Date: Fri 13-Dec-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Illustration: C

Location: A15

Quick Words:

music-Christmas-albums-Buffett

Full Text:

(rev new holiday/Christmas music, 12/13/96)

Do You Hear What We Hear?

New Releases For The Ears This Yar

(with album covers)

BY SHANNON HICKS

Christmas brings a certain sense of style, sights, smells and sounds to the

final holiday season of the year. Black velvet dresses for the ladies; wreaths

and garland and menorahs in doorways, porch tops, windows, on tables and

floors; holiday parties from the festive to the formal; the scents of

cinnamon, peppermint, pine and cookies; and the sounds, from gospel to rock,

vocal to instrumental... all mark the season of light, festivities, new life

and the promise of a new year.

Along with that promise comes the assurance of new music (not that musicians

need a seasonal excuse to present new releases). This year, like all before

it, comes a handful of new holiday sounds, some which will become the future

"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Jingle Bells" - classic, timeless songs;

others to become the new "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" or "Rockin'

Around the Christmas Tree" - the radio hits of years gone by; some will

quietly earn a spot in a few Christmas collections, and others will gather

dust on the shelves. Christmas is caroling or listening, jazz or pop, rock or

classic ... like the varied ways to celebrate the holiday itself, the choices

for hearing the holiday are innumerable.

Back in October, Hollywood Records announced the release of A Vibraphonic

Christmas . Vibraphonic was the first acid jazz band signed to the label's

roster; it has two previously-released albums on Britain's Acid Jazz label.

With six instrumental offerings and four vocal tracks, A Vibraphonic Christmas

demonstrates a blending of jazz elements with funk and pop. Sharrin Summers, a

publicist with Hollywood Records, described the album as "really cool," with a

"hip, funky groove to it."

The group is led by Roger Beaujolais, a mainstay of Britain's acid jazz scene.

Last year's radio hit "Can't Get Enough," which spent four weeks at #1 on the

R&R NAC Charts, was his American breakthrough.

The album features two cuts with longtime Vibraphonic collaborator Alison

Limerick, a British vocalist. Limerick had a pair of UK chart successes

earlier this year with her singles "Where Love Lives" and "Make It On My Own."

In another instrumental vein, Star of Wonder is a collection of holiday music

by composer/musician Peter Buffett (and the New World Ensemble). Don't

recognize the name? Check the soundtrack credits from the Award-winning

soundtrack to Dances With Wolves , or the CBS documentary "500 Nations."

Marking a new chapter in his career, Star of Wonder , according to Hollywood

Records, has allowed Buffett to break from his recordings of past, to infuse

familiar holiday melodies - "We Three Kings," "Silent Night," "What Child Is

This," "Auld Lang Syne" - with traditional Celtic and French influences.

In 12 tracks, Buffett has created an album which is, says Summers, "haunting;

it has an Enya-esque sound."

Parrot Heads - those brightly-clad fans of guitar-totin', barefoot-singing,

margarita-swillin' singer Jimmy Buffett (not to be confused with the

aforementioned Peter Buffett) - have become so used to expecting new albums

from Buffett in the spring - prior to his annual summer treks across the

country, as the King Parrot Head winds his way back to his home base of Key

West - that this season's lagniappe has no doubt thrown a few of his fans for

a loop. A holiday album from Jimmy Buffett?!?

Not to fear. One listen to Buffett's Christmas Island (Margaritaville Records)

and the familiar sounds of steel drums, lightly tickled keyboards and

Buffett's familiar voice wrapped around some of everyone's favorite Christmas

songs, and everyone will feel back to normal (not that Parrot Heads claim to

be run-of-the-mill normal people).

As Jimmy Buffett celebrates his half-century mark this Christmas - the

singer-songwriter was born on Christmas Day 1946, the same day W.C. Fields

died - Christmas Island is his gift for the holidays. The album is a

collection of songs "not ladled over with sugary sentimentality," he writes in

the album notes, but exactly what listeners would expect: The sounds of

happiness, from a man who says he can look back over five decades where "fun

and joy have been far more visible ... than suffering and sadness."

