done their due diligence on the ol' black-and-white TV circuit - they know the drill. Sticking to the whole 'variety show' playbook, they blend different songs together in little medleys or suites, never devoting an entire track to a song in its entirety. If I had to wager a guess, it's due to the fact that they wanted to squeeze as many relatives as possible on to the album without pissing anyone off. That's the sorta thing that could really ruin a family Christmas. Or future family Christmas album.

Gonna go out on a limb here and assume this is 'M. King.'

The vibe of this album plays out like a cheap version of the music used in movies like Bing Crosby's White Christmas. I noticed 'M. King' wrote many of the arrangements on to be found here, and he must have been the brains behind the operation, wheeling extended family members into the studio by forklift and arranged them in groups in front of microphones when they were needed. Still, I've heard countless Christmas albums that have used these same, boring, 50s/early 60s, 'pop culture' arrangements. Holiday music to slow dance to. And later drink yourself to death in front of a Christmas tree.

This album reminds me of the early 2010s when some indie rock bands would have like twenty people in their acts, and you'd have people on stage whose sole responsibility was like shaking some maracas or dancing or some crap like that. That used to annoy the shit out of me, and I wanted to pull these bands aside and be like, "Guys, it's totally cool to have friends on the side, not all your buddies have to be in the band at all times." I get that the King Family has a lot of members in its tree, but Jesus H. Christ folks - trim the fat here and there. Maybe Cousin Al doesn't have to be on this year's Christmas album, maybe he can just be the guy that drives all these people around in the converted, old school bus you use to drive from county fair to county fair. And hook up with fat chicks with gonorrhea working the Tilt-a-Whirl from time to time.

There are no stand alone tracks on this album that deserve special scrutiny. I really tried to find you guys something comically bad about this one to eviscerate, but damn it all if this entire album all sounds the exact same. Variety Show sleeze, predictable and boring, like we've all heard a million times before. 

Just with, you know, something like 50 f***ing' singers. So if that's your jam, folks - maybe you'll enjoy this one.

I sure as hell didn't.

VERDICT:  4/10 - Borophyll (Less is more, guys.)

- SHELVED -

- Brian

The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. CXXXV

Strap yourself in for another spin around ye olde turntable, gang. . .

Album Title:  Holiday Greetings

Album Artist:  Birchwood Chorale

I'm not entirely sure where this one came from. I have a stack of, like, forty un-reviewed LPs downstairs in my storage room that I pull from every year for new posts on this site of mine, and because of this I never made it out to Radio Wasteland this year - my local record store - to pick up any more. Probably the first time I haven't done so in like six or so years, Jim most likely thinks I'm dead. Anyway, if I had to guess, I'd wager I picked it up from their Dollar Bin at some point int he past, because it was still shrink-wrapped with the price sticker (a whopping 99 cents) still on it.

Brand new, never played, about as Mint as a forty-five year old record can be.

. . . this can't be a good sign.

So kicking things off on Side A on this sum'bitch, I realized that this album cover art was a little misleading. I assumed there'd be a stand-out, female vocalist on this release. Some chick who, as the picture indicates, enjoys her Holidays with some LCD in her egg nog. Not so much the case, though - I should've caught the 'Chorale' at first glance and realized then that it was a choir-based album, and not some churchy-type tripping balls on yuletide acid.

We've reviewed a ton of 'chorales' on this blog over the years, and the sound majority of those generally sound like church choirs, landing anywhere on the 'professional' to 'Cousin Frank has a microphone-to-reel set up and for $40 and a case of Schlitz he said he'd record your church group next Thursday at 3pm' scale. This doesn't quite sound like a church choir to me, despite some of the religious carols that are being sung here. No, this is more dramatic, like some 'touring' group that puts on a show at your local civic or arts center, and you go with your significant other for like $10 a ticket and sit around a bunch of other folks who equally were in the same 'Eh, it doesn't sound like an awesome time, but if you're bored we could go and check it out' boat.

That's the sort of show where the vocal arrangements are artsier than they need to be, in order to display the singers' range - which, to be fair, is pretty good here. No doubt these folks can sing, and the recording quality is on point for the time: it's mixed well, no dramatic highs and low that make you spill your drink out of fear or anything like that, and the male and female vocals emerge out of the left and right channels (you would want to listen to this in Mono for sure.) There's no music accompaniment except for a soft piano here that serves more as a grounding agent than anything else, so most of the heavy lifting is done by the chorale.

