The 12 Days of Christmas

Another of the Pickwick releases I seem to keep finding. There is no date, which is pretty standard, but it's a pretty safe bet this collection of songs goes back to the '50s and probably early '60s. Pickwick seemed to delight in packaging budget collections and here on The 12 Days of Christmas it's a pretty standard collection of the big classics.

As I've come to expect with these records, they are short. Woefully short. The majority of the songs clock in at just over two minutes, and a couple are under the two minute mark. Although the Jimmie Rodgers version of "The 12 Days of Christmas" is a second shy of the three minute mark - at least according to the back of the jacket. Bonnie Guitar pulls off the longest song with her arrangement of "O Holy Night" that was really nice. I actually thought it was going to be a guitar piece played by a Scotsman - Bonnie Guitar, get it? It wasn't.

The songs run the gamut, but are all very much of an earlier time. If you're looking for a more contemporary collection of carols, the kind the pesky kids are listening to nowadays, this is not the album for you.

I'd mentioned Jimmie Rodgers' version of "The 12 Days of Christmas" and it's a very serviceable arrangement and is enjoyable, but it lacks the fun that Burl Ives brought to the table. It's also a song that is best heard when you're a kid, as it ages terribly as you get older. Billy Vaughn does an instrumental arrangement of "Joy to the World" that had organ and bells. It's Eddie Fisher who pulls off a really nice treatment of "Ave Maria" that segues into Liberace's piano tinkling on "What Child Is This" complete with accompanying orchestra. My mum would love this one. Side one closes out with The Mills Brothers performing "Silent Night" with the Hammond organ providing the music. It's actually a really cozy version that reminded me of the church services of my childhood. Man, that organ. You either love it, or it just grates ... I'm sort of in the middle, but it does tend to stale date some wonderful music. I'm thinking specifically of Mahalia Jackson's Christmas album.

Side two opens with one of the more current Christmas classics with Pat Boone doing "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town." It's Pat Boone, while he was no Elvis, he was Pat Boone for crying out loud. It's a nice version. Compared to many of the songs on the first side, this is a decidedly upbeat selection. Heck, I am a sucker for a whistling solo. George Wright follows with his take on "The Little Drummer Boy," a song that is done on a pipe organ, although there is a drum chorus as well as what sounds like a glockenspiel. It's more fun than it should be, mainly because in my head I imagine a little old man in a black coat and top hat sitting at the organ pumping the pedals and pulling stoppers. Bonnie Guitar is up next, and her version of "O Holy Night" was likely pulled from her 1966 Christmas album. By all accounts she was also a heck of a guitar player too, so her stage name was more than just a gimmick. Lawrence Welk brings out his champagne bubble machine with "The First Noel" and it's another instrumental that just hearkens back to another time. Jimmy Wakely closes out the album with "Winter Wonderland" that brings it all home.

There is something about these old collections that takes me back to a time I was never really part of. It makes me nostalgic for a time that never existed outside of a romanticized version captured in old black and white movies.

Things are only ever as good as you make them.

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock band, almost progressive at times, who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , ...

David Baerwald - Bedtime Stories

The little sticker on the shrinkwrap says, "You may remember David Baerwald from David & David's Boomtown ..." You bet, I remembered David Baerwald. Back in 1986 Boomtown was an album with moments of sheer brilliance. The whole album may not have been as top shelf as the first few tracks, but that didn't matter - it is an excellent album. I waited for a follow-up ... and waited, and then in 1990 it was a solo David, David Baerwald, who dropped Bedtime Stories . I snapped it up. "All For You," the opening cut, is still my favourite song on the album. It was mesmerizing. I'm not sure if the song got any airplay, it may have, but that may have been wishful thinking on my part as it was on a lot of mix tapes at the time and I heard it a lot in the car. The CD had a great booklet with all of the musician credits and lyrics. Oddly, when I found a sealed copy of the record (a great score), it just had a plain paper insert - the picture of David walking wit...

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ... It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continued to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self-titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner, who had been with Gary from the b...

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