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Cover story Do you hear what we hear?
Songs, songs, ringing through the night; which will bring you goodness and light? A Team Pop tribunal decides which holiday CDs are stars.
By GINA VIVINETTO, Times Pop Music Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published December 5, 2002
Every year at this time, select members of Team Pop gather at a designated location to discuss the matter of holiday music. It's like a summit, with only the most erudite of our crew, the highbrows and snooty snoots who really know music. Music of every genre. Like, even opera and stuff.
Actually, who in their right mind wants to listen to hours of holiday music weeks before the season starts? Which is why each year Team Pop resorts to scary, ethically precarious measures to make folks join us. We offer a home-cooked meal. The old your-name-in-the-paper bribe. Parental force becomes involved so we can say we've got every demographic represented. Some years it's passers-by and duct tape, simple as that.
This year we did it again. We heard kickin' country, Celtic and bluegrass. We rocked, we hip-hopped. We swung. We separated the good from the bad, like Santa does. Did we mention we're a sophisticated bunch? We counted among us a society columnist, an opera singer and a guy who knows all about classical music. Understand then how we selected, naturally,
OUR VERY FAVORITE DISC:
BOB RIVERS, WHITE TRASH CHRISTMAS (ATLANTIC) Okay, scoff if you must, but we were shocked at how much we loved White Trash Christmas. Rivers, a Seattle radio DJ and parodist, is a genius. Try not to laugh listening to his version of Eminem doing Jingle Bells, giving new meaning to "ho ho ho's." A Jethro Tull-ish Aqua Claus? The lyrics will make any classic rocker cackle. We should admit -- in case someone caught us on videotape -- we even howled over the soon-to-be holiday classic Little Hooter's Girl.
Now, for the rest of the bunch:
GOOD:
JOHNNY MATHIS, THE CHRISTMAS ALBUM (COLUMBIA) On this, his sixth Christmas album, the legendary Johnny Mathis offers an impeccably poignant Joy to the World, a swingy Frosty the Snowman and a heart-stirring Away in a Manager. Mathis has such perfect phrasing and such a reserved, classy delivery, we all agreed that he's the way to go for a night of hot cider and snuggling with your holiday honey.
ROCKAPELLA, COMFORT & JOY (AMERIGO) Rockapella's history includes much fine holiday music, and Comfort & Joy is another top-notch affair. It finds the reknowned a cappella quintet harmonizing on Peace on Earth, a super-peppy Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree and I'll Be Home for Christmas. Intricate arrangements and clever vocal acrobatics make this a very droll affair, indeed.
SWINGIN' CHRISTMAS PARTY (BLUEBIRD) Every year Team Pop flips for the swingy holiday tunes, and Bluebird's offering has us merry again. Swingin' Christmas Party is not just for "the Coliseum types" -- as one Team Popper dubbed them -- but for music lovers of any age. It features jubilant tunes from big band legends Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey; happy holiday hits beginning with the jingle of sleigh bells kicking off Miller's Jingle Bells, and culminating with Guy Lombardo's peerless Auld Lang Syne.
THE GOLDEN DREYAL, A KLEZMER NUTCRACKER FOR CHANUKAH (RYKO) We dig Klezmer music, with all its squawky clarinet and snappy banjo, so we gravitated to The Golden Dreyal, featuring Tchaikovsky's music done in traditional Jewish Klezmer style. The disc features the classic tale told with a Jewish spin, drawing from folklore and mythology.
BAD:
AMERICA, HOLIDAY HARMONY (RHINO) We got so many laughs out of America's odd offering, which takes the band's soft rock hits -- A Horse With No Name, Tin Man, Ventura Highway -- and refashions them with seasonal lyrics. Well, no, of course it doesn't work! The songs sound like they were constructed in a musical mix-and-match hoax on the Internet. Except, the band was serious when it recorded this disc. Isn't that creepy?
JIM NABORS, CHRISTMAS (COLUMBIA/LEGACY) For those still perplexed by the idea of Gomer Pyle singing anyway, you should avoid the painful Christmas, a collection of actor Jim Nabors' many Christmas tunes recorded between 1967 and 1972. Nabors croons holiday fare such as O Come All Ye Faithful in his odd, syrupy baritone. Many songs feature over-the-top arrangements filled with laughable amounts of puff and pageantry. Nabors' very mod chartreuse sweater on the cover, however, is fabulous!
