John & Ray Ruin Christmas

Title: John & Ray Ruin Christmas
Date: 1992
Category: Noise
Current Status: Available through Guru Bob Records…. Cheap.


“Well, it’s that season again…”

That’s how the thing started. At least that’s how the finished tape began. The opening lines of “John & Ray Ruin Christmas” have been a running joke (at least for Ray and me) since 1992 when we made that awful album. This is technically NOT from the attic, but its cult status and relevance to the season makes it worth discussing.

We decided to make an album collecting terrible Christmas music; either stuff we found to sound unmusical, stuff that had totally the wrong sentiment for Christmas, and stuff we just thought was more goofy than festive. For whatever reason, we thought it would be fun to make a tape and convince other people to listen to it. And while it had extremely limited distribution (like, maybe 12 copies), people remember it. I don’t know if the remember it because they enjoyed it or just because it was so bad that it’s now a minor trauma in their heads.

It all started one evening in the Fall of 1992. I think Ray and I had gone to a Fort Worth Fire Hockey match and had decided to get dinner afterwards. We ended up at a Harrigan’s on Hulen Street in Fort Worth. We placed our orders and then decided to leave our table (we let our server know) and run next door to what was then a Sound Warehouse (the space is now occupied by Half Price Books) and browse. They had a big section of Christmas Music (since Christmas was nigh) and we started finding all sorts of weirdo stuff. The two that I specifically remember were “The Quackers Christmas Special” and “It’s a Cow Christmas.” At any rate, we bought some stuff and went back and had dinner.

On the way home, we decided to check out some of the crap we bought. The Quackers, I’m pretty sure, were first. We put in the tape and started to hear some nice, bland synthesized Christmas music. Okay. Then the “singing” started. And when I say singing, I mean sound that resembled Donald Duck in a drunken stupor. Ray, who was driving, and I completely lost it. I mean full on, nearly wrecked the car, side hurting laughter ensued. It was awful. In fact, when we first released the tape, we warned people not to listen to the Quackers while driving. One listener didn’t take that advice and later agreed it was a good warning.

It’s a Cow Christmas was next and most of it was boring bad, but there were a couple of tracks that were just ridiculous, namely “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and “Santa Cow.”

It was decided that we needed to share this with the world (or as many people as possible).

Over the Thanksgiving break, Ray and I proceeded to create a playlist of stuff we had recently acquired (Thanks to Forever Young records, too!). Back then, we had limited technical skill, even more limited audio equipment, and almost no money. We didn’t have microphones, editing equipment, multitrack… we had an old boombox with an indeck mic. So, we would speak our bits, stop the tape, dub the song, and then record more of us talking. Totally Old School.
We loosely scripted the thing. By that, I mean we talked out the rough parameters of what we were going to say and then hit record. If we screwed up, we re-recorded it.

I don’t remember if we didn’t have quite enough material or just thought it would be amusing to record some “original” works for this project, but whatever the reason, we recorded 7 originals for this thing. These were done with the help of my sister (she could play the flute and therefore was our primary musician) and were recorded live. I have the tape of outtakes with some alternate versions (mainly because the arrangements were pure anarchy and you never knew for sure what each person was going to play). We used a Casio keyboard, flute, several wood recorders, harmonica, toy drum, French horn, kazoo, and one of those spirally door stoppers that make the really funny sound when you let it spring back.

Once we completed the thing, and by the time we finished, it had lost quite a bit of the fun factor, we set about advertising it at school. We sold about 10 or 12 copies. Each copy was hand numbered with a photocopied insert/program and I believe unique holiday art. Each cassette cover had some poorly rendered Christmas related image done in high quality crayola.

Chris Heinefield told me he played it so much his Dad threatened to take it away. Mr. Powell played it class the last day of school before break while we mixed dangerous chemicals together in festive holiday colors.

We even though it would be fun to send it to some radio stations in the naïve hope that somebody would listen to it and play it on the air. Man, we were dumb.

At any rate, people seemed to like it. Why? I have no idea. I listen to it from time to time and I find it hard to listen to now. Granted, I’m usually uber-critical of my own work and the production values are minimal. Plus, I’ve heard it a gazillion times and it isn’t nearly as funny anymore.

We ended up liking the idea of these kinds of things and started making more silly audio tapes. There was “John & Ray Trash Disco”, “John & Ray’s Stupid Music”, “John & Ray Ruin ANOTHER Christmas” and some random audio sketches and unfinished songs. In the late 90’s, we upgraded our equipment from “stolen from a garage sale” to “purchased from a discount store” and recorded “John & Ray Ruin Christmas: The Special Edition.” This was largely are favorite (least favorite) songs from the other two Christmas tapes combined with some new material, including the awful “Santa’s Comin’ down the Chimney” by Bubbles McIntire. Our pal Randy Black helped out on this one. All of these tapes have virtually zero distribution.

In 2000, we somehow ended up back on the air at KTCU as Dead Air Radio (with producer Wade “2-Tons of Love” Goodman and regular appearances by James “DJ Jaime” Reimer and Neep “Happy the Rodeo Clown” Preissinger). Deciding to dust off the virtually unknown franchise again, we did the whole thing live during our three hour show. And we did it one more time as “Dead Air Radio Ruins Christmas in July.”

I’m slowly getting all of this junk transferred to CD and MP3 to try and get it available to any nut that wants it and maybe get lucky and have it become the next viral promotion on the internets. I’ve heard worse.

All of this is how I remember it, but I’ve had a fair amount of Belgian beer since then. Ray might remember it differently. Heck, you might remember it differently. If anybody remembers it differently, let me know and I’ll post a follow up.

The next post will have a track-by-track breakdown.Anybody that wants a copy of the original JARRC, contact me.