Ep. LXXXII: 'Have a Holly Jolly Christmas' - Burl Ives

Look sharp, America - we have ourselves a genuine Holiday celebrity to deal with this evening. . . 

Album Title:  Have a Holly Jolly Christmas

Album Artist:  Burl Ives

Burl.

What kind of a parent looks down at a newborn baby and says, "Yup, 100%.  This baby looks like a Burl."  That parent must've been three sheets to the wind that day - it's a good thing Burl wasn't born with fetal alcohol syndrome.

Snow Bro.

Anyway, the poorly-monikered Mr. Ives is as recognizable around the Holiday Season as Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. . . more or less because all three of these guys were in the same movie together.  Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - the stop-animation classic that came out in, like, the 1940s or something and has since become one of the most prolific Christmas movies in existence - features ol' buddy Burl as the voice of the film's narrator (a snowman who looks an Asian Wilford Brimley.)  Because of his role in the movie, and the fact that he sings a couple songs as well (which are on this album, actually), it's easy to slip right into this album and make yourself at home.

This is a really crappy graphics job. . .

The opening/title track of this album is the aforementioned one from Rudolph, and any person in Western Civilization could readily identify it.  This no-brainer of a Christmas jam has been covered many, many times, but no version I'm aware of holds a candle to the original.  It's not that Burl's necessarily a good singer (he's okay, I guess, but his voice is more novelty than talent), or that the song itself is awesome, it just oozes with nostalgia.  EVERYONE grew up with this song, so it's part of our shared Christmas experience.

If the entirety of Burl's album generated this type of emotional response, then we'd have a definitive Christmas classic on our hands (like Vince Guaraldi Trios' Charlie Brown Christmas, for example.)  Sadly, that's not the case with this particular album, because it loses its audience right away at the beginning of the second track.  

Burl, famous in the secular Christmas sphere, wanders over into the religious part of the Holiday season, singing about Jesus' birthday and what not.  To say this is jarring would be an understatement:  the churchy stuff is about as far removed from Santa, Christmas Trees, Rudolph, etc. as you can get, so when you have the guy that was literally a f***ing snowman suddenly singing about Jesus, it's like getting dosed with a bucket of ice water after stepping out of a sauna.  It's hard to separate Burl's voice singing about Jesus with the mental imagery of Wilford Brimley Snowman. . . and having a Wilford Brimley Snowman singing about Jesus would be. . . . well. . . just terrifying.

This slap on the face happens a few times on this album, but honestly that's my only gripe (even though I think it's a substantial one.)  If you like hokey 60s Christmas music, slathered up and down with Christmas nostalgia and invoking the memories of dozens of Christmases from yesteryear, then this album is for you.  Burl kills it on the children's songs ("Santa Claus is Coming to Town," the jams from Rudolph, etc.), as well as on the more secular songs - you can tell where his comfort zone is, for sure.

A folk singer by trade, Burl's unique voice - which you either like or despise - fits the song arrangements pretty well.  Not necessarily something you'd want to jam out to all the time, of course, but as was the case with quite a few albums I've reviewed in the past, this album fits a unique niche.  For those nights when you're perhaps looking through old photo albums of past Christmases by a fire, or writing out addresses on Christmas cards, or other such quiet, contemplative moments of the season, this is a sound choice.

VERDICT:  6/10 - Decent (I was going to give this a '7,' because overall it's pretty good, but aside from his upbeat, famous songs, all his other secular stuff is just decent. . . and his religious stuff is pretty weird.  I'm gonna keep this one, but can't say how often it's going to end up getting played every year.)

- SHELVED -

- Brian

Ep. XXV: 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Other Christmas Favorites' - Various Artists

 Happy Snow Day, Internet.

Album Title:  Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Other Christmas Favorites

Album Artist:  Various Artists

Harmless children's album, right?  Yeah, that's what I thought too.  When I picked it up at a local thrift store, I thought to myself, "Well hey, here we go:  a holiday album for the kiddos."  I mean, it's got two famous Christmas characters on the cover.  In cartoon-form, no less.

Well, as the saying goes, Don't judge an LP by its cover.

This album is f***ing scary.

"Hey Rudolph, wanna see a dead body?"

I'm serious.  I've heard a lot of crappy children's songs in my day, but the first track of Side B on this crap-fest may be the scariest thing I've listened to in some time.  Some random guy (I'm assuming a drifter) sings an occasional verse here or there, and I guess he's supposed to sound like Santa, but instead he sounds like a Balrog from Middle Earth, singing through a distortion pedal from the darkest bowels of the Black Cauldron.  It's horrifying.

And the singing children?  They're horrifying, too.  Creepy, sing-song shit that you'd expect to hear coming from the attic of some abandoned, run-down cottage deep in the woods.  Built on an Indian graveyard.

This album feels every bit like when Netflix releases a B-Movie that's title is so similar to a Hollywood blockbuster that it tricks people into watching it.  So, say you want to watch Pirates of the Caribbean, starring Johnny Depp, and when you search Netflix you find Pirates in the Caribbean, starring a handful of washed-up actors from early '90s shows like Melrose Place.  And as you start watching it - under the false pretense that it is the legit, Johnny Depp-version - you start thinking to yourself, "Wait a minute, this doesn't look right - I thought Disney made this film?  These special effects are garbage -this looks like a high schooler made this movie.  In China."

Then you realize you've been bamboozled, and that you've wasted twenty-six minutes of your life that you'll never get back.

That's what we have here, guys:  a collection of children's Christmas songs that are executed so terribly that you kick yourself for having wasted the time listening to it in the first place.  The instrumental arrangements aren't uniform (the volume rises and falls without reason, as if some chimps were in the control room turning knobs while their handler was off taking a piss), the song selection is considerably dated (I've never heard half of these songs before, and I fancy myself somewhat of a Christmas music aficionado), and the vocals are so scary that I want to hold my kids close and never let them go.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

VERDICT:  2/10 - Reality TV (A dark look into humanity's Holiday basement of horrors.  It gets a bonus point for featuring a clearly-belligerent Jimmy Durante trying to pick a fight with Santa Claus on 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.' )

- SHELVED -