Bloggerhythms

Holidays Rule, Volume 2 is the second unique compilation of Christmas music backed by MPL (McCartney Productions Limited), one of the World's largest music publishers. Volume 1 was released in 2012 and is discussed here . Both discs in this series are for people who love Christmas music but are tired of the same old thing and offer a mix of famous, all-star talent along with a host of up and coming artists. Kudos to the former Beatle and to everyone involved for having the foresight to understand that not everyone wants to hear Brenda Lee every single hour, every single day, for a whole month every year. The album opens with Paul McCartney, Jimmy Fallon, and The Roots performance of the classic rocker's "Wonderful Christmastime" that is more in the spirit of Christmas than his perennial standard. This take was originally performed on The Tonight Show in December 2016. Other heavy hitters include Norah Jones performing a non-Christmas tune, a live version of...

In 2006 Hall and Oates released Home For Christmas , their one and only holiday album, an extremely good set of music that immediately became one of my favorite seasonal listens. I wrote then that I was stunned at how many overtly religious songs the famous duo put on the the disc considering the very politically correct climate of the new millennium. One of them was a cover version of a song that alluded me for almost thirty years, "Christmas Must Be Tonight." I liked the new, upbeat track sung by Daryl Hall and it made me go out and search for Robbie Robertson's never-to-be classic. Sung by Rick Danko, it appears on the great Canadian band's last album, Islands (1977). It's a surprise that a group whose members were not known to have any specific or powerfully strong religious beliefs would release a song that tackled the subject of Jesus's birth as blatantly as our most loved Christmas carols. It's not about a reckless reinde...

One of the benefits of running a music blog is that I've been exposed to artists that I would not normally get to hear otherwise and New York City's D. B. Rielly is one of them. The praise given here previously to Rielly's first two studio CDs was genuine which is why I was more than pleased at his invitation to listen to D. B. Rielly Live From Long Island City . All three of the singer-songwriter's discs are uniquely packaged. They come in unusual shapes, sizes, and construction materials. The earlier ones were tin and wood and Long Island City comes in the shape of a large, cardboard postcard. Unfortunately, none of them are able to be filed with the rest of my CDs. Perhaps Rielly wanted to make sure his work had its own special place in my collection. Well D. B., if you're reading this, it worked. I've got your stuff stored in my stereo cabinet where I see it more often than my other discs so, guess what, they actually get played. Both of Rielly...