Oh my gawd – he’s gorn early! Season’s greetings and Christmas apologies, pop pickers, and please be welcome to tonight’s Fabulously Festive Friday and another of our light-loafered, lubed-up googlies from the gasworks-end of musical magnificence. My favourite fairy has been mounted, Santa is poised to empty his sack, packages are bulging and festive birds throughout the land are braced for a jolly good stuffing.
With all the fabulously flamboyant anticipation in the build up to this year’s turkey slaughtering season, I’m afraid I’ve been quite overcome with excitement and can no longer withhold the first of my festive discharges. Accordingly, for tonight’s premature gratification, we shall gently probe the often sad and seedy world of my favourite (and least favourite) rawk ‘n’ roll Christmas albums. And so, without further ado – hang the musical mistletoe of rock over the unzipped groin of roll, and let’s gobble down our first portion of fabulously festive cheeez! Not Arf!
Now let’s be honest here, the vast majority of Christmas albums are utter garbage – cheap and cheesy cash-ins, usually from artists desperate to wring a few additional shekels from their fast fading careers. As a perfect example of this heinous crime, m’lud, the prosecution presents Exhibit A: the truly dreadful Christmas album, Winter Carols From Blackmore’s Night – the hey nonny nonny outfit formed by the plank-spanktastically talented Ritchie Blackmore and his comely wench, Yoko Ono. Umm… apologies… Candice Night. It’s syrupy enough (no pun intended Mr. Blackmore) to give you type 2 diabetes and is pretty much a textbook example of everything a terrible Christmas album should be.
Sadly, however, Lady Cutlery is rather fond of this album, so it’s one I will almost certainly have to endure (through gritted teeth) during this year’s festivities. That being said, Ritchie has been somewhat poorly of late and has apparently been forced to cancel several tour dates, so I’ll forgive him for Winter Carols, wish him a full and speedy recovery and sincerely hope he’s soon back doing what he does best: spanking his plank with furious abandon. Anyway – viewer discretion advised. Keep a handful of Metformin ready and listen if you dare…
However, although most Christmas albums are indeed dire, over the years a select few have managed to worm their way (largely, I suspect, because of brain rot caused by excessive alcohol consumption) into my frostily festive heart and now usually get an annual outing or two on the turntable. So let’s get things started for this evening with Twisted Sister and their wonderfully tongue-in-cheek 2006 offering, Twisted Christmas.
Now I’m not going to defend this album on the grounds of musical quality, but it is tremendous fun and absolutely refuses to take itself seriously. At times, this truly ridiculous album reaches Spinal Tap levels of absurdity, but It’s worth noting that Dee Snider, Twisted Sister’s (now former) front man and primary songwriter, is a deeply committed Christian. So, although this album is always great fun and tremendously irreverent, it’s never actually offensive.
Next up is possibly my favourite Christmas various artists album: We Wish You A Metal Xmas & a Headbanging New Year. How could you possibly resist a festive album that features Alice Cooper, Billy Gibbons, Lemmy, Tony Iommi and the late, great, and still very much missed Ronnie James Dio? Highlights include Ronnie and Tony doom-rocking their way through a ridiculous version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, and Lemmy and Billy Gibbons ripping their way through Run Run Rudolph. A Christmas cracker an’ no mistake, guv’nor.
We need to pop back to the poptastcally sensational ’70s for our next outing and take a look at a genuine oddity from that period. 1975 saw the release of A Christmas Yet To Come by the experimental composer Joseph Byrd (who sadly passed away quite recently). Byrd was part of the New York experimental scene of the early 1960s, where he studied under John Cage and produced some genuinely innovative and intriguing pieces. However, by the late 1960s he had settled in California where he formed the somewhat quirky psychedelic rock band, The United States of America. If you ever spot a cheap second hand copy of their self-titled debut album, it’s probably worth picking up because, quite frankly, it’s a strange and thoroughly intriguing album. Don’t pay too much for it though (I recently paid 25p for a CD copy in the basement of a second hand record shop in Greenwich) as most people are never going to play it more than once.
Anyway, by the mid-70s Byrd had become a full time university lecturer, but continued to sporadically produce and release music; and in 1975 he released his synth-driven Christmas album, A Christmas Yet To Come. Byrd performed the entire album on a monophonic ARP 2600 synthesizer (the synth famous for producing the voice of R2-D2 in Star Wars) and given the lavishly polyphonic and multi-timbral nature of the arrangements on the album, to produce it using an ARP 2600 really is something of a technical triumph. Byrd did use a Tom Oberheim expander module on his ARP, which greatly increased the tonal palette available from the instrument. But, despite this enhancement, his 70’s synth tones will still sound a little cheesy to contemporary ears. Nevertheless, there is some fine work on this album and it is – by quite some distance – Byrd’s most accessible release.
Next up (somewhat inevitably, I guess) Slade and their 1985 festive album, Crackers. Sadly, this album really is the perfect example of a late career cash-in. However, despite the very high levels of cheese contamination, this album is saved for me by the inclusion of a truly tremendous re-recording of Cum On Feel The Noize. It’s always been one of my favourite Slade tracks, but the re-recorded version on Crackers leaves their mid-70s original standing in the dust. In fact, if my original copy of this album suddenly vanished, I would immediately re-buy it simply for that one track. There is one other reason to own this album: it contains a truly genuine horror and quite possibly the worst track Slade ever recorded – a cover of Bob Geldof and Midge Ure’s truly hideous Do They Know It’s Christmas. Oh my days – what on earth possessed them?
