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Originally written in December 1997
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Ken Tucker wrote this excellent article describing the various configurations of Carpenters Christmas music on CD.
I think maybe the younger people on the list could use some explanation of what happened with the Christmas album situation.
Flashback to the mid-1980's: Music stores are filled with cassettes and vinyl LP's (8-track tapes are pretty much gone). In the corner is this small section for these new-fangled shiny things called CD's, and to play them you have to have a big expensive player hooked up to your home stereo system (though on the horizon is the tiny Sony D-5 player which is about the size of a cassette walkman - a miraculous breakthrough!)
Karen has died, and A&M has come out with the second Carpenters Christmas album, An Old-Fashioned Christmas. This contains the left-over material from the original Christmas Portrait recording sessions which wouldn't fit on the first album, plus newly-recorded instrumental filler material. (Mostly nice stuff - but definitely filler. I was so disappointed the first time I listened to it to find Karen on so few tracks.)
The record stores are filled with vinyl LP's and cassettes of both C's Xmas albums, but Richard, always interested in the newest technologies, decides to come out with a CD combining the best of the two albums (mostly coming from the first album), utilizing the full 70-minute-plus capacity of the CD. This is somewhat of a specialty item, as are all CD's at this point.
Fast forward to the mid-1990's: vinyl records are gone from the mass market, cassettes are still around but on a smaller scale, and CD's have completely taken over the mass market. We've now ended up in a situation where the special edition Xmas CD, originally a specialty item, is now left as the mass market item, and the original 2 albums are only available on cassette.
Putting the original albums on separate CD's at this point I'm sure doesn't seem to A&M to be a viable option - why would the average consumer buy the original Christmas Portrait on CD, when for the same price he could by the 70-minute-plus special edition, and get almost all the same music plus more? And if it doesn't make sense to put out the original Christmas Portrait by itself, why should A&M put out Old-F Xmas by itself, which is a weaker album, and only has a few Karen vocals which aren't already in the special edition.
Which leaves us fans in an awkward position - we're painfully aware of the great songs which wouldn't fit on the special edition, and thus are not available on CD.
So A&M has two choices at this point: withdraw the Special Edition from the marketplace, and put out the original albums separately, or put out the two albums as a special 2-CD set. The first option probably wouldn't look good, so they seem to be testing the waters with the Time-Life set and the Canadian set (and I guess 2-CD sets in other parts of the world, too.)
My guess is that the PBS special is going to be just the start of a much higher level of renewed interest over the next year, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a 1998 US release of the 2-CD set.
So anyway, I'd say get a copy of the Special Edition, plus any one copy of the 2-CD set (if you have the Time-Life, don't bother with the Canadian, etc, unless you are simply want a complete collection of EVERY release you can get.)
I now have a copy of the Canadian 2-CD set, courtesy of Rod, and while it is nice to have access to all the "lost" songs on CD (especially What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?), I have to admit it will be the Special Edition that continues to spend the most time in my CD player this year. (In my opinion the special edition CD is THE definitive popular music Christmas album.)
Sorry this got so long - this is about 3 times as long as what I thought I was going to type!
Ken Tucker
P.S. What's with the album cover on the Canadian edition? I guess it's supposed to be K&R looking though a "frosted window pane", but instead it just looks like a blurry, muddy, badly reproduced photo - and the same photo is reproduced sharply and clearly on the back of the booklet. And it's the stangest looking "window" I've ever seen... Except for the barely visible snowflakes, there's nothing particularly Christmassy about the cover at all. Oh, well, it's the music, not the album cover....
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Buy: |
Buy: Carpenters - Christmas Portrait CD |
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| Buy: Carpenters - Christmas Collection 2 CD set |
Buy: Carpenters - Christmas Collection 2 CD set |
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Last changed: Sun Jul 8 17:22:15 EDT 2007
