NOTE: This piece was written for LockedonRaptors.com last year, but that site has since been wiped from the internet. We’re making HQ its new home, though a couple slight edits have been made to make it more up to date.
On a blustery December night in 2010, a work of art was recorded in a Toronto radio studio. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Velvet Underground & Nico, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy — those perfect assemblies of songs that work of art is not. No, From Brooklyn to Toronto: Jack Armstrong and Eric Smith Sing the Holiday Classics, the musical debut of two long-time Toronto Raptors broadcasters, is something else entirely.