I feel like the posts are all over the place today, that's what happens when I don't have a good solid theme. Hopefully the themes will be back tomorrow, but until then, expect the unexpected. This record sounds like a high school marching band was paid a couple hundred bucks for a tape of their last rehearsal before their Christmas show, then a budget label released it. Well, at least the cover is a nice period piece. This is
Manhattan "Pops" Symphonic Band-
The Sound Of Christmas (Mount Vernon Music MVCS 3 (AKA MVSC 3), Stereo). Enjoy, if you can.
1. Jingle Bells
2. It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
3. Christmas Medley
4. God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
5. The First Noel
6. Little Town Bethlehem
7. Good King Wenceslaus
8. Christmas Medley
9. Ave Maria
MEGA
That "mvm" logo was pretty much a guarantee of dreck, as I recall. I like your description, "This record sounds like a high school marching band was paid a couple hundred bucks for a tape of their last rehearsal before their Christmas show."
ReplyDeleteI agree, but the exception that proves the rule is a Skitch Henderson LP they put out. It's got a couple of Christmas adjacent tracks that are great! Even the sound is good. But I can't find any info on it, may not even really be him. This one is dreck though, but I like the cover.
DeleteHey Ernie, I'll be the dissented one (all in good fun of course) and after reading your synopsis, I was expecting pain and misery with chuckles in between. I gave each track a brief listen (30 to 60 seconds) over on D**z*r and it wasn't all that bad, and no chuckles either. I can understand the resentment with "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" and the beginnings of the first Christmas Medley, but the rest a passable grade.
ReplyDeleteAs usual, I enjoy your descriptive writing. Oh, and I wholeheartedly agree - LOVE that cover! And, consider me the newest fan of this album. I hope I'm not alone, lol.
If it floats your boat, be my guest. I'm gonna file it back in the back of the library and revisit it in a decade or two... :)
DeleteI commented on another post the same thing. This rip sounds mono.
ReplyDeleteThis being a bottom-of-the-barrel label, I would not be surprised at all to discover it's a mono recording that's maybe been played with a little. Doing my little trick of splitting the channels, inverting one, then summing them up yields a little bit of sound, but not a whole lot. So this one could very well be labelled stereo, but a mono recording. Whenever I have doubts about a recording, I tend to just leave it in stereo and let the listener worry about it if they want. Lots of these old records aren't marked one way or the other, and my ears and listening situation aren't that good.
DeleteCompare this and see what you think.
Deletehttps://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/49ooqq83l9zl2bjjm5xrr/OP.zip?rlkey=357m87ia3107vx1ocevw8ln9b&dl=0
Hard to tell. The levels are a lot lower, and one channel appears to be quite a bit lower than the other.
DeleteGotcha. There's quite a difference on my monitors.
DeleteYeah, it seems to be mono. I have CapnOT's rip and that one's stereo. Not drastic, and maybe simulated, but it's stereo. This one seems decidedly mono.
DeleteBudget label shenanigans. :(
Delete