Mainlining Christmas

I bought the 2011 Carols for a Cure album in person in New York, and I’ve meant to pick up another one ever since. I love the combination of classic carols and new songs, all done by current Broadway singers. I was excited to find that they’re now all available in MP3 for those of us not able to pick them up on Broadway! The 2015 volume has a lot of gems. Here’s a quick run-down of what you’ll find this year: CHRISTMAS VACATION - The cast of Beautiful - The Carole King Musical Hey, this is a good reminder that I actually like this song when it’s divorced from the terrible movie. Fun! JOY TO THE WORLD - The cast of Hamilton  I'll admit it, this song is a big part of why I hunted down this album. Per the Mainlining Christmas rules, I can't go back to listening to Hamilton over and over until Dec 26, so this'll have to hold me over. This track opens with narration and segues into the song, done in a style of overlapping harmonies and echoing lines that heavily evoke...

If you thought my Christmas music write-up was a little short this year, it means you probably remember my write-ups from past years, which were ridiculously long. This year's initial article looked at 20 CD's I bought between last Christmas and the start of this season. That's a fraction of what I've bought in previous years, but there's a reason for that. Amazon Prime. Earlier this year, Amazon expanded Prime benefits to include free streaming music. I know there are plenty of other streaming services out there, but I never jumped on for a few reasons. First, some don't seem to be geared towards building playlists and listening to one album at a time (much less keeping track of which albums you've listened to and which you haven't, which is essential for this exercise). Second, I was already paying for Prime, so the added features were essentially free. The free music is limited to select albums, so you're not getting total access to Amazon...

Snowy winterscape. Christmas music. Shot of a cathedral. Repeat for an hour. Neither Lindsay nor I recall adding this to our Netflix queue, but somehow it got on there. Maybe it just migrated its way on or something. It's difficult to imagine either of us intentionally putting it there. Regardless, it arrived at our home, so we watched it. It was, first and foremost, kind of boring. It wasn't bad, of course. It just wasn't anything more than what it was. And what it was can be accurately described in the fragment-filled opening paragraph of this review. There was essentially no substance - it was music and video; that's all. For what it's worth, the music was good. Though the subtitles were pretty awful. "Wast"? Really? And here I always thought the past tense of "was" was "was". The video was good, by which I mean it was pretty. Lots of snowy streets, trees covered in snow, frozen lakes that were coated in snow, churches ad...

I haven't seen very many episodes of The Brady Bunch , but from the little I remember, A Very Brady Christmas managed to capture the stone and style of the show perfectly. Incidentally, I believe the previous sentence ranks among the all-time most condemning insults I've ever lobbed in a review for this blog. It should be noted that this was produced in 1988, which was about nineteen years after the series had started. By this time, the Bradys had actually expanded into something of a cinematic Universe. Most of the kids had gotten married in earlier reunions and spin-off series, opening up a whole new generation of cloying Brady children. The best description for the plot is that of a blender. What little story exists does so in brief, unrelated chunks. The impetus for the reunion revolves around Mike and Carol Brady trying to surprise each other with a Christmas vacation. The special sets this up as a potential major plot point, before defusing the tension in a scene a...

And when I say "New CD's," I of course mean really old music. It looks like we're adding an additional 245 songs this year through albums we mainly picked up at used book and consignment stores for between $1 and $3. We bought a handful at yard sales over the summer. Let's see how much of this year's haul is something I'll ever intentionally put on again. You Sleigh Me! (Various) Not a bad start, all things considered. This mid-90's compilation from Atlantic features an assortment of their artists mostly playing classic or traditional songs, along with a couple of original pieces. As is always the case with new versions of old songs, it all comes down a simple question: did they bother to do a distinct version, or did they just copy an arrangement that's been done to death? In this case, they put in the effort, and some of the results are phenomenal. Mary Karlzen's "Run Rudolph Run" puts a country-rock spin on the song. L...