The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. CVII

Ladies and Gentledudes of the Internet, I present to you now the return of America's Greatest Yuletide Event:

The Great Christmas Record Odyssey.

You readers all know by now that systematically going through every, last one of my Christmas albums during the Holidays and scrutinizing the holy hell out of 'em is, without a doubt, one of my favorite Holiday traditions. This borderline weird past time of mine - a perfect storm that marries the OCD/Hough analytical side of my personality with my love of music, vinyl collecting, and the Holidays in general -  has been around since I first got into vinyl, back in 2005. Even that far back, when my collection was probably only a dozen or so LP's and compilations my Dad gave to me (or I otherwise picked up at a thrift store) and about three-dozen boxed sets I got from my Granny, I began diving deep into musty, Holiday music, cocktail in hand, and discovering all kinds of Christmas music - the good, the bad, and the ugly. Ten years later, the first year we moved back to Michigan, I began recording my analysis on this here family blog of ours, and now - seven years and over one hundred frickin' installments later - this ongoing Holiday tradition of mine runs like a well-oiled, yuletide machine.

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

10 - . . . And Out Come the Wolves (a symbol of perfection, and arguably one of the greatest albums made in the last thirty years)

9 - Cowabunga! (if it makes you want to shout like a Ninja Turtle, you know it's good.)

8 - Awesome (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 (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  (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 Yours Truly.)

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

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)

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:  The Golden Glow of Christmas

Album Artist:  Various Artists

This one was among a stack of crappy, used vinyl that I picked up at Radio Wasteland a year or two ago (every year I go in to my local record store and drop about $20 - $25 on dollar store records to add to my To Analyze stack - I'm probably sitting on, like, fifty albums to review at this point.) I'll review them, give them a score, then drop them back off to Jim in a month or two. Usually I get some kind of a trade-in deal for 'em, so it all comes out in the wash in the end.

I kinda knew, going into this one, what I was getting myself into; probably '4' or '5' territory, based solely on the artist line-up. Probably not going to be great by any means, but also nothing overly cringe-worthy or comically bad. Just your usual quasi-boring, run-of-the-mill, 1950s/1960s Christmas compilation. God knows I've reviewed, like, forty or fifty of these sum'bitches over the last eight years.

Well, here's another one to add to that list.

Kicking things off, we have the New York Philharmonic's take on the "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's Messiah. Not unheard of on a holiday compilation - I've seen it multiple times before - but it's far from ideal. I wouldn't call this song Christmas 'mainstream' by any means, but rather a classical piece that's worked its way into church music over the last couple hundred years. Its appearance on holiday albums makes sense when the album in question is solely religious music (usually the case), but on a compilation that features non-religious music (such as this one) the song's inclusion is asinine. While the rendition of the song is great - no complaints here, Leonard Bernstein - it doesn't vibe well with the rest of the track list.

If you're a fan of Johnny Mathis, Doris Day, Julie Andrews, Jerry Vale, Tony Bennett or Barbara Streisand, you'd appreciate their numbers here. Nothing extraordinary or god-awful to be found on either side of this album, just the usual yuletide malaise from the same assortment of Christmas Regulars that pop up on compilations like this one. 

What would Mathis' take on 'White Christmas' sound like? It sounds exactly like you'd think it would. 

No one takes any risks with their assigned songs - they've been doing this long enough, they know how the deal works. Show up, record your song, collect your paycheck, and go home to probably scarf down a handful of amphetamines or whatever the hell all these guys were addicted to back in the 50s/60s.

'It Came Upon a Midnight Clear', courtesy of Ray Conniff & The Singers is a solid number - I'm a big fan of their Holiday album, We Wish You a Merry Christmas - and Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra deliver with their well-known number 'Anderson: Sleigh Ride' (the commonly-used rendition that features the big brass sound that's one-part Christmas and two-parts College Football Marching Band at Half-Time.) 

