December People - Sounds Like Christmas

Why Can't All Christmas Music Be This Creative?


Continuing in the tradition and vein of the Jethro Tull album Sherry brought you, I present The December People - Sounds Like Christmas. This album sounds more like a blessed ressurrection of the rock gods of the past...a Christmas miracle in and of itself.

In numerous interviews over the last 10 or 12 years, musician and producer Robert Berry has expressed, hinted and suggested that he would love to be an active member of the legendary band, The December People. He has now gotten his wish. Berry is finally singing and playing with the mysterious - some say reclusive - band on this, their ninth album, Sounds Like Christmas.

You may not know the previous 8 fantastical, phantasmagorical records the band has amassed, given their out-of-print status and convoluted distribution problems fueled by a myriad of label changes. But that has all come to an end. Magna Carta has ensured the band has a stable, fruitful future for the next 10 years, until the band's current contract expires December 24th, 2011.

It is frustrating to the Magna Carta label heads that the band refuses to trade on their illustrious rock pasts and reveal their true identities. Notes band member Klaus Kringle (obviously a pseudonym), "This is music for all of the world and all of the world's joy during this special season. If fans perhaps spot my guitar sound and are able to identify me, well, so be it. But I'd rather not associate The December People with my bread and butter. And it's an attitude all of the guys basically agreed to. I remember the meeting we had backstage at Winterland back in '72. We were opening for Edgar Winter and dammit if he didn't look a little like Santa. No one knew who we were until we hit the stage and, of course, all hell broke loose in the press after that and it caused a lot of animosity between all the guys and their main bands. You have no idea."

So, for this reason, the identities of the original December People (known to their devoted public as Sven, Klaus, Rudolph, Prancer and Vixen) shall remain a well-guarded secret. And again frustrating to the staff of Magna Carta, these men (and one woman) - jaded veterans of thousands of interviews over the years - have decided to push newest member Robert Berry to the forefront and have him speak for the band. It should be noted that Berry was given a 12 page legal document of topics he was not allowed to address. This fact makes gathering information on the album a formidable challenge.

The facts is that "Sounds Like Christmas" finds The December People creating, adapting and overhauling Christmas songs that sound astonishingly like seasonal triumphs that might fit on certain classic rock albums by certain classic rock bands, namely Yes, Queen, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Genesis, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Peter Gabriel, Sting, Kansas and King Crimson.

Robert Berry had no problem working with this concept. In fact, he has worked with people from the aforementioned bands before. On some of the album's tracks, Berry and his studio have supplied equipment that members of The December People used to use and haven't seen in years. On other tracks, Berry himself has recreated - as a sort of Christmas gift to his new band mates - sounds which are near and dear to the hearts of The December People; sounds that, perhaps, they are used to hearing within their more well-known mother bands.

"Of course all the tracks have drums and they're all real drums, no drum machines, nothing fake on this album. Some of the songs like 'Little Drummer Boy'; we used a Hammond B3, which is something that Keith Emerson is famous for. He's also known for the Moog synthesizer, which he made famous in the song 'Lucky Man' years ago. I feel that I know the players and I understand how they would play and I feel like I know how they think a bit.

Some say The December People's rendition of 'I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day' sounds like Queen. "You know, like I said before, I collect guitars, and I have a Brian May guitar," notes Berry. "And I also collect Vox amplifiers, which is what the Beatles used to use, and it just so happens that Brian May uses a Vox amplifier. So we had the right guitar (Ed: and guitarist? Berry flips through his list of rules and offers an icy "no comment" for that) and the right amplifier....

With The December People saving their voices for mammoth rock tours already booked with their main acts through the rest of '01 and '02 (spanning Europe, North America, Indonesia, parts of Bolivia and Pakistan, casinos in Finland and Estonia), the band decided to bring in guest lead vocalists for the tracks Robert didn't sing. King Crimson's John Wetton can be heard on 'Silent Night' and 'The First Noel'. Shadow Gallery's Mike Baker sings ''Twas The Night Before Christmas', Jake Livgren (Kerry's nephew) took on "Up On The Housetops" and Magellan's Trent Gardner is brilliant on 'What Child Is This'.

