"Christmas Favorites," from Promenade. Or, what do MINT SPC pressings sound like?

 

This is complicated.  This four-EP Promenade set, wherein most of the sides are titled Christmas Favorites, is a fascinating hodgepodge of Lord-knows-what-source-LP-or-EP-set selections, with Santa Claus himself (sounding like Art Carney with a respiratory virus) turning up on the A side of the fourth EP to narrate the story of Christmas.  A quick Discogs search failed to reveal the original source for this track--or any of the others.  And, as usual, the audio quality is quite good, for the most part (though several selections are accompanied by annoying hum, which I didn't try to suppress, since doing so detracts from the fidelity), but the pressings are garbage, basically.  I previously described the sound-editing hassle involved, and so I won't say anything more about the hideous, day-ruining, "I'd love to smash these things into tiny particles" frustration I endured.  No point in revisiting that sheer Hades-on-Earth experience.  From which I'll never fully recover, probably.  But no point in describing it.

  
And now Blogger is creating larger-than-usual paragraph breaks. What the...?  It already decided to divert this blog's comments to my gmail account, and after informing me that I had turned off the comment notification feature (I had not).  And, on line, there is an explanation of this action on Google's part.  Essentially, the idea is to inconvenience its users for the sake of "security."  "We'll make this service more secure by not allowing you to utilize it."  I tend to doubt that inconveniencing customers does anything to hamper the efforts of hackers.

Anyway, the topside sleeve/mailing wrapper/envelope, which is for a completely different EP set, was used by the eBay dealer who shipped these mint-in-sleeves records.  And I had to wonder, did the mismatch originated with SPC?  In fact, did this EP set ever have its own sleeve?  Or any sleeve, period?

And, after searching eBay and Discogs, it does appear that these were released without a mailing envelope/sleeve, which seems hugely improbable, but then we're talking about a famously ultra-cheap label group.

Though mint, these discs feature all the pressing flaws we expect from the Synthetic Plastics Company of New Jersey, which I won't go into.  Except to note the following: Loud surface noise at the close of each track, pressing faults which necessitated umpteen file splices to remove, and... so on.  But these are stressors to be removed from my memory.  No point in dwelling on the visit-to-Hades nature of this audio-rescue effort.  So I won't.

But, despite all these things (which I refrained from noting), this is a hugely fun set.  The performances are mostly fine, and as noted above, the fidelity WOULD be terrific if not for the vinyl issues.  And I find these Franken-presentations perversely gratifying.  The let's-just-cobble-something-together aspect of budget collections is kind of endearing, I think.  Yes, the budgets all lied and claimed to offer a superior product, but what's a little truth-flipping?  As far as that goes, what IS truth?  We want to regard truth as an empirically testable feature of the natural world, but it's undeniably also, to a degree, something intangible.  But we won't discuss this.  I don't want to sound like I'm professing any version of, "Reality is simply what we perceive it to be."  Then again, what if that's the case?  But I won't go there...

DOWNLOAD: Christmas Favorites--Promenade EP set.zip

Santa Claus is Coming to Town; Jingle Bells; Adeste Fideles--Promenade Orch. and Chorus

Winter Wonderland--Billy Reed, Promenade Orchestra

Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer; Deck the Hall; Good King Wencelas (sic); God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen; Joy to the World--Promenade Orchestra and Chorus

Home for the Holidays--Frank Moon With the Promenade Orchestra

White Christmas; Silent Night; O Little Town of Bethlehem--Promenade Orch. and Chorus

Nuttin' for Christmas--Bob Stain With the Promenade Orch. and Chorus (originally credited on the Peter Pan single to "Bobby Stewart")

Frosty the Snowman; It Came Upon a Midnight Clear; Away in a Manger; The First Noel; Hark the Herald Angels Sing--Promenade Orch. and Chorus

Sleigh Ride--Laura Leslie With the Promenade Orchestra

Lee