Albums for the Christmas shopping cart

It is now the time for buying presents and wrapping gifts. And while iTunes is just a click away, nothing beats the feel of physical CDs. These are easy to wrap and there is no chance that your credit card will get hacked. Besides, can you imagine how much it will cost to get all the songs from compilation albums like those in Pure….?

The Pure….series is a boxed set truly meant for the gift-giving season. Handsomely packaged, it boasts of 25 titles to choose from. Each set is made up of four CDs with songs from the greatest artists of all time and an album costs only P250.

When I say greatest, that means a lot of big names ranging from Frank Sinatra to Journey to Adam & The Ants and many more. Not only that, it is also heaven-sent for people like me who never had the chance to collect those hits on 78 or 45RPMs discs because a lot of them are available in the Pure…..series, all digitally-mastered for better listening.

Now in the stores are Pure….Hard Rock, Cuba, 80’s Dance Party, America, Mediterranean, Brazil, 70s Dance Party, Summer, 90s Dance Party, Hip-hop, Divas, Celtic, Guitar Heroes, Country, Movies, Disco/Funk, Jazz, Soul, Psychedelic Rock, Drive, Alternative 80s and because it is now the Season, there is also Pure… Christmas.

In keeping with the Pure…. concept, Christmas is truly made up of “the greatest Christmas music.” These include, the familiar, Feliz Navidad by Jose Feliciano; the ones I had not heard anything about, like Mary’s Boy Child and Oh My Lord by Boney M; original versions as in Santa Baby by Eartha Kitt; beautiful oldies, O Christmas Tree by Mario Lanza; and recent releases like O Holy Night by Paul Potts.

The one I like best from all the Pure… titles though is Crooners. This is four discs with songs from the greatest ever crooners. That means male singers and this makes me wonder why girls are never crooners although like doves, females can also croon. But back to the crooners. The album has almost everybody. Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Engelbert Humperdinck, Perry Como, Tony Bennett down to Elvis Presley, Paul Anka, Marvin Gaye, Rick Astley and others.

The treasures for me in Crooners are the original recordings that I did not have the chance to get when they first came out on those breakable discs. Eddie Fisher sounds heavenly in Downhearted. Here at last is The Three Bells by The Browns. Also Brook Benton’s wonderful version of A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. And Buster Pointdexter with Hit The Road Jack, Hold Me Now by Johnny Logan, Cupid by Johnny Nash and would you believe, a Mama Loves Papa tune by Crosby.

Of course I am sure a lot of music lovers out there will enjoy listening to the younger sounding Sinatra and Julio Iglesias, remembering how good Marvin Gaye was with Sexual Healing, how romantic is Vic Damone’s, An Affair To Remember, what a hit Gary Puckett and the Union Gap had with Young Girl or that Mac Davis can really get you hooked with Baby Don’t Get Hooked On Me and that If You Don’t Know Me By Now by Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes is indeed one of the most beautiful songs ever written.

Nice. But again I wonder, how come there is no girl singers collection in Pure…. There is one titled Diva but those are Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Christina Aguilera and company. The Crooners counterpart should have Patti Page, Ella Fitzgerald, Rosemary Clooney, Connie Francis, Brenda Lee and all those great sounding females who made lasting hits a long time ago.

If you want a girl CD with the same vibe as Crooners, then the one that I heartily recommend is What Matters Most by Barbra Streisand. Now a Grammy nominee for Album of the Year, this CD has Streisand singing song with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman. And what songs these are. Among them are The Windmills of Your Mind, Something New In My Life, So Many Stars, I’ll Never Say Goodbye and What Matters Most.

The CD comes in two editions. One is a single disc with only What Matters Most while the other one has other compositions by the Bergman’s that Barbra had already recorded in the past. Brace yourselves for these titles. What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life, You Don’t Bring Me Flowers with Neil Diamond, Papa Can You Hear Me? from the movie Yentl, The Summer Knows, How Do You Keep The Music Playing and also one of the most beautiful songs ever written, The Way We Were.

It just hit me how right these songs are for Christmas, a time when like it or not, we do a lot of remembering.