Christmas Joy, The Ventures (Varese Sarabande)

Not many acts persevere over 40 years in exactly the same form they pioneered at the start, at least without becoming fixtures in Branson, Mo., but The Ventures are one of them. Which means you're likely to find you prefer the earlier bursts of inspiration from their original Christmas album. This one was recorded new in 2002, has a longer set list and revisits some of the same tunes from the original. The liner notes mention the inventive arrangements from the earlier work and then go on to say they don't do much of that here, but that's not entirely true, thank goodness. A medley of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" and "Here Comes Santa Claus" blends in a bit of Del Shannon's "Wandering," "Needles and Pins" sneaks into "Deck the Halls," "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" gets a dose of "Secret Agent Man," "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" cops the "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress" intro, their own "Walk Don't Run" kicks off "Sleigh Ride," there's a piano playing the riff from Heart's "Magic Man" on "What Child is This," and plenty of other tunes on here work in familiar licks that were a little too brief for me to name. The real revolution is this is one Ventures album with vocals; the last two songs, "Feliz Navidad" and "Christmas Joy" feature some singing. The latter song was a Japanese hit as an instrumental in the 1970s. Gotta say I prefer the guitars to the voices.