Working with longtime collaborator Michael Utley, Buffett presents

arrangements of "Jingle Bells" and "Up On The House Top," the latter in a

"surfer dude" mode; sings John Lennon/Yoko Ono's "Happy Christmas (War Is

Over)"; has fun with "Mele Kalikimaka"; and presents some of his own Christmas

tales, including "A Sailor's Christmas," the title track, "Ho Ho Ho and A

Bottle of Rhum" and "Merry Christmas Alabama (Never Far From Home)."

There was a hint, by the way, of things to come on Buffett's previous album,

Banana Wind , which included the single "Holiday" ("You need a holiday/ take a

holiday." True, it was "holiday" in a different context, but it was a holiday

suggestion nevertheless. An alternate season to listen to Buffett, Christmas

Island is a grand gift. Put on the poinsettia lei, enjoy a sailor's Christmas,

and be sure to unwrap the bonus track.

Speaking of alternate and things alternative, 13 of the world's top alt-rock

bands have contributed their interpretations of Christmas sounds in O Come All

Ye Faithful: Rock For Choice (Columbia Records).

This album features works by groups familiar (Bush, The Presidents of The

United States of America, Sponge) to not-so-familiar (Mike Watt and the Crew

of the Flying Saucer, Deep Forest and Wes Madiko), and the songs cover the

same gamut, from Henry Rollins' eerie reading of Clement C. Moore's "`Twas The

Night Before Christmas" and Lennon/Ono's "Happy Christmas (War Is Over)" to a

spirited new singalong called "Christmas Piglet" and "I Did It For The Toys."

Well-known to unknown, the album also includes rephrasings of "The Little

Drummer Boy" and "Blue Christmas" among its choices.

Rock For Choice is a national organization that raises awareness and money to

protect reproductive rights and women's health clinics across the country. The

organization was founded in 1991 by the rock band L7, music journalist Sue

Cummings, and The Feminist Majority, a national women's rights organization.

A portion of the proceeds from album sales will go to Rock For Choice. O Come

All Ye Faithful: Rock For Choice is dedicated to Shannon Jowney and Jeanne

Nichols, two young women's health clinic workers who were killed December 29,

1994, in Brookline, MA, by an anti-abortion radical.

Next, The 12 Soulful Nights of Christmas (So So Def/Columbia Records) is a

collection of Christmas classics (re: interpretations) by up-and-coming stars

shouldered between some of R&B's timeless, best singers. From Brian McKnight

("Because of His Love") and Chaka Kahn ("Christmas Once A Year") to Trina

Broussard ("Not Really Christmas"), Alicia Keys ("Little Drummer Girl") and

K-Ce and JoJo from Jodeci ("In Love on Christmas"), again, this is a selection

of obscure to familiar, this time done with a soulful twist.

Subtitled "(Part 1)," The 12 Soulful Nights of Christmas will undoubtedly be

followed in subsequent seasons by additional volumes.

Finally, for those who love the feeling of "Oh! I remember when I first heard

that!" and want something that brings back Christmases past, Nick at Nite

Records (under Sony Music) has put together an album sure to strike young

heart strings inside everyone.

Who hasn't spent at least one night in their childhood, wrapped in a blanket

in front of the TV watching Christmas cartoons? Whether Frosty or Rudolph, the

Grinch or Charlie Brown and his silly little Christmas trees, cartoons have

always appealed to the children in all of us, and all cartoons (the good ones,

anyway) have been scripted with music.

Now comes A Classic Cartoon Christmas , an assemblage of the songs everyone

knows a few lines to, and all recorded from master tapes by the men and women

who forever inscribed them into our young memories. Whether it is Burl Ives

singing "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer," Fred Astaire doing "Santa Claus Is

Coming To Town," Jimmy Durante's "Frosty the Snowman," or the unnamed deep

voice that who immortalized "You're A Mean One, Mr Grinch," A Classic Cartoon

Christmas is as familiar as snowmen, snow angels and the Christmas cartoons we

tune into year after year.