Holiday Music—Neither Trite Nor Cliché

Of course you’re going to play your Tony Bennett, Mahalia Jackson, and whichever upgraded version of Elvis Presley’s Christmas albums (there’s just shy of a zillion of them out now) you have. And various Messiahs and Nutcrackers (for the latter, Duke Ellington’s is highly recommended and I believe that Brian Setzer did a big-ass guitar version of some of Ellington’s on his album a few years ago). But sanity requires that you find new, innovative, unfamiliar stuff every year. Otherwise the hard-wiring in your neural networks will play “Chestnuts Roasting” by Nat King Cole over and over and over. And that would not be a good thing. Here’s a further selection from this penultimate holiday season (pending The End O’ The World™ due winter solstice 2012).

Let’s start here. I know I told you in the prior edition that the Twisted Sister album was the best all time. But I forgot

about this one. Here you get not one but two songs about spending Christmas standing by the barbecue, one about being

in Maui on Christmas Day because “the only thing colder than that weather back

there is you, Mama”, and awesome sax tone on a pounding rock version of

“Good King Wenceslas”. Hard to believe

anything could make Twisted Sister

sound “traditional”. But this does it.

Let’s split the difference. Dee and the boys

get the points in the “Traditional Carols”

category, these blues guys (with a wacky

country closer) take the overall grand

prize.

Now, here’s a question. When you hear the phrase “Hawaiian slack key guitar”, what do you think of? Unless you’re a deep guitar geek and probably one who’s lived in the Islands, you probably think of trebly pedal steel over massively over produced string orchestras. And you’d be wrong. “Slack key” just means the guitars have some of the strings downtuned, and never an EADGBE tuning darkens the innovation.

This one’s a really slick acoustic guitar holiday album. Nice mix of

familiar songs with cool arrangements and complementary regional and

cultural addenda. Oh, and for unclear reasons, the producers  throw in one forlorn cut of “traditional” pedal steel

and orchestral backing.

And while we’re thinking about guitars,John Fahey recorded the mother of all holiday guitar albums, all touch and technique of addictive quality. This Rhino remaster combines almost all

of Fahey’s first two holiday albums.

Annoyingly, they had to leave off most of his stunning Russian music medley for lack of space. Oh, because these albums were basically the only albums

Fahey did that made any money at all, he kept recording Christmas albums over

the rest of his far-to-short career hoping to strike gold again. Some of those later disks are pretty good. But this is the best

by light years.

Oh, what the hell. Since we’re riding this guitar horse, let’s saddle up one more time. These are the guitar-geekiest

Christmas albums ever. Mostly metalheads, but builds in jazz (Al DiMeola), pop (Brian Setzer), and just plain hard

smegging rock (Jeff Beck)  intervals. Highlight is Joe Satriani’s set-piece Silent

Night. Joe plays a couple choruses upfront and then launches into an awesome,

but completely unrelated, improvisation. Revisits the theme once more as an outro. No household should be without!

Besides guitar, the other theme of this entry is production. Or the relative lack of same. In general, I’m a fan of under-

vs. over-. And that means that this Odetta album picks up massive

points. It’s mostly just her and a

bass player. Sweet mix of hymns,

carols, and traditional spirituals.

Let’s wrap this up with some serious, serious Goth. The Projekt label is laborof love for guy who devotes himself

to finding, recording, and selling

up-to-date ethereal-but-not-ambient Goth. Fabulous harmonies, innovative

and effective arrangements. 

In the best tradition of John Fahey, Projekt hit it big with their first holiday album. And has been attempting ever since

to replicate that success. 

In this case, though, everything from all 3 primary albums and the single disk “best of” 

are fabulous. No loss of quality with time.

So with that said, this will shut down the holiday music reviews for the year. Not sure where we’ll go next here. But I do hope you’ll surf on over to http://docviper.livejournal.com/ and

http://theresaturtleinmysoup.com/ when time permits. Both will be updated in the next day or so. Thanks for stopping by!

Holiday Music 2010

Senior year, when the Pompton Lakes High School Concert Band fired up the holiday music medley for the Winter Concert, my shorter, more slender friend Dan and I slipped backstage, pulled on white long underwear tops and bottoms, and did a dainty pirouette across the stage just as music teacher Carl Howard hit the downbeat to “Frosty”.

And I’ve never looked back. I love Christmas music.  Or, as I would call it if I could possibly piss off Fox “News”, “holiday” music.

Speaking of which. Yesterday Gretchen Carlson was assigned to beat up the guy who organizes the Tulsa, Oklahoma holiday parade. Which last year changed its name from “Christmas” parade. She tried a couple different lines of attack, none of them working very well. Then she pulled out the big gun. “Larry, do you know that some people are refusing to participate in the parade because it no longer is called “Christmas”?” Larry looks at her. She rambles on: “And the Acres of Love Alpaca Ranch is refusing to participate because of the name change. Did you know that?!” Ah, at this point, you need to dig into this yourself. The look on the poor guy’s face as he tries not to crack up when she says “Acres of Love Alpaca Ranch” is beyond priceless. Start your research here:

http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/12/07/tulsa-council-votes-on-parade/?test=latestnews

Anyway. Here’s a nifty selection of “holiday” slash “Christmas” music for your 2010 delectation. I kicked ass in the used CD shops this year, including earlier tonight when I found a seriously cool stack of holiday stuff at the CDepot in College Park. Check back before the end of the year. Possible I’ll install another…uh…installment…of the holiday slash Christmas music recommendations before we close out the holidays.

Let’s start here. The best Christmas album there has ever been, and likely ever will be (especially given that the End O’ The World ™ is just a few short months away on 21 December 2012. Unless the translation of the Maya Long Count Calendar is off by 50 years. In which case it is just about…uh…52 years away). Anyway. Twisted Sister, who labored for years and years in the bars of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, put together what is by far the most creative, humorous and hard-rocking holiday album ever. Hell, it’s not just the best holiday album ever. It’s damn close to the best metal album ever. No household should be without.

At sort of the other extreme of guitar albums there’s this guy—Thom Rotella. His web site here:  

http://www.thomrotella.com/

emphasizes his jazz chops, and on the basis of the clips, he’s got good ones. On this album, he’s layered guitars into a gorgeous, and non-cliché, non-been-there-done-that, excellent CD.

Big bands. I’m not usually a huge fan. Nothing wrong with it, and you have to have as much Ellington and Billie Holiday as your hard drives will hold. It’s just that moments of true rock and roll are few and far between. That’s not a problem with this Stan Kenton disk. Kicks rockin’ ass. Cover to cover. Killer. No household should be without.

Then there’s the Bucharest Madrigal Choir, doing a whole album of “Christmas in Eastern Europe”. Very cool. Comfortably recognizable chorus work, with a twist of odd scales and unfamiliar voicings. Complex enough to be listenable multiple times in any one holiday year.

Finally, there’s this WOW Gospel Christmas album. There are zillions of WOW Gospel albums available. This double disk of holiday stuff is as close to Twisted Sister as you get without distorted metal guitars and pounding double-bass drum sets. It’s rock and roll, pure and simple. Surprisingly so. No household should be without.