Please Mr. Santa Claus, Evan Johns and his H-Bombs (Rykodisc)

Johns and his band are a regional bar band attraction, and this 1990 album is about what you would expect when such an ensemble gets together and says, "Hey! Let's make a Christmas album!" Johns writes or co-writes most of the nine songs here, and the originals are mainly instrumentals that do little to suggest Christmas apart from their titles; "Mule Size Yuletide," for example, is a jam on the riff from "Day Tripper." And I have no idea what a cover of "Telstar" has to do with Christmas. UPDATE: Jay Karr enlightens us: Telstar, the first communications satellite, was launched in 1962 by the U.S. on behalf of AT&T. Famed British producer Joe Meek was inspired by this event, probably because Telstar's Earth receiving station was the BBC's Goonhilly Down facility, to record the original song with the band The Tornados. It went on to become a worldwide smash and was even reputed to be Queen Elizabeth II's favorite song -- she even worked a mention of Telstar into her Christmas address that year. End update. The vocal version of the title song is not bad, and "The Little Cajun Drummer Boy" is exactly what it sounds like, a Cajun version of the classic carol.