Berry comments on Gardner's cameo: "'What Child Is This?' was kind of designed for Trent Gardner to sing. He was working on the Leonardo project which is this dramatic kind of deal and I thought "What Child" was perfect for him. He could easily give it drama."

Elsewhere, Steve Walsh from Kansas shines a light of peace and good tidings all over the album and its life-replenishing concept. "Steve Walsh blew me away with his version of 'We Three Kings'," notes an enthused and merry Berry. "He called me and said, 'I gotta tell you, I'm having trouble singing this. I'm getting tears in my eyes when I'm singing this because it's just turning out so great.' He was really emotional about it and I guess he has a new baby, maybe a year and a half, so that was all tied up in this Christmas album, those emotions, which is kind of a nice thing."

Magna Carta managed to secure and clear one comment from a different member of The December People with respect to the overall philosophy of the project. Drummer Rudolph L. Shankar: "We started from the rock side and moved toward the Christmas side. We made the Christmas fit into the rock thing where usually they're making the rock thing fit into the Christmas thing. The hard part for us was taking these songs that sometimes just had eight lines and all these major melodies - they're all happy - and put them into serious rock 'n' roll. We didn't realize how hard that part of the challenge would be until we actually started working on it."


It is hoped that The December People will sign off on a proposed tour of four key nations that share latitude with The North Pole. It is a labyrinth of conflicting schedules however, and indeed, there is a legal matter that must be cleared up before lawyers from all camps convene to discuss tour plans.

"The currently available version of "Sounds Like Christmas" includes a very grave error with respect to the instrumentation credits," explains a visibly shaken Robert Berry. "The typesetter noted only myself in terms of the arrangements and instrumentation. Needless to say, Sven, Klaus, Rudolph, Prancer and Vixen are all upset and have had their "elves" actually rough up Magna Carta's warehouse people. They basically took all the boxes of the disc that hadn't gone out to press and a few stores and put them in their "sleigh", which was actually a stolen, rusted-out cube van, and drove the whole thing into the Hudson River. You didn't hear about that from me, but anyway... I mean, the band has since apologized and kind of distanced themselves from these people, but still, they got their way. The disc is going to be reprinted so any of those old ones that got out, I guess, are collector's items."


With such a compelling concept and such talented musicians to actually pull it off, Robert Berry has produced an imaginative journey which transports the listener not only to an era in which the greatest music of our time was created, but to an emotional serendipity that can exist only at Christmastime. The title of this recording gives us the key as to how Berry and company have accomplished this. By incorporating the premise of "Sounds Like...", the December People usher us into this improbable dimension of hearing our heroes of classic rock presenting us with a very special Christmas gift. The music is performed with a technical precision that is assuredly reminiscent of the bands to which this tribute is directed. While the listener is never intentionally fooled into believing that these bands have reunited for this project, the signature sounds are accurately reproduced in such a way that I was constantly saying, "Wow, that really sounds like...".

To fully appreciate the impact that this recording can have, it is best to listen to it without knowing which artists are being emulated ahead of time. For me, this only heightened the serendipity. Later, as I looked at the Magna Carta website, it was fun to see which artists I had guessed correctly. (Actually, with the quality of this project, it isn't all that hard to tell if you are a true fan of classic 70's rock.)

As a fan of classic rock and a lover of Christmas carols, this recording truly touched me in many ways. I hope that you will take the opportunity to experience the childlike wonder of Christmas as seen through the vision of Robert Berry and the December People....and to the many of us that this album has captured the hearts of.

Merry Christmas.

Artist: The December People (Magna Carta records)
Album: Sounds Like Christmas
Genre:Retro/Prog Rock/Holiday


The December People - Sounds Like Christmas

By Bez