Things just went from suck to blow

Well, folks, that promised compilation of great music is going to have to wait just a little while longer. When I got home, my computer had crashed and after trying everything I could I had to restore the system. Bad news, I lost everything I hadn't backed up (and I haven't backed anything up for several months, including just about all my new Christmas music, among other things, of course) but the good news is when I went to visit my mom a couple weeks ago, I put two years worth of my Christmas MP3s on a flash drive for her, and she's now in possession of my backed up Christmas music files. So while I don't have the files on hand to share with you now, I did ask her to mail me the flash drive so I can pull the files I need off of it.

So just a bit more patience... Now that precious free time I have is going to be spent reinstalling old programs and the sort. It's not going to be fun.

You may have noticed...

You may have noticed a couple things around here. One is I haven't been around too much. Shoot, last month I didn't even post at all, and I feel terrible about that! I felt I owed an explanation to those of you checking this blog for updates.

The main reason is lack of time. This year, compared to last year, my free time is really diminished due to an increase of hours to work at my part time job. Which I guess is good and bad. It's good because more hours means more money, means more I can save to do things I want/need to do in the future. It's bad because in a way it's a sign of the bad economy (people having to work more to prove themselves at jobs just to hang on to jobs they aren't getting raises at because of the bad economy) and it's bad because it really sucks up a lot of my free time. A LOT.

The other thing you may have noticed is a HUGE chunk of MP3 files just suddenly vanished from the site. OK, maybe you haven't noticed it yet, but if you are new here and trying to go back in the archives to find good old MP3s to download, I will save you the time...I deleted everything from 2007 and 2008. I three requests to remove Mp3s in the last month, and all of them were older files that I should have deleted long ago. I left them up because I wanted to be the friendly blogger and offer MP3s longer than any site out there. Well, I don't want to get in trouble either and rub anybody the wrong way. The worst case scenario is my file hosting site gets tired of the requests to remove MP3s and terminates my account so I have no where to post my files, and that is not something I want to see happen. So the life span of MP3s on this site is going to be shorter, much shorter, than they ever were before. I haven't decided exactly how long to leave them up. Perhaps six months would be fair?

As for more Christmas music to share, I have a ton, folks. Just hang tight. I think I will have time this week (later in the week, not today or tomorrow) to post my second annual Christmas in July compilation. Shoot, I gotta post it in July while I still can.

I just wanted to post a brief "whassup" to let you all know how things were going, and that I haven't forgotten about this place. I am not letting it go, and have more in plan for it than time allows me to do, but rest assured, I have more in plan for it. So stay tuned!

Christmas Coolville

Neato Coolville is a blog I recently discovered and in addition to all the COOL stuff Mayor Todd brings his readers, he has PLENTY of Christmas Coolville goodies for us all to enjoy!

Stick around his site after checking out the Christmas goodness...there is a lot of stuff there to enjoy!

Santa's Land

I know it's late in the month, so I want to give those of you who have been checking this blog for a new post this month something special. Call it a mid-seasonal Christmas gift!

One of my personal favorite finds this past Christmas was this rare record from Santa's Land in Cherokee, North Carolina. I am not sure the exact year this record was produced (what was it about a lot of vinyl not having any dates printed anywhere on the jacket or record label?) but from the look of the kids and the sound of the music, I'd place it circa early to mid 1970's.

And, OH, what a sound it is! Simple songs, yet timeless and captivating in a way as well. From the enjoyable title track (the little girl asks some provoking questions but the woman answering doesn't really answer the questions...) to the final strains of the last track, this is the best 20 minutes I've spent devoted listening to any Christmas record in my days. Some songs come close to the best classics of the genre but never reached the status of the more familiar standards. "How Santa Claus Got His Name," for example, reminds me a lot of the classic "C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S." Some of it is silly (the grown men speeding up their voices to sound like elves, for example!) to the sad and melancholy ("Dear Santa") but all of it is memorable and worthy of repeat listenings in my book. Add all that to the slightly awkward picture on the cover of the kids unsure of this old man they are being exposed to and the strange looking elf in the upper corner...

...What is up with that anyway? I don't want to say what I think in fear of little tykes reading this!

This was well worth the money it took to procure this into my collection! Everything about it adds so much to my enjoyment! The seller only asked that I share the treasure with others, so here you go. Enjoy!

