Having a Happy Christmas (is difficult with these albums)

Christmas can bring back memories of some beloved characters from television and music. There's Frosty, Rudolph, The Grinch, The Chipmunks, and there are others that are beloved by all.

These characters are not beloved by all. In fact, they seem to have a certain knack for making Christmas shitty for those who try to indulge in something new. It's like getting a cube of mouldy fruit cake. It's pure useless garbage, and that's what we get from these Christmas albums that nobody wants to buy.

Lou Monte - Merry Christmas from Pepino The Italian Mouse



This album is full of Italian-styled Christmas music with the exception of one song. What in hell was the point of releasing this piece of shit Christmas album if you're going to promote your Italian mouse character and put him in only one song which has nothing to do with Christmas? Not only that, you have to wait until the first song on side two for your Pepino experience. What a fucking joke.

Listen to Pepino The Italian Mouse


Ray Bentley - Radar The Happy Reindeer



Canadians are stupid, myself included for making you listen to this garbage.

This is the story of a homeless Reindeer trainer who drags around his deformed Reindeer who has shiny eyes as opposed to Rudolph's shiny nose. Santa's reindeer get injured and aren't able to pull the sleigh, but the reindeer trainer gets a bunch of new reindeer and lets his ugly laser-beam-eyed reindeer lead the sleigh on Christmas. It's a pretty dumb story.

According to the album cover, there is a motion picture of the story coming, but a search on Google tells me that it never existed. All the children who bought this piece of junk had their Christmas ruined by never seeing Radar in all his animated glory. Perhaps the budget went to all the musicians (The Radar Singers) who recorded all the terrible songs on this album. Also, the track listing for side two is wrong. If they can't get that right, then I can't imagine how terrible the production of the motion picture went until it was scrapped.

Apparently, Mr. Ray Bentley named his company Radar Publications LTD. My guess is the makers of the TV show M*A*S*H sued his ass which resulted in the motion picture never being released.

Listen to Santa's Very Near
Download The Whole Album



Christmas with The Happy Crickets



We have a Pickwick special! To be fair, I've never found Pickwick to be as bad as Arc Records, but Pickwick does have quite a wide selection of terrible shit including this album. Yes, it's a Chipmunks rip-off, but I don't know why they chose to use the name of Buddy Holly's band. First of all, it sounds nothing like Buddy Holly. Second, it's not as fun as The Chipmunks, so you're stuck with this in-between garbage that nobody asked for.

Side one consists mostly of the religious-based Christmas songs which in my opinion would be insulting to the Lord due to their chipmunky/crickety voices. It sounds extremely bizarre hearing these voices sing about Jesus. I dare someone to play this in church. If you do, please take video of the congregation's reaction. I'd love to see it!

This album also has some kind of howling artefact that can be heard at the beginning and end of each song. My guess is that there's some kind of electronic hum on the microphones that the singers used which sounds more like a howl when it's sped up.

You know what the funniest part is? "The Chipmunk Song" isn't sung by the cricket voices and is instead sung in the style of Mickey Mouse. I'm guessing Pickwick was trying to avoid a lawsuit. It's also by far the worst track on the album.

Listen to White Christmas
Listen to The Chipmunk Song
Download the whole album

I have yet to decide how to end off a full decade of blogging, but I feel the need to do something. This has been the longest-running project I've ever been involved in! Stay tuned for my farewell to the 2010s...