All My CDs, pt 73: Christmas Disk

Christmas Disk - Elvis Manson

Remember a few reviews ago when I wrote about probable bias in some of my reviews? This one and the several that come after are the crown jewel of probable bias in my CD collection. Not only are they by my own father (Elvis Manson is his stage name), but this particular CD contains contributions from every member of my immediate family (and the kid next door) and one track features my own prepubescent speaking voice throughout. I’m pretty sure that would disqualify me from reviewing this album if I were a real reviewer. But I’m not.

This was my father’s first CD (although he’d recorded cassette tapes for years before then), made in the mid-90s. As the name certainly indicates, this is a Christmas album, and contains some of the most recognizable carols and songs performed in a straightforward fashion, notably Do You Hear What I Hear and Cantique de Noel (better known as Oh Holy Night). O Magnum Mysterium might not be as universally known but opens the album very nicely with its churchy, Latin vibe.

Most of the music here is either entirely original or given some unique spin by my father’s rather idiosyncratic sense of humor. Silent Night Shift intersperses bland synthesized carols with P.A. announcements like you’d hear occasionally interrupting the piped-in music in the grocery store (“Housekeeping, aisle 12, broken ketchup”). Visa or Mastercard more directly addresses the connection between Christmas and shopping by replacing the lyrics of “Carol of the Bells” with ones parodic of consumerism: “Cash registers / hear how they ring / stockholders say / profit is king.”

Other songs are neither reverent nor sarcastic, but simply fun, like The Snowball Fight and Skaters, instrumentals meant to represent winter sports in musical form, with Reindeer Ride similarly treating us to a more fantastical form of recreation. Malcolm Xmas retells the nativity story in the form of a rap. Ding Dong Packle Bell takes the Pachelbel cannon and soups it up a bit. Looking at the track listing now, it occurs to me that there’s a mixture of reverence, lightheartedness, and self-aware parody that seems to echo the reactions I see to the holiday season in general. Is this intentional? Maybe.

Track 13, called The Last of the 3 Spirits, is perhaps my least favorite track on the whole album. This is the one that features my own voice, calmly reading passages from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol while my father’s ghostly instrumental stylings illustrate the story in the background. The reason I don’t like it is very simple: it was an early experience with hearing my own voice on record, and as is often the case I found it disappointing. Plus I can just hear every little vocal stumple and foible, despite the many, many takes I remember enduring. But I was just a kid at the time. Nowadays, I can almost forgive my father for putting me on his CD.

Keep my bias in mind here, but if I had to rate this CD, I’d say it’s well worth checking out if you have any ability to. (It’s probably not available for sale anymore.) Despite its humble origins in a suburban attic, the recording is clean and polished, and the writing on the original songs is very clever and creative. Just feel free to skip track 13.

Next: Dishcover the Riddle