The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. CXXII

Hey there. Let's jump into this one and, well, just see what we can wrap our heads around . .

Album Title:  A Christmas to Remember

Album Artist:  Various Artists

Right off the bat, I should let you guys know that this was one of the more difficult albums I've had to review for the Holidays. I first spotted it at Radio Wasteland in the dusty-as-all-hell Dollar Bin, and right away I thought this was going to be a total crap-fest, considering:

No, that's not The Band - it's The Christmas Boogie Band. Huge difference.

1.)  I didn't recognize a single artist on the track listing on the back of the sleeve, which is rarely a good sign. I mean, how hard is it really to book a C- or D-List artist for a Holiday record? How many absolute train wrecks have we seen over the years featuring abysmal 'talent' in their track listings? These dudes are always clamoring for spots on Christmas compilations like this, that's pretty much all they had once their mainstream careers began to dry up. 

2.)  The cover art is. . . something. You have Santa Claus, flying across a wintery landscape, like he's been known to do - directly in front of the moon like he's in E.T. or some shit. Down below on the ground is a herd of wild horses, watching on in what I can only assume is awe at the passing spectacle. Horses are skittish animals, guys, so this probably freaked them right the f*** out. Seeing a dude repeatedly cracking a whip across the backs of their quadruped cousins (are horses and reindeer distantly related?) as THEY FLY ACROSS THE SKY, IN CLEAR DEFIANCE OF GOD'S WILL.

Clearly whoever whipped this together was high as a damn kite.

But I digress. Let's get back to the point of this whole entry here, folks - let's analyze what this thing actually sounds like. 

Dropping the needle on Side A, we're met with some upbeat Tijuana-ish, South-of-the-Border jazz. As you all well know by now, this is most definitely my jam. I sat up, took notice, and was like, 'Oh damn, we might have a surprise keeper on our hands here!'

Remember this one, gang? Colored vinyl pressing of Christmas Disco for $12?

Then, right on its heels, came something different - a full-blown, Salsoul Orchestra-ish rendition of 'Jingle Bells.' Jarring, sure, considering it was preceded by a completely different sound, but not horrible: both were upbeat, fun instrumentals that one could definitely be entertained by, and they were done well (mixing, arrangement, performance - no complaints.) 

The next track also had some disco elements to it, but featured a male singer delivering some straight-up yacht rock vocals over the funkiness. 2015 Brian would not have cared for this in the slightest, but 2024 Brian, folks, is all here for the Yacht Rock.

I was hoping the trend would continue as Side A progressed, but the ol' bucket of ice water was dashed in my face pretty fast when the next track kicked off. A polka number. Heavy on the organ, no accordion to be found, so that it comes across more as a carnival ride soundtrack than an actual Polish take on Christmas. Definitely cringy, but all of these songs clock in under the 2-minute mark, so I was willing to take a point off and continue on my merry way. Fortunately, the next song is a return to Yacht Rock/Disco territory, which, while not my favorite sort of yuletide genre in the slightest, was at least following a discernible trend.

Magnum P.I. and Slenderman enjoy a sleigh ride on a magical winter's night. 

The last track on Side A, while not horrible, was a country/western instrumental done all on a quartet of guitars. And though out of place here (though the 'place,' by this point in time, is starting to get hard to keep track of), it was a decent little track. No, where everything falls of the rails in major fashion is upon flipping the record over on to Side B. . .

It's a piano-led orchestral number. Slow, serene, and it doesn't sound anything like Christmas music. It's like they pressed two different mini-albums onto one frickin' record. No more upbeat, fun music. No more Tijuana jazz, no more disco, no more yacht rock. Now it's time for introspection.

I had a bad feeling that this album was themed (I've reviewed albums in the past that were released like this), with one side the 'upbeat' Christmas music - the fun carols, etc. - and the other side the 'serious' Christmas music (you know, the 'Reason for the Season' and all that crap.)  

I hate it when albums do this.

Well, they definitely weren't kidding with the 'all the different ways you feel' crap.

My fears were well-founded, as it turns out. The next couple tracks were all filled with the usual, boring church bullshit: lots of organ, lots of hand bells, chimes, harpsichords, harmonicas (courtesy of a group called The Harmonicats - seriously, I guess that's a thing that exists), and - of course - swelling string sections. It was bad enough just as mere instrumental tracks, but by the third or fourth song in, they start rolling out the usual, overly-brash male vocals - because belting out religious carols makes it hit harder, I guess - and the standard, old-lady-warbling that you generally hear at a church service you're dragged to during the Holiday Season.

This whole album sounds like some mid-level record company executive asked his sound engineers what masters were lying around the label's studio that hadn't been previously released on prior Holiday compilations. The poor sound dudes, sighing deeply and shaking their heads, came out with a dusty cardboard box filled with a 13 reels of various songs (from all kinds of frickin' genres.) They informed this douchey superior of theirs that these reels were all that was left, but they were from various sessions over the years and there wasn't any continuity to speak of.

Then the executive, in his infinite wisdom, said 'screw it' and told them to mix them all up and have the shit pressed for release.

If it were possible to rate each side separately, I'd probably rate Side A a 6.5 (not that we condone the '0.5' system around here) and Side B a 4. But, because we are a society with f***ing rules, I can't do that, and as such, will be slapping one, big rating on the entire album as a whole.  And I'm not happy about it. At all.

