millinocket's Full Review: Jingle All The Way... by Crash Test Dummies
Remember several years ago, there was a hit song called Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm? The group was called the Crash Test Dummies. Now do you remember? Okay, maybe not. But the song was a hit, and the band is still around. As a matter of fact, in 2002, they recorded a Christmas CD entitled Jingle All the Way….
Now, one of the best things about Christmas around our house is the music. My husband has, over the years, collected a vast array of Christmas music, ranging from old world and Celtic carols to Bruce Cockburn’s Christmas and some Windham Hill releases. He’s always looking for additions to this collection, as the music is by far his favorite part of the holiday. On a recent visit to the CD store, he, perhaps in some sort of a fugue state, happened to purchase Jingle All the Way from the bargain used bin. Once he had listened to it, he put it on for me. What a guy. There, as if on a silver CD platter, he had served me up the finest material I had ever heard for the Spawn of Scrooge Write Off! For this is the worst, most foul, least tuneful and most depressing Christmas music I have ever heard, hands down. I think it may be the actual reason that the grinch turned grinchly, or the scrooge scroogly. It is so bad that I hope it is actually a joke that I just didn’t get. Unfortunately, I don’t think so.
The CD starts out with the classic White Christmas by Irving Berlin. It sounds at the beginning as though William Shatner might somehow be involved. Half spoken and half sung in Brad Roberts’ bass-a-mundo, and backed by an organ, this is perhaps the oddest rendition of White Christmas ever recorded.
This lovely piece is followed is followed by a country (?) version of O Little Town of Bethlehem with lead vocals provided by Ellen Reid. Reid, although far better than Roberts, does seem to have a bit of difficulty finding a key here and staying in it.
Now, I won’t go into each track, it’s just too painful. I must, however, make special mention of the third song, Jingle Bells. With Brad Roberts again at the helm, I believe that this song was originally arranged for either the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz or some strange and twisted group of cold war Soviet expatriates. It sounds more like a battle march than a Christmas carol. Unless you want to scare the bejeebees out of them, don’t let the kidlets hear this one.
While these three songs are definitely the, um, highlights of the CD, we are also treated to renditions of In the Bleak Midwinter, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, We Three Kings, The Little Drummer Boy, The First Noel, Silent Night, Good King Wenceslas and The Huron Carol. Even in the less bizarre arrangements, the pace is often extremely sloooooow, giving us even more time to hate each selection.
To be fair, In the Bleak Midwinter, and Silent Night (again with a country style arrangement, but one that actually works) are really quite pretty. Ellen Reid does a nice job with the vocals. In fact, most of her vocals are nice; they would be even nicer if they were on some other CD. Brad Roberts’ bass is getting so low that I’m concerned it will result in seismic activity. He spends much of this CD in the gravelly extreme end of his range. His voice has in the past been kind of a fun element that made the band’s sound distinctive; here it just hurts to listen to.
Now, lest you think that the purchase of Jingle All the Way was a purchase entirely without merit, I believe that two good things have come out of it:
1)My husband will forever after realize that a current year release in the bargain used bin is there for a reason and
2)The guys at Discs (our CD store) are probably still laughing their butts off at this purchase, and it’s good to make people happy at Christmas time.
Now you’ll have to excuse me while I cleanse my Christmas palate with a little Vince Guaraldi and Bruce Cockburn……………
mfunk75 kindly allowed me this second entry in Spawn of Scrooge W/O (due to the necessity of including this item) in which the item reviewed should give Christmas a royal bashing. I believe that this CD accomplishes said task by its mere existence. For details see mfunk75’s profile page, and check out the oh-so-scroogly entries by all these fine participants:
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