A Very Special Christmas Live!

Fans of the Very Special Christmas albums will get few surprises with this in-concert follow-up to the three studio compilations. Only 2 of the 11 songs have never appeared on one of the previous editions; one of those, Eric Clapton's "Christmas Tears," is a fiery performance with Blues Traveler head John Popper guesting, while the other is a collaboration between Clapton and Tracy Chapman on "Give Me One Reason," not exactly a Yuletide standard. That mix of the useful and the puzzling is typical of the whole CD. It's good to hear Mary J. Blige's force encouraging Sheryl Crow to push her vocal limit, even on a tune as lightweight as "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." But why doesn't Blige, the 1990s' preeminent female R&B voice, get to work out on, say, Phil Spector's "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)"? Mainly because Jon Bon Jovi is instead called upon to lamely replicate Bono's vocal from the first Very Special disc. This too-often calcified offering is hardly this charity series' finest. --Rickey Wright  more