VERDICT:  5/10 - Meh  (Almost good, but damn - this album does to 'compilations' what Michael Bay did to Transformers. It's so random that I want to prescribe it ADHD meds and get it in to therapy.)

- SHELVED-

- Brian

The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. XXXVIII

Time for another installment of pre-Holiday Season weirdness, America.

Get your Jam Pants on. . .

Album Title:  The Sounds of Christmas

Album Artist:  Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians

I'm going to start this off by saying that this is a really, really bizarre album.

Now, you wouldn't really think it by merely looking at the album cover (though anyone who comes up with 'The Pennsylvanians' for an ensemble name is probably a bit weird.)  If anything, one would think that, upon looking at the album artwork, this would be yet another 'down home Country Christmas' offering, focusing on vocal-heavy, organ-and-bell numbers the likes we've seen, oh, thirty or forty f***ing times already in this Great Christmas Odyssey of ours.

I sure as hell did.

Well, you'd be wrong, folks.  This album does indeed focus on the vocals - the Pennsylvanians are more or less a church choir, and they do their churchy choir thing as could be expected.  Barely any musical instruments to be found here; you're more or less sitting in a church pew for this one, listening to your fellow parishioners belt out Holiday carols.  Not terrible, for what it is.  If that's your thing, you'd probably love this offering.

(Me?  Not so much.)

What's really weird about this album is the random sound effects.  When I read 'The Sounds of Christmas,' I assumed - like most folks probably would - that this referred to the various carols the choir was singing.  Well, what it refers to is church bells, train whistles, the sounds of crowds and cars, etc. - basically anything the guys who mixed this down could get their hands on.  I feel like some asshole with a reel-to-reel recorder was walking around the outside of the church, trying to get inside to record the choir, and accidentally had the recorder running as he was frantically trying to find the entrance.

Not very professional, Fred Waring.

Sound effects aside, no song on this album is very long.  They get about a minute into a song before they fade out and fade back in to the choir singing another Holiday carol.  Sometimes it fades out back to church bell sound effects, other times it fades in to a children's choir, or organ music that doesn't have anything to do with what the choir was previously singing.  I'm pretty sure the guy who mixed this album down was high as a kite.

Then, inexplicably, there's an ol' timey slave spiritual in the middle of Side A.  I shit you not.  Like, think Roots.  It makes NO SENSE, and as I was playing this in the comfort of my Study, I literally glanced over my shoulder to make sure there weren't any African Americans standing in my backyard that might take offense to me playing this.  The slave spiritual eventually transitions into a southern revivalist banger, as if a group of African American church-goers from the Deep South burst open the previous church's doors and hijacked the recording process for a song or two, then left without saying anything.

After a song or two of borderline racist-randomness, it goes right back to the boring, run-of-the-mill church choir warbling.  With no previous indication that the slave spirituals and Black Church testifyin' ever happened.  Did the elderly church choir even notice?

This album gives me anxiety.

VERDICT:  3/10 - Seriously? (Random sound effects and slave spirituals do not equate to Holiday music, Fred Waring.  This album scores a pity point for being sooo random that I plan on keeping it among my Christmas collection just so I can play it for people once and awhile as proof of its existence.)

- SHELVED -

Random Kid Update, Vol. II

Yes, I realize we haven't been 'on the ball' with updating our family website this month. A thousand apologies. Our workloads have been insane this year (remember me mentioning 'the A'Team'? Turns out I was right about many of those assumptions of mine). This year's gonna be a bonafide train-wreck.

Work aside, having two kids is interestingly enough twice as time-consuming as just raising one. Who knew. You'd think it'd be more of a buy-one, get-one free sorta thing. Whatever.

In conclusion, we sincerely hope everybody has been able to persevere through this difficult time surfing the world wide web sans Hough updates. We appreciate the patience, folks, and look forward to sorta disappointing and/or minorly inconveniencing you in the near future.

Having said that, Enjoy some new footage, folks.

Slainte.

- Brian

Random Kid Update

We figured we'd share some random, day-to-day footage from around our household. Enjoy.

- Brian and Kris

The Library(ish) Room

Hey gang. Let's talk about books for a sec.

I happen to enjoy books a great deal. I like reading them, and I have quite a few of them. When we moved into this new house of ours, we had two bookcases filled with 'em, but another eight or nine moving boxes filled with those that couldn't fit in the shelves. So we bought another one. That left us with five or six boxes of books lying around the house.

Neither Kris nor myself were very fond of the idea of continuously purchasing additional bookcases for the house. For one thing, we don't have the room for any additional furniture - we're up to the hilt in furniture around here - and the logistics of housing all of those random bookcases (that probably wouldn't match) is just something that neither of us want to deal with.

The solution? The Random Room.

What the hell's the Random Room? Its exactly what it sounds like, folks: its that one room in the house filled with random nonsense, unpacked boxes, and crap. Storage bins, a coffee table, a large bulletin board from my old office, the vacuum cleaner and other cleaning polearms, and a mountain of books and photo albums.

All in all, a big mess.

This room had to go.

Kris and I realized that with my mom and stepdad coming down to visit, we'd be able to tackle a lot more remodeling and construction around the house. Cowabunga. John was able to install a series of brackets and shelves down the back wall that was strong and sturdy enough to hold our numerous tomes (thanks again), and - voila - we were able to turn what had previously been a constant source of annoyance into a cozy, mini-shrine of knowledge.

Check it out:


Now all I need is a parlor chair and I'll be all set.

Slainte,

Brian