A few years ago and for a period of a few months, whenever I met up with a particular friend he would have some new issue to whinge about in relation to his boss. In all fairness his boss did sound like a nightmare, the type of person devoid of a sense of humour and unable to relate to his staff on any level. Things came to a head when at the end of a particularly stressful but - against the odds –ultimately successful sales year the boss called my friend and the remainder of the sales team together for a motivational talk and the presentation of a gift to each one for their hard work and dedication.
Now my friend is telling me this story in such a way that you expect there to be a happy ending so my thoughts about the gift were of a large financial bonus or perhaps a paid weekend in some posh hotel for him and his girlfriend. But no, the boss had bought a picture for everyone in the sales team: the same picture in fact; an identical picture set in an identical cheap and nasty silver frame; a picture of a rowing boat on the water, bathed in horrible orange and red filtered lighting that reminded you of a bad eighties Athena poster.
Worst of all though were the fatuous words emblazoned across the bottom third of the picture: “Success is a journey, not a destination”.
Funnily enough my friend soon left after that.
I tell you all this because on the back of the CD to ‘A Midnight At A Time’ is a picture of a rowing boat, except this one is beached. I also sense that my friend’s old boss would be the kind of person who’d play Thomas Raniszewski’s CD in an honest belief that he was listening to a thing of beauty.
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Thomas composes the music you’d expect to hear on one of Disney’s particularly saccharine children’s cartoon films or as the background to a promotional video for some American Fundamental Christian Church calling for donations. How anyone can create something as uniformly bland and devoid of personality is beyond me (but obviously not Thomas), particularly as so many people seem to have helped him on his way to get his opus recorded.
Most of the tracks are syrupy instrumentals but there are three sugary duets to glaze over before the worst offender of all, ‘Through A Child’s Eyes’: a song that is begging to be the soundtrack to the new Christmas advert for ‘Werther’s Originals’ with its lyrics. “Magic and dreams are realised when I see Christmas through a child’s eyes”.
Bah f**king humbug!
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