Crackers was also the album that more or less signalled that Slade had thrown in the towel. They had enjoyed a splendid late career revival after coming off the bench at the 1980 Reading Rock Festival to completely steal the show. And, as a result, they spent the next few years playing to some of the biggest crowds of their careers and shifted some very respectable album numbers. However, by the mid-80’s, they were fast fading once more and a Christmas album (released on the tacky budget Telstar label, no less) was a very clear white flag and an admission of defeat.
The music press were not particularly kind, with one review describing Crackers as a “joyously raucous, sing-along album [and] the single most detestable record they’ve ever made”. Classic Rock Magazine suggested the album was “a nadir for Slade [that] achieved its commercial goal (it was certified Gold in the UK) but slammed the credibility of HMS Slade amidships like some unforgiving German torpedo”. As much as I enjoy this album, I can’t really argue with those sentiments.
Next up is another various artists compilation, but this time a charity affair. A Very Special Christmas was released in 1987 to raise funds for the Special Olympics and was a whopping success (certified quadruple platinum, no less). I bought a copy because back then I was still dumb enough to believe that handing over some of my hard-earned cash to the big corporate cheridees actually did some good. Nevertheless, despite my staggering naivety, this is a star-studded affair (Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Stevie Nicks, The Pretenders, Madonna, U2, Eurythmics, Whitney Houston, Bob Seger, Bryan Adams) and there’s a few decent performances contained within. It usually gets a festive outing at Chez Cutlery, simply because it’s one of the few Christmas albums in my collection that won’t rattle the guests or produce stern looks of displeasure from ‘er indoors.
Another Christmas album that can be played without frightening the horses is the 2003 Jethro Tull Christmas Album. It seemed destined (at the time, at least) to be their final studio album, so it could easily have been viewed as a typical and cynical late-career cash-in. It’s the usual Christmas album mix of new material, re-recordings of old material and some new arrangements of traditional Christmas music. However, whatever their motivations, they actually managed to produce a pretty decent Jethro Tull album and it was a solid and respectable way for them to (apparently) bow out.
As it happens, of course, it didn’t turn out to be Jethro Tull’s last outing, because, just a trifling twenty years later, Ian Anderson successfully revived the old band and produced couple of brand new Jethro Tull albums (The Zealot Gene and RökFlöte). Despite both releases being (to all intents and purposes) Ian Anderson solo albums in a Jethro Tull wrapper, these two albums proved to be a pretty decent return to form for the old flute snuffler. In fact, when Lady Cutlery (a huge Jethro Tull fan) dragged me to see them tread the boards last year, I was very happy to discover they were still on very good form, with Mr. Anderson turning in an energetic and surprisingly enthusiastic late-career performance.
The Jethro Tull Christmas Album is a firm festive favourite of Lady Cutlery and will certainly get a few spins on the old turntable this year. There will be no grumbling from me (I save that for when the Whitney bloody Houston albums come out) as it’s not a bad album at all and I’m very happy to include it on my Christmas list of hot platters by popular beat combos.
And you can’t possibly have a musical Christmas without a spot of Frank Sinatra. A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra was Frank’s first Christmas album. Originally released by Capitol Records in 1957 (it’s been re-packaged and re-released a great many times since then), it’s quite a schizophrenic album, with side one featuring a selection of secular holiday tunes, while side two is made up of traditional religious Christmas carols. Frank (along with pretty much all the crooners of the tine) subsequently released a great deal of festive material, but this one, his first Christmas album, remains my favourite of his many festive outings.
If I could keep just one of my Christmas albums, it would probably be the Beach Boys’ Christmas Album. First released in 1964, it really is an absolute corker and proved to be a long-running success (in the US) during subsequent Christmas seasons. The music historian, James Perone, described it as “one of the finest holiday albums of the rock era” and, quite frankly, I can’t think of a single reason to argue with that. I’m still a big Beach Boys fan, so it will certainly get an extensive outing at Chez Cutlery this year.
Finally for this evening, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s 2000 festive outing, Christmas Time Again. Just like Slade’s Crackers album, it a really does feel like a tacky end-of-career cash in. However, unlike Slade, that really wasn’t the case: A quarter of a century after the release of this album, Lynyrd Skynyrd are still going strong and some of their very best work (check out the live recordings from their Vicious Cycle Tour or their 2009 studio album God & Guns if you doubt my judgement) was produced long after the release of this Christmas album.
There’s nothing new or original here, but if you ever find yourself getting ripped on moonshine in a small town dive bar on a sweaty Christmas Eve in the deep south of the good ol’ US of A, this is exactly what you’d want your evening’s soundtrack to be. Incidently, I saw the band in concert last summer (several times, in fact) and they are still on truly blistering form – even though, sadly, they are now down to their last original member.
And I think we’ll wrap things up for this evening with a cracking Elton John performance of his 1982 Christmas single, All Quiet On The Western Front. 1982 was right in the middle of what are now generally regarded as Elton’s “car crash years”, but he still managed to produce some excellent stuff during this dodgy period. Over the years, this track has gradually wormed its way into my heart to become one of my favourite Elton John tunes. However, not many seem to agree: the single was a commercial flop in most territories and is usually absent from his many compilation albums. This performance is taken from a 1982 BBC Sight & Sound In Concert Christmas Special, which was broadcast live from the Hammersmith Odeon in London, back in the days when Auntie was still capable of delivering some pretty decent value for the much loathed licence fee.
Anyway, I think that’s quite enough of my inane ramblings for one evening. So I shall bid you TTFN, dear Puffins. May all your packages be a-bulging, your birds well stuffed and don’t forget – when you wake up on Christmas morning, please make sure that Santa has emptied his sack.
Goodnight, and may your festive frog go with you – Not ‘arf!
Featured Image: Christmas at the Pabst Mansion by Michael Barera via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0
© Ivory Cutlery 2025
