MP3 Rhan Wilson - The Return of An Altared Christmas

This time around, Rhan Wilson has abandoned any semblance of normalcy. Familiar songs, original lyrics, skewered and skewed with reverence.

11 MP3 Songs
JAZZ: Latin Jazz, SPOKEN WORD: Comedy



Details:
Imagine youself at yet another holiday party, questioning your decision to venture out of the house, looking for the true joy of the Holiday Season.

Suddenly, amidst the meager array of cookies and nog, there appears a fruitcake. One unlike any other ever witnessed; a fruitcake so delicious and tempting it is soon completely devoured.

With each bite you find your mind and ears mysteriously opening, both to the people surrounding you and to a musical world wherein the holiday songs of yore, with their original lyrics, are transformed into something odd and new.

Conversation becomes fascinating; the unsuspecting revelers open to the true meaning of the holidays; the desire for joy to the entire world.

And you, too begin to experience a different way of hearing the "same old Christmas carols." Old songs in new settings which can invoke a laugh, a chuckle, or a momentary tear as you are reminded of a special time in your life.

You too can be a witness to that alchemy, for now this magical set of songs, transformed to a higher power, skewed and skewered yet reproduced with reverence, is now available on "The Return of An Altared Christmas" music CD.

Produced by Santa Cruz musician/artist Rhan Wilson, this follow up to 1998's original "An Altared Christmas" employs a similar technique: change the major key feel of familiar songs to minor, and listen to how that simple altaration changes the feeling of the music.

And again, many Santa Cruz musicians appear in this vision of a more profound holiday. Accordionist The Great Morgani, guitarist Bob Burnett, clarinetist Mark Sowlakis, and saxophonist Gary Regina appear, as do Dana Hutson (Pele Juju), Lee Beverly (Eddie Money), Pipa Piñon (Dreambeach), Tammi Brown, Paula Bliss, Paul Wagner, David A. Wallis, and even a Rod Serling-esque voiceover by Santa Cruz City Councilmember Mark Primack.

Together Rhan and this talented musical cast trace some of the Holidays' funnier unspoken follies: parents using Santa Claus as a behavioral control (Santa Claus is Coming to Town), the ritual of decorating the Christmas tree which will be tossed to the curb the day after (O Christmas Tree), or the blubbering disclosure by a drunken guest as he reminisces over how "Grandmother got Run Over by a Reindeer."

Rhan and the musical ensemble also take us to a world in which "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" eminates from Rennaisance-era Venice, "Over the River and Through the Woods" segues through latin-jazz to "The World is a Ghetto" and back, and "Joy To The World" begins by invoking Aramaic-period music, and morphs into modern soul Gospel.

Finally, as the langorous party winds down with "Auld Lang Syne," we ask: was it really the fruitcake, or have we always had the ability to open and share joy with one another, to simultaneously laugh and to cry, and to realize the true meaning of the Holidays?

While the answer may truly never be known, we know this for certain: the fruitcake is out of the box and forever into the bowels of mankind and will never again be relegated to the farthermost corner in the pantry of our collective mind.

Joy to the entire world, one and all, for we have just taken a cosmic sleigh ride to...
The Altared Zone.