Not falling into the pitfalls of the more-common-than-it-should-be-practice of 'Holiday Originals,' the folks who laid out this track list crammed it full of Holiday staples. This make sense, because if you were going to your local civic center to watch this three-hour choir concert (because you're old now and that's what passes as weekend entertainment at this stage in your life) and you didn't recognize any of the songs, you'd probably have a long, awkward ride home afterwards. And you'd be sleeping on the couch.

You could probably listen to one song off this record and be like, "Okay, I get it." But after nearly forty-five minutes, or seven hours, or however damn long this album is, I feel a little like I'm hallucinating myself. Has this been the same song the entire time? Is the five-headed wreath harpy on the album cover merging into a singular, yuletide Beelzebub? After so much dramatic singing to little-to-no music - often times dialed up to 11, in like John Williams' 'Duel of the Fates' territory,' you feel your brain melting down the back of your shirt.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I think I'll just skip the acid and just stick to whiskey in my egg nog this Holiday Season, thank you very much. I'm too old for a long, strange trip like this.

VERDICT:  5/10 - Meh (Decent singing, as far as chorales go, but one can only take sooo much of this kind of art form in one sitting before questioning the reality of everything around them. And personally, I don't like it when the colors on my walls start speaking to me. . .)

- SHELVED -

- Brian

The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. CXXXIV

Okay, people. 

It's mid-November. The Holiday Pre-Season is upon us.

And you all know what that means. . . .

The Great Christmas Record Odyssey.

We're on the tenth year of me doing this, folks. Ten years of hunting down Christmas records of every stripe, whether they're limited edition, color pressings intentionally hunted down off of Amazon, dusty, mice-chewed vintage albums found stacked (flat, of course) in thrift stores, or random curiosities with hilarious album art plucked from the Dollar Bin at my local record shop, Radio Wasteland. I'll amass a small pile of yuletide albums - usually between ten and fifteen - pour a drink, and then type up a review for each and every one of them throughout the Holiday Season.

It's simple work, but it's honest work.

Seeing how it's the first installment of this season's vinyl scrutinization, I'll once again direct your attention to the sacred rating scale we use around these parts:

10 - . . . And Out Come the Wolves  (Perfection. Don't believe me? Name a better punk album. I'll wait.)

9 - Cowabunga!  (I'm Gen-X, guys - for people in my age group, this term encapsulates the feeling of being round-house kicked across the face by a Ninja Turtle. But in a good way.)

8 - Awesome  (Solid, without any major faults. Worthy of repeated spins during the Holidays. )

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  (This is the point where it gets dicey. Once and awhile a '6' makes it into constant rotation, but only if it satisfies a previously-vacant Holiday music niche.  These albums almost always get 'Shelved':  I hold on to them - for the time being - but they lose turntable time for the duration of the Season.)

5 - Meh   (This is the dime-a-dozen wasteland, where you find your Julie Andrews and your Percy Como's. Anything below this point is almost always put into my annual 'Donate to Goodwill' pile.)

4 - Borophyll  (There may be some redeeming qualities here that might make albums at this score appeal to some people, but definitely not to Yours Truly.)

3 - Seriously?  (Comically bad, if you will.)

2 - Reality TV  (There's only one thing shittier than Reality TV, gang. . . .)

1 - Ohio  (Do I really have to explain this?)

Good.  Now that everyone's been refreshed with how shit works around here, let's just go ahead and get started, shall we. . .

Album Title:  Punk Rock Christmas 2

Album Artist:  Various Artists

So this album was purchased by mistake, believe it or not. A couple months ago I had attempted to buy an album called Halloween Garage Blues off Amazon (you know, for Halloween.) Well, the album arrives a few days later, I open it up, and - lo and behold - it's a James Brown Christmas album. I double-checked the UPC sticker on the cardboard mailer, and it said it was Halloween Garage Blues, but the album inside was different. I briefly thought about keeping it anyway, but I'm only so-so with James Brown and dropping $18 on a Christmas album just to review on this blog of mine seemed stupid, so I ended up returning it.

I tried ordering the album a second time, and - just as before - the cardboard mailer stated that it was, in fact, the album that I had ordered. But again, upon opening it up, I found this album instead. Punk Rock Christmas 2. At this point, I said 'f*** it' and just cut my losses. I love punk rock, I love Christmas, maybe this one would pan out decent. Plus, it looks pretty cool: pressed on heavy, white vinyl, the jacket and presentation of this compilation is awesome - album artwork carries the same skeleton motif as as the first installment in this series (which I don't own. . . yet). 

