Music |
The Beach Boys Christmas Album
By
Published: Dec 05, 2017
Category:
Rock
GUEST BUTLER JOE DEPRETA is a New York marketing executive and writer on cultural trends. He recently wrote a compelling piece in Head Butler about the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s 50th anniversary.
1964 would have been the final year of President John F. Kennedy’s first term. Inflation was 1.3%, gas was $.30/gallon, the average cost of a new car was $3,500, and you could still hear Dinah Shore singing “See the USA in your Chevrolet” — the superbly made Malibu was introduced that November.
That same month, Capital Records released the Beach Boys Christmas Album. Much has changed since that age of innocence and the promise of a new frontier. At the time, in spite of Viet Nam, assassinations, and the winding road to psychedelia and rebellion, a veil of harmony still draped the country, and popular radio was a democracy of music, genre-less to a large extent. Playlists segued from Sinatra to the Temptations, the Rolling Stones to Neil Diamond, Dean Martin to Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley to the Beach Boys – often in the same hour, on the same station.
The harmonies of the Beach Boys, and the canvass of their songs, created a romanticized vision of sun-kissed days when life was just, well, brighter. Their music was an aural reflection of the times. For many of us in the Northeast, those songs made our world appear freer — from problems, stress, and a disharmony of imminent change that was beginning to hang heavy in the air, even during the passing decades.
As a lad living in the shadow of Manhattan, I romanticized southern California. Barefoot girls with flowers in their spilling hair, carrying surf boards with Colgate smiles. It appeared to be a venial Sin City, misdemeanors committed by drag races, beer parties, and maybe some intimacy on the beach in the glow of the moonlight.
But, while that romantic idyll has gone the way of infinite lost loves, the harmonies of the Beach Boys remain evergreen. And man, do we need that now. Kvetching on social media doesn’t quite slake the ache.
This holiday season, there are a handful of CDs in my stereo to keep me in the spirit of joy, giving, and gratitude — or enhancing that spirit: The Chieftains’ Bells of Dublin, Latvian Christmas Cantatas, and the Beach Boys Christmas Album.
The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album cover alone echoes simpler times: five fresh-faced young men in Andy Williams sweaters decorating the tree. You can almost hear them humming as they trim. The album enjoys five original songs and seven standards. A forty-one-piece orchestra conducted and arranged by Brian and the great Dick Reynolds accompanies many of the songs. [To buy the CD from Amazon, click here. For the MP3 download, click here.]
In the end, it’s about the angelic voices that lift you to a place of peace and contentment. It’s worth the price of admission alone to hear Brian’s solo rendition of “Blue Christmas,” one of the most chills-inducing pop holiday recordings of all time.
There are, of course, holiday songs within the California sound template that Brian essentially created. “Little Saint Nick” is a big smile of a carol, reverse-engineered into the rhythm track of “Deuce Coup.”
“Merry Christmas Baby” expresses unrequited holiday love within a classic, early ‘60s rock motif with a sprinkling of Doo-Wop.
The pristine harmonies are in full glory on “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” “White Christmas,” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” While we’ve all heard multiple renditions over the years, Brian and company make the songs sound as if there were created just for them.
Sleighbells are the percussion instrument of choice here, and their ebullience lends an innocent playfulness to the five voices. The traditional and the whimsical coexist in, yes, perfect harmony. It makes me long for toboggan rides on snow-packed suburban hills as hot chocolate waits at the bottom of the run. Holiday season aside, the mosaic of voices and instrumentation may make you want to leave cookies for the man in red, just because the inspiration hit that chord of unbridled sentiment.
A friend once suggested that the Beach Boys Christmas Album is the “Love, Actually” of music. It’s so sentimental, so of another time, yet so good. To call it a guilty pleasure would be to minimize it. It’s really just pleasure at a time when many of us can very much use that.
