Santagold: The My Space Collection Vol. 2

You know you've been waiting for it, so phone the neighbors and wake the kids because IT IS HERE!!! The SECOND ANNUAL TWELVE MONTHS OF CHRISTMAS MY SPACE COLLECTION!

Whether you love, hate, or are ambivalent to the current state of My Space (my relationship with them is a love/hate one, actually) the fact remains that this is perhaps one of the few places on the 'net where I can find such a wide variety of Christmas music. Granted, the bit rates on the songs are not the greatest, which frustrates me. Other websites (not nearly as large as My Space, granted) can permit their artists to upload higher bit rate MP3s. So sound quality of some of these songs aside, I do feel that these are the rare singles of tomorrow. Some of these songs are only up for a limited time, and I've seen some bands remove them from their page the day after Christmas. Some of these songs are only released for the fans to hear online, and are not on any of the artist's CDs. So somebody has to curate what they can find, and while it's a long process to do so, it's quite rewarding in the end.

And in the end I had nearly 8 hours of music, well over 130 tracks, all compiled from My Space this year. I could have easily turned this into a "boxed set," and there are certainly tracks I left off this compilation that I REALLY wanted to include. As it is, two discs just isn't enough, but I guess having extras will make for some interesting compilations to share in the future. But I still say having to leave off some of the tracks I did is like leaving out the cranberry sauce from Christmas dinner. Oh well...we gotta do what we gotta do.

And what you have here is what I think is a pretty solid collection of music, and spans a good range of styles and has a little of something for everybody.

I took a cue from our friends at Sounds Familyre for the downloads...I chose to utilize the "widget" feature on box.net as I found downloading from Sounds Familyre to be MUCH better using this feature than downloading from any other site, hands down. I hope you find it much easier to use as well, and if you downloaded the Sounds Familyre Christmas comps in the past, then you already know what to do. If not...well, it should be self explanatory once you click your mouse on a title. If you have any problems, let me know. Just remember to right click over the song icon and you can select your options to play or download from there.

Also, just FYI....some of these songs (believe it or not) COULD have been on the Wayside Waifs CD! I won't name any names - you know who you are if you are reading this - but there are bands/artists listed here that I contacted personally to see if they could contribute and they never responded but then their Christmas song gets slapped up on My Space. Oh, I'm not bitter. I just mention it to show any potential artists/bands (and I know some are reading this blog...I get emails!) that I contact that it was a legit deal, and not spam as some suspected.

(And if you are an artist/band I contacted, I didn't check your profile to see if you had a Christmas song you withheld...I checked it because I was sincere when I said I loved your style and that I wanted to see what you could do with a Christmas track!)

You will also note there are a few New Years Day, Boxing Day, and Hanukkah songs here as well...I tried to make it a nice, varied collection.

The track listing:

Disc One
1) The Singles-New Year's Eve
2) A Smile and A Ribbon-Heavenly Christmas
3) Sean Porter Experience-Christmas Time Is Here
4) The Revelations feat. Tre Williams-It's That Time of Year
5) Huggie-Rockin' on Xmas
6) Dean Farnell-Why Don't Christmas Go Away? I'm Bored With the Wizard of Oz
7) Jace Blues-Christmas Time
8) Kja & the Jersey Cowboyz-Christmas Without You
9) Alyssa Bonagura-Come Back this Christmas
10) Hajen-Hajens Julsång
11) Ingrid Michaelson-Snowfall Kind of Love
12) Jimmy Robbins-Hurry Back to Me
13) Paper Route-The Sound
14) Sleeping At Last-A Cradle in Bethlehem
15) The Violent Husbands-Home Sweet Home
16) The Features-Christmas Wish Book
17) Mike Ryan and the Wabbits-Ah, It's Christmas
18) Poos-Bad Boys and Girls Club
19) Mid Knight-Christmas Star
20) We Know, Plato!-Christmas Ain't a Nursery Rhyme
21) Metro Jets-Jingle Jangle Christmas
22) Socratic-A Christmas Coal Carol
23) The Vonage-Kitten in the Snow
24) Brownie Points-Auld Lang Syne

Disc Two
1) Camera Obscura-You're the Only Star in my Blue Heaven
2) Jens Lekman-Run Away With Me
3) Wolfkin-Christmas Comatose
4) Steven McKay-Sounds Like Christmas
5) Said the Whale-This Winter I Retire
6) The Margarets-Christmas in a Northern Town
7) Bicycles-Snow
8) Jack Hayter-Blind Man's Fog
9) My Skinny Valentine-Christmas Crime
10) Oliver North Boy Choir-Blizzard
11) The Boy Least Likely To-The First Snowflake
12) The Leisure Society-The Last of the Melting Snow
13) The Teenage Prayers-Yuletide
14) Wave Pictures-We Dress Up Like Snowmen
15) Love It or Leave It-You, Me and this Christmas Tree
16) First Class Fever-Mary's Christmas
17) Champagne Riot-December Slopes
18) Captain Polaroid-You'll Never See Christmas
19) Amanda-Cookie Santa
20) Gravity Wave-Lil' Baby Isaac Newton
21) Koo Koo Kanga Roo-Seth Cohen
22) My First Earthquake-Fa La Freezing


Santagold Disc One


Santagold Disc Two


Thank you for listening and for reading!

Off season finds part 3

There is one My Space find I forgot to share yesterday that I wanted to share with you today as a way to link yesterday's post with today's...

The Duloks-Bad Vegetarian

Those of you who downloaded my podcasts may have already heard the CW Stoneking track and this track, as I shared both of those in my podcasts.

There is a DJ out of Portland, Oregon named Dave Cusick who hosts a radio show called That Sound. In addition to admitting he's visited my blog looking for music to use on his Christmas shows (and Dave LOVES Christmas music! Be sure to check out his archived programs and download his podcasts, especially his Christmas shows!) and in addition to contributing a track ("The Cat Who Controls Christmas") for the Wayside Waifs CD, Dave also turned me on to Local Cut, which put out a charity CD last year called "Another Gray Christmas." Unfortunately, I learned of the CD a bit too late, as they were sold out of it by the time Dave told me about it. (So if any of you dear readers want to share the CD with me....just sayin' you know!)

HOWEVER, Local Cut did have a couple downloads up on their site and here they are:

Eskimo and Sons-Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown
Starf***er-Happy F***ing Christmas

And some random tracks I found at artist's websites in my talent search for the Wayside Waifs CD...all sites I just randomly came upon in my quest for people who might be interested in contributing a track or two to my effort.

Mike Viola-Give Me A Second Chance for Christmas
The Walkmen-No Christmas While I'm Talking
Unstatuesque with Stafrænn Hákon-Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
Unstatuesque with Stafrænn Hákon-White Christmas

Thank you for listening, and be sure to check back tomorrow for your New Years Day Gift!

Off season finds part 2

First, before I delve in further, just a disclaimer: I am not claiming these songs were posted NEW over the summer...some of them I just found for the first time over the summer, and for all I know they have been up online since one Christmas past. So it may show my cunning to find cool stuff online, or show that I am slow to the draw and some other bloggers beat me to the punch.

First off, some tracks I am fairly certain were new this past summer, and these were posted online on individual band/artists websites as they record their Christmas tracks to have them ready for the Holiday period. Many of these tracks I found while looking for bands/artists to contact to see if they would be interested in using their song on the Wayside Waifs CD. And even if these bands/artists said no or declined to reply, I don't hold that against them and gladly feature their music here because I do think it should be heard.

The first example I have of that is Morning Glory and their demo of Not Another Christmas. I believe this is the same version found elsewhere around the Christmas season, so it looks like the demo is the only version so far.

Morning Glory-Not Another Christmas (Demo)

Next up is an unmastered version of a new song...

Maybe It's Reno-Gravestones and Christmas Trees

And one of my favorite finds from the off season...

Gentlemen Auction House-Home for the Holidays
Gentlemen Auction House-On the Rooftops

And there were also a few Christmas songs posted on the My Space profiles of some artists I contacted, so perhaps they were up early or left overs from last year and I missed them previously. At any rate, they were new to me and hopefully new to you as well! And this should give you a nice mixed bag...

Farrah-Christmas is Canceled (this Year)
Declan O'Rourke-Christmas Wine
C.W. Stoneking-On A Christmas Day

Just a word about C.W. Stoneking...you may not tell from the style of music here, but he was born in 1974. He's from Melbourne, Australia and his album King Hokum is well worth seeking out. I did contact him to see if he'd include this song on the Wayside Waifs CD, but he never responded. I just love this song, and hope he does more Christmas music in the future.

And CW is of no relation to me, but I suppose you never know. There's probably a similar ancestor somewhere back far enough.

Thank you for reading and listening, and I will have some more off season goodies to share tomorrow to help you ring in the New Year.

Off season finds part 1

For those of you who only check the blogs around this time of year for Christmas music, you may not realize that Christmas music can be found online all year long (or perhaps you don't want to know about it!) Granted, it's not going to be nearly as plentiful in mid June as it is in mid December, but I managed to find a good number of Christmas goodies over the past twelve months while the rest of you were on the beach playing volleyball and getting your tans.

And, since this is the Twelve MONTHS of Christmas, I thought what better time for me to reflect on this past year of Christmas music than to share with you some of my off season finds?

And as I compiled my list, I realized that I had more than could probably be contained in one post, so I will make this a multi parter until I am done...probably on New Year's Eve if all goes well.

First up on the list of things I want to share are a couple radio show goodies I found. Before I got into collecting Christmas music, my big thing was collecting air checks and radio morning show CDs. Man, that got REAL expensive, and difficult! (You don't know how many DJs across the nation did NOT want me to buy the CD of material from their morning show because they were afraid I was going to steal their material...and some of them had material ripped off and used on shows like Crank Yankers and by other DJs!) But I use my past experience in looking for things in helping me find even MORE Christmas goodies. So I visited some of my favorite radio/aircheck haunts this past year and uncovered a couple goodies. Of course, I hope to find even more in 2009, but for now these are rather fun...

Radio Caroline-Batman's Christmas Caper (1966)

Radio Caroline was an offshore radio station that broadcast off the shore of Felixstowe, Suffolk, England. They began transmission Easter Sunday, 1964, and went on to broadcast for 40 years. This broadcast took advantage of the Batman craze at the time and the cast consists of the Radio Caroline disc jockeys.

I sincerely hope to find more Radio Caroline Christmas goodies in the coming year. My search has just begun....

Next up...

KMPC-Robert Morgan 12-23-1983

KMPC was an AM station out of Los Angels and I understand that Christmas was a real important time to Robert Morgan (pictured above), and he went out of his way to make his Christmas broadcasts quite memorable. Here is a snippet of time preserved for us to enjoy today from the 12-23-1983 broadcast from 7-8am. As with more Radio Caroline Christmas goodies, I hope to find more Robert Morgan Christmas goodies.

Ok, well, I will leave you with that to enjoy for now...this should give you plenty to listen to until I come back tomorrow with even more off season Christmas goodies to share with you!

The Post Christmas Post

So it's the day after Christmas: servers all across the nation are breathing a sigh of relief as those of us who collect Christmas music ease off on the downloads and uploads, the nog is going sour, the tree needs to be tossed, and what was a white Christmas has melted into a muddy and salty post Christmas. I don't know how many will be here to check out my site for more Christmas songs, but in the event you haven't gotten enough, I have more to share.

Last year I started a folder for new songs I just got in 2007. By the end of the year, I had somewhere over 1100 songs in that folder alone. In the 2008 folder? Well...let's just say I don't think any human being is meant to get this much Christmas music in one year, and I still have a handful of CDs to rip and a good pile of LPs and 45s to convert to MP3 (though me thinks those vinyl sides will be in my 2009 folder) and a good number of zipped files on my desk top waiting to be unzipped and put in my 2008 folder. So when all is said and done this year, I've exceeded my expectations of what I think I would get for music.

Which makes cataloging it all the more difficult. There's just so much to listen to and to connect the dots between all the tracks and that makes coming up with compelling post ideas quite a challenge. But I plow ahead.

When I listen to my Christmas songs, I make notes of common themes that stick out to me (and I often have to listen to the songs SEVERAL times before bigger themes stick out to me) and that's how I get the ideas for my posts here. But from time to time sometimes all I have is just a couple songs that are related and I don't get around to making themed posts on those topics. So today you're in for a bit of a treat...Here are songs I've noticed from my personal collection that may not be great enough for individual posts, but I thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at them in one longer post.

One unexpected theme came to me as I listened to my new songs this year: pirate Christmas songs. Granted, two of them are from the same artist, but I was able to uncover one more for this post. An interesting concept...of course, these are comedy songs by default.

Kevin Mahler-Pirate at Christmas Time
Kevin Mahler-Pirate's Christmas
Gastronomical Unit-A Pirate's 12 Days of Christmas

Another curious and unexpected theme arose from my collection of Christmas songs this year...Brady Bunch Christmas songs. No, I am not talking about the old Brady Bunch Christmas album, but songs inspired by the Brady Bunch.

First up is from a compilation I found online this past summer (yes, Virgina, there ARE Christmas songs to download during the summer!) and my honest review of the compilation is don't bother seeking it out unless you want something for your audio torture chamber. One or two songs by this "artist" is quite enough in my book. The entire CD worth of music by him not so much. Individually, his songs are unique, quirky, and certainly something fun to toss into a mix to keep people on their toes, but a little bit of this guy goes a long way, trust me.

The second track is from a download I found this past month.

Kenny and the Christmas-Tones - The Ann B Davis Christmas Song

(and I am telling you all of Kenny's Christmas songs sound that way...and he is obsessed by cows.)

Joe Algeri and Friends-All I Want for Christmas is Cindy Brady

Another curious theme that came out when listening to my music was the concept of Christmas trees with FEELINGS. Not too many songs are out there like this, folks...I've only come across two so far. That's not to say there are more, but they are certainly far and few between.

This first track comes from my most absolute favorite compilation I purchased this past year: A Very British Christmas. Crappy cover, awesome collection of music. (As of the time of this post, it looks like it's out of print...or maybe just out of stock for now, I hope...)

Peter Brough & Archie Andrews-The Little Fir Tree

That track reminded me of a track I got last year from Nellie McKay's My Space page, a very passionate plea by Nellie to, please, have sympathy for these Christmas trees we kill every year.

Nellie McKay-A Christmas Dirge

You'd think there would be more war songs, and perhaps if I plunged more into the Christmas music from the 40's I'd find more, but in the modern age we pretty much have John Lennon's famous track. But I did manage to find a couple more examples.

Arthur Askey-I'm Sending a Letter to Santa Claus
Jona Lewie-Stop the Calvary

And if Santa retires some people think he'd have some problems....(though I think if he just shaved and changed his clothes he'd be fine...)

Tina Marie Holbrook-If Santa Claus Retires
Keith Tenley-Gold Watch for Kringle

As always, thank you for reading and listening.

You gotta wake up....

It's Christmas time in the morning! What did Santa leave us???


Humph...that's not exactly what I asked for, Santa, THANKS A LOT!

And look what he left for you!

Get it while the getting is good...the present will be gone tomorrow!

Santa has gone back to the North Pole, kids! The link has expired!

Christmas Eve Present

So I know that the traditions of Christmas are varied and numerous world wide, and even in America. But growing up we always got to open presents Christmas Eve and then get to open MORE presents on Christmas Day that "Santa" left. So today here's my Christmas present for you this Christmas Eve, and tomorrow you will have to see what Santa decides to bring. NO PEEKING!
That present to you is an EP I made in collaboration with Ken Clinger. Two of the three songs feature lyrics by me, and one is a cover version. It should be fairly obvious which is which.

I hope you enjoy.

1) The Elf Song
2) The Clingmunk Song
3) Song of Rahab

Whew! Lots of "song" songs on this!

And for those of you who received the bonus disc for the Wayside Waifs CD, the version of the Elf Song is slightly different here...I re-recorded the vocals. I actually prefer the vocals on this take much more, but in the end you are the final judge.

Merry Christmas, and thank you for reading and listening.