I am not a fan of Christmas how it has become. Starting at the end of October now. I find the whole consumerismness of Christmas offensive. Although there are still glimspes of Humanity being at it greatest at this time of the year,even those glimpses are fading and I am left saddened and a little bitter. Then I bought Rhan Wilson's first An Altered Christmas years ago when he first put it out. It has become standard Christmas faire for me. I am so please that he has done The Return of An Altered Christmas. This coming Christmas will be my first with both of them. I will laugh and cry and somehow get by........Thank you Rhan.
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HOLIDAZE

While most associate the lilting, frolicking tone of the spoof Christmas song "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" with comedy, musician Rhan Wilson hears it differently.

On his latest CD release "The Return of an Altared Christmas," available at all Gallery of Sound stores, Wilson, 45, presents well known Christmas songs like "Grandma," and others, all in minor keys, radically altering the delivery of the selections with humorous results.

"People see (the song) as this peppy and happy tale, but it's actually an awful, tragic story of Grandma being struck and killed on Christmas Eve," Wilson said.

"We brought out the 'true meaning' of the song."

A native Californian, Wilson, who spends half of each year at a home near Sweet Valley, tells the story in spoken-word style, while the backing vocal/commentary of Dana Hutson is completely over-the-top -just as Wilson intended.

"It's basically a back-up singer gone wrong," Wilson said while laughing.

"I told her to step all over me and she did. It turned out to be hilarious."

Wilson also uses Middle Eastern and Klezmer arrangements on many of the songs on "Return."

On "Santa Claus is Coming To Town," on which Wilson uses childhood fears as his mantra, the end result is more Halloween than Christmas.
"
'Santa Claus is Coming To Town' ..well, is that a threat or a promise? It didn't start out down that path, but eventually it became very creepy...," Wilson said.

His first CD, "An Altared Christmas" used similar tweaking with similar results.

"I just got tired of hearing god-awful Christmas songs. There are so many out there that are just made to sell records and they're so unoriginal... I thought people would appreciate a different sound."

-Joe Student, Weekender Editor
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Exceedingly more cerebral than anything Weird Al Yankovic has ever done, Rhan Wilson’s subtle send up of Christmas standards, “The Return of an Altared Christmas,” is a fresh, often hilarious and sometimes brilliant take on familiar holiday favorites.
     Wilson, who resides in NEPA for part of the year and did most of the mixing for the CD in his home studio, uses original lyrics and components of known tunes, changing the tone of each song by playing it in a minor key and altering its arrangement, tempo and style.
     At his best, Wilson uses the subtle subtext of each song to pull it inside out, focusing on such things as a young child’s fear of Santa Claus (“Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”), or the true tragedy of a loved one’s death (“Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer”) for rich comic fodder.
    Other instances merely present songs in a different genre using Middle Eastern, jazz and polka style music to spin modern classics into a parallel, Bizzaro musical realm.
     While the entire collection is intended as a themed play -blaming a special fruitcake for the odd interpretations- most of the selections stand well on their own, much like oddly colored ornaments on an upside down Christmas tree.

Rating: B
-Joe Student, Weekender Editor
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Rhan Wilson's minor-key muse rages on, unabated:

In his previous release, An Altared Christmas, Wilson sandwiched a few novelty songs between several other minor-key but otherwise straight renditions of well-known songs. (His weird, haunting Jingle Bells is unforgettable.) This time around he has abandoned any semblance of normalcy. In The Return of an Altared Christmas, a lowly fruitcake launches a magical mystery tour through a set of holiday standards, standards performed by Wilson and his cohorts in a decidedly non-standard way.

Wilson enjoys the interplay between music and spoken word performance. In spite of its Rod Serling, Twilight Zone style introduction, the work is best understood as a radio play. Informed by The Firesign Theatre, his production juxtaposes familiar songs and holiday images with absurd situations and ironic arrangements embedded in the vehicle of linear radio drama. A master of wry irony, Wilson uses pop, R&B and Klezmer arrangements to tell an outlandish Christmas Story. The ensemble cast are wonderful, but the mood is helped along primarily by instrumentalists Bob Burnett, mandolin and guitar, Gary Regina, saxophone, Mark Sowlakis, clarinets, and The Great Morgani, accordion. The highlight of The Return is an extended semi-hip hop retelling of the tragic Dr. Elmo classic, Grandmother Got Run Over By A Reindeer, with Rhan playing the grieving grandson and Dana Hutson his suspicious interlocutor.

Never background music, Wilson's exorcism plays out as serious farce meant to challenge and entertain self-aware post-modern listeners of all ages. The only thing necessary to enjoying The Return of an Altared Christmas is the ability to suspend disbelief that Santa Cruz hipsters eat fruitcakes.

--Richard Banks
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