Ep. CXII: 'Weihnachten mit Heintje' - Heintje

Prepare thyselves for an auditory journey back through time, back to festive Cold War Europe. . . .

Album Title:  Weihnachten mit Heintje

Album Artist:  Heintje

So obviously this was purchased because I figured it was going to be a total train wreck right out of the gate. I mean, just look at this thing:  a.) it's clearly a German album and will feature tons of comically awful German singing, b.) it features a boy with arguably the most punchable face in existence as its cover model, and c.) it cost a whopping $3 from Radio Wasteland. One could assume that what we'd find here is a lot of warbling (in German), some poorly-mixed church service type arrangements, and - boy, if we're lucky - some creepy childrens choirs doing background vocal work.

Kinda hard to pass up something this promising, folks.

Upon dropping the needle, one's met with a woman gently singing 'Silent Night' (though, in German, we spell that all weird in the track listing.) Song itself isn't horrible, it is what it is. . . a German woman singing 'Silent Night.' In German. She can carry a tune (in German), and the musical accompaniment itself is your run-of-the-mill arrangement, so this is just more of the usual Holiday background music.  Just, you know, in a foreign language.

But that's where the Christmas train stops, folks. The following songs on this album (aside from the old 'O Tannenbaum,' which I believe is Germanic in origin anyway) don't sound like any other Christmas song I've ever heard of before, and not only because they're sung in German. I don't even think these are church songs, I have no idea what they're doing on a Holiday album at all. These could be songs about hiking in the Alps, or driving a car down the Autobahn on a Sunday afternoon, or rounding up an entire race of people based on their religious views and carting them off into Poland in order to contribute to your ongoing war effort (before 'disappearing.')

You know, German stuff.

Then, for reasons unknown, we have 'Ba Ba Black Sheep.' Or 'Twinkle, Twinkle Litter Star,' or 'The Alphabet Song.' Take your pic, guys, it's all the same f***ing melody. Regardless of which of these three songs this lady is singing (because I'm too lazy to look any of this up in Google Translate), this song is just bad. They wheeled out a bunch of Aryan Nation youth to sing background vocals on this, and little children singing in German isn't something that ever needs to be recorded. These kids could very well be the most angelic little cherubs that God ever placed on this Earth, but when singing in German?  Hell no, it scares the shit out of me. Even worse when it's children's tunes like this.

Which begs the question, why was this included on this frickin' Christmas album in the first place?

Well, aside from the opening track on Side A - where someone on the volume slider goes a little goofy fading into a barrage of ringing Christmas bells, as if Quasimodo himself was all hopped up on coke and going ape-shit up in the rafters of some stuffy, church bell tower - the production value on this album is surprisingly decent.  The vocals and instruments are balanced, the songs fade in and out as they should, and the arrangements themselves (for the most part, excluding a couple I'll mention here in a bit) are satisfactory.

Folks, this album was definitely produced by someone with money, which got me curious and led me to look up this album on the ol' Internet.

Holy shit, folks.

Nice turtleneck shirt you got there, Franz.

Turns out what I had assumed was a German Woman singing is, in fact, a Belgian Boy.  The same boy (with the aforementioned punchable face) that graces the album cover. Not a woman at all, but a Cold War era teen idol of sorts. Apparently this poorly-named Heintje made a crap-load of pop-friendly albums back in the mid-60s to mid-70s, and was immensely popular in foreign markets. Like, all the rage in early '70s China, if you can believe that. I guess more power to him - he found himself a niche making shitty pop albums in German, Dutch, and Belgian languages.

But, like the atrocities carried out by The Fatherland during World War II, this 'Christmas' album is inexcusable.

VERDICT:  4/10 - Borophyll (I was going to rate this higher - like, maybe a '5' - but there aren't nearly enough recognizable Christmas songs on here. While not terrible, per se, this ain't Cold War Germany, this is 'Merica - and in this country we like our Christmas albums Supersized with Holiday jams, Heintje.)

- SHELVED-

- Brian

Ep. LXXXIII: 'Holiday Sing Along with Mitch' - Mitch Miller

Prepare yourself, comrades, for a Luftwaffe-level assault on the Holiday senses. . . . .

Album Title:  Holiday Sing Along with Mitch

Album Artist:  Mitch Miller

Sweet Baby Jesus.  This one's weird, folks.

Such versatility. . .

Mitch Miller made a name for himself with an early '60s TV series called Sing Along with Mitch, that featured this dude and a male chorus (choir?) singing traditional, folk, and pop songs, while lyrics flashed along the bottom of the screen with one of those bouncing balls over each word as it was sung.  Due to the show's popularity - yes, it was popular with viewers -  they released a whole slew of records for people to sing along with.  Pop records, country records, showtunes records, and, like we have here, Christmas records.

Look at all these wonderful. . . lyric sheets.

The fact that someone could make so much money on something as stupid as singing along with music - something we all do anyway with regular, non-karaoke records - really says a lot about the early 1960s and how starved they were for entertainment.  The packaging on this album is interesting, for sure.  There's a still-intact lyric sheet with tear-out pages for each song, so folks could - I assume - rip out the page for the song they were listening to if. . . they didn't feel like holding. . . the entire album cover. . . .?  I guess?  I don't get it.

Anyway, so what does this slicked up production sound like?  Well, have you guys ever seen that meme online that says that when men reach their middle ages they have to either get really into smoking/grilling meats or really into World War II?  It totally makes sense to me, and Yours Truly is definitely guilty of the latter.  This evening I was actually watching the Stalingrad episode of WWII in Color (or something like that - it's really, really good) on Netflix shortly before retiring to the Study to put this album on my turntable.  Upon dropping the needle down, I immediately experienced flashbacks to what I had just been watching.

The first handful of songs on Side 1 are marches, sung by a boisterous male choir (chorus?), seemingly recorded in a large, barren room (the reverb and distance in their voices clearly give this away.)  And maybe it was the fact that I had just been watching German soldiers marching victorious through the burning fields of the Soviet Union in 1942, but listening to these first few songs it was impossible to not imagine a smoky beer hall filled with celebrating Nazi infantrymen.

Why are Nazis singing Christmas carols?  Why are they singing in English?  Who the hell is playing all the accordions?  

Questions like these I don't have answers to.

Not every song on this sing-along album sounds like Nazi propaganda, though.  There are polka-ish numbers, which shouldn't be too shocking for anyone, considering the rabid obsession Americans had with polka music in the '60s.  Other songs sound more folksy in nature (folksy in the Rankin Bass/Glenn Yarbrough The Hobbit vein, that is) - again, not too shocking considering the climate of American music back then.  There's even some children's songs on here. . . and yes, they're equally justifiable and run-of-the-mill for the time period.

While the song styles themselves vary every-so-slightly, the one consistent variable across all songs on this album (aside from the over-reliance on accordions) is the relentless, Aryan male choir.  Whether the song's fast or slow, hard or soft, march or polka, folk or children's, the Fuhrer's Supreme Choir rolls ever onward, crushing all resistance in its way.  There is no stopping the constant barrage of baritone, male bellowing that refuses to cede a single inch or decibel across both sides of this Holiday album.  Poland, France, Belgium, Norway, Czechoslovakia. . . . and now Holiday Sing Along with Mitch. 

What we really need here is for this choir to suddenly find itself bogged down and stuck in snowy, -30 degree weather for awhile.  

If history has shown us anything, guys, it's that a Russian Winter is a sure-fire way to force the Germans to a grinding halt. . .

VERDICT:  4/10 - Borophyll (Indiana Jones said it best, folks: "Nazis. I hate these guys.")

- SHELVED -

- Brian