Ep. XXVIII: 'Joyous Music for Christmas Time' - Various Artists

 What's up, fan base.

We're officially in the Holiday Season now, so it should go without saying that Yours Truly is already hilt-deep in his record collection, scrounging up Christmas treasures won from various record stores, thrift shops, and. . . well, Amazon.

For the last two years, I've shared with you one of my all-time favorite - and borderline obsessive compulsive - Holiday pastimes:  the audio scrutinization and analysis of every last Holiday record in my ever-expanding record collection.  This year is no different, folks - I've got a horde of new albums to review, some fake logs on my gas fireplace, and some yuletide 'nog all set and ready to rock and roll this evening.

So throw on your Santa hats, fetch yourself a holiday cocktail, and let us do this. . .

Album Title:  Joyous Music for Christmas Time

Album Artist:  Various Artists

Okay, but before I start off with this, I should point out that I have no idea where this came from.  I've had it for a couple years now, and just haven't gotten to it in my previous year's Holiday record rating.  There's no price tags to be found, but the inner paper sleeves - while still in pretty good shape - aren't in the Near Mint condition that would give it away as being a former number from Granny's collection (which I inherited.)  These records also have some hissing surface noise to them (fortunately no pops or anything), which is odd - it tells me that this collection was well-loved and often-played.

And that, dear readers, is kinda sad, really.  For whomever previously owned this particular 4-LP box set must have had a really, really weird taste in music.

I had some high hopes going into this box set, folks, I really did.  Some of the songs are a straight-up full-choir tour-de-force, backed by roaring church organs and brass.  Kinda like if you were dragged to your Grandma's church one Sunday in December, but unlike the church your family usually goes to, your Grandma's church is one of those centuries-old, castle-like cathedrals downtown, with a shitload of stained-glass windows, a full orchestra, and a 200-person choir conducted by Basil Poledouris (see:  Conan the Barbarian.)

It's the sort of music that makes you want to celebrate the Lord's birth. . . then run to the nearest living thing and chop off it's head with a mighty broadsword.

But sadly, those few songs are about all this boxed set has to offer.

While these numbers - mostly from the first record - relish in their epic yule-ishness, the majority of this collection is more humble in arrangement and sound.  There's some quieter organ work, which sounds less like Conan and more like one of those warbly deals you can find in living rooms all over the 1970s.  We also have some '60s easy listening and some hymns.  Then some more hymns.  And also some hymns.

Then the boxed set attempts to 'kick it up a notch' with some futile attempts at operatic singing, as if you were dragged back in to your Grandma's church, where one of the old choir ladies in their congregation starts singing with delusions of grandeur.  And you have to sit there and listen to this random old lady pretend she's on some theater stage, belting out her rendition of Silent Night, all the while you're trying so hard not to laugh that you pee yourself a little.

Apart from the other three albums, one whole record in this boxed set is comprised of selections from Handel's Messiah.  If you like that classical piece, cool.  You might like this boxed set.  I personally don't have anything against it, per se, but neither am I one of those guys who drives around listening to frickin' Handel during the Holiday season.  Tchaikovsky, sure.  Handel?  Not so much.

I mean, I love Rossini and Mozart, but I don't want either of those dudes on my Christmas album, folks.

In conclusion, I'm seriously considering tossing out Records 2 and 4 from this boxed set and re-rating this collection a 6. . . but that would require getting up, walking across the Study and into the Kitchen in order to reach a trash can, and. . . well, I'm a lazy, lazy man.

VERDICT:  5/10 - Meh  (25% of this boxed set is pretty good background music, 25% is Handel's Messiah, and the other 50% is nothing but shitty music from your grandma's church.)

- SHELVED -

Ep. V: 'The Family Christmas Treasury' - The Holiday Choraliers/ 'Organ and Chimes' - Jesse Crawford

 Okay, America - today I have two reviews for ya. . . and neither of them are good.

Album Title:  The Family Christmas Treasury

Album Artist:  The Holiday Choraliers and the Longines Symphonette (featuring the World-famed Thomas Organ)

I know what you're all thinking out there - THE  Thomas Organ?!  Are you kidding me?!

Seriously, folks.  You'd think with such a list of contributing 'talent' on a record like this, there just might be something worth listening to.  Sadly, that isn't the case, here - this collection is terrible.

Another classic mash-up featuring the hot skills of those Holiday Choraliers and those gangsters in the Longines Symphonette.  Dope stuff.

This is a four-record boxed set, and every side of every record sounds about the same - elevator music.  From the early '60s.  You feel like you're sitting in an insurance agent's waiting room in 1963, slowly losing your mind as your eyes drift along a wall of wood paneling and western-themed oil paintings.  And, because it's Christmas and everything, this f***ing record is playing really, really quietly in the background.

Can you picture Hell now, Internet?

This four-record boxed set was among the bulk collection of records I inherited from my dad's mom back in 2005, and there's a particular here worth mentioning.  Among the collection my granny gave me, there were about twenty mint-condition boxed sets that she had amassed through Time-Life, Reader's Digest, and the like back in the '60s and '70s. . . and from their flawless condition, most had never even been listened to.  This particular box set, however, is significantly worn - there's a lot of pops and hisses on these records, despite my attempts at cleaning them.  Scuff marks, scratches, etc.  Nothing serious that would make me toss the set or prohibit from gracing one of my turntables, but enough to cause audio distortion.

This, to me, clearly means that Granny played the shit out of this boxed set.  She loved it.  It's worn to pieces from so much love and use over the years.  And that's just straight-up weird, 'cause this album, as previously stated, is 'wood paneling and western-themed oil paintings' in music form.

Which, if you knew my granny at all, explains a lot.

VERDICT:  3/10 - Seriously? (scored a point for being one of my granny's favorites, and I do love my granny.)

- SHELVED -

Album Title:  Organ and Chimes

Album Artist:  Jesse Crawford

This one is barely worth reviewing.  I only feel the need to mention it because I want the world to know of its sheer horribleness.

Jesse Crawford - whoever he/she is - deserves a swift kick in the nuts (or lady parts) for making this.  The only people this record is suited for are those elderly people who can't hear any more, but still feel it's their Christian duty to sit in church and listen to pipe organ music they CAN'T EVEN HEAR.  For that's what this is, readers - pipe organ music.  Nothing more.  While playing this, occasionally there would be chimes, and my dog Watson would lose his shit, thinking people were at our front door.

Doorbells ringing over an out-of-tune pipe organ.  Playing Christmas tunes.  That's what this record is, folks.

No.

And, judging by its sound quality (or lack thereof), I'm assuming it was recorded in a dingy church basement in some small town in the midwest, by someone's cousin (probably named Travis) who records speeches in the town's city hall.

To add insult to injury, there's an abundance of pops and hisses on this atrocity that prohibit me from even playing it through on my turntable.  Henceforth, I am casting it down back into the fires of Hell from whence it came.

VERDICT:  1/10 - Ohio

- THROWN IN THE GARBAGE -