Alas, these two numbers are the only two stand-outs in an otherwise run-of-the-mill, snoozefest of a Holiday comp that comes courtesy of the good folks over at JC Penney. 

Perhaps if those guys had been better at putting together Christmas records they'd still be in business.

VERDICT:  4/10 - Borophyll (This album is 'being dragged to JC Penney by your mom on a Sunday afternoon to buy an uncomfortable pair of khaki slacks for Christmas card pictures,' in music form.)

- SHELVED -

- Brian

The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. LXXIX

Good God, here we go again. . . 

Album Title:  The Brightest Stars of Christmas

Album Artist:  Various Artists

Guys, I'm really conflicted about this one.  Head's all over the place.

Merry Christmas from the Donner Family

So, starting off with the album cover, we have some obvious 1960s watercolor painting of what, I assume, are seven shacks on the side of a wintry mountain, all buried in snow.  If this were a photograph of a real place, the inhabitants would slowly succumb to hypothermia and people wouldn't find their frozen corpses until Spring.  Who thought that this artwork would make a great album cover for a Holiday compilation? 

The good folks at J.C. Penney, that's who.  

(Remember J.C. Penney?  It was like Kohls, but shittier.)

Anyway, artwork aside, this is your usual roster of snooze-fest go-to's that we've seen pop up time and time again in this Christmas Record Odyssey of ours:  Ed Ames, Perry Como, Arthur Fiedler, Henry Mancini,, Robert Shaw Chorale, etc. etc.  Even before I dropped the needle on this one, I had a hunch that we'd be somewhere in the '3' or '4' neck of the woods.  The opening song on Side 1 wasn't anything to raise my hopes, either - an orchestral show-opener that's loud, overly-celebratory, and everything you'd come to expect from Eugene Ormandy.

Not like any of us know who the hell that guy even is.

Things slowly start to improve, however.  Elvis - the white-washed King of Rock and Roll - shows up with his famous 'Here Comes Santa Claus.'  If you like Elvis, you'll like this.  If you don't like him, you won't.  There's nothing surprising here with this song, it seriously sounds like every other upbeat Elvis song you've ever heard.  Ever.

Track 3 on Side 1, "Wonder Winterland" features a hillbilly banjo out of left field (by way of Tijuana.)  Steel guitars and a hard ride cymbal drive this Dixieland, brass-heavy rager into something that seriously had me come back into the Study from the kitchen and say out loud, "Are you frickin' kiddin' me?"  This track is awesome.

Following this, it segues right into Perry Como's "Home for the Holidays."  While I've never once said out loud "I love Perry Como" - because then I'd be a Comosexual - this is a Holiday staple, and one that currently sits on more than one of my Holiday playlists.

Sadly, this short run of 'not bad' patters out, and we're left with Christmas songs as lifeless as the frozen bodies left trapped on the side of the mountain in the picture above (thanks again, J.C. Penney.)  Harpsichords and a church choir - everyone's favorite combination - close out Side 1 in a yawnfest medley.  The same bizarre, overly-orchestral version of 'Jingle Bells' that Julie Andrews was forced to work with on our previous episode is featured as the opener of Side 2.  Ed Ames gets your grandmother's juices going, but certainly doesn't do it for anyone else.  Charley Pride's country number is as out of place on this compilation as a black singer would have been in 1970s country music.

. . . . hey, wait a sec.

Arthur Fiedler - the Fiedster - then makes a valiant attempt to bring Side Two back to life with his famous rendition of 'Sleigh Ride,' accompanied by the Boston Pops (like Perry Como's song on this release, a Holiday standard that's featured on one or two of my playlists), but it's just. . .  not enough.

VERDICT:  5/10 - Meh (Rising from the ashes of J.C. Penney's grandma slacks and tacky bed comforters comes this random compilation of Holiday usual-ness.  A hidden gem, a couple tried-and-trues, and a whole lotta boring.)

- SHELVED -

- Brian