Santa's Land01-What If?
Santa's Land02-Santa's Christmas Party
Santa's Land03-How Santa Claus Got His Name
Santa's Land04-Santa's Christmas Land
Santa's Land05-Christmas Dreaming
Santa's Land06-Hiding Behind the Christmas Tree
Santa's Land07-Dear Santa
Santa's Land08-Santa Claus' Band
Santa's Land09-Ho! Ho! Ho!
Santa's Land10-Old Time Christmas

Thank you for reading and listening!

Green Day

With today being Earth Day, I decided to dig into my collection to pull out some Earth friendly Christmas songs to share with you, showing that not only can you celebrate Christmas all year long, but you can celebrate Earth Day all year long as well!

First up is Rev. Green (and friends) from a recent 45 record I picked up this past Christmas season. I thought this was the perfect song to kick off today's celebration of Earth Day...

Rev. Green ft. Anthony and Kria Brekkan-Be Good to the Earth This Season

Peter Alsop is an artist I discovered from my work on the Wayside Waifs Charity CD because he was on Ken Clinger's My Space page as one of his many friends. While I did discover Peter's work too late to ask him to contribute to the CD, I did find it in time to pick up his kid friendly but oh so fun Christmas CD in time for this past Christmas. There's a few good tracks on there celebrating our time on this fragile planet. First up...

Peter Alsop- G-Gee, It's Warm Out Here

Well, if it's so warm out, where is the snow? This is from a free download from Zang Productions. It looks like it's still available so scurry over there to get the other tracks they offer!

Joel Barrowclough the Custodian & Greybeard-Where Is All the Snow?

Time for another Peter Alsop song, my favorite Earth friendly song he has to offer on his Christmas CD...a real nice message here.

Peter Alsop-Earthsong

To close, here is a track that I found on the artists' My Space page during the 2007 Christmas season, and I understand it's currently available on her website (unconfirmed...I did not double check...I just saw that on her Wiki page.)

Nellie McKay-Christmas Dirge

Thank you for listening and reading!

Off the beaten path stuff and NEWS!

Not quite in time for Easter, but I came across this when listening to my Christmas tracks recently:

The Paincakes-I Believe in Santa

Surprisingly, there aren't very many Easter Christmas songs out there!

I couldn't let a month go without touching base with my dear readers...not in the Twelve Months of Christmas! So this post is just for a few updates in what I've been up to and have planned for the coming year.

First off, after going through about a good 8 gigabytes of Christmas music (which I listened to at work on a flash drive and I listened to it everyday for more than a month!) I have to say that I have a few good compilations coming up soon. I also had to take a BREAK from Christmas music! Well, we all need just a little time away, right? So after getting through all the Christmas music I got in the last year (and then some) I loaded up all the radio shows I recorded on my computer over the last year (not Christmas related, I am afraid) and have been listening to those. It's always interesting to listen to just regular music and you'd be surprised on the odd tidbits you find when you listen to regular music. Take any random band/artist name you can think of and type their name in Google followed by the word "Christmas." You know, that's how I honestly find quite a bit of my off the beaten path stuff?

Here is one of my recent off the beaten path favorite finds for you:

Robyn Hitchcock-Have a Holiday, Baby

That was recorded live on Studio 360 way back in December 2006, so I am sure more than a few of you Christmas music faithful have heard that track before, but it's always new to somebody (and was new to me fairly recently!) and VERY much a welcome addition to my collection. I always liked Robyn Hitchcock's music and I looked on his CDs for proper Christmas music and on compilations and always came up empty handed. But this is the kind of stuff you can find when you search for an artist's/band's name on Google coupled with the word Christmas! Just a tip...

I digress...needless to say that even when I listen to regular ol' music I am thinking, "Hey, I like these guys...I wonder what kind of Christmas music they could make?" Does that make me a fanatic?

In my downtime over the past couple months when NOT listening to Christmas music (I know, hard to imagine, right?) I watched Lost episodes back to back from season one to current. Good times, good times. And those radio programs I mentioned? Well, it so turns out that I contacted the DJs for two local NPR shows that air exclusively in Kansas City and offered music from my own personal collection for their Christmas episodes next year and they are going to play tracks I pick! Certainly not everything I come up with, but it's something! One show in particular plays the same set of Christmas tracks year after year after year...the EXACT SAME! AAAAGGGHHH!!! I had to do something to rectify that. So in addition to creating comps for this blog, I will also be creating custom made compilations for my DJ friends and perhaps will share some of the chosen tracks here as well. Some really, really interesting stuff...

And in other personal Christmas music related news, I have a NEW BONUS DISC in the works for a Christmas 2009 release that will be sold as a bonus disc with the Wayside Waifs CD. Now, I realize that a good number of you already purchased the CD and bonus disc last year, so I will offer the bonus disc to you at a good price. Just know that I hate double dipping myself and would never ask you to double dip to get a few new Christmas songs (though if you want to buy a copy of the Wayside Waifs CD to give as a Christmas present when purchasing your bonus disc, that would be cool too!!!)