Now, on to the album itself.  Punk Rock is tricky, and I say that as someone who holds this sub-genre of rock and roll as the greatest out there. There are multiple styles, spanning nearly fifty years, and as such you have to build a punk playlist adhering to certain rules. Most importantly of these is sound: punk rock has evolved from snarling, fashion-oriented rebellion (in England's and New York City's respective, late 70's scenes), to the class warfare motifs of the hardcore explosion in California and Washington D.C. in the early 80's. It started to die out, only to see a rebirth in the skate-punk bands of the mid-90's, and then MTV caught on and, on the heels of successful crossover bands like Green Day and The Offspring, we ended up with the highly polished 'pop-punk' of the early 2000's. 

Though calling any pop-punk band 'punk' is a grievous sin. Don't do that shit: Pop-Punk stands alongside 'Boy Bands' or 'Hick Hop' atop the World's Most Insufferable Music list.

With sound in mind, we have the approach to compiling albums with various artists. You CANNOT have a '70s punk band on the same album as a pop-punk/emo group, that's the sort of thing a 7th grader does when building their edgy playlist to listen to on the school bus every morning. Regardless, whoever came up with this compilation seemed to be grasping at straws in order to fill up a second compilation of punk-ish Christmas songs, because that's exactly what we have here. Classic originators from the '70s like Johnny Thunders on the same side as the insufferable, whiny-voiced Amber Pacific, whose entire discography is clearly written for 14-year-olds who think Amber Pacific is 'edgy.'

(They're not.)

I wish I could say that this was a compilation of poorly-chosen artists alone, and that even if they didn't blend well laterally they at least all had some decent songs on here. Sadly, that isn't the case, I'm afraid. Some songs - like Naked Aggression's 'What We Buy' and MDC's '(Merry Christmas) The World's on Fire' aren't even Christmas songs, they just have Christmas-related words in the song title. That's lazy-ass studio exec'ing, guys. 

Pace is an issue as well. Reagan Youth's 'Punk Rock Christmas' or The Members' cover of 'Happy X-Mas (War is Over)' are slow and painful affairs that barely qualify as 'punk' at all (and punk legends Reagan Youth's vocals are so bad on this track you can barely listen to the song in its entirety.) It's okay to slow things down once and awhile in punk music, but when that happens you have to do one of two things: 1.) switch from shout-singing to actually singing, or 2.) continue to shout-sing. The former takes talent, the latter takes conviction. . . and in punk rock conviction is the biggest asset to a vocalist, and the main determining factor in whether or not a band will cut it for you. I listen to a LOT of punk rock, and my favorite bands are the ones where the singer can be believed in what he's saying, even if he sings like total shit. Within a second or two of a vocalist coming in on a verse I can tell whether or not I can listen to that band, regardless of whether or not I like the sound of the band (ex. the Dead Kennedys sound awesome but I can't listen to them because Jello Biafra's voice makes me want to take my own life.)

It's not all doom-and-gloom for this season's first album review, though - we have some definite bright spots to highlight here. The Rumjacks' track, 'Christmas in Killarney,' is a breath of fresh air, rollicking across three minutes like the Dropkick Murphys' cousins from Australia were only in town to celebrate the Holidays for one night and were damned sure to make the most of it. 90's skate-punk veterans Pulley and Down by Law (as well as Down by Law's singer's side-project band, Dave Smalley and the Bandeleros) all deliver on their tracks, as well. There were even a couple bands I was previously unaware of, like Bankrupt (from Hungary, I guess?) and Ship Thieves (who arguably have the best track on this entire album with 'Who Put the Gum in Santa's Whiskers?') who managed to figure out how to do Christmas songs the proper, punk way. 

It shouldn't be f***ing rocket science, but I guess some bands - and the label executives who compile these holiday albums - struggle with it.

So, in the end, this album is all over the damn place. Cohesively, it's a hot mess - from bands' sounds not meshing, to artists of various eras not blending together track-by-track, to bands who probably shouldn't even be in the same zip code as authentic punk bands, etc. Some songs are definite punk rock originals about the Holidays, but others just seem to feature Christmas-ish words in the titles. There are great songs on here, and some decent ones, some 'meh' ones, and some God-awful ones that I will skip over every, damn time. If one of your determining factors when selecting a Christmas album is consistency, than this one is certainly not your jam.

Ultimately, it comes down to an appreciation of the genre itself, and when it comes to punk rock, rules aren't meant to be blindly adhered to. Cohesiveness and consistency? I guess none of that really matters in the end with punk rock. As shitty as some of the songs on here are, there's enough glorious, Holiday moments to be found on here to keep it in rotation.  Oi Oi Oi.

VERDICT:  7/10 - Pretty Rad (If it were possible to rank it a '6.5' I would, but we don't do that '.5' sorta shit around these parts.)

- REMAINS IN CIRCULATION -

- Brian