Men­tion the name Er­ic Richards, and peo­ple are like­ly to ask: Er­ic who? But this so­ca artiste has been around as old as the hills.

Richards, a for­mer Char­lie's Root stand­out, has teamed up with la­dy Isha (Bet­ty George) on a new three-track Christ­mas CD, which is quite mu­si­cal­ly en­ter­tain­ing. The songs on the CD are Old Time Parang Band (La­dy Isha), and San­ta Run Away From The North Pole (Er­ic Richards) plus the in­stru­men­tal ver­sion. Both songs were com­posed by Ce­cil Phillips.

What's out­stand­ing about this CD is the mu­sic, done by Mar­lon Mor­ri­son of Cre­ative Sounds Stu­dio. Take a bow, Mar­lon. The names Jameela Phillips, Nneka Browne, Lenore Singh, Ce­cil Phillips, Tony George and Hadiyah Phillips fig­ure promi­nent­ly on back­ground vo­cals and rhythm.The nor­mal­ly laid-back pan­nist, Syd­ney Joseph, does the ho­n­ours on Old Time Parang Band. An­gos­tu­ra Lim­it­ed is the spon­sor of the CD, which should be in the col­lec­tion of any true blue parang so­ca lover.

Adding to your Christ­mas Blues

If you're suf­fer­ing from the blues this sea­son, the song Christ­mas Blues, writ­ten by Heav­en "Snakey" Charles could ei­ther add to the feel­ing, or take it away, de­pend­ing how you look at it.This CD, un­der the hand of Kal­abash En­ter­tain­ment, is not your nor­mal parang so­ca song, nor does it fit in­to the hu­mor­ous vein of My­ron B. It's sim­ply weird! I ex­pect a bet­ter prod­uct in the fu­ture.