Seasonal Favorites Volume 3, various artists (Double Crown)

Fans of the Double Crown label are already up to speed with the first two volumes, so here's another one for 2010. As in the past, the artists featured are from the label, mostly in the early 60's guitar combo sound that stretches from Duane Eddy to the surf music scene. Much of this is instrumentals, kicking off with The Razorblades' "Morgen Kinder Wirds Was Geben," as you might expect from a German band. The Excelsiors take a lot of delightful liberties with "Good King Wenceslas" and The Frankie Handwax Experience superimposes "We Three Kings" over Jimi Hendrix's "Manic Depression." Previously released items from the label show up here, like "Greensleeves" from King of Hawaii's Chrismas disc and The Barbary Coasters' "Secret Santa." Burt Rocket gets a little Joe Meek/Telestar on us with "Santa's Hot Rod," The Balboas throw in a vocal with "This Is Santa Claus," and also resorting to the microphone are The Polkaholics with "Sausage and Sauerkraut For Santa," a rock/polka hybrid. Tiki Joe's Ocean goes exotica on us with their version of "Jingle Bells," and OJ Watson and the Ludlow Ramblers do "We'll Be Home With Bells On," which is straight old-school country, and Peter Curry and Dick Chiclet wrap things up with a twangy "Old Anxiety," better known as "Auld Lang Syne." This is right in line with the previous two collections, and if you grab it from the mothership (assuming your local record store doesn't have the hard copy, that's the only place online that has it) there's an additional song downloadable from the site, "Silent Night Twist" by The Beechwoods, which is just a little sedate for twisting but more uptempo than the song is usually performed. The Balboas did a video, like to see it? Here we go: