Holiday hump

Well, we are over the hump month for the holiday season! Now I feel like Christmas is just right around the corner...and it IS! The leaves will be falling before we know it, the snow flying soon after that... it's amazing how fast time flies.

My trip to Minnesota yielded a few Christmas music finds. I didn't score a whole lot from Cheapo or from the record show I went to (unfortunately, I got there late so I felt rushed enough as it was and I didn't have time to search through everything.)

And there was also a record store in Kansas City that closed because the owner died and they were selling off a TON of records (and I mean a TON) downtown Kansas City two weeks in July. I was out of town for the first week, but I went down there once I got back in town. It was hot...105º heat advisories...and it was in this hot warehouse downtown where they had these records for sale and it about killed me to be there for four hours the day I went. I didn't go back the next day because it was even HOTTER. And there were other people there loading up on Christmas records too...some to give away as joke gifts for Christmas, some serious collectors (one I saw was rambling on about different versions of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, for some reason. Hey, to each their own!) And the records there were only a dollar each. I wish I could have gone more often. It was a once in a life time opportunity.

(Hmmm...there were other Christmas music collectors there....Did anybody who reads this blog show up there?)

But in all these trips, I didn't amass huge amounts from one single place, but I managed to get a few records here and there to make a decent sized collection to add to what I already have.

There are also a few more things I am working on. One, of course, is the Wayside Waifs Holiday Charity CD. I will be updating the latest news on that project soon, but briefly for here: Out of 79 artists I've contacted so far to date, 11 have said they would be willing to contribute. I have one completed song ready for the compilation, and I am contact with the other contributing artists and always reaching out to more to see if they are interested. I've had musicians from as close to me as the next town over from me all the way to Sweden interested in contributing, so I am rather excited about the prospects of this project.

One band I am especially delighted to say are contributing a song is Shi-Sho, who are known around these parts for their contributions to the Filthy Angels online compilations. I wrote a song for them and they are working on recording it as I type this!

So, please, SPREAD THE WORD on this project! Share information on your blog/Christmas site about it if you have one. Submissions are welcome from anywhere and everywhere. So if you know a band or a musician who would like to contribute a song for this charity project, share this information with them.

Another thing I am excited about and I am looking into (though this is entirely up in the air and admittedly a bit ambitious) is there is a local community radio station in Kansas City called KKFI. They allow people to volunteer, do guest DJ spots, and such. So......yeah, I recorded a "pilot episode" of a Christmas music program. Hey, you never know! They just may play it! Either way, the readers of this blog will be treated to a podcast of it once I hear back from the radio station, pro or con. Pro, and I will post the podcast as soon as it airs on the radio. Con, I will post it here sometime during the regular holiday season, and may very well do a few more podcasts for this blog even if I can't get the shows on KKFI.

Hey, it may be a long shot, but it's a community radio station, not a corporate owned commercial station...and I wouldn't collect a dime for my work, so you never know.

Not too long ago I opened EVERY Christmas song on my hard drive to play them in Windows Media Player. Mind you, these are JUST the songs on my hard drive, and I have not transferred everything I have to MP3. I have a solid 12 days worth of music so far, and that is if the songs played back to back for 24 hours a day! Yeah, I think I could pull off a few podcasts for the radio. Well, we will see what KKFI has to say about it! And I will keep you up to date!

No songs to share with you today. I just wanted to touch base with you all to let you know what's been keeping me busy these past few weeks. I am currently working on my next compilation for this blog: a collection of my recent acquisitions of Christmas songs on 45 record! I should have the first part of that up in a few days.

Keep it bookmarked to this blog (somehow I don't think it works to say keep it "tuned" when referring to a website....) and thank you for reading!