Slade - "Merry Xmas Everybody"

Hello Friends,

Nothing puts us quite in the mood for the Holidays like some early 70's English glam rock!

"Merry Xmas Everybody" would be Slades's best selling single of all time which is fine by us, its a great song!  Plus, we're always suckers for Noddy Holder's lead vocals!

MERRY XMAS EVERYBODY!!

Hi-Fi Holidays: Around the Christmas Tree

Various Artists - "Around the Christmas Tree" (1957) - Decca

Hello Friends,

Found this one in a thrift store dustbin!  A dollar well spent!

Subtitled, "A Special Christmas Day Program" we were a little nervous at first that there would be sermons being preached between the actual songs, but we were pleasantly surprised when we gave it a spin and found out its just a fun mix of mid-50's holiday classics.

The lineup on the record is a little square, but who cares, its a nice, relaxing record to listen to on Christmas Eve after all the errands are run, the food is cooked and the presents are wrapped!

Here's a track listing for y'all:

Side One:
Columbus Boy Choir - We Wish You A Merry Christmas
Axel Stordahl - Glade Jul (which we think is "Silent Night" in Norwegian)
Dick Haymes - The First Noel
Vincent Lopez - Cantique de Noel
Four Aces - Hark The Herald Angels Sing
Owen Bradley - Medley: Joy to the World/God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/Away in a Manger
Columbus Boy Choir - Angels We Have Heard on High

Side Two:
Columbus Boy Choir - Deck the Halls
Dick Haymes - It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
Shulmerich Carillon Bells - Oh, Come All Ye Faithful
Four Aces - Silent Night
Axel Stordahl - Deilig Er Jorden
Dick Haymes - Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem
Four Aces - Jingle Bells

Merry Christmas Everybody!

RATING: 3.5 Decca the Halls (get it?) out of 5

(Bad) Movie Night: Christmas Evil (1980)

Hello Friends,

Grab your popcorn and pull up a stool, its (Bad) Movie Night again on Vinyl in the Valley!

Its that time of year again, kids!  The weather sucks, everyone is broke, stress levels are high and suicide rates are off the fucking charts!  There's the constant feeling that in these days and weeks leading up to Christmas the other shoe is gonna drop!  Something's gotta fucking give! 

Luckily, Tiki T. and I relieve our holiday stresses with bourbon, like normal people. 

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Harry Stadling, the protaganist of Lewis Jackson's festive 1980 slasher flick, Christmas Evil.

Hapless Harry (played by Brandon Maggart) is driven totally batty by a traumatic event from Christmas past and goes on a Holiday killing spree dressed like a lunatic Santa Claus. Actually, the event really didn't seem that traumatic!  Basically, it involved his dad dressed like Santa Claus caressing and kissing his mother's thighs!  Geez Harry... get over it!

Now in his 30's, Harry has a crap job at the Jolly Dreams Toy Factory and when he's not working he's stalking the neighborhood children to keep track of which ones are "good" and which ones are "bad"!  Something finally snaps and Harry transforms himself into a homicidal Santa and Christmas Evil becomes the more festive of all the early 80's slasher movies!
  Is this what Christmases in the early 1980's were like?  Egg nog-crusted mustaches, crappy overhead lighting, bad suits, worse jokes and terrible disco versions of Christmas songs? Fan-fucking-tastic!

The movie is pretty much terrible and by that, of course, we mean its fucking GREAT!   

Look, John Waters agrees!

Two bourbons, up!

We'll see you next time, friends, until then the Tiki Bar is closed*.  

(* not really)

Hi-Fi Holidays: Christmas with Melis

Jose Melis - "Christmas with Melis" (1958) - Seeco Records

Hola Amigos,

We couldn't wait to hear what sort of magic was contained herein on these grooves when we found this little treasure on our annual Black Friday record store sojourn!

Early research (i.e. the liner notes on the back of the album) reveals that Jose Melis was a Cuban-born child prodigy who began playing music at a very early age.  He attended conservatories in Havana and Boston, and later Julliard.  He played percussion in a U.S. Navy band during World War II before eventually being recruited by Jack Paar to be the house musician on his "Tonight Show", essentially making Jose Melis an early version of ?uestlove!


From the looks of it Tiki T. and I were expecting some bombastic Space Age Pop not unlike that of the genre's grand wizard, Esquivel.  But, while the songs on Christmas with Melis are very much in a late 50's lounge form, the album overall isn't as weird as we would like it to be!

Its actually very understated, subdued (two words that really don't really speak to late 1950's Latin artists in general) and listenable!  There's some interesting sounds going throughout the record but the strength of the record is definitely his arrangements!  