SELAH, ROSE OF BETHLEHEM (CURB) Rose of Bethlehem, this season's offering from Christian pop superstars and Dove Award winners Selah, is so slow and sleepy, it caused one Team Pop member to rate it a "nine out of 10 on the sedative scale." The collection of holiday songs of faith such as Silent Night and What Child Is This? is the right album to slip into the stereo if coaxing the kids to fall asleep before Santa's visit is what you need. Or, if you'd like to slip into something more comfortable -- like a coma.
BROOKS & DUNN, IT WON'T BE CHRISTMAS WITHOUT YOU (ARISTA) Christmas comes countrified on It Won't Be Christmas Without You. Nashville superstars Brooks & Dunn deliver a boot-scootin' Winter Wonderland and Blue Christmas. Things got a little too fiddly diddly for some Team Pop members, who suggested the album should be put up on cinder blocks in the front yard. Ouch! Get a load of the liner notes, with the photo of cowboy boots with holiday applique.
PLUS ONE, CHRISTMAS (ATLANTIC) No one in Team Pop warmed to Plus One's Christmas, and not just because we're out of touch and don't know that these cutie pies with the goatees aren't a white-hot Christian pop act. We all agreed that Plus One sounds too much like a second-tier boy band. The disc's booklet features snapshots of all five frolicking in the snow looking like J. Crew models.
STILL CHECKING OUR LIST ON THESE:
PATTY LOVELESS, BLUEGRASS & WHITE SNOW: A MOUNTAIN CHRISTMAS (EPIC) This disc caused a rift among the Team Pop posse. Some thought that Loveless, a country singer who specializes in torch songs, was trying too hard on Little Drummer Boy, with its Celtic flute and Enya-moves-to-Nashville vibe. (We also wondered, um, where are the drums?) Again, things get awfully baroque on Loveless' Joy to the World. Others liked the jamboree flavor of the Christmas tunes done with a down-home bluegrass feel.
CHRISTMAS ADAGIOS: HOLIDAY CLASSICS TO TOUCH YOUR HEART AND SOUL (BMG) We slipped Christmas Adagios in the stereo, sat back and soaked it up. "Soothing," one Team Pop member said, and we all nodded in agreement. But after three or four more holiday favorites performed by "crossover" classical performers (read: New Age) and smooth jazz artists, some of us grew fidgety. "Soothing?" those folks asked. "Or flatlining?"
SHA NA NA, ROCKIN' CHRISTMAS (THE GOLD LANE) Sha Na Na is back, doo-wopping holiday style on Rockin' Christmas. The act has been singing 1950s-style greaser rock since debuting at Woodstock more than 30 years ago. If you thought the pompadours and leather jackets seemed weird at that festival, imagine Jocko belting out Blue Christmas with Bowser and the gang harmonizing behind him. Some tunes have novelty charm.
THE BEST OF CELTIC CHRISTMAS (NARADA) If getting jiggy with your figgy pudding is on your holiday wish list, listen to the two-disc The Best of Celtic Christmas, featuring fiddler Natalie McMaster, country singer Kathy Mattea and scores of songs snazzed up by tin whistle, flutes and Scottish bag pipes. Warning: Two discs of it can get a little dizzying, inspiring one Team Poptart to exclaim, "Somebody summon Darby O'Gill and the Little People!"
SHANA BANANA, MERRY CHRISKWANZANUKAH (WWW.SHANANABANA.COM OR WWW.BIGCYPRESSRECORDS.COM)
Local musician Shana Banana writes clever, upbeat childrens' music, and her Merry Chriskwanzanukah is another marvel. Banana's message is spirited and completely inclusive, as evidenced on the titles: Chanukah Banana, Pick A Holiday and, for our friends whose spiritual sides bend toward the East, Namaste. Banana's music is always fun yet provocative. The same is true here, where we find the singer celebrating toys and good times, yet also offering deeper lessons of the season.
* * *
-- Team Pop members Pete Couture, John Fleming, Louis Hau, Logan Mabe, Wilma Norton, Mary Jane Park, Camille Reyes, Charlotte Sutton, Tom Zucco and Kate Zucco contributed to this report.
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