Ep. LXXIX: 'The Brightest Stars of Christmas' - Various Artists

 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

Ep. LXXVIII: 'Firestone Presents Your Favorite Christmas Carols' - Julie Andrews

Another day, another random Christmas LP from the stacks of yesteryear. . . 

Album Title:  Firestone Presents - Your Favorite Christmas Carols

Album Artist:  Julie Andrews

So, just to be up front with everyone here, I don't have a damn thing to say against Julie Andrews.  She's Mary frickin' Poppins, and we're all gonna show that lady some respect around these parts.  

Now this bad boy I believe I got when my kid brother, Chris, decided he was too cool for vinyl anymore and dumped a crate of mostly-shitty LPs on me a couple years ago.  For whatever reason, he had this one in that crate, and so we're finally getting around to analyzing this latest offering from the good folks at Firestone Auto.

Four new tires aaaaaaaand some Andre Previn for ya, pal.

You know when you buy your Christmas music from the tire store, you're in for a real treat.

This album is yet another example of the mismatching of vocals with the sound of music (see what I did there???)  What Firestone has done here (and I know they probably had little to do with the organization and production of this album, but whatever) is take a very soft-voiced, English lady and paired her up with an orchestra that is either a.) too bombastic in volume, or b.) too distracting with weird instrument choices or sudden theme changes.

This album, overall, feels very bloated.  As if the producers of this album felt intimidated by Julie Andrews' very presence in the studio and felt it necessary to over-compensate for their insecurities by just assaulting the senses with a constant-barrage of sound or weird changes in tempo, volume, or theme.  Like hot damn, fellas - how hard is it for you to just lay down a simple, soft melody for Mary Poppins to sing over?  You have the talent in front of a mic, just act frickin' normal for 2 1/2 minutes, five or six times per side, and you're done.

'Jingle Bells' is not a symphony.  It does not require five theme changes, four movements, and an interlude.  Just play the damn song, guys.

Take 'Joy to the World' as another example.  Now that's a ridiculously difficult song to get wrong, folks - it's a yuletide banger, and it's one of those songs that when it comes on, you're like, 'Oh hell yes, I love this one.'  Even with this sure-fire title on the track list, this arranger still manages to bungle it.  Horns are too loud, timpani are thundering everywhere, and it just feels like they have every volume knob cranked up to 11.  The male chorus overpowering Ms. Andrews at every turn sounds like a regiment of drunken, Russian hussars  singing in a beer hall after slaughtering peasants on the steppes.

These are the assholes, folks.

Some of the slower songs - like 'O, Little Town of Bethlehem' or 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen'- feel as if they had initially been planned as twelve-minutes of orchestral arrangement but then were diced up on the editing floor because the arrangers realized they only had a frickin' paragraph and a half of lyrics to go with it.   There's random harpsichord solos - yes, harpsichords - interspersed among the sweeping string sections so the entire thing feels like a dated musical piece Disney produced for an after school educational program.  

You can't make this shit up, folks.

Poor Ms. Andrews is featured on, like, 20% of this album.  The other 80% percent is made up of instrumental arrangements that try way too damn hard to be bold, or overly-sentimental, or God knows what else.  

Umm. . . . no, it wasn't.

Now, on occasion, the music and Andrews do match up into something that could be considered a cohesive musical pairing.  It happens on a couple songs, scattered across both sides of this moldy Firestone offering.  

And when that does happen, dear readers, this is tolerable background music - stuff you could put on a 'Classic Christmas' playlist, filled with music from the '40s, '50s and '60s.  Obviously not something you'd listen to all the time, but still.  Tolerable.

VERDICT:  5/10 - Meh (A reputable singer is drowned out by overly-ambitious orchestral accompaniments.  Wacky antics - and harpsichords - ensue.)

- SHELVED -

- Brian

Ep. VI: 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' - The Vince Guaraldi Trio/ 'Your Favorite Christmas Music, Vol. 4' - Various Artists

 Welcome back.

Since we're running short on Holiday music review time, I'm going to double-up on my album reviews from this point forward.  Check out what we have going on today. . .

Album Title:  A Charlie Brown Christmas

Album Artist:  The Vince Guaraldi Trio

Very rarely does one album sum up the entire Holiday season in one fury of sonic awesomeness, but this well-known jazz standard is the staple of the Hough Family Holiday Season.  Every track features the Vince Guaraldi Trio keeping it lose and festive, showcasing their chops while at the same time adhering to each Christmas carol's core melody (something you would think would be simple, but that sooooo many other jazzy Christmas albums fail to do.)

And to top it all off?  The record itself is a festive green.  I mean, that's just awesome.

Long story short, this is perfection achieved.

VERDICT:  10/10 - . . .And Out Come the Wolves  (A flawless Christmas album that receives the same perfect score as the other flawless album that bears its name)

- REMAINS IN CIRCULATION -

reviews from this point forward.  Check out what we have going on today. . .

Album Title:  Your Favorite Christmas Music, Volume 4

Album Artist:  Various Artists

Oh, Granny. . .

I seem to have a ton of these different compilation albums, inherited from God Knows Where.  Most, I take it, are from my dad's mom (ol' Granny Hough, that is) - one only needs to glance upon the inexplicable scrawling across the front cover to identify the OCD-ness of a Hough.  Plus it's in calligraphy, and that's been Granny's calling card for years.

This particular album was recorded in 1965 (see calligraphy at left), and definitely sounds like it.  Not the fun, hip, British Invasion mid-60s, either.  No, this is the stuffy music of the World War II generation - once America's Greatest Generation, now reduced to yelling from their living room recliners at their teenage children about cutting their mop tops and secretly thinking kids' shaggy hair might have something to do with the Communists.

Thanks, Firestone.

Here's something a little random concerning this particular compilation - it's from Firestone.  That's right, Firestone.  As in the automotive tire company.

What the hell are they doing producing Christmas albums?

I'm assuming this was part of a promotion they were running back in 1965.  Maybe Grandpa Hough loaded up Granny, my dad, and my Aunt Lucy up into the family station wagon one December day and drove up to Bob's Tire Emporium.  Perhaps he was going to have some new tires put on the car, and the mechanic there suggested upgrading to the Firestone tires, as they were giving away a 'free Christmas album' with the purchase of four, brand new Firestone tires.  Knowing my grandfather, he wouldn't have jumped at this, BUT maybe Granny got all excited about it and, rolling his eyes, Grandpa Hough had no choice but to relent and go with the Firestones.

And now I'm reviewing the result of that purchase on a frickin' blog.  Fifty years later.

Anyway, back to the album itself.  It's ok.  Yes, just ok.  Nothing too terrible to mention (though the operatic singing gets a little jarring at times), but it sounds like a heap of other Christmas compilations I already own.  Julie Andrews makes a few appearances on this otherwise bland, Pavarotti-styled Christmas compilation, and her songs are halfway decent.  Alas, even Mary Poppins herself can't save this album from being sent back to its former place on the Not-in-Holiday-Rotation shelves.

VERDICT:  6/10 - Meh. (ok. . . but there's better albums out there to sit in its place of glory next to my turntable.)

- SHELVED -

- Brian