The title Merry Mixmas: Christmas Classics Remixed pretty much says it all. The classics are all here, but with an urban spin. We’re talking Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, and Ella Fitzgerald along with some others you may not have in your iPod, like Johnny Mercer with the Pied Pipers.
There’s something about Dean Martin that brings visions of martinis and that classic, that sly smile dancing through your head, and ARP’s remix does it up right, adding some cinnamon spice (including the sample of Deano, “I gotta get a tattoo at 12:30 and I don’t want to be late) without taking away from the original “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” God knows that title alone can apply to most of the country right now.
The track that will get everyone doing a conga line around the tree is the Latin tinged, Malibu remix of “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer Mambo.” Q-Burns Abstract Message gets slick and saucy, tying the 50s to the new millennium on “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.” And while your whipping up Martha Stewarts’ homemade recipe for eggnog, Ursula 1000’s “I’d Like You For Christmas” by Julie London may cause you to do a heavy pour of rum just to liven things up. And when you want to travel back to your childhood, “Christmas Time is Hear” brings back memories of watching the Charlie Brown Christmas and when life was a lot simpler.
This time of year, a lot of seasonal Christmas compilations arrive like junk mail, and a lot of them are as worthless as that application for yet another credit card. But I would have to say that Merry Mixmas gets a big fat star and will be heard in my home during this holiday season.
