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!

Say You're Mine

First off, an apology for this late post: Obviously I meant to get this up in time for Valentine's Day...actually I intended to post this ON Valentine's Day. I may have mentioned before how I listen to Christmas music while working and I will make notes of play list/compilation ideas as I go along through my day and the songs (and I've been going through an 8 GB flash drive FULL of Christmas music over the last month!) and I store the lists in my "drafts" folder in Outlook Express at work.

I can also access my work email from home, and get a hold of my lists when I need them. Only this past week was a double whammy for me...late Thursday into Friday night I had to deal with a virus/spyware on my computer which prevented me from getting ANY work done. Then when I got back up and running, it was too late...the IT department where I work had closed for the long holiday weekend and I couldn't access my email folders from home.

So I had to decide if I should hastily put together a quick list of songs to post by searching for "love" in the titles (or something equally prosaic) or should I just wait until Tuesday and get the list I wanted to post? I opted to wait and make a late post, because I had songs on my play list that I couldn't think of off the top of my head.

And I am glad I did wait.

So, without further adieu, here are the the Christmas Valentine's Day songs! Some are rather sad and plaintive...I guess people are longing for love at Christmas time! But I tried my best to find some of the more off the beaten path Christmas love songs for this post.

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!