Before he decided to become a freak, Phil Spector was rock and roll's greatest record producer. He created the "Wall of Sound," a studio trick that combined orchestration and other instruments to create a . . . wall of sound. No one else could do this in the early 1960's, so Phil Spector became the boy-wonder of rock music, creating the best music that the post-Elvis and pre-Beatles era had to offer.

Like many Jewish songwriters, Spector decided to dabble in Christmas music. There's a good reason for this. Anyone who can write a Christmas song that becomes a standard can expect royalties into the next century.

But it's not easy to write a good Christmas song. We know this because once we put away the Thanksgiving turkey we are bombarded with hundreds of Christmas songs for the next month. Every major recording artist has a Christmas song. Some of them have two or three. Some even release entire albums of Christmas songs. Most are crap, but there are some good ones. I always liked this song. And Band-Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas" ain't bad, despite the bad 1980's haircuts. Unfortunately, the greatest songwriter of them all, the man who wrote Hey Jude, gave us this drivel.

Phil Spector was not content to write a Christmas classic. He instead recorded a Christmas album, using the girl groups that made him famous in the early 1960's. The album incorporates the famous Wall of Sound, and it's so good that one record reviewer said he listens to the album in the dead of summer. I believe him. Even an atheist would love the Phil Spector Christmas Album. Spector may or may not have killed a Hollywood actress a few years ago, but he sure as hell knows how to produce a great Christmas album.

The highlight of the Phil Spector Christmas Album is the Ronettes' Sleigh Ride. The below video captures the spirit of Spector's version, with Ye Olde pictures from the days of yore, before we inherited the horrible world that we live with today. My first choice is to return to the stone age, but I can live with the world depicted in this video, as well. Wouldn't you?