The new BONUS DISC will be ALL NEW songs, not just outtakes from the first disc, like the first bonus disc. It will be in a simple cardboard jacket with my designed cover art as well, and more than likely a CD-R burned on my personal computer to keep costs down. The bonus disc will be a VOLUME 2 to the Wayside Waifs CD. However, it won't be sold separately UNLESS you purchased the CD and bonus disc last year. It's going to be an EP and I am not planing to make Vol. 2 a full length CD. I already have four tracks for the disc, and will soon have six once Ken Clinger turns in his contributions and quite possibly eight tracks if a contributor from last year decides to do the two songs I asked them to do (and it's looking like they WILL!) All I can say is I am VERY excited about Volume 2 of the Wayside Waifs Charity CD and I will always keep you posted as I know more.

And if you know any artists or bands who would like to contribute a song, send them my way! While the new disc is going to be an EP, if it turns out to be an 80 minute EP chock full of songs, then SO BE IT!

Til next, thank you for reading and listening. I will be back soon...

Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

This may become a periodic feature on this blog: Songs with lyrics that are simply strange and/or misheard. I can’t promise that I will post many of these, as I tend to only notice these things upon repeat listenings of songs, and I simply haven’t had time to listen to all that I have several times over to really examine them that hard.

But one particular track has come to play for my ear drums more than a few times and I finally noticed it today…this songs contains a VERY strange line.

The Cricketone Chorus-The Snowflake Song

Now, you have to listen to it before proceeding...

The lyrics seem innocent enough:

Timble Tumble Little Snowflake High Up In The Sky
Drifting Dancing Slowly
Earthward Like A Cotton Butterfly

Whirling Swhirling Pretty Snowflake Landing In My Hand
How You Change The Whole World
In To Nature's Winter Wonderland

Every Snowflake Has A Shape That's All It's Own
There Are Never Two The Same
White As Day Up To The Sun A Silver Throne.

The lyrics seem innocent enough so far, but what is the next line???

The snow flakes put the Jews to shame????

Then something about Helter Skelter. Which could mean that the snow flakes are falling in hurried confusion or perhaps there is something more sinister at work here since the Jews were "displaced" in Germany and spent time in what are also known as "Helter Skelter" camps. Helter Skelter PURE WHITE SNOW FLAKE? What is this about a pure race of white snow flakes???

Trust me, I've listened to this SEVERAL TIMES, desperately trying to find another meaning in the lyrics. I had to have misheard them! So I did a trusty Google search...obviously, I am wrong, and the lyrics posted online will be RIGHT!

Allthelyrics.com has a different interpretation of that line… “the snow flakes put THEIR JUICE to shame” instead….but what the hell does that mean? Snow flakes put their juice to shame? WHAT? What juice? They hate their orange juice so they put it to shame? IT MAKES NO DAMNED SENSE! And listen to it closely…listen to it a dozen times over like I have…there is no way that they are singing “THEIR.” They sing “THE.” So either it’s they put THE JUICE to shame or THE JEWS to shame.

Or, I hope to GOD, something else nobody else has picked up on so far!

"Their juice" makes absolutely no sense to me, and I doubt it does to the person who submitted it to allthelyrics.com. Not that putting Jews to shame with a Helter Skelter makes any more sense in a Christmas song, but geez, at least I can wrap my head around that.

While on the topic of misheard lyrics, let’s take “Oh Holy Night.”

O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining.

ERROR??? I believe it’s “e’re,” shortened version of EVER for poetic purposes that has not really been in our vocabulary for several years now, but was a common word when this song was written. ERROR pining? Who the hell thought that should be the word used in the online lyrics?

I really have nothing to back me up on that…it’s not like I went to the library to get a book with old carols with original lyrics. It’s not that deep to me, folks. I am just saying which makes more sense to you… “ERROR pining” or “E’RE pining?” EVER pining is something I can wrap my head around.

I wonder about these lyrics posted online sometimes, I really do!

I also apologize for not posting more this past month. I had to get this in today so I could remain true to the Twelve Months of Christmas! Would you believe I FINALLY got caught up on all the Christmas music I got last year and then some, though? So I have some pretty long lists of compilations I want to post on this site over the course of the next several months, so be sure to check back for more Christmas goodness.

I also have some other goodies in mind for future posts, and promise to post more often in the future!