Mainlining Christmas

Hi folks. I've got some fairly lengthy thoughts about Christmas music I'm planning on subjecting you to eventually, but this post is going to be a little more targeted. Here's the thing. Amazon's currently unloading a crap load of holiday cheer dirt cheap. I don't expect these prices to last past the end of the month, so I wanted to draw your attention to a handful of Christmas MP3 albums that are actually worth listening to before the prices go back to normal in a few days. Full disclosure: This site is an Amazon affiliate, so, yeah, if you use the links below and proceed to buy something, Amazon gives us a 2 cent kickback or something. Woo - conflict of interest. However, believe it or not, I'm NOT writing this post in the hopes of generating enough revenue to buy a pack of Smartees. No, I'm doing this because I truly believe that Christmas music spreads pain, and I'm a horrible, horrible person.  Without further ado, here are seven albums that a

This year I made a point of adding to my collection of holiday music with what I'm calling Novelty Character Albums . What I mean is, albums where most of the gimmick is that the songs are being sung by fictional characters. I, honestly, love character-based Christmas music. There are so many seasonal songs that are good no matter what, but when, for example, the Muppets sing them, they become transcendent. The first one I'm looking at is also the oldest (date on the CD notwithstanding). The Chipmunks have been a novelty act since the 1950's, and their hit holiday song won a Grammy at the very first Grammy Awards . So for historical purposes, I had to get one of their compilations. The company that owns The Chipmunks has been putting out different combinations of holiday songs since 1961, generally just re-combining and re-releasing the same tracks. So even though this CD was technically released in 2010, the recordings are all from the 60's. With that out of th

These days, I've got a lot of holiday albums, representing just about every imaginable take on Christmas you can imagine.  Yup.  At this point, I've heard it all. And without hesitation, I can say that this is my favorite of the bunch.  I've had this for a few years now, and I keep at least a handful of the tracks in several set lists I play all year round.  There's some phenomenal music here. The album was in part brought about by the band's realization they already had a surprising number of songs related to Christmas.  As a result of being written over the course of four decades, the music is highly diverse.  The album has several of my favorite re-imagined holiday songs, new versions of some classic Tull songs, and some others that aren't so well known. It's that last category that particularly impresses me.  The best song on the album, in my opinion, is Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow, a beautiful little piece you need to check out.  The re-imagine

A Celtic Celebration Steve Schuch and The Night Heron Consort With all the holiday music we've been listening to, the time is right to tell you about one of my favorite holiday albums. This is a CD I've had for about as long as I've had CDs and the music (now MP3s of course) goes into my rotation every year. It's an instrumental CD with a great style. All the songs have very strong "vocal" lines done on various instruments, like the penny whistle or the fiddle.  The number of instruments used is impressive, and includes a huge amount of unique percussion.  (The liner notes say: Traditional Christmas Songs played on fiddle, whistles, guitar, harp, pipes and more. )  They use the tone of each instrument to bring out different parts of each song.  The verses build upward in most of the tracks, providing an arc sometimes missing when carols are done without words.  It's very effective, and the intricate counterpoints and unique arrangements add an enorm

Fair warning: some of the language in this song might not be appropriate for all occasions: I think this little ditty sums up the spirit of holidays better than just about anything I can imagine. Special thanks to Beth for the heads up.

On some level, this album facilitated the experiment that is this site.  As such, I'm not sure if I should be grateful or angry at Amazon for making this available. It turns out that if you want classical music, Amazon is happy to provide it in bulk for very little money .  I'm sure a lot of these recordings - or at least similar ones - are available for free, but this saves me the time of having to scour the internet for options. I'm not sure the price will last, but I actually got this for $1.99, meaning I paid about two cents a song.  The recordings aren't fantastic, but then neither is my sound system.  The sheer number of pieces means I can put this on random and listen for hours on end without hearing the same songs over and over again. Highly recommended if you want a collection of holiday music without the hassle that goes along with putting it together yourself.