The Happy Crickets – Christmas With The Happy Crickets

First of all, this record is pretty wack and hardly happy sounding! For the most part, the vocals sped up, chipmunks style, but they kind of drag down instead of pep up the songs, making them sound somewhat drugged-out sounding, more like the Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz - or Ernest Tubb
at the wrong speed. There's one song where there the vocals aren't messed with, but the singers all sound so high / stoned that they're even weirder than on the cricket-i-fied tracks. The irony here is that this song is a version of "the Chipmunk Song" but messed-up - instead here the singers are all talking and singing in falsetto and doing out-there scat singing and just being weird . . .

The cover art is fantastic, with the crickets looking more like the Jetsons or some other Space Age Creatures, hardly resembling insects or critters like crickets.

The record features some pretty cool backing music at times, with a sort-of surf-guitar sound, with electric organ chords - and mostly full-band backing throughout.