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Christmas Eve and Other Stories

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Sales Rank : 221

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Is the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Christmas Eve and Other Stories a holiday rock opera? Or perhaps just a holiday prog-rock disc? Or maybe it's New Age? Whatever the case may be, this isn't your typical Christmas album. Filled with electric guitar solos, plenty of synthesized keyboards, a children's choir, and lively drumming, Christmas Eve can only be compared to one other record, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's other holiday disc, The Christmas Attic. On this CD, angelic vocal solos (on numbers such as "The Prince of Peace") are interspersed with driving instrumentals. Sentimental, occasionally bombastic, but as high-concept as holiday albums can be. --Jason Verlinde

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Customer Reviews

Fabulous

This orchestra is wonderful! Really inspiring holiday music...got us all in a festive mood at work throughout the holiday season.

Bought as a Christmas present

I bought this disk for my mother for Christmas, so I haven't sat down and listened to all of it on my own. She played it quite a lot right around Christmas, and the songs I heard were very good, sweet, very appropriate for the season. I know that she's enjoyed this CD very much, in that she loves Christmas music and this is a group she enjoys very much.

Rock for Those Who Used To

If Styx and .38 Special had gotten together to record a Christmas album in 1983, it would have sounded a lot like this. For some of you, that is a good thing. For me, not so much.

Savatage deserves the Credit! Wake up People!!!!

With all due respect to all you people who loved TSO, I think you should wake up and go straight to the nearest CD store and buy Savatage albums and give it a listen because TSO=Savatage! and Basically the Christmas Eve/Sarajevo song is basically a song on the Dead winter dead album for Savatage! Even Back to a reason II is the same Back to a Reason song sung by Jon Oliva in Poets and Madmen album for SAVATAGE! So,, why does TSO get the credit and Savatage doesnt! Is this Fair!

A Fun Non-Traditional Christmas CD

I borrowed this CD on a whim recently, and have discovered just how much fun most of it is. But let me warn you, this is like nothing else you've ever heard before.

This is a rock and roll orchestra Christmas CD. Don't know what I mean? Well, many of these tracks feature an orchestra backing up electric guitar, keyboard, and drums. And these aren't your parents' arrangements, either. The best example is "Christmas Eve/Sarjevo 12/24" which gives "Carol of the Bells" a heavy rock arrangement. And it is absolutely fun.

The disc is about half instrumental, and those are the best tracks by far. Another highlight is "A Mad Russian's Christmas" which includes themes from "The Nutcracker." But they aren't all hard rock arrangements. "The First Noel" is quiet, as are the final two tracks.

The one weakness of the disc is the vocal tracks. Some of them are quite good, like "A Star to Follow" which features three choirs in a round. But most of the others tell a story about an angel sent down to Earth to find something good that has been done in the name of Christmas in the last two thousand years. These songs become overly sentimental even for me, the king of Christmas sentimentality. They are also rather ordinary sounding musical wise, and I find my mind wandering. Something that doesn't happen on the instrumental tracks. And usually that's the other way around.

This CD is well worth getting for the instrumental tracks alone. The rest aren't bad, but they aren't great either.