The Ventures - The Ventures Christmas Album (mono)

It's Epiphany, and the last of the gifts have been given and we are at the end of the Christmas season. So what do you do when there's nothing really left to say about the holidays? You play an instrumental album - and who better exemplifies the instrumental rock than The Ventures - the best selling instrumental band, OF ALL TIME.

When I found this my inner kid was overjoyed. I loved "Walk Don't Run" and of course their version of the Hawaii 5-0 theme. I had never heard a full album by the band, and didn't really know much about them other than they were early guitar heroes.

The Ventures Christmas Album was released in 1965 and it hit the charts, and would land on the charts again in 1966, 1967 and 1968. A pretty cool feat. The Ventures for a period of time had their guitars made for them by Mosrite, and these are the guitars on the cover of the album. Signature models, before signature models were a thing - not counting the Les Paul of course. It would seem that when their endorsement deal ended in the late 60s the band went back to using Fender instruments - but those Mosrite guitars were super cool.

Finding this in the dollar bin was a coup, and is a whole lot of fun. It's hard to imagine now, but back in the early 60s stereo records were still a novelty, and even Cashbox, the music trade, would publish charts that tracked stereo versus mono performance. The Ventures took advantage of what they could do in the studio by hard panning their instruments into the left and right channels - there was literally no middle ground. I'm so glad I have a stereo stylus to take advantage of this new marvel in hi-fidelity sound - sadly, like my Elvis Christmas record, and so many other early recordings the version I found in the dollar bin was BLP-2038 - the mono release. There was no banner on the cover proclaiming It was in (gasp) ... visual sound STEREO. Oh well beggars can't be choosers, and despite the previous owner, some dude named Euclide who marked up the front and back with a ballpoint pen, also really looked after the record. It was in impeccable shape after I cleaned it. So thanks for that.

From a technical perspective they were tasty players. As an instrumental band these guys were handling the melody lines, and then would find room to push things to the forefront. There isn't shredding, but there are times you can hear early sweeping and some decent bends and early fuzz and distortion - but the lead work was beautifully phrased and fretted. There's a reason The Ventures are often referred to as the band that launched a thousand bands. 

The classic line up was featured on this record. Bob Bogle on bass, Don Wilson on rhythm guitar, Nokie Edwards on lead guitar and Mel Taylor on drums. Oddly on the early recordings it was Edwards who played bass, and Bogle was the lead player.

All of the songs presented here are clever and quirky takes on the classics that throw little musical winks to other current songs here and there. If you listen closely on "Silver Bells" you can hear what sounds like an early talk box on the call and response section of chorus. It's pretty cool. If there's a complaint it's that the songs are short. They didn't pad their arrangements, with most of the songs clocking in the two minute range. The longest song on the album "White Christmas" is close to three minutes, and is a very nice arrangement. "Scrooge" is probably the most out there song here, with it's cartoon slide whistle, but it's also one of the most fun too. The whole album clocks in under half an hour ... it left me wanting more, which was better than wearing out its welcome.

I can't think of a better way to end my holiday listening for this past season.

Here's to a Happy New Year.