On "Jingle Bells", for instance, Melis breaks the song up into three distinct sections.  He playfully starts out by adding a hint of Mozart to the familiar melody while a simple, understated organ provides playful counterpoint beneath the piano.  The middle section of the piece changes the melody to in include more minor chords on the piano, which sounds more Beethoven-y.  For the finale, things lighten up again and both the piano and the organ (probably a Wurlitzer) feverishly run to their conclusion.  All this in 3 minutes & 40 seconds!


Probably the highlight of the record is the original composition, "The Christmas Story".  Melis apparently performed this spoken-word Christmas gem (complete with his thick Cuban accent) on Jack Paar's "The Morning Show" during the Yuletide season four years prior to this release and got such an overwhelming response to it that he decided to record it for the album! link

The only other song with vocals on the album is another original, "Merry Christmas Music" which is also pretty good, but we can't help think of Ricky Ricardo when we listen to it!

The first side of the LP contains the more secular songs ("Sleigh Bells", "Winter Wonderland", "Jingle Bells", et cetera) while Side Two is home to the more religious ones ("Silent Night", "Adeste Fidelis", "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" and the like).  Overall, a fun holiday record that pairs nicely with some rum punch!



RATING: 3.5 making spirits bright out of 5 

Weird Al Yankovic - "The Night Santa Went Crazy"

Holy shit friends!

We're not sure how this Weird Al song from 1996 has been beneath our radar for all these years!

Its another classic from Ye Olde Weird One... this time with a festive twist!  It actually reminds us a little of The Kinks "Father Christmas" or Greg Lake's "I Believe In Father Christmas" but with a lot more blood & guts!  (Plus, I believe this song actually qualifies as a Yankovic original!)

There's a whisky-soaked Santa, reindeer sausage, Freddie Krueger and an X-files reference!  AMAZING!

Hi-Fi Holidays: Light of the Stable

Emmylou Harris - "Light of the Stable" (1979) - Warner Bros.

Hello Friends,

We're taking things down a few notches tonight with the incomparable Emmylou Harris and her 1979 album of Christmas songs, Light of the Stable.  

Great-sounding American roots music so get your fiddles and autoharps ready and dig out that mason jar full of moonshine, friends!  

The record begins a take on Tex Logan's Christmas cowboy classic, "Christmas Time's A-Comin'" which sounds like an old fashioned Appalachian hoedown with finger pickin' a-plenty!

About half of the songs on the record are typical Holiday standards ("O Little Town of Bethlehem", "Away In A Manager", "The First Noel", "Little Drummer Boy" & "Silent Night".) And if we're being honest, these are all good versions of "the classics", but based on the strength of the originals and lesser-known tracks, we kind of wish she went more in that direction! 

And speaking of which, the remaining songs include Rodney Crowell's "Angel Eyes" (which Emmylou would record as a duet with Willie Nelson on the Honeysuckle Rose soundtrack a year later);  the bluegrassy, "Beautiful Star of Bethlehem"; the mostly a-cappella, somber Irish lullaby, "Golden Cradle"; and the titular track, "Light of the Stable" (with background harmonies courtesy of Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt & Neil Young... who can be distinctly heard at the right volume or with the right headphones!)

Her voice is as timeless and angelic-sounding as ever and the title track is worth the price of admission alone! 

We like Emmylou Harris so much we can't even think of anything of funny to say about the album's cover art!

RATING: 4 White Candles Burnin', Old Heart's A-Yearnin' For the Folks at Home out of 5

Hi-Fi Holidays: Christmas Time

George Wright - "Christmas Time" (1962) - Dot Records

Hello Friends,

We're kicking our hi-fi holidays off in style this year with a great sounding LP by famed organist, George Wright.

Now there's no shortage of Christmas LP's that feature an organ as the featured or lone instrument, but in our opinion nothing beats George Wright's magic fingers swirling around on a Wurlitzer Pipe Organ.  

The music here is imposing and big-sounding.  Perfect for rallying the troops and just as a perfect for picking up the mood at early December cocktail party! There's not a lot of subtlety to be found on a record full of pipe organ music! Another high ball for Tiki T!

Some of the sounds coming off this record are so bonkers that even the liner notes feel compelled to clear things up:

"These are not multiple recordings; that no splicing has been done; that there has been no 'overdubbing'; in short, incredible as it may seem, that these are complete and original live performances..."

FUN FACT: In addition to playing hundreds of theaters and recording dozens of albums in the 50's & 60's, Wright might be best known for his work as studio organist on the ABC soap opera, General Hospital in the 60's & 70's.

RATING: 4.5 Quartermaines and Spencers out of 5