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Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Christmas Album (High Coin)
I think I better come clean right away. I'm reviewing the wrong album.

When asked to nominate my favourite Christmas offering, fond '70s childhood memories charged Tijuana Christmas to the front of the queue; the warm embrace of the brass, the energizing and mood-lifting effect, all suspended in glowing twinkly soft-focus. As soon as the record went on my sister and I would stop bickering over who had received the most prized colour of bubble bath (green) and run around the dining table - the needle jumping from it's groove every time we dashed over the loose plank in the floor.

Ah...it was up there with Jim Reeves, Nat, Bing and Sinatra, with The Railway Children soundtrack, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Disney songs. My mum would habitually protest about syncopated "Americanized" corruptions of traditional songs and the extra notes added to the falling cadence of O Come All Ye Faithfull. She always suggested putting 'proper' carols on by 'proper' choirs (like Kings College, Cambridge), but this really was the record that put a smile on all our faces and caused outbreaks of seasonal familial harmony. The standard faves were all there - The Holly and the Ivy, Hark the Herald, O Come All Ye Faithfull, O Little Town - a joyous smorgasbord of easy listening.

Latterly, my older sister shamelessly snaffled the record amongst a prized section of original family vinyl, so for the purposes of this review I ordered up the CD. There were some disconcerting signs even at this stage, the cover picture shown online was different, but hey that happens, and the reviews mentioned vocals, I didn't remember any of those. And when it arrived, one of my old favourites was nowhere to be seen on the tracklist! As soon as it started, I knew my mistake. This was not easy listening brass that revelled in its unpretentious jollity, this was, well...jazz.

Recorded in the summer of 1968, there are shades of Beach Boy sunshine amongst the self-conscious cool. West Coast jazzer Shorty Rogers did the vocal and string arrangements, and the album went platinum.

In its best moments, it sounds like a cocktail party with Audrey Hepburn about to walk through the door on the arm of James Bond. There are samba and rumba rhythms, some inventive arrangements, a nicely laidback Let It Snow, a Mariachi-flavoured Las Mananitas, a Dixie Jingle Bell Rock with a 'striptease' coda.

In its worst moments it's like being trapped in a lift all Christmas long accompanied by The Swingle Singers, with nothing to eat and drink except Advocaat and sugared orange and lemon jelly slices. And please, Herb, covering The Christmas Song - you're not Nat King Cole, just leave it.

The album may have made me giggle and sometimes made me snap my fingers and tap my feet, and it certainly it helped my four-year old son find his "funky legs", but it didn't make my heart leap.

Turns out the album basking in the warm glow of my 70s childhood was in fact a 'tribute album' called Tijuana Christmas not Christmas Album, whereby soundalike musicians (in this case the magnificent sounding Torero Band) reproduced the Herb Alpert Tijuana Sound. What's more it was put out by Music For Pleasure and cost a cool 99p.

Whilst the real Tijuana brass album has been remastered and reissued, the Torero's Tijuana Christmas has been scandalously discontinued. It's time to start the lobby for the reissue, I want to recapture that 70s glow and pass it on to my children.

I'm sure in all sorts of ways the Herb Alpert is a better and more inventive musical accomplishment. But - whisper it - I like the fake better.

Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Christmas Song